Post Memory

Family stories give the individual a sense of identity and create a story for the inclusion, transmission and attachment of new generations. If we know the past of the family, we can tell the story of how it is. The family features of the past and today are familiar to the individual. New generations depend on the way of movement and discourses of previous generations. While some of these stories are about identity, ethnicity, culture, some are about family history, positive or negative experiences. Traumatic events that family members have witnessed or experienced are transferred to later generations. Traumatically overwhelming, unbearable, unimaginable memories and discourses go beyond social discourse and are passed to the future generations as emotional tenderness or a chaotic urgency.
Various theories and methods have been developed to understand and clarify this transmission. Transgenerational transmission studies have come into question with Holocaust studies, first studies on that topic began with the 2nd and 3rd generations of Holocaust survivors. Theories of trauma transmission point some different approaches of how traumatic events experienced by the family transmitted, they are: transgenerational transmission, inter-generational transmission, multigenerational transmission, cross-generational transmission and parental transmission.
In 1990, Marianne Hirsch proposed the concept of post-memory as a transgenerational transmission in a work on formation of collective memory of Holocaust. The concept became a fundamental element of memory work, causing a series of debates. According to the theorists who embraced the post-memory conception, there was a need for a specific conceptualization to study the function of traumatic experience transmission through images and stories, to establish the knowledge of experience of later generations. It thus, made possible, to describe a proximal experience or indirect recall from a transgenerational point of view, in which the subjective relationship with the event is preserved. In the last two decades, post-memory was centered on almost all trauma transmission and cultural studies. Not only the next generation of Holocaust survivors, but also dynamics of other societies who were exposed to societal and historical trauma are covered within this concept.
This study handles the transgenerational trauma transmission in post-memory theoretical framework. How transmission occurs, what is transmitted to generations, when transmission took place and how this transmission affects future generations are topics of that study.

Que nous soyons en archéologie, en histoire de l’art, en sociologie, en philosophie ou même en anthropologie, les débats sur la conservation de la mémoire individuelle et collective ne cessent d’alimenter les réflexions de ces derniers temps. Porté par une volonté de réexaminassions et de conservations des traces des réalités antérieures, l’engouement autour de « la post-mémoire » est en partie suscité par les dates et les discours commémoratifs, la construction des musées et des effigies ainsi que la conquête de la restitution à la fois des évidences imaginaires et les analyses des faits réels d’une époque antérieure à la nôtre. S’étendant vers tous les domaines de savoirs avec pour principal leitmotiv la restitution des différentes visions de l’histoire, cette volonté touche aussi les enjeux contemporains. Car en observant le dialogue interdisciplinaire, on remarque que les travaux sur ce que Lucie Campos nomme « le retour à l’histoire réelle » semblent bousculer aussi bien les héritages scientifiques que les définitions du récit littéraire.

В данный сборник вошли статьи, анализирующие травму не только как
единовременное событие, резко изменившее жизнь человека, но и как процесс,
который продолжает влиять на отношение людей к их прошлому, настоящему
и будущему. По мнению авторов сборника, травму невозможно свести только к
акту нарушения – или даже полного разрушения – привычного образа жизни и
сложившихся моделей самовосприятия. Травмирующей оказывается тщетность
попыток сформулировать приемлемые причины этого неожиданного разрыва
ткани социальной жизни. В разных контекстах и с помощью разных подходов
авторы сборника демонстрируют способы, с помощью которых люди учатся
жить с травмой – не подавляя и не вытесняя ее негативное воздействие, но находя для нее место в своей судьбе и в исторической жизни.

Taking the cue from an analysis of four Holocaust movies released between 2014 and 2015, as well as of the critical responses they elicited, this article re-examines the current debate on the interplay between cinema and Post-Memory. Despite the fact that some of these films, in particular
Son of Saul, offered a theoretically controversial approach to the subject of Holocaust representation, they did not raise debates comparable to those that accompanied the release of other homologous movies in previous decades. What is this lack of controversy symptomatic of and to what extent may it be attributed to a change in sensibility that is investing the memory of the Shoah? My hypothesis is that the phenomenon known as Holocaust fatigue is but the tip of a deeper transformation involving the institutionalization of Memory, on the one hand, and a gradual acknowledgement of the master narrative’s failure to encompass the diversely traumatic experiences we are currently struggling to make sense of, on the other.

