Remembering World War II Refugees in Contemporary Portugal: A Translational Perspective on Transcultural Memory 9783110738339, 9783110733440, 9783110733556

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Verena Lindemann Lino Remembering World War II Refugees in Contemporary Portugal

Media and Cultural Memory/ Medien und kulturelle Erinnerung

Edited by Astrid Erll · Ansgar Nünning Editorial Board Aleida Assmann · Mieke Bal · Vita Fortunati · Richard Grusin · Udo Hebel Andrew Hoskins · Wulf Kansteiner · Alison Landsberg · Claus Leggewie Jeffrey Olick · Susannah Radstone · Ann Rigney · Michael Rothberg Werner Sollors · Frederik Tygstrup · Harald Welzer

Volume 30

Verena Lindemann Lino

Remembering World War II Refugees in Contemporary Portugal A Translational Perspective on Transcultural Memory

This publication was generously supported by Centro de Estudos de Comunicação e Cultura [Research Centre for Communication and Culture] (CECC) through national funds by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) – the Portuguese national funding agency for science and technology, project UIDP/00126/2020.

ISBN 978-3-11-073833-9 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-073344-0 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-073355-6 ISSN 1613-8961 Library of Congress Control Number: 2021940901 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: Café Chave d’Ouro, Estúdio Mário Novais, Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa, PT/AMLSB/CMLSBAH/PCSP/004/MNV/001748 Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

para a Alea

Acknowledgments Writing this book would not have been possible without a wonderful network of professors, colleagues, friends and family. First of all, I am particularly grateful to my supervisors Professor Peter Hanenberg at Universidade Católica Portuguesa for his patience and inestimable support as well as his enthusiasm for my project and his invaluable feedback; and Professor Ansgar Nünning at Justus Liebig University Giessen for the vast knowledge he readily shares and his intellectual rigour in discussing my work. I was fortunate to be part of the doctoral program in Culture Studies within the Lisbon Consortium and the Research Centre for Communication and Culture (CECC) at Universidade Católica Portuguesa. The dynamic intellectual community at Universidade Católica in Lisbon contributed in innumerable ways to my work. In this context I would like to thank Professor Isabel Capeloa Gil, who founded the stimulating doctoral network; Professor Alexandra Lopes, who has always been available when needed and whose work has been an inspiration, and all others with whom I had the pleasure to work and learn in Lisbon, particularly Professor Ana Margarida Abrantes, Professor Marília dos Santos Lopes and Sónia Pereira. I am very grateful to my colleagues and friends from the Lisbon Consortium for the intellectual and emotional support, and especially to Annimari Juvonen and Sophie Pinto for their help when I was travelling between Portugal and Germany. During the initial years of my PhD, I had the privilege of being a member of the European PhDnet in Literary and Cultural Studies. I would like to acknowledge my personal and intellectual debts to all members and to thank them for their insights, effort and time to discuss my work throughout these years. This includes the academic director at Justus Liebig University Giessen Professor Ansgar Nünning, Professor Isabel Capeloa Gil and Professor Peter Hanenberg from Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Professor Angela Locatelli from University of Bergamo, Professor Heta Pyrhönen from University of Helsinki, Professor Susanne Knaller and Dr. Alexandra Strohmaier from University of Graz, Professor Elisabeth Wåghäll Nivre from University of Stockholm, and all others who joined the symposia at some occasion. My appreciation extends to the coordinator Dr. Nora Berning and my wonderful colleagues from the third cycle. I would also like to express my gratitude for the possibility of conducting part of my research at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) and for the opportunity to participate in the activities of this excellent graduate school. I would not have been able to write this book without the support at my home institution as well as a number of foundations. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to the EDP Foundation and to the ASBAL Association in Lisbon for

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110733440-202

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their generous support of my research project. Moreover, I would like to thank Daniel Blaufuks and Tinta da China for the permission to reproduce images of Sob Céus Estranhos in this book and the staff at Cinemateca Portuguesa for their help in answering my questions regarding the permission to reproduce stills from Fantasia Lusitana. Beyond this, it is almost impossible to acknowledge the crucial role of my family and friends throughout my PhD. I am indefinitely grateful for their support, love and patience, and particularly to Marco, without whom all this would literally not have been possible.

