Os regressos da guerra: espaço público, mundo digital e (re)produções mnemónicas

Abstract

For a long period of time, the effective impact of the colonial war on Portuguese society was accompanied by a relative institutional silence concerning the memory of the conflict. The scarce public approach to the event was followed, in the last two decades, by the growth of different processes of memorialization of the conflict, to which the memory work produced by more or less formalized associations or groups of former combatants contributed decisively. This article analyzes two of these memorial axes: the war memorials and the mnemonic representations of the conflict in the largest Portuguese blog of former combatants. We will argue that despite being circumscribed to the communities of remembrance that promote and participate in them, they influence and are influenced by the dominant public memory of the war and contribute to generate moments of sociability and feelings of (self)recognition for these groups.

Keywords

• Portugal
• colonial war
• memory
• monuments
• blogs