Books by Vasco Martins
Routledge , 2021
Making a fresh contribution to our understanding of the history of Angola, this book explores the... more Making a fresh contribution to our understanding of the history of Angola, this book explores the impact of social, political and economic change upon the largest ethnic group of the country, the Ovimbundu.
Based on extensive fieldwork conducted in Angola, including oral testimonies and life stories, participant-observation, and archival materials, this book shifts the viewpoint from the colonial enterprise, international politics and ideological alignments to focus on African experiences and responses. The author analyses the transformations introduced by Christianity and colonialisation and how they contributed to politicised modern notions of ethnic identity, creating communal imaginaries that began manifesting during Angolan’s anti-colonial war. He then explains how the weaving of this ethno-political landscape assisted UNITA’s mobilisation of significant parts of the Ovimbundu during the civil-war, essentially deepening popular belief in the axiom Ovimbundu-UNITA, and how the latter created a national imaginary that echoed social anxieties and moral discourses. The book then explores the links between ethnicity, politics and war on the quality of post-war citizenship in Angola, particularly on people’s integration in the citizenry or marginalisation from it.
Articulating a reading of ethnicity that connects high politics and elite based explanations with how ordinary people feel and discuss ethnicity, politics and citizenship, this book will be of interest to scholars of African history and politics, as well as ethnicity and nationalism.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Papers by Vasco Martins
e-Journal of Portuguese History, 2024
This article explores the political uses of frameworks of heroism in Angola. It argues that after... more This article explores the political uses of frameworks of heroism in Angola. It argues that after independence and governing a country it had to decolonize, the MPLA promoted a specific political morality and civic virtue by referencing its own heroes and heroines. It used its youth, women, and children’s party organizations as vehicles to indoctrinate society in the new revolutionary values and behaviours. Yet, after an immense work of signification, the archive on heroism and morality, specific to a political period, was made obsolete due to the political changes after the turn to democracy and end of the civil war.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The Journal of African History, 2022
The article explores the political uses of the memory of the Popular Movement for the Liberation ... more The article explores the political uses of the memory of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola's (MPLA's) heroic combatant Hoji ya Henda from the independence of Angola in 1975 to recent times. Based on extensive archival work in Luanda, the article maps the historical periods and circumstances during which the ruling regime invoked Henda's memory, noting how changes in the political system directly affected how his memory permeated the public domain, oscillating between presence, silence, replacement, and resurgence. In doing so, the article explores a dilemma in the study of memory, opposing historical continuity and active construction in memory-making. It concludes that even when subjected to political manipulation for several decades, the original memorialisation of national heroes such as Hoji ya Henda, although subject to historical circumstance, always retains its original mnemonic signifier in society. This signals an important nuance in entrenched debates concerning the opposition between history and the political construction of memory.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
History and Memory 33(2), 2021
This article explores the political uses of the memory of the Angolan liberation war. It argues t... more This article explores the political uses of the memory of the Angolan liberation war. It argues that the MPLA's rise to power in post-independence Angola led to the formation of an official state narrative based upon this movement's own memory, which gradually developed a script that follows specific rules. The article explores the politicization of the history of the Angolan liberation struggle by comparing official memories with the countermemories presented by other liberation movements to ascertain narrative boundaries. It then examines the shifts and nuances, or what I term gradations of memory, that can be discerned in the narratives offered by a number of prominent MPLA figures later in their lives, which deviate to a certain extent from the “liberation script” supported by the state.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
African Studies Review, 2020
Abstract:
Rehabilitating the legacy of deceased leaders is a phenomenon particularly salient in S... more Abstract:
Rehabilitating the legacy of deceased leaders is a phenomenon particularly salient in Southern Africa, insofar as memories of liberation wars provoke considerable debate. After a protracted civil war, Angolans remain divided about the contributions of their historical leaders. Jonas Savimbi sits at the center of this division, a binary representation of both heroism and villainy. Martins demonstrates how Savimbi’s memory is invoked both as a moral source of hope for an alternative Angola—one imagined and disseminated by Savimbi and UNITA and appropriated by social protest—and as a technology of fear and control employed by the MPLA to assert political dominance.
