The french state and the portuguese state in the face of the arrival of the pieds-noirs and the retornados

The french state and the portuguese state in the face of the arrival of the pieds-noirs and the retornados In France, in spite of the economic context of the Trente Glorieuses being favourable to the absorption of labour, the socioprofessional characteristics of the French people who arrived from Algeria did not correspond to the needs of the French labour market, which required industrially qualified workers. In the Portuguese case the inverse situation pertained.

02.01.2020 | by Morgane Delaunay

Luanda, Lisboa, Paradise?

Luanda, Lisboa, Paradise? What is at stake in Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida’s book are the living, human ruins of empire. No longer based on the figure of the veteran or the returnee, but on someone from the other side of the line colonialism traced: a black man and, in this case, the complex figure that colonialism generated, the assimilated African who, here, for the first time in Portuguese literature, is at the centre of the narrative.

26.12.2019 | by Margarida Calafate Ribeiro

Postmemory and resentment

Postmemory and resentment The construction of postmemory is a complex process which may take place in very different ways and, as is worth repeating, is never simply based on transmission, but, rather, implies an active positioning, a decision, on the part of members of a second generation. Such a decision is never simply played out at a strictly rational level, it inevitably presupposes a high degree of emotional involvement.

30.11.2019 | by António Sousa Ribeiro

Cold sweats and furtive listening in Angola

Cold sweats and furtive listening in Angola Historian Marissa Moorman wrote an important book about radio and modern state power. "Only radio receivers can feel radio waves. But people feel radio. Radio, Moorman reminds us, courses through our lives everywhere we go and alongside everything we do."

15.11.2019 | by Jesse Bucher

Us, them, why? (by way of Paulo Faria)

Us, them, why? (by way of Paulo Faria) ‘The Missing Face’ is a powerful reflection on the war, and above all on the ownership of traumatic experiences of conflict, specifically at the end of Portuguese colonialism in Africa.

12.11.2019 | by Felipe Cammaert

Museums: the ultimate contact zones

Museums: the ultimate contact zones Museums are democratising, inclusive and polyphonic spaces for critical dialogue about the pasts and the futures. Acknowledging and addressing the conflicts and challenges of the present, they hold artefacts and specimens in trust for society, safeguard diverse memories for future generations and guarantee equal rights and equal access to heritage for all people.

07.11.2019 | by António Pinto Ribeiro

Silly, sinister, season: on “the responsibility of intellectuals” (i)

Silly, sinister, season: on “the responsibility of intellectuals” (i) One that stands in contrast to the government’s disregard for democratic procedure – even as it claims to be pushing on the “people’s will” – was the publication of a book by University College London’ Press, with the title of The Responsibility of Intellectuals: Reflections by Noam Chomsky and others after 50 years.

01.10.2019 | by Paulo de Medeiros

Waiting for the Next Future (I)

Waiting for the Next Future (I) These visible and invisible movements, transparent or subterranean, brought a new vision of black cultural presence to the world in places far beyond Africa. They brought, too, a new perspective on an African continent. Portugal, which had historically opened its doors to the first waves of globalization, was looking to the future with realism and with desire.

01.10.2019 | by Margarida Calafate Ribeiro

Waiting for the Next Future (II)

Waiting for the Next Future (II) Next Future ended by opening up to the future, with a nod towards a Europe and a Eurocentrism which has hardly considered African and Latin American comic books, crime writing, science fiction or visual animation. A challenge to museums and virtual exhibitions was launched with the project-exhibition Unplace – Networked Art: Places-Between-Places.

01.10.2019 | by Margarida Calafate Ribeiro

The tree of life: political values, cognitive tools and the transformative power of the media

The tree of life: political values, cognitive tools and the transformative power of the media The regenerative pillars of society: in order to regenerate, to ill, to let something healthy grow again, we need democratic participation, environmental sustainability, social inclusion, and cultural diversity. These would be the main political goals. The cognitive tools to walk this way are critical thinking, artistic creativity, ethical technology and… that’s my point, the transformative power of media.

