Legacies of Empire and Colonialism in Comparative Perspective

Coord: Elsa Peralta

Colonial legacies | Colonialism and Post-Colonialism | Colonial Empires | Portugal | Europe

Placed at the crossroads between the humanities and the social sciences, this research subgroup intends to address the many ways in which the colonial past is present in former European colonising centers, just as it is present in the colonised countries. Based on an anthropology of colonial legacies (Benoit De L’Estoile, 2008), it is considered that this presence, which can be more or less visible, is embodied in material culture, monuments, architecture, archives and museums, in popular culture, in eating habits and music, in political discourses and daily practices, and in the movements of people, goods and images. This subgroup intends to look at these incorporations, in the way they are socially lived, spoken and represented. Focused especially on the Portuguese case, it nonetheless seeks a strong comparative dimension, extending the analysis to the framework of a postcolonial Europe, where colonial legacies are simultaneously a field of hegemonies and ideological disputes.

Objectives

Understand, through the research on theoretically based and empirically grounded cases, the multifaceted forms by which empire and colonialism still live in the mental and social landscapes of postcolonial Portugal;
Build a solid empirical basis for critically discussing the legacies of empire and colonialism in postcolonial Europe, thus contributing to the development of comparative research on the topic.

Team

Members
Bruno Góis (researcher, CEComp-FLUL)
Carla Raquel Carvalho (PhD student, CEComp-FLUL)
Elisa Mariotti (PhD student, CEComp-FLUL)
Elsa Peralta (principal investigator, CEComp-FLUL)
Helder Thiago Maia (researcher, CEComp-FLUL)
João-Manuel Neves (junior researcher, CEComp-FLUL)
Jonas Prinzleve (PhD student, CEComp-FLUL)
Marcos Cardão (researcher, CEComp-FLUL)
Morgane Delaunay (postdoctoral researcher, CEComp-FLUL)
Murilo Guimarães (postdoctoral researcher, CEComp-FLUL)
Silvia Frota (assistant professor, CEComp-FLUL)

Collaborators
Ana Maria Troncoso Salazar (Technische Universitat Chemnitz, Germany)
Christoph Kalter (professor, University of Agder, Norway)

ACTIVITIES

Recent Activities (2020-present) (selection)

Long term activities

Seminar Cycle “Memory, Culture and Citizenship in Postcolonial Nations” (org. Morgane Delaunay & Jonas Prinzleve), 10/2022 - 06/2023.
“Ethnography Workshops” (annual cycle), ICS-ULisbon (2 editions) (org. Elsa Peralta), 2020-2022.
Seminar Cycle “Olhares sobre a Música. Perspectivas Comparadas”, Centro de Estudos Comparatistas, CITCOM – Citizenship, Critical Cosmopolitanism, Modernity/ies, (Post)Colonialism & THELEME – Interart and Intermedia Studies. Org: Penélope Patrix (CEC – FLUL), Marcos Cardão (CEC – FLUL), 2021.

2024

Peralta, Elsa; Troncoso, Ana. "Student Exchange: The Postcolonial across borders: Interdisciplinary Research and Practices of Resistance". Universidade de Lisboa, Universidade de Coimbra e Universidade de Chemnitz. 25-27/09/2024.https://www.tu-chemnitz.de/phil/iesg/professuren/swandel/forschung/tagungen/nelken/austausch.html.pt

2022

Neves, João-Manuel, "Sá da Bandeira e a constituição do campo da literariedade relacionado com Moçambique”. Colóquio internacional AfroLab 2022. School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon, 10/11/2022.
Peralta, Elsa, Guest at Symposium "Historical truth and accountability in the post-colonial state", Ghent University, Human Rights Centre, in Ghent, Belgium, 23/09/2022.
Delaunay, Morgane, "Os retornados e a memória da sua instalação no Portugal pós-colonial", Panel 93 "Constelações da memória pós-colonial”, VIII Congress Associação Portuguesa de Antropologia, Évora, Portugal 6-9/09/2022.
Peralta, Elsa, “Decolonial Iconoclasm: City, Memory, Participation”, TU Chemnitz, Institut für Europäische Studien, 7-9/09/2022 (with Dr. Ana Troncoso).
Prinzleve, Jonas, “Postcolonial Cities in Digital Space: Introducing the Project ReMapping Memories Lisboa – Hamburg”. 3rd Seminar, CEComp-HD “Digital Methods in the Spatial Humanities”, Center for Comparative Studies (CEComp), School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon, 16/05/2022.
Prinzleve, Jonas, “(Post-)Colonial Heritage in Hamburg and Lisbon. A Comparative Perspective”. Seminar course “Recent Research in Postcolonial and Global History”, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Hamburg, Germany, 19/01/2022.

