Humanize the wounded legacies of the colonial past: the duty of post-memory in Estranha Guerra de Uso Comum

Abstract

This work seeks to reflect on the wounded legacies of colonialism from a post memory perspective, that is, under the sign of an urgency to understand, humanize, and universalize the evils that resulted from the Portuguese experience in colonized African territories, namely, with regard to the traumas, silences and scars created by this overseas experience. To erase the past is, in the light of this pretense, a mistake. Therefore, the merit of this emerging paradigm of the study of memory highlights the historical will of a generation that, due to family proximity, seeks through processes of recognition and compassion to bring to the place of sorrow a more positive, understanding and fraternal light.