The Portuguese Empire and the Lusophone Postcolony as Diasporas

Abstract:The Portuguese-Speaking Diaspora is an ambitious repository for a selective yet extraordinarily wide-ranging assembly of cultural artifacts drawn from the entire history of the Portuguese empire and Lusophone postcolony. Within the chronological expanse ranging from 1415 to (roughly) 2015, the book stages a storytelling enterprise of encyclopedic breadth and scope, skillfully intertwining historical accounts with brief vignettes and longer analyses of a wide array of artistic objects, from literary works to maps, paintings, decorative arts, sculpture, and cinema. Given the study’s broad definition of diasporic experience (which encompasses a variety of often nonpermanent or short-term dislocations) and its guiding focus on “imperially produced hybridity that is characteristic of lusophone culture” (72), the book is best read as a lively history of hybrid cultural processes and legacies of the Portuguese empire rather than as a sustained reflection on the diasporic condition as such.