Lugares da memória: o asilo de Mãe e a escola de Ondjaki

Abstract

The study in question analyzes the reconstruction of events, places, and people in the works Bom dia, camaradas (2001), by Ondjaki, and A máquina de fazer espanhóis (2010), by Valter Hugo Mãe. By focusing on the characters' recollections of the colonization and Civil War in Angola, as well as the remnants of the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal, the research explores the relationship between Memory and History, employing the concept of historio-graphic metafiction. The selected works feature protagonists who experienced these histori-cally significant periods as ordinary people rather than combatants, highlighting respectively the importance of the elderly as guardians of memory and the figure of the child as one who seeks to understand the past. The places where most of these memories occur are significant: the asylum and the school represent collective symbols of old age and childhood, respectively. The comparative analysis of the novels reveals convergences and divergences in the characters' perspectives, contributing to the understanding of the construction of collective and indi-vidual memory. Furthermore, the dissertation aims to explore the mechanisms by which liter-ary narratives function as forms of historiographic metafiction, questioning the limitations of traditional historical discourse. The goal is to understand how these contemporary works rein-terpret the recent history of Angola and Portugal, highlighting the complexities of the con-struction of historical memory and its interaction with literature, history, and cultural identity in post-colonial and post-dictatorial contexts