Resumé:
La réhabilitation de dirigeants morts est un phénomène en Afrique Australe, on fait encore des grands débats sur les mémoires des luttes de libération. Malgré une longue guerre civile, Angola est divisée par les héritages de leurs dirigeants historiques. Savimbi est au centre de cette division, comme un héros ou un vilain. Martins démontre comment Savimbi est évoqué, d’un côté comme source morale et d’espoir pour un pays différent, imaginé et diffusé par lui-même et par l’UNITA et dans des récits de protestation sociale; d’autre, comme technologie de peur et contrôle, utilisée par le MPLA pour assurer sa domination politique.
Resumo:
A reabilitação de líderes falecidos é um fenómeno saliente na África Austral, onde as memórias das lutas de libertação suscitam grandes debates. Depois de uma longa guerra civil, Angola continua dividida pelos legados dos seus líderes históricos. Jonas Savimbi situa-se no centro desta divisão, posicionado entre herói e vilão. Martins demonstra como Savimbi é invocado por um lado como fonte moral e de esperança para um país diferente, imaginado e disseminado pelo próprio e pela UNITA, e apropriado em narrativas de protesto social; e por outro, como tecnologia de medo e controlo utilizada pelo MPLA para assegurar domínio político.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Kronos, 2019
Focusing on the Memorial António Agostinho Neto (MAAN) in Angola as the case study to analyse mat... more Focusing on the Memorial António Agostinho Neto (MAAN) in Angola as the case study to analyse materialisations of memory, the article attempts to read the political representations of this monument by analysing its main narratives, questioning its silences and unpacking its impact on public memory. To do so, the article is divided into three parts. The first section engages with the relevant academic literature on southern African memorialisation and provides a brief description of the MAAN. The second and third sections consider Richard Werbner's notion of elite memorial-ism to produce a two-dimensional analysis, referencing the absence of MPLA narrative and symbols in the MAAN while noting how it became inaccessible to the ordinary Angolan population, a result of more ample dynamics of state society relations in the country. It concludes that the logics of social hierarchy that have promoted the marginalisation of segments of the population have impacted the MAAN's ability to contribute to the new ways Angolans are imagining the nation.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Citizenship Studies, 2017
This article discusses citizenship and belonging with reference to
processes of post-war state fo... more This article discusses citizenship and belonging with reference to
processes of post-war state formation, namely: the MPLA’s political
hegemony and the centralisation of power in the presidency. It argues
this political arrangement imposes upon individuals an oscillation
between different ‘levels’ or hierarchies of citizenship with a tendency
towards marginalisation, formally allowing them to access both but
under the specific circumstances dictated by the MPLA party state.
Without a strong political opposition with a plausible alternative
citizenship doctrine and with little incentives to improve the terms
of citizenship it provides to the population, the Angolan government
constructed a system of interests whereby the MPLA functions as a
gatekeeper. Both in control of the state and of the distribution of
citizenship, the regime regulates the flow of resources to the bottom
through strategies of poverty and dependency, which increase the
distance between the state and the population and sponsors the
marginalisation of the majority.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Journal of Southern African Studies , Jun 17, 2015
This article explores the attribution of political identity to the Ovimbundu ethnic group of Ango... more This article explores the attribution of political identity to the Ovimbundu ethnic group of Angola during the post-war period. It examines specific historical periods and political debates to reveal negative stereotypes popularly used to associate this ethnic group with the União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA), a practice still present today. Academic scholarship concerning the ethnic debate about Angola is still embryonic. This paper negotiates a new approach by looking at ethnic stereotypes as enduring means of attributing political identity to a specific ethnic group, while taking into account the views of those targeted by such identity attributions. Having explored how UNITA mobilised the Ovimbundu for political gains, the paper uses interview data collected in the central highlands to demonstrate not only the attribution of stereotypes but also the Ovimbundu’s own perception of themselves as a ‘marginal other’. It is in the group’s interaction with wider Angolan society that such stereotypes are summoned and shaped in the pejorative epithets ‘bailundo’, ‘kwacha’ and ‘sulano’. The article concludes that decades of ethnic manipulation provided various identity connotations, based on ethno-regional and socio-political criteria. These were often contrary to actual Ovimbundu outlooks, but still served as limiting factors to their social, political and economic integration. Thus the Ovimbundu’s own perception of their marginalisation has been reinforced.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
PhD Thesis by Vasco Martins
This thesis is a study about the modern ethnicity of the Ovimbundu of the central highlands of An... more This thesis is a study about the modern ethnicity of the Ovimbundu of the central highlands of Angola. It shows how Ovimbundu conceptions of ethnicity became altered and enhanced by processes of modernisation, usually introduced by foreign agents, and how this modernisation came to play a critical role after independence.
