The fall of the European empires over the course of the 20th century forced massive migratory flows from the former colonies to the old metropolis and between colonized regions. The experiences that came with the loss of colonies were traumatic for the erstwhile colonials, who carried their imperial nostalgia to the old metropolises. The social and political consequences of these longings are still unfolding in former colonizing societies. This article critically engages the materialization of lusotropical sensibilities, focusing on contemporary Portuguese decolonization as it is experienced in Lisbon’s urban landscape. I argue that cafés, restaurants, and pastry shops frequented by retornados are not only places of memory but spaces where imperial longings are ingested and internalized.
Portugal deixou de ter colônias em 1975, mas, apesar disso, continua a ser constituído por relações de poder coloniais. De que modo pode a arqueologia contribuir para desconstruir a ideia de um estado-nação como o que encontramos na narrativa hegemônica que dá forma ao Portugal de hoje? Responderemos a esta questão com um método genealógico, conectando discussões contemporâneas sobre a descolonização do espaço público à forma como historicamente se resistiu à integração da raia no estado-nação no caso de Cambedo, uma comunidade rural em Trás-os-Montes. A nossa análise será feita através de três descobertas — do presente, da fronteira e da modernidade — através das quais revelaremos eventos e conexões historicamente obscurecidas.
What are the circumstances through which we become archaeologists? In April 2018, Rui Gomes Coelho met with his former adviser, Randall H. McGuire, and his adviser’s adviser, Michael B. Schiffer, for a conversation about the reasons why they became interested in archaeology, about mentorship and about how they connect their experiences to broader social questions. This conversation is an affective reflection that crosses the emergence of behavioural archaeology, Marxist archaeology, the postprocessual turn and the context that shaped the origins of the archaeology of the recent past.
Every garden needs to be tendered, and needs a caretaker who knows about the cycles and moods of nature. It is hard to conceive that refugees may have anything to do with gardens, as they are always on the move. In this essay I will examine gardens and refugees. Gardens are not only ecological phenomena but also the articulation of ideas, places and action. They can be places that express the power of humanity over natural circumstances, the projection of an idealized order, or a place of seclusion and escape. That is the reason why gardens are a powerful trope, and that is also why they are sites of entrapment in societies that simultaneously incite and estrange the refugee. I will show that gardens are places in which refugees define some control over their lives, but also where they are rejected. I argue that the conflictive encounters that take place in gardens are better understood when we see them as workplaces, sites in which people produce goods to provide for themselves and their families, and to supply the market. In the end I will defend that the ambiguity of the garden conjures an invitation to us archaeologists: an invitation to glance beyond the narratives of victimhood that reinforce the estrangement of the refugees, and to see the transitory materialities of their lives as mirrors of our own societies.
Resumo:O presente artigo busca discutir o jardim como um objeto que permite problematizar a questão dos refugiados, campos de concentração, plantations escravistas e outras circunstâncias extremas do mundo moderno e contemporâneo. O autor argumenta que o jardim pode ser caracterizado como um tropo da modernidade em sua evocação de agência e liberdade, mas também de aprisionamento e violência. A arqueologia é percebida como um poderoso instrumento para trazer à tona e denunciar essa multiplicidade de sentidos, através das especificidades que o estudo da materialidade permite, levando-nos a questionar estereótipos de vitimização e afastamento.
Abstract:The present article seeks to discuss the garden as an object that makes it possible to problematize refugees, concentration camps, slave plantations and other extreme forms of the modern and contemporary world. The author of the argument that the garden can be presented as a trope of modernity in its evocation of an agency and freedom, but also of imprisonment and violence. Archeology is perceived as a great tool to generate and describe this multiplicity of meanings, through the specificities that the study of materiality permits, leading us to question the conditions of victimization and remoteness.
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