Tardi is one of the most important active French sequential artists, considered a contemporary classic thanks to his vast oeuvre and his comics adaptations of important French literary works. Most of his graphic narratives are set in the early 20 th century, and quite a few of them deal with the First World War. These are a precious case study for the analysis of the interplay between individual memory, post-memory, and historiography. They may also cast light on the political dimension of Tardi's oeuvre. Je ne suis pas historien, le nombre d'obus au mètre carré ne m'intéresse pas. Tardi

The handbook presents the experience of implementing cultural initiatives in the framework of the “From Destruction to Creation. Ways of Reconciliation in the Ukrainian Society” Project financed by The Federal Foreign Office of Germany. The project was implemented by Non-governmental organization “Integration and Development Center for Information and Research” in partnership with the Representative office of the Institute for International Cooperation of the German Adult Education Association (DVV International) in Ukraine.

Günter Grass' Im Krebsgang explores the social mores and taboos that surround questions of mourning and memorializing German suffering in the twentieth century. Grass poses these questions primarily through Paul, his protagonist, and the account he gives of how his mother Tulla and son Konrad take up the repressed memory of the Wilhelm Gustloff disaster. Their mode of memorializing the disaster, I argue, can be understood as a powerful instance of what the Mitscherlichs famously call the German "inability to mourn." Tulla's inability to recognize, and her tendency to "turn a blind eye" to certain aspects of her past thoroughly resonates with what Henri Bergson calls "psychic blindness". This notion of "psychic blindness" sheds light on the pathology that underpins Tulla's memory and on what I will call, following the work of Marianne Hirsch and Eric Santner on the intergenerational dynamics of memory, Konrad's postmemory. My contention is that Konrad takes up this inheritance in his online historical revisionism, which reconfigures the past to fit an ethically-dubious politics of victimization. The conclusion of my essay focalizes on the nature of Konrad’s postmemorial work as an online neo-Nazi politics of victimization, which obscures his present reality with a virtuality of the past.

In his first novel (Lenta Biografia) Chejfec told the story of an unsuccessful transmission of the familial memory and of the Ashquenazi culture. He then dealt with the progressive disappearance of the Jewish traditions and culture within the immigrant community in Argentina from which he comes from (in Los Planetas especially). Confronted to this absence of legacy, Chejfec tried to explore this emptiness and to reclaim his origins via literature, incorporating in his texts the themes of the wandering people, the Yiddish language or the Hassidic stories. However, he is opposed to a Jewish Latin-American literature which would be closed on itself, and claims a literary stance which is between Judaism and national culture.

Si Chejfec narra en su primer libro, Lenta biografía, una transmisión fallida de la memoria familiar y de la cultura asquenazí, también da a leer por otra parte, en particular en Los planetas, la progresiva desaparición de la cultura y las tradiciones judías en la comunidad inmigrante en Argentina de la que él procede. Frente a la ausencia de legado, Chejfec busca explorar esta carencia y reapropiarse sus orígenes vía la literatura, recuperando a su manera un patrimonio literario (el topos del pueblo errante, la lengua idish o los relatos jasídicos). No obstante, se opone a una literatura latinoamericana ensimismada y reivindica al contrario una posición literaria fronteriza entre lo judío y la cultura nacional.

Si Chejfec fait dans son premier livre, Lenta biografía, le récit d’une transmission défaillante de la mémoire familiale et de la culture ashkénaze, il donne à lire par ailleurs, dans Los planetas notamment, une progressive disparition de la culture et des traditions juives au sein de la communauté immigrée en Argentine dont il est issu. Face à cet héritage absent, Chejfec cherchera à explorer ce manque et à se réapproprier ses origines via la littérature, en réinvestissant par exemple le topos du peuple errant, la langue yiddish ou les récits hassidiques. Il s’oppose toutefois à une littérature juive latino-américaine fermée sur elle-même pour revendiquer une position littéraire frontalière entre judaïsme et culture nationale.

