2011

ICLA Coordinating Committee for the Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages (CHLEL)

Re-writing/Re-memoring History in Literature though the colonial/postcolonial junction

Faculdade de Letras – Universidade de Lisboa
CHLEL/CEC Seminar: 7th-8th June, 2011

Postcolonial studies and theory have stressed the importance of both individual and collective differences. Thus they foreground the production of subjectivity as well as the acceptance and knowledge of History’s “marginalized subjectivities”.

The procedures and protocols of the postcolonial cultural project call back times and places geographically distant but of great historical significance. These procedures, which can take into account all kinds of memorial reports and archives, contribute to the consciousness of their lasting interrelation. By awakening a fertile dialog between past and present, they can promote the (re)construction and (re)formulation of the past, between oblivion and affirmation by shattering the “narrative of the nation”.

When we address literary production in countries affected by colonial control from the perspective of the Empire, the prismatic experience of keeping memory alive leads us to reconsider and review the ideas of nation, nationalism, identity, colonialism and post colonialism. Memory-based reports and other kinds of cultural expression of archives produced in these geographically distant countries usually note the deep transformations induced by the invasion of industrial and technological resources as well as their constantly changing layouts and compositions. Such mixtures show significant new faces in different “places of culture” and induce new forms of contact and articulation with other languages and cultures.

Consequently, these circumstances provide for a literary discourse that is deeply affected by these fertile articulations between different cultural and linguistic discourses on the historical past.

The seminar will provide a fertile space for the Portuguese colleagues from the Centro de Estudos Comparatistas to engage in dialogue with members of the Coordinating Committee and members of CHLEL projects.

Location: Center for Comparative Studies, University of Lisbon/Faculdade de Letras – Universidade de Lisboa