Citation

Garraio J. Violence Against Women 2019; 25(13): 1558-1577.

Affiliation

University of Coimbra, Portugal.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1077801219869547

PMID

31506021

Abstract

This essay examines two Portuguese novels about colonialism and its legacies: António Lobo Antunes's Fado Alexandrino (1983) and Aida Gomes's Os Pretos de Pousaflores (The Blacks from Pousaflores) (2011). Fado Alexandrino perpetuates the use of Black women's raped bodies as a plot device to represent colonial violence, while Gomes's narrative empowers racialized victims of sexual abuse and challenges dominant public memories of the Colonial War. A close reading of these novels, contextualized against the background of scholarly debates about the representation of sexual violence, exposes both the perils and potential of cultural works to preserve the memory of rape in armed conflict.

Language: en

Keywords

Aida Gomes; António Lobo Antunes; Lusotropicalism; Portuguese literature; colonialism; “return”