Jangada – Rede Internacional de Cátedras, Centros de Investigação e Associações is an International Network of Lusophone and Galician Chairs, Research Centers and Associations, which was founded in 2019, in Pontevedra (Galicia).

The name Jangada refers to the title of the novel Jangada de Pedra, The Stone Raft, by Portuguese Nobel Prize-winning author, José Saramago. This novel was published in 1986, when Portugal and Spain joined the former European Economic Community, today’s European Union. The premise of the novel is that the Iberian Peninsula has broken off the European continent and finds itself floating freely in the Atlantic Ocean. Politicians around the world are forced to deal with the traumatic effects, while five characters coming from Portugal and Spain get involved in a journey across the peninsula as the landmass goes on moving until it stops between Africa and South America.

The novel is of course an allegory of the need to expand European perspectives and identities. This idea of the Iberian Peninsula as a raft between Europe, Africa and the Americas became the founding idea behind our network, and it is also obviously connected to different aspects of migration.
 

The network comprises the nine Saramago chairs existing worldwide, 3 of them are located in Spain, and the other four are in Italy, Argentina, Mexico, Bulgaria, Peru and Brasil.

Other members are five chairs of Lusophone studies in Portugal, Spain, France and Colombia, as well as five research institutes in the US, Galicia/Spain, Brazil, Portugal, and France. There are also another international network and an international pedagogical association that have joined Jangada.

Furthermore, along with the institutions and organisations previously mentioned, there are already numerous individual associate members from different universities around the world.

Detailed information on this network, its partners and their individual activities is available in Portuguese here.

The general objective of the Jangada network is to create synergies and to promote collaboration among its members in relation to the projects and activities that are being developed and carried out within the scope of current Lusophone Studies, be it through teaching, research or extension activities, and always privileging interdisciplinary approaches.

It seems obvious to us that today's Lusophone Studies call for transversality, internationalization and interdisciplinarity. We could refer, for example, to the  interrelations among literature and justice, law, human rights, anthropology, philosophy, politics, feminism, post-colonialism and ecocriticism, along with others.

Our partners belong to different academic, cultural and national systems, on whose support we depend to a greater or lesser extent. But the transversality that we intend to create, the decentralization and the deterritorialization to which we aspire, the mutual support and the convergences that we can generate might help us to achieve a greater autonomy in relation to our academic and political systems.

Thus, the network aims to strengthen,within our respective contexts, the critical spirit and the impulse to action and change which José Saramago always demanded and practiced.

Joint research and other activities, dissemination projects, knowledge transfer and all kinds of innovations within Lusophone Studies are specific objectives of the Jangada network.

With this network we are trying to respond to three central ideas that can be deduced from the work and thought of the Portuguese Nobel Prize laureate José Saramago.

Firstly, the concept of transiberism, which was coined by Saramago in order to highlight the need for the Iberian Peninsula, and Europe as a whole, to understand themselves as being interwoven, not only culturally, but also ethically, with the many and diverse cultural spaces that emerge from colonialism. This includes the notion of Europe taking responsibility for colonialism, the idea of, in Saramago’s words: "a finally ethical Europe".

Therefore, we consider it is essential to emphasize all kinds of minorities and underprivileged groups. The fact that the impulse to create this network was born in Galicia is itself paradigmatic. Galicia, a nation without a state, historically colonized by Spain and Spanish culture, drowned in self-hate and still suffering from a sort of an inferiority complex, had been, nonetheless, the cultural and literary cradle not only of the Portuguese-speaking world, but also of a fundamental part of the Ibero-Romance world in general.

The second central idea that instigated the creation of the network is the “Universal Charter of Duties and Obligations of the Individuals”, suggested by José Saramago as a necessary complement to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. An English translation of the text may be found, together with further information, on this link of the website of the International José Saramago Chair.

This charter, submitted by the Saramago Foundation to the United Nations in 2018, was developed by an international committee of experts and was inspired by the speech delivered by Saramago at the Nobel Banquet in 10 December 1998. The following quotation, which also precedes the Charter, explains the main objectives of our network perfectly well:

"Nobody performs her or his duties. Governments do not, because they do not know, they are not able or they do not wish, or because they are not permitted by those who effectively govern the world: The multinational and pluricontinental companies whose power – absolutely nondemocratic – reduce to next to nothing what is left of the ideal of democracy. We citizens are not fulfilling our duties either. Let us think that no human rights will exist without symmetry of the duties that correspond to them. It is not to be expected that governments in the next 50 years will do it. Let us common citizens therefore speak up. With the same vehemence as when we demanded our rights, let us demand responsibility over our duties. Perhaps the world could turn a little better." (José Saramago, 1998)

Finally, the third central idea of the network stems from the awareness that truly important and meaningful changes can be achieved only if we adopt, at the right moments, extra-systemic positions and actions. This is to say that we must never forget that our educational, academic and scientific systems increasingly depend on economic and political conditions, on lobbyism and oligarchies, and so on.

The ideals of a secular humanism, as a democratic and ethical life stance, that fosters the right and responsibility to achieve meaningfulness and allows young people to freely shape their own individual personalities,are being gradually withered away from our educational and university systems.

Our network is obviously aware that we must continue to resist to these dynamics within the system. That we must try, as Saramago said, to "turn the world a little better" by contributing to build an ethic based on human and ecological values, not abandoning those who already are and/or want to stay within the system. But we are also aware that the system is in itself unsustainable , and that one of our moral duties and obligations is to bring education, in general, and the university, in particular, directly to the people, without the fees, ratings or grades we know today.

Our first joint publication has been the volume on José Saramago e os desafios do nosso tempo (Barcelona: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona 2021), exploring many interdisciplinary approaches to the political questions in Saramago's writing and thinking.

Besides, in 2022, on the centenary of José Saramago’s birth, several partners of this network organised many different activities. For example, there were four itinerant conferences hosted by 4 European Saramago's chairs that took place in Barcelona, Sofia, Rome and Vigo.

Since its foundation, the Jangada has grown and the number of its members has increased. We hope that it continues to grow in the future, strengthening relationships and mutual support between its members and working for the implementation of common initiatives.

Thus, the Jangada network wishes to invite every chair, institution or association sharing our values ​​and goals and working in Lusophone Studies to join us.

Contact us here. We are always be pleased to receive any questions or proposals!

Documentos anexos