Memories legacies of the Colonial War: some conceptual reflections on the intergenerational transmission of trauma

Abstract

The article takes into account some dominant theories about the controver­sial concept of post- memory. Post- memory, in fact , as the possibility of an intergenerational transmission of memory, particularly traumatic, espe­cially for people belonging to the familiar sphere that didn’t live the expe­rience in question but maintain an emotional tie with the direct witnesses, provides the ability to critically review the fixation of memory processes in their tense relationship with the possibility of a contractualization of his­tory. The case associated with such a conceptualization is the Colonial War that Portugal fought in Africa for over a decade (1961-1974) and heavily conditioned both the ontology of the country after the Carnation Revolu­tion and the consciousness of the former combatants who lived traumatic experiences projecting the impossibility of their symbolization on family relationships. Besides, through the myth of Philomel, the article approaches part of the contemporary Portuguese cultural production of the second ge­neration, trying to vocalize the painful silences of their parents.