Abril (Jul 2016)
A too long travel: the Portuguese ‘returning’ from Africa
Abstract
Much has been written about the traumatic experience of the ‘returned’ to Portugal, after the colonial period in African countries. However, some recently publicated novels - notably, Caderno de memórias coloniais (Isabela Figueiredo, 2009), and O retorno (Dulce Maria Cardoso, 2012) - retake this subject through a subjective discourse, focusing family memories, forty years after the independence of former colonies. In a postcolonial feminist perspective, we can identify in these novels some particular gender and race injunctions that exist today, such as traces of a unresolved colonial memory. This article intends to investigate who are the subjects of these memory discourses that put into question the colonial-patriarchal order, situated on the margins, which enable them to build a conter-narrative of colonial memory.
