Theses defended
Paradoxos Coloniais: Memória, Pós-Memória e Esquecimento nas Narrativas de Segunda Geração
April 14, 2026
Post-Colonialisms and Global Citizenship
António Sousa Ribeiro
This thesis stemmed from the author's perplexity at the contradictions and omissions that "tell" Portugal, placing at the center of its national identity the period of maritime expansion, presented as the golden age of national history, while simultaneously maintaining a public memory on the long period between then and decolonization in the 20th century wavering between silence and commemoration. After three decades of public silence about the end of the Portuguese empire, timidly interrupted by literary or academic epiphenomena, the end of the empire resurfaced in national memory through memorial narratives of individuals and families who experienced decolonization firsthand-a memory that had, until very recently, been characterized by a nostalgic, celebratory, or even expiatory tone.
Since the descendants of families who came from African colonies to Portugal after 1974 are closer, relationally and emotionally, to the collective memory of the end of colonialism, this study addressed the narrative processes through which this experience has been narrated between generations. The innovation of this work lies in the intersection of the concepts of memory and postmemory with the concept of forgetting, to understand how subsequent generations, who never lived in that time-space, construct meanings to this memory in their present time and how they narrate them. To understand the working of postmemory regarding the end of the empire, the author focused on the Angolan case, conducting twenty-four semi-structured interviews with descendants of the generation that arrived from Angola with independence. They came from white and non-white racialized families, worked in different services or economic sectors in the colony, and lived for varying lengths of time in Angola. The authors identified the narratives transmitted between generations, the silences, and the "forgotten", examining the place of violence in these memories (especially in its racial and sexual dimensions).
In the first empirical chapter, life narratives were analyzed with the aim of identifying the elements that comprise the post-memories of those descended from the testimony of the final years of Portuguese colonialism in Angola. The predominant narrative is identified, supported by an "Angola chronotope," whose meaning in the present is rendered impossible by a crystallized time. This passive post-memory narrative traces the testimony constructed within the family. In the following chapter, an amnesiological exercise was conducted (Plate 2016), identifying forgotten aspects of the accounts by crossing different socially marked narratives or other documentary sources, especially literature and history. Racial and sexual violence are two crosscutting forgotten elements, destabilized by residual uneasiness of descendants who manifest an incipient active post-memory. This work revealed that the closer the narrative of post-memory is to family memory and testimonies, the greater the memory gaps, the greater the forgetting. Finally, in chapters seven and eight, the analysis focused on the narrative processes of postmemory and the meanings they acquire today, in light of the contemporary political and social era. Producer of colonial paradoxes, the postmemory narrative poses ethical challenges and presents limitations in its contribution to a critical national historical consciousness of this period.
In this multi-scalar analysis, forgetfulness emerges, and with it, the sociological relevance of post-memories. The concept of memory and post-memory as the production of meaning about an absence in the present, through capacities such as imagination, mediation, and translation between experience and expectation, places the individual inexorably at the heart of social memory and the production of historical time. The narratives of post-memory, tracing the family testimony they heard incessantly, remain engaged with the "future of their memory." Still, a small group advances with questions and discomfort that reveal an ongoing process of mnemonic imagination to "remember a future," in an ongoing memory work that calls for close attention.
Public Defence date
Doctoral Programme
Supervision
Abstract
Since the descendants of families who came from African colonies to Portugal after 1974 are closer, relationally and emotionally, to the collective memory of the end of colonialism, this study addressed the narrative processes through which this experience has been narrated between generations. The innovation of this work lies in the intersection of the concepts of memory and postmemory with the concept of forgetting, to understand how subsequent generations, who never lived in that time-space, construct meanings to this memory in their present time and how they narrate them. To understand the working of postmemory regarding the end of the empire, the author focused on the Angolan case, conducting twenty-four semi-structured interviews with descendants of the generation that arrived from Angola with independence. They came from white and non-white racialized families, worked in different services or economic sectors in the colony, and lived for varying lengths of time in Angola. The authors identified the narratives transmitted between generations, the silences, and the "forgotten", examining the place of violence in these memories (especially in its racial and sexual dimensions).
In the first empirical chapter, life narratives were analyzed with the aim of identifying the elements that comprise the post-memories of those descended from the testimony of the final years of Portuguese colonialism in Angola. The predominant narrative is identified, supported by an "Angola chronotope," whose meaning in the present is rendered impossible by a crystallized time. This passive post-memory narrative traces the testimony constructed within the family. In the following chapter, an amnesiological exercise was conducted (Plate 2016), identifying forgotten aspects of the accounts by crossing different socially marked narratives or other documentary sources, especially literature and history. Racial and sexual violence are two crosscutting forgotten elements, destabilized by residual uneasiness of descendants who manifest an incipient active post-memory. This work revealed that the closer the narrative of post-memory is to family memory and testimonies, the greater the memory gaps, the greater the forgetting. Finally, in chapters seven and eight, the analysis focused on the narrative processes of postmemory and the meanings they acquire today, in light of the contemporary political and social era. Producer of colonial paradoxes, the postmemory narrative poses ethical challenges and presents limitations in its contribution to a critical national historical consciousness of this period.
In this multi-scalar analysis, forgetfulness emerges, and with it, the sociological relevance of post-memories. The concept of memory and post-memory as the production of meaning about an absence in the present, through capacities such as imagination, mediation, and translation between experience and expectation, places the individual inexorably at the heart of social memory and the production of historical time. The narratives of post-memory, tracing the family testimony they heard incessantly, remain engaged with the "future of their memory." Still, a small group advances with questions and discomfort that reveal an ongoing process of mnemonic imagination to "remember a future," in an ongoing memory work that calls for close attention.