Art Spiegelman’s comic book Maus was the inspiration for Marianne Hirsch during the work over the concept of Post-memory. As far as “generation memory” and question of trauma seems to be the crucial element of narration, interesting interpretation field is connected also with “animal metaphor”. In context of relation between “human”–“animal”–”unhuman” the article with usage of case study is attempting to analyse the reasons and consequences of chosen visual representation and its ethical adequacy. Additionally is the attempt to answer the question where is located the border between “human being” and “animal” in contemporary philosophy and description of its political character.

The wave of mass migrations and human displacement following the Partition of the Indian Subcontinent engendered the emergence of a new ethnic identity for migrant Muslims who were struggling to set roots in their new homeland-Pakistan. Once depicted as the most self-sacrificing people who ensured the successful creation of Pakistan, these migrants were, gradually, perceived as unwanted refugees and outsiders. Political and ethnic tensions between natives and migrants were violent in the city of Karachi, where most of the migrants had been shifted. These volatile and hostile conditions complicated the notion of 'homeland' for the migrants who found no sense of security or belonging in Pakistan and had to organize themselves under a new and distinct ethnic label: the Muhajir. Intizar Husain and Kamila Shamsie address this issue about the idea of the homeland for the post-Partition Muslim migrants in Pakistan in The Sea Lies Ahead and Kartography, respectively. This paper traces the evolution of the Muhajir ethnic identity by studying the portrayal of the migrants' experiences in these two texts and presents the argument that the post-Partition Muslim migrants in Pakistan gradually prioritized a national consciousness over a diasporic consciousness to situate themselves in Pakistan.

Albania represents perhaps the most extreme case of isolation and governmental oppression under communist dictatorship in southeastern Europe. Not surprisingly, the violence of transition in Albania both reflects and in significant ways differs from the violence of transition in other southeastern European countries. It's relation to the former Yugoslavia, for example -- where the Ethnic Albanian populations in Kosova and Macedonia complicate a politics of memory and national identity -- both imbricates and distances Albania from the Balkan wars. As a pivotal point in networks moving goods and people throughout the Balkans in the 90s and as a host country for refugee populations, Albania is intimately tied to the material conditions of the wars accompanying transition in the Balkans. Paradoxically, the fact that, within Albania, people do not follow the identity schisms mobilized in the wars remains a source of national pride. This paradox points to a complex nexus of issues surrounding individual and collective memory in post-communist Albania: on the one hand, Albanians retain a strong national identity that is fiercely proud and patriotic, and, on the other, this identity is fragmented, marked by internal conflicts, experienced episodically, lacking an organic structure for integrating experience into sustainable narratives through which the past can be remembered or the future imagined. These two paradoxes -- of the fragmentation of memory and identity that nevertheless has a nationalistic unifying core, and of the violence of transition which contextualizes memories of the past and imaginaries for the future -- frame the investigation of memory and identity in this paper. For our analysis, we draw on interviews with two age cohorts: women who were working adults with families under the Hoxha regime, and women who were in or about to enter college when the government collapsed. Following Pierre Bourdieu's analysis of the body as a site of incorporated history and Iwona Irwin-Zarecka's delineation of the infrastructure of memory, we are especially interested in understanding how unarticulated, unanalyzed, and unresolved memory contests are manifesting in the culture and politics of transition. Our questions include: How are private memories retained in the face of state violence, and what are the limits of representation in a memory project that seeks to open the discursive space for articulating experiences that have remained unarticulated? Given the un-representability of deep memory (Friedlander), how do memory projects generate memory scaffolds that can bring the past into productive relation to the work of mapping a future? What are the processes through which fractured and fragmented (unarticulated) (oppressive) narratives and constructions of the past are integrated, or, at least, put into productive relation? This investigation of memory and identity is in the interests of understanding the "socially instituted limits of the ways of speaking, thinking, and acting" constraining Albanians working through this historical moment, and, through this understanding, to offer reflections of use to others similarly situated as they engage in the work imagining trajectories into the future (Bourdieu Language and symbolic power 31). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Este trabajo se ocupa de la dramaturgia argentina de las generaciones de posdictadura y observa en ella algunas manifestaciones de las nuevas subjetividades ante el pasado traumático y el tema de la memoria social. Luego de una síntesis de los fenómenos teatrales emergentes durante el período, se caracterizan las generaciones de posdictadura tomando herramientas provistas por estudios sobre la nueva narrativa. Estableciendo diálogo entre áreas del saber bastante incomunicadas (la investigación sobre dramaturgia y narrativa), el trabajo se propone contribuir a una comprensión más integrada de las diversas prácticas literarias de esas generaciones. A pesar de ciertas diferencias de ritmo en el desarrollo de la conciencia generacional, puede afirmarse que la producción narrativa y la producción dramática de las generaciones de posdictadura poseen rasgos muy parecidos.