Contents Acknowledgments

VII

1

Introduction 1 1.1 Portugal and the memory of the refugee presence during the 1930s and World War II 3 1.2 A translational perspective on the memory of World War II refugees in Portugal 17 1.3 Aims, methods and structure 21

2

A translational perspective on the memory of the refugee presence in Portugal between 1933 and 1945 27 2.1 Theoretical challenges of memory studies faced with migratory phenomena: rethinking mnemonic communities and the mediality of memory 27 2.2 Heterocultural networks of signification: from transfer, remediation and transcultural memory to a translational perspective on memory and migration 40 2.3 A translational perspective on ethical and political dimensions of memory: heterocultural ‘archives of implication’ and the remembrance of the refugee presence 55

3

An affiliative (post)memory of the ‘condition of exile’: postmnemonic archival critique and the ethics of memory in Daniel Blaufuks’s Sob Céus Estranhos 62 3.1 The materiality of (post)memory: regarding the traces of a familial past 63 3.2 (Post)mnemonic archival critique: transcending essentialistic appropriations of the memory of the refugees 74 3.3 Remembering the ‘condition of exile’: a translational perspective on the ethics of (post)memory and the heterocultural position of being exiled 91

4

Lisbon as centre for transit and espionage: nostalgia, rich exiles and the figure of the female refugee in Domingos Amaral’s Enquanto Salazar Dormia 107 4.1 Memories of a spy: entertaining authenticity in a popular format 108

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4.2

4.3

Recycling the dominant imaginary of Portugal during World War II: heterocultural references in a nostalgic narrative about a glorious national past 117 Blending espionage and transit: a translational perspective on the imaginary of rich exiles and the figure of the refugiada 132

5

Thresholds of national memory: the Estado Novo and the ‘refugee other’ in João Canijo’s Fantasia Lusitana 144 5.1 Claiming cinematographic literacy: Fantasia Lusitana’s use of found footage 145 5.2 Reappropriating the nationalistic fantasy of the Estado Novo: remediation as archival intervention and critique of the politics of representation 159 5.3 Necessary absences of the ‘Lusitanian fantasy’: a translational perspective on the thresholds of national memory 175

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Conclusion: heterocultural archives of implication of the refugee presence in Portugal between 1933 and 1945 191

Works cited

207

List of Illustrations

221

Index of Names

223

Index of Terms

227

1 Introduction Yes, where could she go this young Dutch woman, – where could the Czech opposite her go, – anyone in this room, – anyone here in this metropolis of the persecuted? Erika Mann “Waiting for the Lifeboat” (n.d.)1

Erika Mann’s short report “Waiting for the Lifeboat” (n.d.) is one of the most compelling accounts of the refugee situation in Portugal and particularly Lisbon during World War II. Travelling through Portugal on her way back to the United States from London where she had worked for BBC’s German broadcast, she was in quite a privileged situation when compared to the mass of refugees that had been stranded in the small country. However, “Waiting for the Lifeboat” speaks nonetheless of an atmosphere of “helpless fear” (n.d., 2) that characterised Europe’s “only free and neutral port” that had suddenly become “the meeting and waiting place for all those, who [were] fleeing from Hitler” (n.d., 1). In fact, due to its geographical location and its ‘neutrality’ during the war, Portugal was an important place of (temporary) refuge for thousands fleeing Nazi persecution, occupation and war in Europe. While after the outbreak of war the number of those seeking refuge increased as emigrants from Germany and Austria were joined in their plight by refugees from the countries invaded by Nazi Germany, escaping became ever more challenging. With the advance of war, access to European embarkation ports with ships to the Americas got increasingly difficult, and even the eastern gateway via land over Siberia to Shanghai ceased to be a viable option after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. In the period between the summer of 1939 and November 1942, the Iberian Peninsula therefore gained more and more significance as the exit route from Europe. Particularly after the fall of France in June 1940 and the implementation of severe restrictions to emigration and transit through Spain by the Franco regime, ‘neutral’ Portugal proved to be the last hope for those Central Europeans that had initially fled to French territory (Spitzer 1998, 66), as well as citizens of occupied countries and other foreigners whose French places of residence had suddenly become enemy territory. While, for a long time, Portugal’s role as country of asylum during the war was a rather neglected topic in international as well as Portuguese academic and non-academic discourses, interest in its position regarding the war and

1 Most sources date the manuscript to late 1940 or 1941 (cf. Vilas-Boas 2018, 145). The manuscript is available at the digital literary archive Monacensia (http://www.monacensia-digital. de/content/titleinfo/33165). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110733440-001

