A psychoanalytical reading of the Caderno de memórias coloniais, by Isabela Figueiredo

Abstract

The present article intends to build a critical reading of Caderno de memórias coloniais, by Isabela Figueiredo, from the potential imbrications between literature and psychoanalysis, focusing on the constitution of the author's subjectivity mainly from the relationship with her father. The testimony that emerges throughout the novel reveals both the obstacles and ambivalence present in this relationship – marked by desire and guilt, love and hate – as well as the circumstances in which this occurs, that is, amid the contradictions that mark the social situation of Mozambique. In this sense, the political-ideological positioning of the patriarch of the family, a Portuguese settler adhering to quite oppressive racial, social and gender perspectives, ends up affecting the complex relationships established within his own family nucleus and revealing the way in which the Mozambican social structure was organized during the period of the Portuguese Estado Novo. Thus, from an experience socially lived within the logics of Portuguese colonialism, the author’s self-analysis emerges, a critical review of the past essential to then be able to move forward.