Following a contrast in existing literature between either the attribution of vital importance to ethnicity in human agency or the downplay of it in favour of other elements, this work may be positioned in the middle, that is, it finds common ground with both arguments. I follow a constructivist approach, patent throughout the thesis and much used by many academic studies, which enables the analysis of Ovimbundu modern ethnicity by crossing the several influences the people of the central highlands were exposed to with their own agency and capacity to imagine and follow new ideas, mostly associated with modernisation. A paradigm begins emerging, one that recurs to the experiences apprehended during colonialism, influenced by processes of evangelisation and colonisation, which allow a clearer and more complete comprehension of aspects pertaining to the organisation of the political movements, the civil-war and issues related with post-war reconciliation, integration and state-formation. It becomes clear that the construction and imagination of political identities was much dependent upon processes of ethnic modernisation, which are still influential in people’s lives in contemporary Angola.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Book Chapters by Vasco Martins
The memory of the liberation war in Angola has been a constant source of political power, one uti... more The memory of the liberation war in Angola has been a constant source of political power, one utilised by the hegemonic power, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), to assert its legitimacy to continue ruling the country. The politicisation of these memories, besides confusing historiographical production, has eluded various other proponents of alternative interpretations of the memories of the liberation war, particularly its other participants, the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) and National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). This chapter demonstrates that, by presenting a cleansed version of historical memory, free of conflict and controversy, official memory replaces and silences the diverse actors that were at the genesis of the new nation after independence. It continues to show that oppositional counter-memories are either tied to weak representation in contemporary society, in the case of the FNLA, or a lack of interest in asserting participation in the liberation war, in the case of UNITA. The result is an opaque and metamorphic use of memory, one essentially defined by Angola's contemporary politics.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The Portuguese Colonial War and the African Liberation Struggles Memory, Politics and Uses of the Past, 2023
This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. On 1 November 1975, ten days be... more This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. On 1 November 1975, ten days before the independence of Angola, the last highcommissioner and general-governor of the Portuguese colonial government in Angola, Leonel Cardoso, signed and made public the following dispatch: We call special attention to all Portuguese citizens who left the airport terminal yesterday after dinner, to the fact that the aero bridge has come to an end, at midnight of the same day, 31 October, in accordance with insistent warnings diffused in the press and radio since
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Book Reviews by Vasco Martins
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Political identities, legitimacy and the Angolan civil war
Political identities, legitimacy and the Angolan civil war
(New York, Cambridge University Press,... more Political identities, legitimacy and the Angolan civil war
(New York, Cambridge University Press, 2015), xiv + 184 pp., hardback, £72.99, ISBN 978-1-107-07964-9; paperback (2018), £21.99, ISBN 978-1-108-46886-2.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Conferences/Panels/Seminars/Workshops by Vasco Martins
Um dos aspectos mais críticos na forma como se pensa tanto a história como a experiência moderna ... more Um dos aspectos mais críticos na forma como se pensa tanto a história como a experiência moderna do colonialismo europeu prende-se com a indagação das dinâmicas de continuidade e ruptura que marcaram as transferências de poder que se operaram naquilo que se convencionou denominar descolonização, com todas as limitações que o conceito comporta.
Esta oficina procura contribuir para uma reflexão sobre os lastros do colonialismo português tanto nas sociedades previamente colonizadas como na antiga metrópole. Fá-lo reunindo um grupo de jovens investigadores/as que, através de casos de estudo, procura promover um diálogo que supere a cesura do colonial/pós-colonial. Para esse efeito, debruçam-se sobre diferentes geografias e cronologias, a partir de variados tópicos de investigação, que se estendem desde a arquitectura e urbanismo coloniais às manifestações culturais e artísticas, passando por fenómenos como a crescente internacionalização da questão imperial ou a organização do poder estatal na sua longa duração.
Crê-se, com esta oficina, que os “legados” do processo de ocupação, exploração e sedimentação imperial, nas suas manifestações sociais, políticas, ideológicas, culturais ou artísticas, por exemplo, podem beneficiar de uma reflexão colectiva com diferentes pendores metodológicos, epistemológicos e teóricos. Em particular, esta reflexão pode contribuir para um debate que, a partir de diferentes escalas analíticas e geográficas, permita pensar o colonialismo português e as suas heranças de forma integrada, sublinhando as dinâmicas de recíproca co-constituição entre metrópole e colónia, entre antigo estado colonizador e estados pós-coloniais. Em suma, que permita desnudar as dinâmicas de trânsito, cooperação, emulação e competição estabelecidas para lá de estritas fronteiras soberanas ou estatais.
