Narrativity, memory and decolonization in the novel The return, by Dulce Maria Cardoso

Abstract

The paper is an analysis of The return, by Dulce Maria Cardoso, which emphasizes its memory linearity, besides discussing the relevance of memory in the process of decolonization and displacement of the so-called “returned” to Portugal, by the perspective of the character/narrator, the young Rui. The memory, in the face of all the fragmentation of the individual, also provides for literature a fragmented discourse of stories, previously known through the voices of the winners, present in the hegemonic discourse. Here are recovered the stories of a past full of gaps, which in contemporaneity are equipped with trauma and truth. The construction of the narrative of The return, by Dulce Maria Cardoso, is based on memory, from that which belongs solely to the author, withdrawn from her coexistence in Angola at the age of thirteen, until the vision of Rui, who has also returned to an unknown homeland. The novel is told on a mnemonic basis and reveals the subjects’ ability to live events and tell them at the same time or decades later, introducing to the contemporary Portuguese novel the particularities of a post-memory.