Dimensões cronotópicas em Tornado, de Teresa Noronha: o relato de vida na escrita feminina contemporânea

Abstract

This dissertation aims to analyze how chronotopic dimensions (time and space) shape the construction of the life narrative in the novel Tornado (2021), by the Mozambican writer Teresa Noronha, highlighting how the movements of internalization and externalization contribute to the re-signification of individual and collective experience in contemporary women's writing as a way of narrating oneself. The research starts from an understanding of the chronotope, a Bakhtinian concept that articulates time and space in the plot, to observe how these elements manifest themselves in Noronha's autofiction, in which the author converts personal experience into literary expression, merging personal experience and historical context in the narrative. Based on an analytical-interpretative methodology, this research combines a critical reading of the work with theoretical contributions from Mikhail Bakhtin (1997; 2008), Homi K. Bhabha (1998), Nazir Ahmed Can (2020), and Izabel Teixeira (2011), among other scholars of African and post-colonial literature and literary theories that address the concept of chronotope. The analysis reveals that Tornado is structured from a fragmented and non-linear time, in which memories, daydreams, and streams of consciousness produce a narrative that is discontinuous in time and space, denoting the processes of war trauma and identity disembodiment. Space, in turn, acquires a central symbolic role, acting as an operator of meaning for the narrator's own subjectivity, marked by wandering and a feeling of non-belonging, and which attempts to consolidate itself through self-writing. The geographies of Mozambique, Portugal, and France become affective territories that reflect the physical and emotional displacement of the protagonist, whose experiences mirror the tensions of race, gender, and nationality in the post-colonial context. Preliminary results indicate that Noronha's work reinscribes Mozambican space as a place of memory, loss, and new beginnings, while her writing represents a gesture of resistance and re-signification of her own life experience. It is concluded that, in Tornado, time and space not only structure the narrative but also operate as existential dimensions that underpin the elaboration of an identity fragmented by lived experiences, reaffirming the relevance of Mozambican women's literature in the field of post-colonial narratives.