This paper studies Argentinian playwriting produced by Postdictatorship generations and observes some manifestations of new subjectivities related to the traumatic past and the topic of social memory. After a summary of the emerging theatrical phenomena during the period, the Postdictatorship generations are described using tools provided by critical readings about new narratives. Establishing dialogue between rather isolated fields of knowledge (the researches on theatre and narratives), this paper attempts to contribute towards an interlinked comprehension of diverging literary practices carried out by these generations. Despite some differences in the development of generational consciousness, it can be stated that narrative and dramatic works produced by the Postdictatorship generations share very similar features.

The article contributes to the historiography of the Czechoslovak communist dictatorship. The Communist takeover and stabilization of the regime were connected with various kinds of oppression including political trials. The biggest political trial in that time was that with the female politician Milada Horáková and the twelve members of her resistance group. This trial was followed by dozens of smaller local trials around the country, accusing 627 people altogether. While the main trial was carried publicly and was used extensively in the state’s propaganda, the local trials remain almost forgotten and outside the interest of Czech public. This paper will focus on one of them and its impact on my narrator and his family.

Antonín Městecký jr. was a child when his father Antonín Městecký was imprisoned for 11 years after a local show trial in the city of Hradec Králové in East Bohemia. The imprisonment of his father was his strongest childhood experience; when his father returned home, the son was already an adult and they both kept silent about the traumatic past. They never discussed what really happened in the time of the father’s imprisonment, creating a severe trauma for the son. How can the turning point in someone’s life be remembered if we have only limited information?

Using the methods of oral history, this paper explores how Mr. Městecký tries to deal with this gap in his family’s history by extending his childhood memories with information told to him by members of his father’s resistance group or found in books and archives. In the methodology, I will also reflect on how sharing his story with me constituted bridging the gap. His narrative contains rich accounts of life and survival as well as interesting moments and silences, revealing the complexities of trauma narratives and their effect on the descendants of former political prisoners.

This research paper looks at the "generation after" the so-called "Revival Process" (1984-89) in order to explore the intergenerational transmission of memories of family traumas related to the largest assimilation campaign in Communist Bulgaria, which was implemented in the 1980s. To investigate how young Turks and Muslims hold, recollect, and contemplate family memories, this qualitative empirical research was conducted through in-depth interviews complemented with a semi-structured and theme-guided questionnaire. Adopting an ethnographic sensibility, this study unravels an inconspicuous yet present web of family memories about the Revival Process and its aftermath, and an accompanying narrative that is verbalised in the most intimate spaces of everyday life. At a personal level, it turns out that the Turkish and Muslim generation of post-memory does not ransack the history of the Revival Process for political profit. Instead, it argues that there is a lack of self-examination with respect to the recent past in Bulgaria.

(2020) re-publication as a chapter, with an updated Introduction and a new Post-Script.

"As physical and psychosocial architecture, the border wall embodies
the US government’s use of carceral, or prison like, structures and systems
to enforce its sovereignty. The government’s heavy-fisted procedures for
exerting domination over Indigenous peoples reassert Americanization as
an authoritarian project along the Lower Rio Grande. Americanization operates to police non-assimilating Indigenous, poor, leftist, nonconforming,
and dissident communities resisting a weak democracy. A weak democracy
can be defined in many ways, but in this context it refers to a polity where
the US government, private corporations, and powerful interest groups
structure de jure and de facto immunity and impunity. Some of the effects
are to intensify race- and gender-based violence, atrocities, massacres, trafficking,
land dispossession, militarization, paramilitary activities, and official
repression. Survival of indigeneity depends on access to land, on human
rights protection, and on the ability to transmit knowledge. Indigenous
peoples must be able to produce, reproduce, and disseminate memory and
knowledge to future generations, and they must be free to exercise and
access justice. The rights to knowledge and to truth, and to name—actively
repressed in this region both before and after construction of the wall—are
being redefined by Indigenous peoples such as the Ndé."

