Framing absence

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.