Niketche, uma história de poligamia, de Paulina Chiziane: as representações do corpo e da nudez feminina desvendadas na literatura e na cultura moçambicana

Abstract

This study aimed to analyze and recognize the representation and conceptions of nudity and the female body present in the Mozambican literary work Niketche, uma história de poligamia (2004), written by Paulina Chiziane. The story of the book challenges us to think about women’s history from African and Mozambican’s experience, through the perspective of the character Rami and her relationship with Tony and the other lovers. The character goes deep into the cultural diversity of her country and the roles assigned to women, related to tradition and inherited culture, blending tradition and modernity. The female body and its nudity emerge in the book in order to break some bonds that character considered eternal. It is through the body that the woman constitutes herself, expresses herself, hides, owns the world or becomes its hostage. More precisely, we approach the concept of body to the Mozambican’s culture represented in Niketche through theoretical readings about the African continent, Feminism and women’s history in the African and Western context. This study investigated how these concepts are rooted in African culture and find in literature a privileged stage of expression. By studying this representation, it was possible to reach understandings about what we have regarding these issues in the West in general, taking especially Brazil as place of speech.