Nesse sentido, esta oficina convida os/as participantes a apresentarem as suas investigações enquadrando-as num conjunto de questões que centrem interesse e indagações comuns:
- O colonialismo português e os seus legados podem ser pensados isolando as diferentes parcelas imperiais? O que se ganha e o que se perde com esta opção analítica e/ou epistemológica?
- Que processos sociais específicos da dominação colonial impenderam, foram cooptados ou liminarmente rejeitados pelos novos estados independentes? De que forma o binómio continuidade/ruptura opera não só na história, mas na constituição das diferentes memórias nas quais se inscreve este passado?
- De que forma o passado e o presente desta “transição” procurou isolar elementos “especificamente” nacionais, obscurecendo outro tipo de processos e dinâmicas?
- De que modos a natureza do “estado colonial” impendeu sobre as dinâmicas sociais, culturais e políticas das novas nações pós-coloniais?
- Como foram incorporadas as memórias sobre continuidades e descontinuidades com o passado colonial nos discursos políticos e de produção artística e cultural?
Intervenientes: Ana Balona de Oliveira (IHA-FCSH/NOVA), Ana Guardião (ICS-UL), Cláudia Almeida (ICS-UL), Marcos Cardão (CEC-FLUL), Natália Bueno (CES-UC), Pedro Cerdeira (UGenebra e IHC-FCSH/NOVA), Rita Lucas Narra (IHC-FCSH/NOVA), Sofia Palma Rodrigues (CES-UC e Divergente.pt)
Organização: Inês Nascimento Rodrigues, José Pedro Monteiro e Vasco Martins (CES)
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Reviews of my book by Vasco Martins
Journal of Southern African Studies, 2020
Review by Vasco Martins of
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Books by Vasco Martins
Based on extensive fieldwork conducted in Angola, including oral testimonies and life stories, participant-observation, and archival materials, this book shifts the viewpoint from the colonial enterprise, international politics and ideological alignments to focus on African experiences and responses. The author analyses the transformations introduced by Christianity and colonialisation and how they contributed to politicised modern notions of ethnic identity, creating communal imaginaries that began manifesting during Angolan’s anti-colonial war. He then explains how the weaving of this ethno-political landscape assisted UNITA’s mobilisation of significant parts of the Ovimbundu during the civil-war, essentially deepening popular belief in the axiom Ovimbundu-UNITA, and how the latter created a national imaginary that echoed social anxieties and moral discourses. The book then explores the links between ethnicity, politics and war on the quality of post-war citizenship in Angola, particularly on people’s integration in the citizenry or marginalisation from it.
Articulating a reading of ethnicity that connects high politics and elite based explanations with how ordinary people feel and discuss ethnicity, politics and citizenship, this book will be of interest to scholars of African history and politics, as well as ethnicity and nationalism.
Papers by Vasco Martins
Rehabilitating the legacy of deceased leaders is a phenomenon particularly salient in Southern Africa, insofar as memories of liberation wars provoke considerable debate. After a protracted civil war, Angolans remain divided about the contributions of their historical leaders. Jonas Savimbi sits at the center of this division, a binary representation of both heroism and villainy. Martins demonstrates how Savimbi’s memory is invoked both as a moral source of hope for an alternative Angola—one imagined and disseminated by Savimbi and UNITA and appropriated by social protest—and as a technology of fear and control employed by the MPLA to assert political dominance.
Resumé:
La réhabilitation de dirigeants morts est un phénomène en Afrique Australe, on fait encore des grands débats sur les mémoires des luttes de libération. Malgré une longue guerre civile, Angola est divisée par les héritages de leurs dirigeants historiques. Savimbi est au centre de cette division, comme un héros ou un vilain. Martins démontre comment Savimbi est évoqué, d’un côté comme source morale et d’espoir pour un pays différent, imaginé et diffusé par lui-même et par l’UNITA et dans des récits de protestation sociale; d’autre, comme technologie de peur et contrôle, utilisée par le MPLA pour assurer sa domination politique.
