Abstract

PIMENTA, Susana. The Mestiço in the “Urgency of Existence”. Essa Dama Bate Bué! (2018), by Yara Monteiro. Comunicação e Sociedade [online]. 2022, vol.41, pp.61-73.  Epub June 22, 2022. ISSN 1645-2089.  https://doi.org/10.17231/comsoc.41(2022).3687.

In today’s Lusophone cultural panorama (2010-2020), several artists of the generation of postmemory (Hirsch, 2016), heirs of the colonial trauma, have been deconstructing or repairing misconceptions, injustices and inequalities stemming from the colonial system. A group of researchers also fight for fairer memory policies to repair how Europe thought, classified and imagined the distant worlds. Drawing on Yara Monteiro’s (1979-) debut novel, Essa Dama Bate Bué! (2018), this article aims to analyse how the postcolonial and mestiço condition of the Lusophone “generation of postmemory” is envisioned. Memories allow inquiring about the colonial past and the roots and cultural heritage of the following generations in “between-places” (Bhabha, 1994/1998), such as the mestizo. Yara Monteiro opens the discussion on the trauma, miscegenation, humankind, and even a possible universality or a historical reparation, seeking to normalise the other side of miscegenation in the European discourse. The process of identifying the mestiço is still problematic today and therefore requires an “urgency of existence”.

Keywords : generation of postmemory; miscegenation; historical reparation; Yara Monteiro.

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