Crystallizations of alien memories: the colonial war in Paulo Faria’s postmemory writing

Abstract

In Paulo Faria’s writing, the appropriation of alien memories of the Portuguese colonial war in Africa is materialized in two complementary and yet autonomous spheres. On the one hand, the starting point of Faria’s fictional writing is the crystallization, in writing and through writing, of his father’s memory of the colonial experience. From the son’s perspective, this purification of memory is shown as a war through writing, in order to relive the father’s traumatic experience. On the other hand, in the process of constituting postmemory, the heir’s vision is also composed by the narratives of the direct witnesses of the colonial war, namely those of the military who served in Mozambique with his father. However, in this process of construction of a postmemory by the son, these witnesses sometimes question the vision of the descendant when transformed into fiction. Faria’s response relies precisely in insisting on the fictional – and, above all, mediated – nature of his writing, which always takes into account the fact that it is merely a second-hand memory.