Entre colonos e colonizados : identidade cingida em Caderno de memórias coloniais

Abstract

This research starts with the analisys of the portuguese novel Caderno de memórias coloniais (2009), by Isabela Figeuiredo, to consider, at first, about the dificulty of the elaboration of an identity in the context of the african colonies in the end of the portuguese empire, just before the independence of those colonies in the 1970s. From that discussion, I also intend to question the possibility of the formation of an individual identity in the post-modern and globalized world. As theorical support, I use the concepts of Margarida Calafate Ribeiro (2004) and Paulina Chiziane (2015) about the way europeans think of Africa and its people. I also use Montserrat Guibernau (1997), Anthony Smith (1997) and Ernest Renan ([2016] ideas about national identity. Also, in the search of an answer to my questions, there is Stuat Hall (2015), with his concepts about the identity in the post-modern era, and also Homi Bhabha (2014) and Edward Said (2011) with their concepts about colonialismo and post-colonialism. I start this discussion, in the first chapter, analysing the intense and complex relationship of the narrator with her father, in her childhood. He is a typical portuguese colonizer, extremely racist and sexist, in opposition to his daughter, who has a post-colonial thought. In this analysis, wich is the base of the research, I use the ideas of Guibernau, Smith and Renan abou trace and racism, and also the thought of Angela Davis (2017) and Chiziane about gender questions in association with colonialism and slavery. In the third chapter I extend the discussion to the retornados, discussing about the difficulty of the formation of their identity and social integration with the portuguese society. As source of my research I use interviews and articles published in newspapers.