Collective Traumas and Common Memories: the Colonial War of Portugal in Africa and European violence of the Twentieth Century

The chapter is a part of an international collective project on the contemporary forms and representations of war. Approaching the case of the Colonial war that Portugal fought in Africa corresponding to the collapse of the secular imperial ambitions, the study tries to analyze this censored and still hidden collective trauma as a specific mode to discuss contemporary Portugal. The topic affects not only the relation between war and 20th century violence in Europe, but, more in general, the problems of post-conflict cultures and memories, searching for a common background for many different European contexts. The problematic link between memory and post-memory in the contemporary Portuguese context turns the war of Portugal in Africa a clear example for a more general and continental discussion on the task of violence, and its possbile representations, in Europe and in its colonial articulations, during the Century of Extremes.