Paper short abstract:

The talk will address of the role of Portugal’s colonial past in its postcolonial reconfiguration. It will dialogue with Gilroy's 'Black Atlantic' and his critique of ‘race’. It will focus on the news coverage of a rebellion by hundreds of Black youths on a Lisbon beach that did not, after all, happen…

Paper long abstract:

My talk will be an attempt to situate the vantage point of a Portuguese

anthropologist who is looking at his country's colonial past and at where his

discipline stands in times of "postcolonial" concerns. In what regards empirical

material, it stands halfway between fieldwork done in Brazil (see Vale de Almeida

2000, and chapter 2 in this book), work on constructions of

creoleness and hybridity in colonial and postcolonial times, and on-going attention (in collaboration with graduate students in Lisbon) to the politics of "multiculturalism" in Portugal.

It starts with a critical analysis of postcolonial studies; goes on to an approach to the issue of "Anthropology and Postcolonialism."; and culminates in a section on the Portuguese colonial experience and its consequences in postcolonial Portugal. Throughout it will dialogue with the

notion of "the Black Atlantic", and its heuristic value for an analysis of what ironically is called "the Brown Atlantic." It will pay particular attention to an event in 2005 - the news coverage of a mass robbery by hundreds of Black youths in a Lisbon beach that did not, after all, happen at all…