Archive · 12 Sep 2026
Scholar Examines Goa’s Postnational Identity Across Colonial Worlds
R Benedito Ferrão wrote a book about Goans who moved between different countries and continents.
Many Goans traveled through Portuguese and British colonial systems.
Their citizenship sometimes helped them seek work and new opportunities elsewhere.
But moving across borders could also make it difficult to decide where they belonged.
Ferrão calls this kind of person a “postnational Goan.”
This means someone whose life and identity do not fit neatly inside one country.
He studies four novels to understand the feelings and experiences behind migration.
He also looks at paintings, old images, and music because they can reveal parts of history that novels may leave hidden.
Ferrão says studying Goa can help people understand colonialism and belonging in many parts of the world.
R Benedito Ferrão’s book studies Goan characters in four novels spanning Africa, Asia, and other regions.
The book connects Goan migration to Portuguese citizenship, British colonial networks, and changing ideas of nationality.
Ferrão argues that Portuguese colonialism needs concepts such as “lusosphere,” rather than language-centered “lusophone” analysis alone.
He describes Goans as “postnational” subjects whose identities and political ties cross multiple countries and continents.
Using paintings, etchings, and popular music alongside fiction, Ferrão examines histories of race, religion, labor, displacement, and colonialism.
- Who
- R Benedito Ferrão, an associate professor at William & Mary, discusses his book Across Continents: Writing Goans, Making Worlds.
- What
- The interview examines Goan diasporic literature, Portuguese colonialism, postnational identity, and Ferrão’s interdisciplinary methods.
- When
- The discussion concerns Ferrão’s recently published monograph; specific publication and interview dates are not stated.
- Where
- The book and interview connect Goa with British and Portuguese Africa, India, Europe, the Indian Ocean, and the Atlantic world.
- Why
- Ferrão seeks to explain the emotional lives of displaced people and challenge Anglocentric approaches to postcolonial studies.
Ferrão’s Framework
Established Approaches
How to study Portuguese colonialism
Ferrão’s Framework
Ferrão argues that Portuguese colonialism has distinctive histories and requires a vocabulary such as “lusosphere,” which includes cultural and political networks beyond Portuguese language use.
Established Approaches
Ferrão identifies an established postcolonial framework as largely Anglocentric and says its one-size-fits-all approach does not adequately explain Goan movements between Portuguese and British colonial systems.
Understanding Goan identity
Ferrão’s Framework
Ferrão presents the “postnational Goan” as an older figure with agency who used Portuguese citizenship to move across empires, while maintaining ties to several places.
Established Approaches
He distinguishes this figure from the more familiar transnational migrant, whom he associates with workers moved by the forces of neoliberal globalisation.
Goa in Indian representation
Ferrão’s Framework
Ferrão argues that Goa has become an “internal exotic” in India, with its Portuguese heritage made consumable through tourism, film, real estate, and anglophone representation.
Established Approaches
The broader Indian imagination, as Ferrão characterizes it, often reappropriates Portuguese India as cultural difference while treating India primarily through a post-British national framework.
- Book
- Across Continents: Writing Goans, Making Worlds
- Author
- R Benedito Ferrão
- Publisher series
- African Perspectives series at University of Michigan Press
- Primary texts
- Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children; M.G. Vassanji’s The Book of Secrets; Roger King’s A Girl from Zanzibar; and Margaret Mascarenhas’s Skin
- Core concept
- The “postnational Goan,” whose identity and connections exceed a single nation-state
- Critical term
- “Lusosphere,” describing Portuguese colonial and cultural networks beyond language alone
- Method
- Intermedial literary criticism combining novels with visual art, etchings, and popular music