25.08.2019 | by Carla Baptista

An inclusionary open access textbook for Portuguese

An inclusionary open access textbook for Portuguese   ‘openness’ means listening to the language of a given community and the commitment to reproduce it in a textbook format. Inclusion of minority groups in the textbook is perceived not as ‘curiosities’, but as an integral part of the cultures being represented so that a wider range of communities and language registers (from formal to informal) is portrayed. In addition, openness applies to the articulation of gender narratives in an inclusionary format. For instance, the masculine gender is supplemented with female and other non-binary genders.

23.08.2019 | by Carlos Pio and Eduardo Viana da Silva

Invisible Portuguese

Invisible Portuguese Continuing to insist on a colour-blind policy, ignoring the voices of Invisible Portuguese, will only maintain the ‘specific and extremely dangerous delusion made possible by the wilful forgetting, and negating, of Europe’s imperial past.

29.07.2019 | by Hélia Santos

Portugal-Angola: returns and detours for plural memories in portuguese society

Portugal-Angola: returns and detours for plural memories in portuguese society Some of these stories also show that such ‘returns’ to Angola by people of Nuno’s generation may actually be critical detours, when they give rise, upon returning to Portugal, to critical postures on the colonial persistence within Portuguese society. In this European context, could the Portuguese case represent an alternative: something that, through a post-colonial journey, may lead to a more egalitarian society that accepts a plural public retelling of the past?

29.07.2019 | by Irène dos Santos

Glotophobia: from linguistic discrimination to accent racism

Glotophobia: from linguistic discrimination to accent racism Reflecting on glotophobia also allows us to question the linguistic and cultural imaginaries of a post-colonial or decolonial perspective. We must rethink, again, discourses that rely on a political or ideological territorialisation sustained by references to the purity of origin, of language, of religion, or of ideological dogma.

13.07.2019 | by Graça dos Santos

Black, between painting and history

Black, between painting and history The authors were confronted with the lack of information on the representation of black men and women in European painting, which led them to very direct and immediate questions: who were the people represented? What were the motivations for representing them? And why did black people in European painting rarely have individualized identities?

10.07.2019 | by Ana Paula Rebelo Correia

Restitution is everywhere

Restitution is everywhere Noting that this subject is now everywhere is to suggest that it has transcended the politico-museological sphere to become part of the public and media space. This is relatively positive, particularly if it is accompanied by actual interventions and insightful debate. Yet the process, which was never going to be straightforward, has become more complex, and acquired new problematics.

08.07.2019 | by António Pinto Ribeiro

Conference: The Empire of Law. Legality and Other Narrative Tools of Colonialism

Conference: The Empire of Law. Legality and Other Narrative Tools of Colonialism Eurocentric power needs to create narratives about colonial history in order to control interpretations of it. Concepts of law and justice have played an important role in this. Also today, the idea of justice is used to approve violent migratory control policies, including the aggressive persecution, detention, and deportation of persons.

22.06.2019 | by vários

European masks

European masks Why does Europe (still) have such trouble showing a coherent attitude in the face of discourses which legitimate racism and xenophobia? What are the masks that stop it from accepting its colonial past and understanding, once and for all, that diasporas are part of the richness of the European cultural map?

22.06.2019 | by Felipe Cammaert

T.A

T.A had brought a dry twig with me from the bushes I hid in for a couple of days. Everytime I hear there is a fire on that island, I just find myself thinking about it... Also brought a couple of snail shells from the same bushes. Why? If the day comes that I forget about it, they would remind me what it is to move forward... even at the speed of a snail..."

16.06.2019 | by Sinem Taş

The refusal of war and the colonial abyss

The refusal of war and the colonial abyss The difficult subject of a politically null war and the traumatic end of the imperial cycle have tended to produce a memory of the colonial war which – though often stressing its “tragic” and “useless” dimension – still emphasizes participation in it as a question of duty. This casts the figure of the veteran as a victim, either of the “winds of history”, or as having been forced to fight.

16.06.2019 | by Miguel Cardina