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political, juridical and educational support and recognition of these spoken
languages and living cultures in national territories. It shows an old habit that
was part of the construction of the state-nations that permit particularly in
our case: the old Portuguese Empire and the Portuguese identity, a cultural
and linguistic paradigm that has had its functionality and that now we need
to better comprehend to move on. Fortunately it was good surprise to learn
about the initiatives of the Russian Federation that together with countries
like India, Canadá or South Africa might help us to approach efficiently our
Multilingual issues.
The understanding of what is valuable for a nation changes through time and
specifically in 2005 Brazil signs the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity.
This declaration suggests, among other things, that cultures and languages
shall be considered treasures of the nations, and underlines the need to support
initiatives of recognition, respect, inclusion and circulation of these groups and
the access to the knowledge generated by these groups in national territory as
well as in the World Wide Web. In our region it is a brand new concept.
The change of attitude towards minor languages concerns a perception of our
socio cultural and historical bonds. There are many blind spots that we have to
deal with to make this move. To work and to reflect on multilingualism social
and digital inclusion when the paradigm since colonization has been to affirm
monolingualism is a difficult job, and our local education goes towards major or
dominant languages while minor languages were forbidden until approximately
ten years ago. Some theoretical apparatus is necessary to deal with such contrast
in academy – the interest to be part of hegemonic culture versus the need to
recognize the value of local culture. Otherwise we might develop an academicschizophrenic
profile as Kosambi and Spivak point out:“[...] “one cannot truly
know the cultures of other places, other times,” and then proceed to diagnose
the hegemonic readings into place.” (Kosambi/Spivak, p.50, 1999)
The first theoretical approach that I found to be useful and productive
to comprehend Multilingualism in Brazil and in our partner countries is
postcolonial reason criticism. One of the reasons might be that the idea of the
foreclosure of the native informant is very present and quite visible in my field.
Another possibility is for the need to comprehend the role of women in third
world countries that is also something that catches my attention in postcolonial
criticism works - being a woman in a third world country university – and
by “third world” I’m referring to traditionally colonized academic culture and
not specifically to Brazilian economy. Anyway, it is based on this theoretical
approach and methodological tool that helps to deconstruct some hegemonic
readings, that I’m able to present some perspective for the incoming project.
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