Resumo:
A reabilitação de líderes falecidos é um fenómeno saliente na África Austral, onde as memórias das lutas de libertação suscitam grandes debates. Depois de uma longa guerra civil, Angola continua dividida pelos legados dos seus líderes históricos. Jonas Savimbi situa-se no centro desta divisão, posicionado entre herói e vilão. Martins demonstra como Savimbi é invocado por um lado como fonte moral e de esperança para um país diferente, imaginado e disseminado pelo próprio e pela UNITA, e apropriado em narrativas de protesto social; e por outro, como tecnologia de medo e controlo utilizada pelo MPLA para assegurar domínio político.
processes of post-war state formation, namely: the MPLA’s political
hegemony and the centralisation of power in the presidency. It argues
this political arrangement imposes upon individuals an oscillation
between different ‘levels’ or hierarchies of citizenship with a tendency
towards marginalisation, formally allowing them to access both but
under the specific circumstances dictated by the MPLA party state.
Without a strong political opposition with a plausible alternative
citizenship doctrine and with little incentives to improve the terms
of citizenship it provides to the population, the Angolan government
constructed a system of interests whereby the MPLA functions as a
gatekeeper. Both in control of the state and of the distribution of
citizenship, the regime regulates the flow of resources to the bottom
through strategies of poverty and dependency, which increase the
distance between the state and the population and sponsors the
marginalisation of the majority.
PhD Thesis by Vasco Martins
Following a contrast in existing literature between either the attribution of vital importance to ethnicity in human agency or the downplay of it in favour of other elements, this work may be positioned in the middle, that is, it finds common ground with both arguments. I follow a constructivist approach, patent throughout the thesis and much used by many academic studies, which enables the analysis of Ovimbundu modern ethnicity by crossing the several influences the people of the central highlands were exposed to with their own agency and capacity to imagine and follow new ideas, mostly associated with modernisation. A paradigm begins emerging, one that recurs to the experiences apprehended during colonialism, influenced by processes of evangelisation and colonisation, which allow a clearer and more complete comprehension of aspects pertaining to the organisation of the political movements, the civil-war and issues related with post-war reconciliation, integration and state-formation. It becomes clear that the construction and imagination of political identities was much dependent upon processes of ethnic modernisation, which are still influential in people’s lives in contemporary Angola.
Book Chapters by Vasco Martins
Book Reviews by Vasco Martins
(New York, Cambridge University Press, 2015), xiv + 184 pp., hardback, £72.99, ISBN 978-1-107-07964-9; paperback (2018), £21.99, ISBN 978-1-108-46886-2.
Conferences/Panels/Seminars/Workshops by Vasco Martins
Esta oficina procura contribuir para uma reflexão sobre os lastros do colonialismo português tanto nas sociedades previamente colonizadas como na antiga metrópole. Fá-lo reunindo um grupo de jovens investigadores/as que, através de casos de estudo, procura promover um diálogo que supere a cesura do colonial/pós-colonial. Para esse efeito, debruçam-se sobre diferentes geografias e cronologias, a partir de variados tópicos de investigação, que se estendem desde a arquitectura e urbanismo coloniais às manifestações culturais e artísticas, passando por fenómenos como a crescente internacionalização da questão imperial ou a organização do poder estatal na sua longa duração.
Crê-se, com esta oficina, que os “legados” do processo de ocupação, exploração e sedimentação imperial, nas suas manifestações sociais, políticas, ideológicas, culturais ou artísticas, por exemplo, podem beneficiar de uma reflexão colectiva com diferentes pendores metodológicos, epistemológicos e teóricos. Em particular, esta reflexão pode contribuir para um debate que, a partir de diferentes escalas analíticas e geográficas, permita pensar o colonialismo português e as suas heranças de forma integrada, sublinhando as dinâmicas de recíproca co-constituição entre metrópole e colónia, entre antigo estado colonizador e estados pós-coloniais. Em suma, que permita desnudar as dinâmicas de trânsito, cooperação, emulação e competição estabelecidas para lá de estritas fronteiras soberanas ou estatais.
Nesse sentido, esta oficina convida os/as participantes a apresentarem as suas investigações enquadrando-as num conjunto de questões que centrem interesse e indagações comuns:
- O colonialismo português e os seus legados podem ser pensados isolando as diferentes parcelas imperiais? O que se ganha e o que se perde com esta opção analítica e/ou epistemológica?
- Que processos sociais específicos da dominação colonial impenderam, foram cooptados ou liminarmente rejeitados pelos novos estados independentes? De que forma o binómio continuidade/ruptura opera não só na história, mas na constituição das diferentes memórias nas quais se inscreve este passado?
