Descrizione del progetto
Teorie innovative sulla storia, la memoria e la cultura visiva
Una rilettura culturale del passato e le sue mediazioni nel presente possono chiarire il modo in cui si produce il sapere storico negli attuali contesti di cambiamento politico? Il progetto MICoMe, finanziato dall’UE, risponderà a queste domande, studiando in particolare il modo in cui viene prodotta la conoscenza del passato nel Portogallo contemporaneo. Per fare ciò, analizzerà il coinvolgimento individuale e collettivo con le tracce materiali e visive lasciate da due eventi storici legati fra loro: la rivoluzione dei garofani del 1974 e il ritorno dei coloni portoghesi. Per raccogliere dati empirici sul modo in cui film, fotografie e documenti di archivi istituzionali e familiari vengono animati per produrre nuove narrazioni sul recente passato, il progetto si baserà sull’osservazione etnografica dei partecipanti, sui metodi delle storie di vita e della storia orale, nonché su strategie di elicitazione di fotografie e oggetti.
Obiettivo
This interdisciplinary project examines how knowledge about the past is produced in contemporary Portugal by analyzing individual and collective engagements with material and visual traces left by two entangled historical events: the 1974 Carnation Revolution and the return of Portuguese colonial settlers to the metropole. Both revolution and return were outcomes of the Portuguese Colonial War, known in the former colonies as the “Liberation Wars,” which resulted in the constitution of new African nations. Drawing on ethnographic participant observation, life history and oral history methods, and photo/object-elicitation strategies, this project gathers empirical data regarding how film, photography, and documents from institutional and family archives are animated in order to produce new narratives about the recent past. It thereby conceptualizes how knowledge about Portugal’s transition to democracy and, by extension, its relationship to the (de)colonial project is produced and mediated. In doing so, MICoMe puts forth novel theories regarding history and memory not separate entities, but rather co-constituting spheres of knowledge production and meaning making. As such, it develops innovative methodological approaches to understanding how contradictory and, at times, oppositional memories regarding the recent past are negotiated through public and private engagements with visual and material traces left by experiences with revolution and return. By juxtaposing colonial memories and militant imaginaries, this project posits that a cultural re-reading of the past and its mediations in the present can elucidate how historical knowledge is produced in in current contexts of political change while also unsettling closed narratives regarding empire, decolonization and political transition.
Campo scientifico
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinatore
1099 085 Lisboa
Portogallo