Desconstruindo o Império: história e imaginário na ficção de António Lobo Antunes

Abstract

This study analyses the process of deconstruction of portuguese imperial memory by the novels Memória de elefante (1979), Os cus de Judas (1979) and As Naus (1988), from the portuguese author António Lobo Antunes. Published in a post-colonial context, the narratives turn to the exploration of the period of imperial/post-imperial transition still in the building process after the Colonial War, the Carnation Revolution and the process of decolonization of Africa. The literature appears in the portuguese post-colonial context as an alternative to the development of a collective memory about the traumatic past and the last chapters of the portuguese empire. The Antunes’s fiction, to address traumatic events for the national community, seeks to effect a rereading of history and the national imagination in order to deconstruct the imperial memory and carry out the construction, through the fictional discourse, a memory/history opposed the systematic erasure of the contemporary movement started after the Revolution. The novels analyzed during the research, published in a post-revolution period, signalize by the attempt of the fictional discourse, establish a way to symbolize, to turn in to language, trauma and lapses caused by the process of collapse of the imperial image with the the Portuguese society. In his narratives, Lobo Antunes reworks the past, avoiding that important events are forgotten by society over the time.