Art Spiegelman’s comic book Maus was the inspiration for Marianne Hirsch during the work over the concept of Post-memory. As far as “generation memory” and question of trauma seems to be the crucial element of narration, interesting interpretation field is connected also with “animal metaphor”. In context of relation between “human”-“animal”-”unhuman” the article with usage of case study is attempting to analyse the reasons and consequences of chosen visual representation and its ethical adequacy. Additionally is the attempt to answer the question where is located the border between “human being” and “animal” in contemporary philosophy and description of its political character.

O artigo analisa algumas das teorias dominantes em torno do conceito, controverso, de pós-memória. A pós-memória, de fato, como possibilida­de de transmissão intergeracional da memória, em particular traumática, sobretudo para pessoas da esfera familiar que não viveram a experiência em causa mas mantêm um laço afetivo com quem a vivenciou, propor­ciona a possibilidade de rever criticamente alguns processos de fixação da memória tout-court, na sua relação tensa com a possibilidade de uma con­tratualização histórica. O caso associado a esta conceitualização é aquele da Guerra Colonial que Portugal combateu em África por mais de uma década (1961-1974) e que incidiu profundamente tanto na ontologia do País pós Revolução dos Cravos, como na consciência dos ex combatentes que vivenciaram as experiências traumáticas projetando a impossibilidade de simbolização dos traumas nas relações familiares. Também, pelo mito de Filomela, é analisada uma parte da produção cultural portuguesa das segundas gerações que procura vocalizar estes silêncios doloridos dos pais.

As Jewish identities become more hybridized in what Manuel Castells calls a" network society," genealogical research intensifies the questioning of how Jews identify and who identifies as Jewish. Jewish identities based on relation, location, and devastation ...

Security relations between Japan and its East Asia neighbors have been complicated for decades. Entering the third decade of the 21st century, Japan will have to face new security challenges posed by COVID-19 and manage its current relations with the United States, China and South Korea. Mitigating local and global security threats will be one of the most critical challenges for the future. This book focuses on internal and external factors that are influencing current Japanese security policy and analyses the security issues from numerous perspectives, including social issues and their effect on security policies, bilateral relations between Japan and its partners in Asia, and the significance of the U.S.-Japan Alliance

Neste artigo abordo a relação entre arte e pós-memória a partir das heranças coloniais ligadas à ditadura portuguesa, à guerra colonial em África e à descolonização expressas no trabalho de quatro mulheres artistas portuguesas: uma escritora, Isabela Figueiredo, com o Cadernos de Memórias Coloniais (2009), uma cineasta, Filipa César, e a performer Grada Kilomba, com Conakry (2017) e uma artista visual, Ana Vidigal, com Penélope (2000). Na minha leitura estes trabalhos constituem-se cartas ao pai/ pátria. O contexto histórico e o quadro teórico de análise é dado no início do artigo.

The article contributes to the historiography of the Czechoslovak communist dictatorship. The Communist takeover and stabilization of the regime were connected with various kinds of oppression including political trials. The biggest political trial in that time was that with the female politician Milada Horáková and the twelve members of her resistance group. This trial was followed by dozens of smaller local trials around the country, accusing 627 people altogether. While the main trial was carried publicly and was used extensively in the state’s propaganda, the local trials remain almost forgotten and outside the interest of Czech public. This paper will focus on one of them and its impact on my narrator and his family.Antonín Městecký jr. was a child when his father Antonín Městecký was imprisoned for 11 years after a local show trial in the city of Hradec Králové in East Bohemia. The imprisonment of his father was his strongest childhood experience; when his father returned home...

