Reconfiguring historical colonial identity: a cartographic approach to El párroco de Niefang by Joaquín Mbomio Bacheng

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Notes on Contributor

Clelia Rodríguez completed her PhD with a combined specialty in Women's Studies and Hispanic Literature from the University of Toronto in 2011, specializing in Equatorial Guinean Literature. She has taught at the University of Toronto, Washington College, the University of Ghana, and most recently in Nepal, Jordan and Chile as a travelling scholar for an international comparative human rights academic programme. She possesses international expertise in conducting interdisciplinary research and teaching, drawing on cultural, gender, refugee, identity, memory, trauma and postcolonial studies (Spain, Mexico, Cuba, United States, El Salvador, Ghana, Canada, Nepal, Jordan and Chile). Recent publications include: ‘Oralidad, Género y Memoria en Ekomo de María Nsué’ (Revista Iberoamericana, in press); and ‘Cuban Women Struggle with Gendered Health Issues’ (Women and Environments, 2003).

Notes

¹ Joaquín Bacheng Mbomio, El párroco de Niefang, Malabo: Centro Cultural Hispano-Guineano, 1996.

² Drawing on my own struggle with articulating written language and as someone who does everything in her native tongue, to embark on the task of translation to English, this article is inextricably bound to cultural past wounds that have marked me but do not define me. I am grateful for the invaluable support of Danielle Thomas in this process. Cherrie Moraga's lines are in sync with my thoughts: ‘I lack imagination you say / No. I lack language. / The language to clarify my resistance to the literate …’ My research in Equatorial Guinea was made possible thanks to a University of Toronto Language Research Grant.

³ Cited by Linda Tuhiwai Smith in Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, London: Zed Books, 2012.

⁴ My emphasis.

⁵ Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, New York: Routledge, 1998, p 7.

⁶ Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, p 17.

⁷ Tuhiwai, Decolonizing Methodologies, p 25.

⁸ Tuhiwai, Decolonizing Methodologies, p 28.

⁹ Tuhiwai, Decolonizing Methodologies, p 28.

¹⁰ Tuhiwai, Decolonizing Methodologies, p 101.

¹¹ Tuhiwai, Decolonizing Methodologies, p 55.

¹² Tuhiwai, Decolonizing Methodologies, p 55.

¹³ Tuhiwai, Decolonizing Methodologies, p 55.

¹⁴ Walter Mignolo, ‘El pensamiento des-colonial, desprendimiento y apertura: Un manifiesto’, in Catherine Walsh, Álvaro García Linera and Walter Mignolo (eds), Interculturalidad, descolonización del estado y del conocimiento, Buenos Aires: Ediciones del Signo; Durham, NC: Globalization and the Humanities Project (Duke University), 2006.

¹⁵ Walter Mignolo, introducción de Walter Mignolo, ‘Desobediência epistêmica: a opção descolonial e o significado de identidade em política’, Cadernos de Letras da UFF – Dossiê: Literatura, língua e identidade 34, 2008, pp 287–324. It is apropos to acknowledge the consolidated research and scholarly contribution of sociologists who have been working on issues of decoloniality for decades, such as P G Casanova, E Lander, E Dussel, P Chaterjee, among others

¹⁶ This papal bull was published a decade after the discovery of the African coast in 1445.

¹⁷ F G Davenport, European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States and Its Dependencies to 1648, Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1917, p 12.

¹⁸ Carl Sauer, ‘The Morphology of Landscape’, in John Leighly (ed), Land and Life: Selections from the Writings of Carl Ortwin Sauer, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963, p 343.

¹⁹ E B Buale, El laberinto guineano, Madrid: IEPALA Editorial, 1989, p 93.

²⁰ Benita Sampedro Vizcaya, ‘Rethinking the Archive and the Colonial Library: Equatorial Guinea’, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 9(3), 2008, pp 341–363, p 342.

²¹ Mbaré Ngom, ‘Afro-fascismo y creación cultural en Guinea Ecuatorial: 1969–1979’, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 21(2), 1997, pp 385–395, p 386.

²² See: http://waltermignolo.com/the-prospect-of-harmony-and-the-decolonial-view-of-the-world/

²³ J B Harley, ‘Maps, Knowledge, and Power’, in Denis Cosgrove and Stephen J Daniels (eds), The Iconography of Space, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, p 302.

²⁴ Tom Conley, Cartographic Cinema, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007, pp 13–14.

²⁵ Christian Jacob, The Sovereign Map: Theoretical Approaches in Cartography throughout History, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006, p 23.

²⁶ Jacob, The Sovereign Map, p 332.

²⁷ Jacob, The Sovereign Map, p 28.

²⁸ Jacob, The Sovereign Map, p 99.

²⁹ Ricardo Padrón, The Spacious Word: Cartography, Literature, and Empire in Early Modern Spain, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, p 21.

³⁰ Padrón, The Spacious Word: Cartography, p 12.

³¹ Conley, Cartographic Cinema, p xii.

³² Conley, Cartographic Cinema, p xi.

³³ Conley, Cartographic Cinema, p 81.

³⁴ Terry Eagleton, After Theory, New York: Allen Lane, 2003, p xxiii.

³⁵ See: http://walterignolo.com/the-prospect-of-harmony-and-the-decolonial-view-of-the-world/

³⁶ Mbomio, El párroco de Niefang, p 16.

³⁷ Mbomio, El párroco de Niefang, p 34.

³⁸ Igor Cusack, ‘Hispanic and Bantu Inheritance, Trauma, Dispersal and Return: Some Contributions to a Sense of National Identity in Equatorial Guinea’, Nations and Nationalisms 5(2), 1999, pp 207–236, p 222.

³⁹ Mbomio, El párroco de Niefang, p 16.

⁴⁰ See: http://waltermignolo.com/the-prospect-of-harmony-and-the-decolonial-view-of-the-world/

⁴¹ Mbomio, El párroco de Niefang, p 16.

⁴² Conley, Cartographic Cinema, p 310.

⁴³ Mbomio, El párroco de Niefang, p 18.

⁴⁴ Mbomio, El párroco de Niefang, p 76.

⁴⁵ Mbomio, El párroco de Niefang, p 76.

⁴⁶ F M R Igambo, Guinea Ecuatorial: De la esclavitud colonial a la dictadura nguemista, Barcelona: Carena, 2000, p 69.

⁴⁷ Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo, Historia y tragedia de Guinea Ecuatorial, Madrid: Cambio 16, 1977.

⁴⁸ Mbomio, El párroco de Niefang, p 25.