SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Overview

Department of the Languages and Cultures of Africa

Graduate Teaching Assistant

Name:

Ms Sara Marzagora

Email address:

sara.marzagora@soas.ac.uk

Thesis title:

Images of the Italian occupation in contemporary Ethiopian literature

Year of Study:

2nd

Internal Supervisors

• Kai Easton

Biography

After a BA and an MA in Humanities (major in Literature, minors in Anthropology, Philosophy and History) at the University of Milan, I arrived at SOAS in 2010 to specialize in African Studies. My expertise area is the Horn of Africa, particularly Ethiopia, whose literature, philosophy and history I am exploring in my PhD. More broadly, my main disciplinary interest is Literatures in African Languages, especially oral literatures. I wrote articles on the Swahili and Xhosa literary traditions, and I spent the summer of 2012 as a visiting researcher at Rhodes University (South Africa) to pursue a research project on Xhosa izibongo (praise poetry).   

PhD Research

My research explores the ways in which the Italian invasion and occupation (1935-1941) has influenced Ethiopian political philosophy and has been represented in Ethiopian literature. The first part of my project consists in an historical examination of the practical and ideological impact of the Italian occupation on the development of Ethiopian literary culture. I then proceed to critically evaluate the way authors from different cultural backgrounds reacted to this historical event and thematized it in their literary works. For this investigation, I propose a transversal methodology, which encompasses written and oral literature, literature in Ethiopian languages and literature in European languages, locally produced literature and literature of the Ethiopian diaspora in the United States, United Kingdom and Italy.

I believe a multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary project can, through the study of literature, enlighten about the Ethiopian society as a whole and its internal structure. The three disciplines, besides literature and Ethiopian historiography, I am hoping to contribute to are political philosophy, anthropology of literature and cultural geography.

My work responds to two recent trends in Ethiopian historiography. The first (see Clapham 2002) called for a historiographical reconsideration of periods of fragmented state authority, such as the fascist conquest, usually misrepresented by the ‘grand narrative’ paradigm. The second (see Messay 2008) reassessed the ideological consequences of the Italian occupation, arguing that its disruptive impact led to profound changes in Ethiopian philosophy, eventually resulting in the 1974 revolution.

One of the focuses of my analysis will be, then, the role of the ‘colonial’ in Ethiopian political philosophy. Most Ethiopian writers were also influential ideologues, and their works are imbued with their political ideas; an analysis of their ideology becomes therefore essential in order to better understand their artistic output.

Literature was often used as a fictional exemplification of wider socio-political arguments over the management of the Ethiopian state. The strong link between literature and political philosophy is an example of the peculiar social function of Amharic written literature – which I plan to explore from an anthropological point of view. From the same disciplinary perspective I shall also research the social significance of oral literary traditions, and their own representation of the ‘colonial’.

During my fieldwork in Ethiopia in spring 2012 I am going to record and analyse the performances of oral artists, in order to compare them to written works. My fieldwork period will also give me a chance to investigate in what ways the memory of colonialism became physical and inscribed itself in the landscape of Addis Ababa (for example, in Yekatit 12 Square) and Aksum (for example, in the stele looted by the Italians in 1937 and returned in 2005) – and how such urban postcoloniality is poetically depicted by local artists.  

PhD Publications

• Marzagora, S. Poetry Against Apartheid. How a Xhosa art form assisted in the struggle against oppression. Think Africa Press, 15/03/2011.
• Marzagora, S. Polemical Poets. Metrical innovation in Swahili poetry. Think Africa Press, 23/02/2011.
• Marzagora, S. The literature of the Ethiopian diaspora in Italy. Mobilizing the heritage of Amharic literature to renegotiate the historical meaning of the 1936-1941 Italian occupation. Proceedings of the 18th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (forthcoming).  

PhD Conferences

• Marzagora, S. Amharic and the rest. Multi-layered power relations in the literatures
  of the Horn of Africa. BCLA/SOAS Conference “Comparing Centres, Comparing Peripheries”. London, 19-21 January 2012.
• Marzagora, S. Literary hegemonies in the Horn of Africa and Ethiopia’s role in the ‘South-South’ intellectual exchange. SOAS Africa Department Seminar Series. London, 1 February 2012.
• Marzagora, S. Inside-out Abyssinia. Tracing the divergence between internal and external discourses on Ethiopia. SOAS “Worldscapes” Conference. London, 10 March 2012.
• Marzagora, S. Looking back to the Horn from Rome. The literary activism of Eritrean, Somali and Ethiopian writers in multicultural Italy. Conference “Welcoming strangers”. Royal Holloway University of London, 27 April 2012.
• Marzagora, S. Local centres and local peripheries outside the ‘World-System’. A case study from the Horn of Africa. Conference “Marginal Cartographies”. University of Warwick, 28 April 2012.
• Marzagora, S. Narrating the Ethiopian diaspora in Italy:  the heritage of Amharic literature in a new postcolonial setting. BCLA Graduate Reception. London, 16 October 2012.
• Marzagora, S. The literature of the Ethiopian diaspora in Italy. Mobilizing the heritage of Amharic literature to renegotiate the historical meaning of the 1936-1941 Italian occupation. 18th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies. Dire Dawa, 29 October-2 November 2012.