Architects of life; living amid ruins: individual; generational and intergenerational memory in “in your hands” by Inês Pedrosa

Abstract

This study is an analysis of the role of individual and social memory in Inês Pedrosa’s novel Nas tuas mãos, which chronicles the lives of three women, whose memories are presented successively through three different media: journal, photo album and letters. Together, the registers of the grandmoth­er, mother and daughter cover approximately 60 years of Portugal history, from the interwar years to the wars for the preservation of the overseas possessions, encompassing, yet, Salazar´s Estado Novo (“New State”). The study of the complex overlapping between individual and social memory relies on the thought of Maurice Halbwachs and Aleida Assmann, whose bipartition of social memory in generational and intergenerational I adopt; studies from Philippe Lejeune, Roland Barthes and Pierre Bourdieu under­lie the analysis of the relevance of the distinct memory supports to which each of the character relies.