Eduardo Lourenço, o Brasil e o impensado colonial

Jacques Derrida’s claim that inheritances constitute a form of positioning finds strong resonance in this thematic dossier on Eduardo Lourenço. Although initially conceived to commemorate the centenary of his birth in 2023, the project evolved into a deeper engagement with his thought. The aim is not merely to write about Lourenço, but to think with him. Central to this reassessment is the link between his concept of the “unthought” and his formative experience in Brazil. What might seem a minor biographical detail—his teaching year at the Federal University of Bahia in the late 1950s—emerges instead as a decisive intellectual turning point. In Brazil, Lourenço encountered a society actively reshaping its colonial inheritance, an experience that profoundly reoriented his critical tools. This context enabled him to conceptualize the “unthought” as a key to interpreting Portugal’s identity, particularly in relation to colonialism in Africa and the long Salazarist regime. Brazil became both model and frontier: a space through which Portugal could be rendered intelligible from the perspective of its colonial transfigurations. Anticipating later postcolonial theories, Lourenço developed a dialectical analysis of domination, heritage, and transformation within still-living colonial structures. From this period onward, his work bears the imprint of a “thinking South,” essential for understanding Portugal and its place within Europe and global modernity.