{"title":"Framing absence","authors":"Paulo de Medeiros","doi":"10.3828/jrs.2024.12","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n What if absence and loss are structuring elements of the post-imperial condition? Not defining elements, as the post-imperial by its very nature remains a slippery and shape-shifting concept; but certainly core, enabling elements that might go a long way towards explaining the strange hold that a post-imperial imaginary has in the present. Keeping in mind that there are as many versions of the post-imperial as there were empires, and more, because even if one considers a specific ‘empire’, say the Portuguese in this case, it never was a homogeneous, consistent, or coherent entity by any stretch of the imagination. One film that makes clear how impossible it is to disentangle the questions of state power, personal survival, and the various traumas inherent in the post-imperial condition is Margarida Cardoso’s forceful and haunting\n Yvone Kane\n (2014). The film, in its totality, should also be understood as an allegory, not of the nation or nations, but rather of the conflation of past and present and their implication of a future bereft of simple answers and convenient mythologies.\n Yvone Kane\n lets us understand that in order to achieve some kind of redemption, in a human, political sense at least, the structuring dualities at the base of most of our society must be abandoned.\n","PeriodicalId":41740,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Romance Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Romance Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3828/jrs.2024.12","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
What if absence and loss are structuring elements of the post-imperial condition? Not defining elements, as the post-imperial by its very nature remains a slippery and shape-shifting concept; but certainly core, enabling elements that might go a long way towards explaining the strange hold that a post-imperial imaginary has in the present. Keeping in mind that there are as many versions of the post-imperial as there were empires, and more, because even if one considers a specific ‘empire’, say the Portuguese in this case, it never was a homogeneous, consistent, or coherent entity by any stretch of the imagination. One film that makes clear how impossible it is to disentangle the questions of state power, personal survival, and the various traumas inherent in the post-imperial condition is Margarida Cardoso’s forceful and haunting
Yvone Kane
(2014). The film, in its totality, should also be understood as an allegory, not of the nation or nations, but rather of the conflation of past and present and their implication of a future bereft of simple answers and convenient mythologies.
Yvone Kane
lets us understand that in order to achieve some kind of redemption, in a human, political sense at least, the structuring dualities at the base of most of our society must be abandoned.
期刊介绍:
Published in association with the Institute of Modern Languages Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London. Journal of Romance Studies (JRS) promotes innovative critical work in the areas of linguistics, literature, performing and visual arts, media, material culture, intellectual and cultural history, critical and cultural theory, psychoanalysis, gender studies, social sciences and anthropology. One themed issue and two open issues are published each year. The primary focus is on those parts of the world that speak, or have spoken, French, Italian, Spanish or Portuguese, but articles focusing on other Romance languages and cultures (for example, Catalan, Galician, Occitan, Romanian and other minority languages) is also encouraged.