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particularly the refugees has increased significantly since the late 1980s. In view of the vast amount of studies, in 2014 Ansgar Schaefer even goes so far as to claim that “the chapter of the presence of thousands of war refugees in Portugal can be considered profoundly studied and documented, despite the existence of certain aspects that will never be known satisfactorily” (2014, 12 [translation mine]).2 Although I do not share Schaefer’s conclusion regarding the need for further academic inquiry, his observation still illustrates the dimension of a memory boom, which may cause a certain discomfort. While the historian refers exclusively to the abundance of existing historical research, the popularity of the topic is not limited to this domain. Indeed, particularly since the mid-2000s the war-period in Portugal has experienced a surge of interest manifested in numerous exhibitions, journalistic articles, reports, documentaries and fictional works. In Lisbon, even special guided tours for tourists are now offered focusing on life in the Portuguese capital during World War II. Rather than making a contribution to the historical account of the exodus from Europe or the World War II period in Portugal, the present study is concerned with the situation in present-day Portugal and particularly the negotiation of the refugee presence between 1933 and 1945 in the arts. How do contemporary artistic media remember the presence of World War II refugees in Portugal? In which contexts and for what ends? How do these mediatised memories relate to different mnemonic communities and different archives? As these questions illustrate, this study situates itself within memory studies and the analysis of the imaginary of Portugal as country of transit and exile in different present-day artistic media. However, the main aim is not to provide an as complete as possible overview of existing representations and practices of recalling (temporary) asylum in art, literature and cinema. Instead, the present study links the analysis of practices of representing and remembering the refugee presence in Portugal to a theoretical reflection about memory. The study is therefore characterised by a particular perspective on memory and conceives of the different contemporary negotiations of the refugee presence in Portugal as a resource in the context of the theorisation of memory itself.

2 In Portuguese this reads: “o capítulo da presença dos milhares de refugiados de guerra em Portugal pode ser considerado como estando profundamente estudado e documentado, havendo, todavia, aspectos que nunca serão conhecidos de forma satisfatória”.

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1.1 Portugal and the memory of the refugee presence during the 1930s and World War II The refugee presence in Portugal refers to the period between Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 and the end of World War II in 1945. However, the majority of fugitives arrived in the months following the Franco-German armistice in the summer of 1940 when Portugal indeed became the central gateway for all emigration from Europe (cf. Schaefer 2014). Until today, the exact number of refugees that found temporary or permanent asylum in Portugal continues to be an object of debate. Patrick von zur Mühlen speaks of more than 80,000 refugees and estimates that over 90% were Jewish, with German Jews making up the majority (1992, 150–154). Reviewing archival material from different institutions and existing historiographical studies, Pimentel and Ninhos set the number of “’verdadeiros’ refugiados” [true refugees] at between 60,000 and 80,000 and defend that most of them arrived via land from Spain (2013, 866–868). However, one encounters heterogeneous estimates ranging from 13,000 to 200,000 in different sources (zur Mühlen 1992, 150–154; Milgram 2010, 148–152). In fact, several scholars have highlighted the complexity of determining exactly how many fleeing from Nazi persecution and war entered Portugal. As Pimentel and Ninhos (2013, 866) but also Schaefer (2014, 16) emphasise, this is in part a consequence of the difficulty in defining who is designated with the term ‘refugee’ and how to distinguish this group of people from other foreigners present in the country. Ansgar Schaefer stresses that in the 1930s and 1940s the designations ‘refugiado’ [refugee], ‘emigrado’ [emigrated] and ‘emigrante’ [emigrant] co-existed in official Portuguese documents as well as the national press (2014, 16), and that official statistics about foreigners present in Portugal did usually register the nationality but not the legal status or political affiliation (2014, 83). Moreover, articles reporting on those fleeing the war in Europe seem to have used the term ‘refugiado’ [refugee] as well as ‘estrangeiro’ [foreigner] and ‘fugitivo’ [fugitive] to refer to all those arriving at the country in consequence of the war without distinguishing between Jews from German and occupied territory, or British and American citizens coming from France.3 Indeed, a certain terminological imprecision has persisted to this day. While the designation ‘refugiado’ [refugee] has clearly prevailed over the alternative 3 This terminological variation is evident in Ansgar Schaefer’s (2014, 192–210) analysis of articles published in Portuguese newspapers dealing with the refugee situation in 1940. The examples mentioned by the historian illustrate not only that the articles included Americans and British nationals in the category of refugee, but also that they used the terms ‘foreigner’ and ‘fugitive’, too.

