Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the tensions between imagined, and hoped for, futures and present realities among Portuguese soldiers who fought in the anti-colonial wars. It will analyse the different images that emerge in narrative, exploring the afterlives of war in Portugal.

Paper long abstract:

Portugal’s late colonial wars have been silenced in national public memory until recently, remaining central in individual memory. Between 1961 and 1974 Portugal was engaged in three theatres of war in Lusophone Africa: Angola, Guinea Bissau, and Mozambique. Nearly one million Portuguese young men were mobilized to fight a war many did not understand and/or agree with. Upon returning home, especially in the aftermath of the 1974 revolution and the rapid political changes taking place in Portugal, the experiences and hopes of these young men and their families were silenced or left unacknowledged.

Drawing on ethnographic research on the history of combat trauma in Portugal I will explore collective (narrative and representational) and individual war memories and the realities of homecoming. I will highlight the temporality of silence, secrecy, visibility, and openness and the interplay between imagined, and hoped for, futures and present realities. The narrative expression of war experiences and memories highlights concurrent, if contradictory and ambiguous, images – victim, warrior, hero (Sorensen 2015), villain or perpetrator, that emerge with distinctive moral meanings and affective dimensions.