This dissertation offers a gendered, postcolonial Gothic reading with a central focus upon considering the complex relationship between authority and articulation in the fiction of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Helen Oyeyemi. Both are writers of Nigerian origin who have lived in more than one country; their texts are hybrid, and contain conflicting cultural imperatives that are signposted through Gothic elements. The two authors studied in this dissertation have been categorised as belonging to the third-generation of Nigerian writers — but since they are cosmopolitan women who have lived in more than one country, the condition of transit and of drawing from more than one corpus of literature imbues their texts. I argue that the fluidity that arises from the condition of writing from the in-between spaces of transit contributes to the sense of the uncanny that fuels the Gothic configurations of their texts. I then posit that the relationship between authority and articulation — often one of struggle and conflict for women given the persistence of patriarchal ideologies — is connected to the metaphoric representations of doubling and of splitting, and to the figures of twins, doubles and doppelgangers that pervade the texts of both authors. I link these metaphoric and thematic representations to postcolonial readings of mimicry in relation to hybridity. In so doing, I examine the manner in which doubling relates to the uncanny in Adichie’s and Oyeyemi’s writings. The sense of the uncanny is produced by the unsettling feeling of being in-between; I have named instances of this in the texts, “liminal dissonances and doublings”. These effects are a direct result of metaphors and themes found in the narratives that evoke haunting and loss, as well as the gendered transgressions which are often necessary in the struggle for articulation. I connect these metaphors, enclosures and psychological configurations of the Gothic to instances of transgression in the texts. I then investigate these diverse representations of transgression, connecting these representations to issues that pertain to identity. I discuss the manner in which these transgressions are a response to instances of commodification that are implied or directly addressed in the texts, and the manner in which this commodification is related to the struggle to assert one’s personal autonomy against public expectations of one’s cultural identity. My literary exploration of the relationship between articulation and authority and the pervasive metaphors of doubling, dissonance and splitting in the texts of the two writers is organised into five topic areas. In Chapter One, I interrogate the position of Adichie and Oyeyemi within the postcolonial Gothic in relation to their identities as third-generation Nigerian writers, by examining the discourse of desire in the texts as well as how cultural identity is fetishised and commodified. Implicit in the argument of this chapter is not just the function of memory, but also the manner in which authority contributes to and often interrupts the discourse of identity — particularly for writers who are in-between cultures. I examine this argument in relation to the concepts of desire and objectification from a Gothic perspective. Next, in Chapter Two, I delve into the Gothic Otherworlds in Oyeyemi’s texts, and consider the manner in which these are linked to the complicated relationships between women of different generations in the same family. I connect this to the theme of authority, looking at the manner in which Oyeyemi transforms and syncretises the Yorùbá motif of the abiku, combining it with Western/Greco-Roman motifs; Gothic literature as well as fairytales. Adichie’s fiction is the concern of Chapter Three; I connect what I have termed the Biafran Haunting to the gazes of dominant or authoritative figures upon fetishised characters situated in the feminine domain. I study the enclosures of the Gothic and the grotesque in relation to the feminine, connecting the enclosures and the figures to the issue of mimicry. In Chapter Four, I relate the Gothic and mythic metaphors and thematic concerns in the narratives to my theoretical account of the Gothic; I link the twins, doppelgangers and doubles in the texts of both writers to postcolonial engagements with hybridity, mimicry, commodification and authority by examining the connection between doubling and splitting in these texts. Finally, in Chapter Five, I look at the struggle for articulation and voicing in the texts; how this is often related, in particular, to metaphors of choking and consumption (of food or other material), and the manner in which these metaphors connect to the commodification of the experience of individuals inhabiting the highly ambiguous and problematic in-between.

Core argument and detailed abstract
Title: Memory as an interculturality booster in Maputo, through the preservation of the colonial statuary
Author: Vítor de Sousa (CECS-Communication and Society Research Center/University of Minho, Portugal) - vitordesousa@ics.uminho.pt; vitordesousa@gmail.com

Core argument
Memory as an interculturality booster in Maputo, through the preservation of the colonial statuary: this sort of mental decolonisation, aims the questioning of the way the colonial past weighs on the current intercultural relations, in Mozambique, when the country establishes a relation with the former coloniser (Portugal), allowing its inhabitants to look at the past as a way to build future dynamics.