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labels, a specification of who exactly is meant with this term is either missing or simply varies between different authors. Pimentel and Ninhos (2013, 868), for instance, present their estimation of the number of “‘verdadeiros’ refugiados” without explaining how they define this category. Ansgar Schaefer, on the other hand, clarifies that his study deals exclusively with “the group of people that, under the violent pressure of the Nazi regime, chose to leave Germany and the territories annexed in 1938” (2014, 16 [translation mine]).4 And whereas Avraham Milgram’s (1999, 2010) research is concerned with Jewish fugitives, Ronald Weber’s category of refugee also includes “British citizens resisting repatriation” due to the peaceful and sunny charm of “Lisbon and its seaside communities” (2011, 127). In other words, although most readers today probably think only of victims of Nazi persecution, in the case of asylum and particularly transit through Portugal between 1933 and 1945 the term refugee actually refers to a heterogeneous group with not only different nationalities, but also quite distinct legal statuses and conditions of temporary or permanent residence. Furthermore, transit through Portugal does not refer only to those affected by the political and racial ideology of the Nazis or the advance of German troops in Europe. Historians agree that, as Ronald Weber writes, “Lisbon in World War II was a way into Europe as well as a way out [. . .]. As an open city, Lisbon allowed figures from both sides – correspondents, diplomats, military brass, secret agents, smugglers, exchanged internees, ordinary citizens – to come and go, as it did newspapers, magazines, films, mail and cables” (2011, 2). Portugal’s role as a gateway for refugees is therefore entangled in the history of its politics of neutrality and Estado Novo’s relationship to both belligerents, particularly Germany and Great Britain. As Mário Matos and Orlando Grossegesse point out, “at the peak of the European fascism(s) the young Estado Novo maintained intense relationships with the Western democracies as well as the countries whose governments had a Nazi-Fascist inclination” (2011, 7 [translation mine]).5 Bound to the British by deep economic entanglements and the centuryold Anglo-Portuguese alliance, Salazar’s Estado Novo was an authoritarian dictatorship with resemblances and affinities to the Italian and German regimes. While it was significantly distinguishable from Nazism for the importance attributed to corporatism by the constitution of 1933 as well as the essential role of Catholicism and the absence of Anti-Semitism in Salazarist ideology, the first

4 In Portuguese this reads: “o grupo de pessoas que, sob a pressão violenta do regime nazi, optou por sair da Alemanha e dos territórios anexados em 1938”. 5 In Portuguese this reads: “No auge do(s) fascismo(s) europeu(s) o jovem Estado Novo manteve intensas relações quer com as democracias ocidentais quer com os países com governos de cunho nazi-fascista”.

1.1 Portugal and the memory of the refugee presence

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decades of the regime in the 1930s and 1940s were nonetheless characterised by a process in which the dictator “built institutions and embraced social policies that were ‘fascistic’, if not strictly fascist” (Sapega 2008, 2).6 It is important to note that the debate about the characterisation of the regime as well as its politics during World War II continues. Authors differ not only as to how they classify the Portuguese dictatorship, particularly when compared to other fascist and totalitarian movements that emerged in Europe in the interwar period, but also with respect to certain emphases regarding the Portuguese attitude towards the belligerents and the refugees. Bearing this in mind, studies generally agree that the main aim of Estado Novo’s attitude towards the refugees was to prevent Portugal from becoming a country of permanent residence (cf. zur Mühlen 1992; Pimentel 2006; Milgram 2010; Schaefer 2014). Moreover, historiographical consensus exists regarding increasing efforts from the early 1930s onwards of the Estado Novo and particularly the secret police Polícia de Vigilância e Defesa do Estado (PVDE) [Police of Vigilance and State Defense] to limit the entry of “pessoas indesejadas” [undesired persons] (Chalante 2011). As Avraham Milgram emphasises, [f]rom 1935, the PVDE, dependent on the Ministry of the Interior, insisted that a clear and rigid policy should dictate the granting of visas, especially where Poles, Russians, Jews, and individuals without a recognized nationality were concerned. Later, this tendency would increase, due to the influence of pro-Germanic and antisemitic figures such as Captain Paulo Cumano of the Fiscalization Service and Borders of the International Section of the PVDE. (1999, 8)

Generally speaking, historians distinguish four different periods or stages of immigration and transit in Portugal (cf. Schaefer 2014; Pimentel 2006). Despite the existence of restrictive measures, until 1938 entry and settlement in Portugal were still relatively unbureaucratic. While the country did not attract many Jewish immigrants in the 1930s due to its political and economic structures, the few that arrived at the time were still able to obtain resident permits and even to

6 While I am aware of the heated discussions about the aptness of the characterisation of the Portuguese Estado Novo as a ‘fascist’ regime, I share Ellen Sapega’s understanding of the historical consensus regarding the first two decades of Salazarist rule in Portugal. As Sapega emphasises: “[t]he creation of a single party the União Nacional [National Union], civilian paramilitary forces and youth groups (the Legião Portuguesa [Portuguese Legion] and the Mocidade Portuguesa [Portuguese Youth]), and the establishment of a political police force (the PVDE, later known as the PIDE/DGS) all point to the existence of political and ideological affinities between Salazarism and fascism. In their emphasis on patriotism and nationalism, Estado Novo cultural practices also closely resembled the practices of other fascist or authoritarian regimes that appeared throughout Europe during the interwar period” (2008, 2).

