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Looking for ‘God’ in Non-Identity: Reading the Transcendental in Agualusa’s The Book of Chameleons
- Author(s):
- Irene Marques (see profile)
- Date:
- 2015
- Group(s):
- Lusophone African Literatures, Postcolonial Studies, West African Literature
- Subject(s):
- Angola, African literature (Portuguese), Portuguese speaking Africa, Africans--Social life and customs, National characteristics, Nationalism
- Item Type:
- Article
- Tag(s):
- José Eduardo Agualusa, Senghor and Emmanuel Lévinas;, Supra-Identity, Lusophone African literatures and cultures, National identity
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6542J81H
- Abstract:
- . I demonstrate how The Book of Chameleons is replete with metaphors of what I call the “non-self,” or “supra-self,” or even “God,” which are commonly found in Zen Buddhist thought, classical African epistemological and ontological paradigms, and more specifically, the idea of African Personality as put forward by Léopold S. Senghor or even in some of Emmanuel Lévinas’s philosophical principles related to the dialectic between self and other or otherness (the non-human) and the divine. This use of multiple cross-cultural frameworks serves to reveal how different paradigms (from West to East, North to South) display parallel ontological visions, thus pointing to the idea that humans (wherever they are) yearn to exit their “small self” and expand their selfhood.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Journal article
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 4 years ago
- License:
- All Rights Reserved
- Share this:
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