ABSTRACT

This article proposes a reading of João Paulo Borges Coelho’s novel Campo de Trânsito (2007) as a literary response to the neoliberal financialisation of oil. Exploring the correspondence between dematerialised forms of capital and the abstraction of narrative modes, I argue that materialist motifs of petroleum extraction and workers’ resistance in Borges Coelho’s text register the ‘porosity’ of Mozambique’s extractives sector, which in recent years has seen an influx of foreign investment after the discovery of globally significant quantities of oil and natural gas. In light of the recent move to rethink world literature through the prism of petro-modernity (WReC 2015; Szeman 2017; Macdonald 2017), this investigation invites new angles of literary comparison for which oil would function as a necessary representational logic beyond its particular figuration as a plot-driver at the level of content.

摘要

本文建议阅读JoãoPaulo Borges Coelho的小说Campo deTrânsito（2007年）作为对石油新自由主义金融化的文学回应。在探讨非物质资本形式与叙事模式抽象之间的对应关系时，我认为，博尔赫斯·科埃略（Borges Coelho）著作中的石油开采的唯物主义图案和工人的抵抗反映了莫桑比克采掘业的“疏松性”，近年来这种现象大量涌入。在全球范围内发现大量石油和天然气后进行外国投资。鉴于最近通过石油现代性的角度重新思考世界文学的举动（WReC 2015; Szeman 2017; Macdonald 2017），本研究提出了文学比较的新视角，在这种比较中，石油将超越其特定的形象，作为必要的表示逻辑作为内容级别的绘图驱动程序。