- De que forma o passado e o presente desta “transição” procurou isolar elementos “especificamente” nacionais, obscurecendo outro tipo de processos e dinâmicas?
- De que modos a natureza do “estado colonial” impendeu sobre as dinâmicas sociais, culturais e políticas das novas nações pós-coloniais?
- Como foram incorporadas as memórias sobre continuidades e descontinuidades com o passado colonial nos discursos políticos e de produção artística e cultural?
Intervenientes: Ana Balona de Oliveira (IHA-FCSH/NOVA), Ana Guardião (ICS-UL), Cláudia Almeida (ICS-UL), Marcos Cardão (CEC-FLUL), Natália Bueno (CES-UC), Pedro Cerdeira (UGenebra e IHC-FCSH/NOVA), Rita Lucas Narra (IHC-FCSH/NOVA), Sofia Palma Rodrigues (CES-UC e Divergente.pt)
Organização: Inês Nascimento Rodrigues, José Pedro Monteiro e Vasco Martins (CES)
Reviews of my book by Vasco Martins
Based on extensive fieldwork conducted in Angola, including oral testimonies and life stories, participant-observation, and archival materials, this book shifts the viewpoint from the colonial enterprise, international politics and ideological alignments to focus on African experiences and responses. The author analyses the transformations introduced by Christianity and colonialisation and how they contributed to politicised modern notions of ethnic identity, creating communal imaginaries that began manifesting during Angolan’s anti-colonial war. He then explains how the weaving of this ethno-political landscape assisted UNITA’s mobilisation of significant parts of the Ovimbundu during the civil-war, essentially deepening popular belief in the axiom Ovimbundu-UNITA, and how the latter created a national imaginary that echoed social anxieties and moral discourses. The book then explores the links between ethnicity, politics and war on the quality of post-war citizenship in Angola, particularly on people’s integration in the citizenry or marginalisation from it.
Articulating a reading of ethnicity that connects high politics and elite based explanations with how ordinary people feel and discuss ethnicity, politics and citizenship, this book will be of interest to scholars of African history and politics, as well as ethnicity and nationalism.
Rehabilitating the legacy of deceased leaders is a phenomenon particularly salient in Southern Africa, insofar as memories of liberation wars provoke considerable debate. After a protracted civil war, Angolans remain divided about the contributions of their historical leaders. Jonas Savimbi sits at the center of this division, a binary representation of both heroism and villainy. Martins demonstrates how Savimbi’s memory is invoked both as a moral source of hope for an alternative Angola—one imagined and disseminated by Savimbi and UNITA and appropriated by social protest—and as a technology of fear and control employed by the MPLA to assert political dominance.
Resumé:
La réhabilitation de dirigeants morts est un phénomène en Afrique Australe, on fait encore des grands débats sur les mémoires des luttes de libération. Malgré une longue guerre civile, Angola est divisée par les héritages de leurs dirigeants historiques. Savimbi est au centre de cette division, comme un héros ou un vilain. Martins démontre comment Savimbi est évoqué, d’un côté comme source morale et d’espoir pour un pays différent, imaginé et diffusé par lui-même et par l’UNITA et dans des récits de protestation sociale; d’autre, comme technologie de peur et contrôle, utilisée par le MPLA pour assurer sa domination politique.
Resumo:
A reabilitação de líderes falecidos é um fenómeno saliente na África Austral, onde as memórias das lutas de libertação suscitam grandes debates. Depois de uma longa guerra civil, Angola continua dividida pelos legados dos seus líderes históricos. Jonas Savimbi situa-se no centro desta divisão, posicionado entre herói e vilão. Martins demonstra como Savimbi é invocado por um lado como fonte moral e de esperança para um país diferente, imaginado e disseminado pelo próprio e pela UNITA, e apropriado em narrativas de protesto social; e por outro, como tecnologia de medo e controlo utilizada pelo MPLA para assegurar domínio político.
processes of post-war state formation, namely: the MPLA’s political
hegemony and the centralisation of power in the presidency. It argues
this political arrangement imposes upon individuals an oscillation
between different ‘levels’ or hierarchies of citizenship with a tendency
towards marginalisation, formally allowing them to access both but
under the specific circumstances dictated by the MPLA party state.
