Decolonising Cape Verdean Soul: Resistance, Emancipation and Identity in Corsino Fortes’ Poetry

An undeniable point of reference in Cultural Studies1,Stuart Hall (1990, p.222) states that “cultural practices of representation always imply aposition from which one speaks or writes,” which the Jamaican authorrefers to as “positions of enunciation.” The identity issue from which thesubject of enunciation, a victim of colonization, positions itself, isconstrained by the “colonial experience” (1990, p. 224). More than merelyrecovering lost time, the question of identity is related to how we positionourselves in relation to the narratives of the past (1990, p. 223).Only in this way, as Hall suggests, can we understand the traumaticnature of that experience (1990, p. 225). The European presence in Africa,with its power and domination, culturally “expropriated” the “other,”converting it into something marginal and peripheral, imposing upon it aculture that becomes a constitutive element of its identity (1990, p. 233).Here lies the ambivalence of “colonial expropriation,” resulting in adialectic of power and resistance, rejection, and recognition. Creolisationor cultural miscegenation is an example of this, manifesting itself inlanguage and cultural representations. In this sense, the African continentrepresents the great aporia of cultural identity (1990, p. 234). (PDF) “Decolonising Cape Verdean Soul: Resistance, Emancipation and Identity in Corsino Fortes’s Poetry”. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/400537023_Decolonising_Cape_Verdean_Soul_Resistance_Emancipation_and_Identity_in_Corsino_Fortes's_Poetry [accessed Feb 06 2026].