Contraste, embate e vontade em o retorno, de dulce maria cardoso

Abstract

Starting from the Greek concept of agony, the restless feeling that (dis)articulates desire and choice, this essay proposes an argumentative line of thought that relates the reinvention of personal identity inside a complex historical situation. For that end, an approachis taken to the voice of the narrator of the 2012 romance O Retorno, written by Dulce Maria Cardoso, so as to explore the polarities that marked the non-voluntary Portuguese migrations inside the very historical process that transformed colonial settlers into the “returned”. The decolonization of the old Portuguese territories in Africa, the arrival of a specific family in Lisbon and the reflections of teenager Rui serve as a base for the analyses that will deal with the struggle that is presented, in thisnarrative, between disparate polar opposites: black and white; Luanda and Lisbon; “returned” and Portuguese, idyllic cordiality and the luso-tropicalist myth; paternal speech and revolutionary discourse, among others in a dense web of clashing discussion in which the human volition to survive and leave a mark is staged.