2021

Peralta, Elsa, “Migrants Across Empires: Connected (Hi)Stories of War, Colonialism and Displacement”, Memory Studies Association Annual Conference, University of Varsaw, Poland, 05/07/2021- 09/07/2021.
Prinzleve, Jonas, “The Coloniality of Urban Narrative Space: City Branding, Cultural Memory and ‘Affective Mis-Interpellation’ in Lisbon and Hamburg”, Hermes Consortium for Literary & Cultural Studies “Space, Affect, Memory: Performances and Representations”, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 25/06/2021.
Delaunay, Morgane, "O Estado Português e os repatriados da descolonização de Angola e Moçambique: desafios, resposta governamental e resultados (1975-1981)", XIX Congresso Internacional de la Asociación Española de Americanistas’, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 15/06/2021.
Cardão, Marcos, “On the 20th anniversary of Provincializing Europe”, with Dipesh Chakrabarty, IHC's Youtube, 01/03/2021.

2020

Prinzleve, Jonas, “A Site of Transcultural Memory? Portuguese 'Seafarers' and Coloniality in the Hamburg HafenCity”, Seminar research group seminar LOCUS – Spaces, Places, Landscapes, Centro de Estudos Comparatistas (CEC), Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, 15/10/2020.
Peralta, Elsa, “Constellations of Memory: a multidirectional approach to (post)colonial migration and remembrance”, 16th EASA Biennial Conference New anthropological horizons in and beyond Europe, ISCTE-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa and ICS-Institute de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal, 20/07/2020-24/07/2020.
Prinzleve, Jonas & Hélder Lopes, Interview series “discrimiNAÇÃO: Sociedade, Memória e Legado Colonial no Portugal no século XXI”, Interview with Miguel Vale de Almeida (ICSTE-IUL), Centro de Estudos Comparatistas (CEC), Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal, 25/06/2020 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrN42NNPwXY&t=1383s].
Cardão, Marcos, “Am I Black Enough For You? Música e Política nas Bandas Sonoras Blaxplotation”, Encarceramento e Sociedade - I Intersectional Conference 2020, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal, 29/01/2020-31/01/2020.

All Activities

KEY PUBLICATIONS

Cardão, Marcos (2021), "O Governo da Pop. Nacionalismo e hibridismo no Duo Ouro Negro”, in Domingos, Nuno, Cultura Popular e Império. As lutas pela conquista do consumo cultural em Portugal e nas suas colónias, Lisbon: Instituto de Ciências Sociais, pp. 319-362.
Cardão, Marcos (2020), Fado Tropical. Luso-tropicalismo na cultura de massas (1960-1974) (2nd ed.), Lisbon: Tigre de Papel.
Delaunay, Morgane (2022), "Portugal e o regresso dos colonos de Angola e Moçambique: Resposta governativa e memória", CIDADES, Comunidades e Territórios , 44: 87-103. Available at: https://revistas.rcaap.pt/cct/article/view/25441.
Delaunay, Morgane (2022), "Discours, mémoire et fiction : les retornados d'hier à aujourd'hui (1975-2018)", in Dard, Olivier & Anne Dulphy (eds), Déracinés, exilés, rapatriés ? II. S’organiser, transmettre, mettre en récit, Brussels, Belgium: Peter Lang, pp. 73-88.
Neves, João-Manuel (2022), O Si-mesmo como sujeito imperial. Literatura colonial dos anos 1920: O caso de Moçambique, Porto: Afrontamento.
Neves, João-Manuel (2022), "Portuguese Fascism’s Genocidal Strategy in Mozambique: the Zambezi River South Bank in the Early-Mid 1970s".Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2022.2029533.
Peralta, Elsa (2022), “The return from Africa: Illegitimacy, concealment, and the non-memory of Portugal’s imperial collapse”, Memory Studies, 15(1): 52-69.
Peralta, Elsa (ed.) (2022), The Retornados From Portuguese Colonies in Africa: Narrative, Memory, and History, London & New York: Routledge Studies in Cultural History.
Peralta, Elsa, Morgane Delaunay & Bruno Góis (2022), “Portuguese (Post-)Imperial Migrations: Race, Citizenship, and Labour”, Journal of Migration History, 8: 404-431.
Prinzleve, Jonas (2022), “Silent memorylands: City branding and the coloniality of cultural memory in the Hamburg HafenCity”, Memory Studies Journal. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980221122161.