One that stands in contrast to the government’s disregard for democratic procedure – even as it claims to be pushing on the “people’s will” – was the publication of a book by University College London’ Press, with the title of The Responsibility of Intellectuals: Reflections by Noam Chomsky and others after 50 years. 
These visible and invisible movements, transparent or subterranean, brought a new vision of black cultural presence to the world in places far beyond Africa. They brought, too, a new perspective on an African continent. Portugal, which had historically opened its doors to the first waves of globalization, was looking to the future with realism and with desire. 
Next Future ended by opening up to the future, with a nod towards a Europe and a Eurocentrism which has hardly considered African and Latin American comic books, crime writing, science fiction or visual animation. A challenge to museums and virtual exhibitions was launched with the project-exhibition Unplace – Networked Art: Places-Between-Places. 
The regenerative pillars of society: in order to regenerate, to ill, to let something healthy grow again, we need democratic participation, environmental sustainability, social inclusion, and cultural diversity. These would be the main political goals. The cognitive tools to walk this way are critical thinking, artistic creativity, ethical technology and… that’s my point, the transformative power of media. 
‘openness’ means listening to the language of a given community and the commitment to reproduce it in a textbook format. Inclusion of minority groups in the textbook is perceived not as ‘curiosities’, but as an integral part of the cultures being represented so that a wider range of communities and language registers (from formal to informal) is portrayed. In addition, openness applies to the articulation of gender narratives in an inclusionary format. For instance, the masculine gender is supplemented with female and other non-binary genders. 
Continuing to insist on a colour-blind policy, ignoring the voices of Invisible Portuguese, will only maintain the ‘specific and extremely dangerous delusion made possible by the wilful forgetting, and negating, of Europe’s imperial past. 
Some of these stories also show that such ‘returns’ to Angola by people of Nuno’s generation may actually be critical detours, when they give rise, upon returning to Portugal, to critical postures on the colonial persistence within Portuguese society. In this European context, could the Portuguese case represent an alternative: something that, through a post-colonial journey, may lead to a more egalitarian society that accepts a plural public retelling of the past? 
Reflecting on glotophobia also allows us to question the linguistic and cultural imaginaries of a
post-colonial or decolonial perspective. We must rethink, again, discourses that rely on a political or
ideological territorialisation sustained by references to the purity of origin, of language, of religion, or of
ideological dogma. 
The authors were confronted with the lack of information on the representation of black men and women in European painting, which led them to very direct and immediate questions: who were the people represented? What were the motivations for representing them? And why did black people in European painting rarely have individualized identities? 
Noting that this subject is now everywhere is to suggest that it has transcended the politico-museological sphere to become part of the public and media space. This is relatively positive, particularly if it is accompanied by actual interventions and insightful debate. Yet the process, which was never going to be straightforward, has become more complex, and acquired new problematics. 
Eurocentric power needs to create narratives about colonial history in order to control interpretations of it. Concepts of law and justice have played an important role in this. Also today, the idea of justice is used to approve violent migratory control policies, including the aggressive persecution, detention, and deportation of persons. 
Why does Europe (still) have such trouble showing a coherent attitude in the face of discourses which legitimate racism and xenophobia? What are the masks that stop it from accepting its colonial past and understanding, once and for all, that diasporas are part of the richness of the European cultural map? 
had brought a dry twig with me from the bushes I hid in for a couple of days. Everytime I hear there is a fire on that island, I just find myself thinking about it... Also brought a couple of snail shells from the same bushes. Why? If the day comes that I forget about it, they would remind me what it is to move forward... even at the speed of a snail..." 
The difficult subject of a politically null war and the traumatic end of the imperial cycle have tended to produce a memory of the colonial war which – though often stressing its “tragic” and “useless” dimension – still emphasizes participation in it as a question of duty. This casts the figure of the veteran as a victim, either of the “winds of history”, or as having been forced to fight. 
Hartman offers new methodological pistes for literary critics working in archives and shows how literary studies can learn from the wayward lives of women like Esther Brown to expand its understandings of creative practices. Reading Hartman reminds us of the political imperative to interrogate spaces and structures of oppression, confinement and conformism from the perspective – speculative if necessary – of those who resist them. 
The increasing centrality of the voices of black and Afro-descendent people in Portugal, speaking out against racism and the inequality of opportunity that it generates, is the best guide to how to reconfigure an ancestry that deserves to be revived and reinvented. 
Os “Congos” foram vários e o “Congoísmo” revelou-se maleável na forma e conteúdo, mas estável na utilidade. Assim sendo, a invocação da sua história e da sua memória só pode ser muito cautelosa. Aspecto importante, requer ainda que se considere a sua história não-europeia, a sua natureza transnacional, transregional e transatlântica, mas também no próprio continente africano. Que não se anule diversidade de actores, instituições, “discursos” e imagens, motivações e interesses. 
Reflection on the transgenerational dimensions of the notion of memory is, however, of course, much earlier than Hirsch’s proposal. In particular in Holocaust literature, the construction of a memory of the “not-lived”, characteristic of the postmemorial gesture, builds up a model that can be abundantly traced and that, precisely due to the power of the paradigm of confrontation with the Holocaust or the ensemble of studies on violence, trauma and memory, deserves particular attention. 
The fact that Franco is buried in sacred land, the Basilica, and his family’s decision to bring the body to Madrid’s Cathedral if he is exhumed from the Valley, a measure they bluntly oppose, has prompted the Government to search unsuccessfully for complicity in the Vatican, scaling up the controversy to a diplomatic realm. The fate of Franco’s body, still today in the Valley, has transformed into a formidable political and memorial arena questioning the ability of Spain’s democracy to defeat once and for all the resilient ghost of its last dictator. 
language embodies the resolutions and contents of its own past as much as its present and future. But language is also a social reality and thus acts as a means of practical communication and by forming subjective awareness. Apart from being one of the basic rights of all human beings (according to the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights), using one’s “home language” in social dealings is one of the contradictions arising in the era of globalization. To read
Essays and reports, social and human sciences
Archive
Authors
Date
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- October 2019
Essays and reports, social and human sciences