Detailed abstract
Roberto Vecchi understands Walter Benjamin’s hesitation regarding the quote from the past, remembering that in the theses of this author about the concept of history, and drawing on Robespierre, he observed that “ancient Rome was a past loaded with today” (Vecchi, 2018, s.p.). Note that the materialist historian’s interest is reserved for the  past, “because of its quality of being completely passed, finished, of being definitively dead”, which gives it the possibility of being quoted. And, it is in this hesitation that, according to Vecchi, the problem exists, related to the reuses of the past and its quote, “if the past is definitively finished, it will present less risks when compared to a past still in discussion”, in which ideologies and reuses “may deeply change, or even reverse, the ways it is evoked” (Vecchi, 2018, s.p.).

For the new state ideology, the representations could not be ambiguous, so the choice in terms of statuary, was always developed according to a one-dimensional dynamic, that “needed ways to establish the connection of these monuments with the collective memory and the present it proclaimed”, as noted by Gerbert Verheij. This way, in a post-colonial period, “reintroducing the conflict that seems inherent to any interpretation of images in a modern era (…) seems, at last, necessary to understand the social role that the monument played in Lourenço Marques [today, Maputo]” (Verheij, 2012, p. 53). Even more so, it helps to understand the destination of the colonial legacy from which, through the independence of Mozambique (1975), the majority of traces was erased, despite the current trend that tends to preserve what remained following this attitude.

In the cases mentioned in this paper, regarding the new life of two colonial statues in Maputo, during the post-colonial period, and the permanence of the first monumental trace of Estado Novo, in the Mozambican capital, although with a genesis different from its initial objective by its inhabitants, the importance that the preservation of memory, even when it is associated with the former coloniser, in a country or a nation’s life, can be observed. In the cases of the statue of Mouzinho de Albuquerque – relocated to the Maputo Fortress –, and the statue of Salazar – placed in the National Library facing the wall –, we can state that they contribute to the development of an interculturality, in a relation between the former colonised country, Mozambique, and the colonising country, Portugal. This sort of symbolic “airing” allows the Maputo citizens (and Mozambicans in general) to question their colonial past, assuming this part of their history, aiming to configure an identity, with less voids, which sail in a sea of memory and oblivion, and that mark the process of building the Mozambican nation (Khan et al., 2016).

In both cases, it is a sort of mental decolonisation (Thiong’o, 1986; Mbembe, 2017), which aims to question the way the colonial past currently weighs on the intercultural relations, in Mozambique, when the country looks at its past, subjugated by the Portuguese colonisation. In this sense, interculturality is promoted, in order to allow the overcoming of mistakes and the resolution of resentments. Marc Ferro (2009) mentions the existence of a reciprocity of resentments, observing that resentment is not only a matter of those who were identified as victims in the beginning. Research concludes that, simultaneously and alternately, resentment may affect, inhibit not only one of the parties, but both. The reaction after a revolution is obvious, but these types of paths are multiple and varied.

As advocated by Maria Paula Meneses, it is important to open historical narratives, “investing in interconnected histories, locally and regionally, challenging the legacies of colonial representations”. This way, decolonisation should be assumed “as an act of awareness control, an act of liberation from oppression of knowledge as a monoculture”. It is based on this context, that entering the 21st century requires “a cartography network, dialogical, more complex and cautious of diversity that makes the epistemic and ontological alternatives visible, in addition to abyssal factures” (Meneses, 2018, 133).

The post-colonial period does not erase the colonial time, although it does recycle it in an aesthetic game full of indifference and ludic aspects: the colonial statue represents an absence/indifference, even if it playfully fills a photogenic space. Nonetheless, the Mozambican state contour in reproducing national memory, in a narrative that is in line with colonial practices. Even if, Mozambique is itself, a memory of colonisation.

