The main objective of project LUARC is to contribute to the revival and development of the personal archive of the Angolan intellectual and politician Mário Pinto de Andrade (MPA). Using the archive as a key to uncover new narratives about Angola’s recent past and to map the evolution of practices and discourses on culture and nationalism, LUARC explores the life and intellectual journey of one of the most influential African thinkers of the twentieth century through the material traces left in his archive.
A cosmopolitan intellectual, MPA was also one of the founders and ideologues of the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA), the nationalist movement that emerged victorious from the 1975 war of liberation against the Portuguese colonial state and has ruled Angola ever since. His clashes with the movement's leadership, however, made him a political pariah, and he was forced to leave Angola in 1975 and spend the rest of his life in exile. Moreover, as a form of retribution, his contribution to the Angolan national project has been largely overlooked by the dominant historical narrative for decades. Project LUARC brings back to the public’s attention the figure and work of a protagonist and a deep connoisseur of Angolan culture, recovering narratives that have long been ignored.
At the same time, LUARC reflects on the nature of personal archives and their potential for history writing and processes of memory building. It also invites different people to critically and creatively engage with the archive, including MPA’s family members and friends, former freedom fighters, researchers, archivists, and artists. Finally, by disseminating results and outputs across different target groups, including Angolan civil society, the project stimulates reflections that have a strong impact on the debate on Angola’s recent past.
