maria sibylla merian centre
conviviality-inequality in latin america
maria sibylla merian centre
conviviality-inequality in latin america
Ana Carolina Torquato holds a PhD in Literary Studies from UFPR with a doctoral exchange programme at the Universität Potsdam and an MA in Literary Studies and Comparative Literature from the universities of Sheffield, Santiago de Compostela and Nova de Lisboa. Ana was awarded a BA in Literary Studies from UFPR. Her main areas of interest are literature, animal studies, disaster studies and ecocriticism. In her current research project, Ana is working on the representation of the relationship between human and non-human animals in zoos and aquariums in post-war Brazilian literature. Her main focus is power relations and the nature of animal agency established between human beings and species living in captivity.
Project: Zoos and Aquaria in Brazilian Literature: Relationships of Conviviality and Inequality among Human and Non-Human Animals
Abstract:
The project investigates how human-animal relationships are perceived and represented in urban zoos and aquariums in Brazilian post-war literature. The basis of my analysis is the selected works of two Brazilian writers, Clarice Lispector and João Guimarães Rosa. The corpus is composed of circa fourteen texts including three novellas and one short story by Clarice Lispector and a group of ten short stories by Guimarães Rosa. The themes of these narratives coincide since both of them report on visitations to zoos and aquariums located in Brazil and Europe. Besides commenting on the geographical recognition of the spaces, the stories’ narrators also remark on animal agency and the state of confinement of the animals observed. My analysis will focus on four major points: the description of zoos and aquariums; the presence or absence of any remarks concerning animals’ state of captivity; the description of the human-animal relationship and how the texts perceive animal agency in that specific environment. To underpin this discussion and to understand how animals’ presence in the cityscape has changed over time, the project uses a theoretical framework which dialogues with sociology, ethology, and the history of zoos and aquariums in Brazil and the world. It probes how urbanisation has historically interfered with human-animal relationships and takes a critical look at the rise of zoos and aquariums as places destined for both entertainment and, in contemporary times, animal preservation and research.
Main discipline: Literary Studies
Selected publications:
• TORQUATO, A. C.. Animality and Textual Experimentalism in João Guimarães Rosa?s My Uncle, the Jaguar. Word and Text: A Journal of Literary Studies and Linguistics, v. XI, p. 187-200, 2021.
• TORQUATO PINTO DA SILVA, ANA CAROLINA. Memória e reconhecimento em -Nenhum, nenhuma-, de João Guimarães Rosa. EM TESE (BELO HORIZONTE. ONLINE), v. 24, p. 247-261, 2019.
• TORQUATO, A. C.. O animal e o humano em A Confissão da Leoa, de Mia Couto, e ‘Meu tio o Iauaretê’, de João Guimarães Rosa. CADERNOS DE PÓS GRADUAÇÃO EM LETRAS (ONLINE), v. 17, p. 61-71, 2017.
• TORQUATO, A. C.. The Analysis of Love and influence in Machado de Assis and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Revista Versalete, v. 2, p. 156-169, 2014.
• Torquato, Ana Carolina. Estudo sobre a condição de ‘(não) animalidade humana’ e a dualidade do ‘eu’ na obra ‘Grande sertão: veredas’, de João Guimarães Rosa. EM TESE (BELO HORIZONTE. ONLINE), v. 20, p. 180-198, 2014.
Simone Toji holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of St Andrews, an MA in Sociology and Anthropology from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and a BA in Social Sciences from the University of São Paulo. She is the author of the forthcoming monograph The immensity of being singular: Approaching migrant lives through resonance. She is a teaching fellow at Belas Artes University and an official at the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN). Her current projects explore questions in migration studies, ethnography, cosmopolitanism, urban studies, and cultural heritage.
Project: Cultural Heritage and Migration in Brazil: Identity and Conviviality Representations in Contention
Abstract:
Cultural heritage policies in Brazil have been predominantly concerned with narratives about the Brazilian nation. They constitute significant means for defining the representation of those who can be considered part of the country. In the case of international migrants, cultural heritage policies have operationalised the recognition of their legacies in two main ways: by applying a notion of assimilation, in which migrants are said to have become ‘Brazilians’; and by referring to a notion of multiculturalism that identifies migrants as groups of difference that constitute the nation. In other words, from the national perspective, the non-national is only acknowledged when the person becomes the same – ‘becoming Brazilian’ – or contrastive – ‘the other’. In investigating the request of families of Japanese origin to have an ecumenical religious celebration, Toro Nagashi, recognised as Brazilian cultural heritage, this project explores how the vision of coexistence in this celebration interrogates the national framework of the Brazilian cultural heritage policies and prompts heritage officials to face a more global and cosmopolitan perspective that encourages the imagining of other models of conviviality.
Main discipline: Anthropology
Selected publications:
• Toji, Simone: The Immensity of Being Singular: Approaching Migrant Lives in São Paulo through Resonance. HAU Books and The University of Chicago Press. (Forthcoming)
• Toji, Simone (2021): “Contingencies of wellbeing: the portrait of an international migrant in Brazil in pursuit of the good life.” In: Gronseth and Skinner (ed.) Mobilities of Wellbeing, Ethnographic Studies in Medical Anthropology. Carolina Academic Press.
• Toji, Simone with Chiara Bortolotto, Panas Karampampas, and Philipp Demgenski (2020a): “Proving Participation: Vocational Bureaucrats and Bureaucratic Creativity in the Implementation of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.” Social Anthropology 28 (1): 66–82. DOI.
• Toji, Simone (2020b): “Whose intangible cultural heritage? Cowboy culture, heritage self-determination and the expression of a divided nation in the context of populist politics in Brazil.” International Journal of Heritage Studies, 27, 1, 1-11.
• Toji, Simone (2019): “The Gambiarra City: International Migrants’ Subjectivity and the Making of a Multi-Dimensional Urban Space in São Paulo,” Urbanities, 9, 66 – 83.