Traumatic Loss, Successful Integration. The Agitated and the Soothing Memory of the Return from Portugal's African Empire

Abstract

Contributing to memory studies from the disciplinary vantage point of history, this chapter observes that in a memorial boom since the early 2000s, two narratives, one of traumatic loss and the other of successful integration, have come to dominate representations of the departure, arrival, and reinsertion of the so-called retornados from the Portuguese empire. In the public sphere, these narratives provide the backbone of an “agitated” memory of the Return, on the one hand, and a “soothing” memory of this process, on the other. Arguing that a lack of historicising perspectives hampers our understanding of these memorial formations and their social functions, the chapter shows that both the loss- and the integration-narrative still with us today in fact first emerged between 1975 and the mid-1980s. Recovering the history of these early public memories, it is claimed, provides a window of critical reflection on the retornados’ place in postcolonial Portugal and Europe as well as on their current representations.