Without a strong political opposition with a plausible alternative
citizenship doctrine and with little incentives to improve the terms
of citizenship it provides to the population, the Angolan government
constructed a system of interests whereby the MPLA functions as a
gatekeeper. Both in control of the state and of the distribution of
citizenship, the regime regulates the flow of resources to the bottom
through strategies of poverty and dependency, which increase the
distance between the state and the population and sponsors the
marginalisation of the majority.
Following a contrast in existing literature between either the attribution of vital importance to ethnicity in human agency or the downplay of it in favour of other elements, this work may be positioned in the middle, that is, it finds common ground with both arguments. I follow a constructivist approach, patent throughout the thesis and much used by many academic studies, which enables the analysis of Ovimbundu modern ethnicity by crossing the several influences the people of the central highlands were exposed to with their own agency and capacity to imagine and follow new ideas, mostly associated with modernisation. A paradigm begins emerging, one that recurs to the experiences apprehended during colonialism, influenced by processes of evangelisation and colonisation, which allow a clearer and more complete comprehension of aspects pertaining to the organisation of the political movements, the civil-war and issues related with post-war reconciliation, integration and state-formation. It becomes clear that the construction and imagination of political identities was much dependent upon processes of ethnic modernisation, which are still influential in people’s lives in contemporary Angola.
(New York, Cambridge University Press, 2015), xiv + 184 pp., hardback, £72.99, ISBN 978-1-107-07964-9; paperback (2018), £21.99, ISBN 978-1-108-46886-2.
Esta oficina procura contribuir para uma reflexão sobre os lastros do colonialismo português tanto nas sociedades previamente colonizadas como na antiga metrópole. Fá-lo reunindo um grupo de jovens investigadores/as que, através de casos de estudo, procura promover um diálogo que supere a cesura do colonial/pós-colonial. Para esse efeito, debruçam-se sobre diferentes geografias e cronologias, a partir de variados tópicos de investigação, que se estendem desde a arquitectura e urbanismo coloniais às manifestações culturais e artísticas, passando por fenómenos como a crescente internacionalização da questão imperial ou a organização do poder estatal na sua longa duração.
Crê-se, com esta oficina, que os “legados” do processo de ocupação, exploração e sedimentação imperial, nas suas manifestações sociais, políticas, ideológicas, culturais ou artísticas, por exemplo, podem beneficiar de uma reflexão colectiva com diferentes pendores metodológicos, epistemológicos e teóricos. Em particular, esta reflexão pode contribuir para um debate que, a partir de diferentes escalas analíticas e geográficas, permita pensar o colonialismo português e as suas heranças de forma integrada, sublinhando as dinâmicas de recíproca co-constituição entre metrópole e colónia, entre antigo estado colonizador e estados pós-coloniais. Em suma, que permita desnudar as dinâmicas de trânsito, cooperação, emulação e competição estabelecidas para lá de estritas fronteiras soberanas ou estatais.
Nesse sentido, esta oficina convida os/as participantes a apresentarem as suas investigações enquadrando-as num conjunto de questões que centrem interesse e indagações comuns:
- O colonialismo português e os seus legados podem ser pensados isolando as diferentes parcelas imperiais? O que se ganha e o que se perde com esta opção analítica e/ou epistemológica?
- Que processos sociais específicos da dominação colonial impenderam, foram cooptados ou liminarmente rejeitados pelos novos estados independentes? De que forma o binómio continuidade/ruptura opera não só na história, mas na constituição das diferentes memórias nas quais se inscreve este passado?
- De que forma o passado e o presente desta “transição” procurou isolar elementos “especificamente” nacionais, obscurecendo outro tipo de processos e dinâmicas?
- De que modos a natureza do “estado colonial” impendeu sobre as dinâmicas sociais, culturais e políticas das novas nações pós-coloniais?
- Como foram incorporadas as memórias sobre continuidades e descontinuidades com o passado colonial nos discursos políticos e de produção artística e cultural?
Intervenientes: Ana Balona de Oliveira (IHA-FCSH/NOVA), Ana Guardião (ICS-UL), Cláudia Almeida (ICS-UL), Marcos Cardão (CEC-FLUL), Natália Bueno (CES-UC), Pedro Cerdeira (UGenebra e IHC-FCSH/NOVA), Rita Lucas Narra (IHC-FCSH/NOVA), Sofia Palma Rodrigues (CES-UC e Divergente.pt)
Organização: Inês Nascimento Rodrigues, José Pedro Monteiro e Vasco Martins (CES)