Ownership of experience and postmemory in postcolonial European literature

Abstract

This paper focuses, from a comparative approach, on a selection of literary works from Portugal, France and
Belgium. In these works, postmemory within a European postcolonial scope appears to be as a key element to
understand the memories of colonial times transferred into subsequent generations. Considering a corpora studied
within European project MEMOIRS—Children of Empires and European Postmemories (Centre for Social Studies,
Coimbra University) funded by the European Research Council (ERC). We seek to discuss the multiple textual strategies adopted by the offspring of colonial memories in order to achieve the appropriation, through fiction, of the traumatic experience. We will analyse the different ways adopted by the heirs of the traumatic memories in order to achieve the ownership of experience, according to the kind of relationship which may exist with the direct witness. The latter, since the appropriation of the colonial past undertaken by the writers studied here varies depending on whether the transmission corresponds to a biographical or to a cultural scenario. We will therefore study works by Portuguese writer Paulo Faria, by Belgian author Laurent Demoulin and by French writers Thierry Crouzet and Éric
Vuillard.