So, we may ask, “what is a statue worth?”. It is not enough that Mozambican politics invests in memory, by showing artefacts. This must be followed by an educational component, so the symbols are interpreted and the visible portion of the country’s history being shown is understood, namely through statuary. Otherwise, taking photos with Mouzinho de Albuquerque as a backdrop, even if it is contextualised, will not have any relation with mental decolonisation, but with another thing, the freedom each person has. The same will occur regarding the statue of Salazar facing the wall of the National Library, which, if not contextualised, may be interpreted as simple resentment.


References
Ferro, M. (2009). O ressentimento na história [Resentment in history]. Lisboa: Teorema.
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This dissertation offers a gendered, postcolonial Gothic reading with a central focus upon considering the complex relationship between authority and articulation in the fiction of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Helen Oyeyemi. Both are writers of Nigerian origin who have lived in more than one country; their texts are hybrid, and contain conflicting cultural imperatives that are signposted through Gothic elements. The two authors studied in this dissertation have been categorised as belonging to the third-generation of Nigerian writers — but since they are cosmopolitan women who have lived in more than one country, the condition of transit and of drawing from more than one corpus of literature imbues their texts. I argue that the fluidity that arises from the condition of writing from the in-between spaces of transit contributes to the sense of the uncanny that fuels the Gothic configurations of their texts. I then posit that the relationship between authority and articulation — often one of struggle and conflict for women given the persistence of patriarchal ideologies — is connected to the metaphoric representations of doubling and of splitting, and to the figures of twins, doubles and doppelgangers that pervade the texts of both authors. I link these metaphoric and thematic representations to postcolonial readings of mimicry in relation to hybridity.

In so doing, I examine the manner in which doubling relates to the uncanny in Adichie’s and Oyeyemi’s writings. The sense of the uncanny is produced by the unsettling feeling of being in-between; I have named instances of this in the texts, “liminal dissonances and doublings”. These effects are a direct result of metaphors and themes found in the narratives that evoke haunting and loss, as well as the gendered transgressions which are often necessary in the struggle for articulation. I connect these metaphors, enclosures and psychological configurations of the Gothic to instances of transgression in the texts. I then investigate these diverse representations of transgression, connecting these representations to issues that pertain to identity. I discuss the manner in which these transgressions are a response to instances of commodification that are implied or directly addressed in the texts, and the manner in which this commodification is related to the struggle to assert one’s personal autonomy against public expectations of one’s cultural identity.

My literary exploration of the relationship between articulation and authority and the pervasive metaphors of doubling, dissonance and splitting in the texts of the two writers is organised into five topic areas. In Chapter One, I interrogate the position of Adichie and Oyeyemi within the postcolonial Gothic in relation to their identities as third-generation Nigerian writers, by examining the discourse of desire in the texts as well as how cultural identity is fetishised and commodified. Implicit in the argument of this chapter is not just the function of memory, but also the manner in which authority contributes to and often interrupts the discourse of identity — particularly for writers who are in-between cultures. I examine this argument in relation to the concepts of desire and objectification from a Gothic perspective. Next, in Chapter Two, I delve into the Gothic Otherworlds in Oyeyemi’s texts, and consider the manner in which these are linked to the complicated relationships between women of different generations in the same family. I connect this to the theme of authority, looking at the manner in which Oyeyemi transforms and syncretises the Yorùbá motif of the abiku, combining it with Western/Greco-Roman motifs; Gothic literature as well as fairytales.

Adichie’s fiction is the concern of Chapter Three; I connect what I have termed the Biafran Haunting to the gazes of dominant or authoritative figures upon fetishised characters situated in the feminine domain. I study the enclosures of the Gothic and the grotesque in relation to the feminine, connecting the enclosures and the figures to the issue of mimicry. In Chapter Four, I relate the Gothic and mythic metaphors and thematic concerns in the narratives to my theoretical account of the Gothic; I link the twins, doppelgangers and doubles in the texts of both writers to postcolonial engagements with hybridity, mimicry, commodification and authority by examining the connection between doubling and splitting in these texts. Finally, in Chapter Five, I look at the struggle for articulation and voicing in the texts; how this is often related, in particular, to metaphors of choking and consumption (of food or other material), and the manner in which these metaphors connect to the commodification of the experience of individuals inhabiting the highly ambiguous and problematic in-between.