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work under the condition that they established their own businesses.7 However, after the annexation of Austria in March 1938, Portuguese authorities introduced severe restrictions with the declared aim of hindering Jewish refugees from settling or staying indefinitely in the country (Schaefer 2014, 133; Milgram 1999). From October 1938 onwards, German and Austrian Jews needed a tourist visa valid for merely 30 days to enter Portugal (circular nº 10) (Pimentel 2006, 75) and foreigners were no longer allowed to practise liberal professions (Schaefer 2014, 133). A group of Austrian Jews were even forced to leave the country although they had valid immigration documents; and reports exist that the PVDE hindered passengers transiting through Portugal by ship from disembarking in Lisbon (Schaefer 2014, 130; Milgram 1999; zur Mühlen 2015). According to Irene Pimentel (Pimentel and Ninhos 2013, 275–281), in 1937 and 1938 the attitude of the Portuguese state towards foreigners became generally more repressive leading to a rise in imprisonments and expulsions. The situation is described as having further worsened when the Portuguese authorities were confronted with the sudden increase in refugees fleeing from France towards the Portuguese border in the summer of 1940. While foreigners wishing to return to their home countries were allowed to transit through Portugal, for Jewish refugees it was very difficult to enter the country legally (Schaefer 2014, 17). In order to obtain a transit visa for Portugal, applicants needed to possess a valid entry visa for the country of final destination, the exit permit for France, and a ship or plane ticket for the journey to their final destination (Milgram 1999). According to Milgram (1999) and Schaefer (2014, 17), the majority of Jewish refugees who crossed the Pyrenees at this time were only able to do so thanks to the intervention of the Portuguese consul of Bordeaux, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, who ignored Salazar’s instructions to refuse transit visas without prior consent of the PVDE. After Mendes’s demission on 22 July 1940, Portugal only issued visas to English, American, Belgian and non-Jewish French citizens (Schaefer 2014, 186–187). Finally, with the beginning of deportations to the extermination camps in October 1941 and the associated prohibition of Jewish emigration from German-controlled territory, the entrance of refugees into Portugal

7 The entrance of immigrants from German territory was particularly facilitated by an agreement dating from 1926 between Portugal and Germany that granted mutual exemption from visas to the citizens of their countries (Pimentel 2006, 75). While valid until the outbreak of World War II, in 1938 circular nº 10 established that German Jews were excluded from this visa waiver agreement and from thereon required a visa to enter Portugal (Schaefer 2014, 133). As Migram (1999; 2010, 84) points out, on 11 November 1939 the Ministry of the Interior further limited the entry of “unwanted” and Jewish refugees by issuing circular nº 14, which forbade fourth-class consuls to grant visas without prior consent by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

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decreased significantly (Schaefer 2014, 21). Legal passage from France to Portugal then ceased to exist when, in November 1942, Southern France was occupied by German troops controlling the Pyrenean region and Spain closed its border to France in March 1943. Although the influx of refugees did not cease entirely, it decreased dramatically. Due to the efforts of the Estado Novo to prevent settlement and facilitate a quick departure from Portugal, in 1944 only a small number of 500 to 1000 people is reported to have remained in the country (zur Mühlen 1992, 163; Pimentel and Ninhos 2013, 868). With the end of the war most of these remaining foreigners departed from Portugal, leaving only a small community of former refugees in the country, of whom almost all had arrived in the 1930s before the outbreak of war (Pimentel 2006, 365). Portugal has often been described as “one of the lesser-chronicled asylum/ transit stations in Europe” (Spitzer 2008, 165). In the Portuguese context, Irene Pimentel, for instance, claims that because the Estado Novo regime suppressed the discussion and study of the topic and, after the revolution in 1974, historians and public had more pressing issues of the recent national past to address, “the memory of the refugee presence [. . .] during the 1930s and World War II remained hidden until the end of the 1980s” (Pimentel 2006, 18 [translation mine]).8 Christa Heinrich makes a similar remark with regard to exile from Nazi Germany, stressing in 2002 that Portugal remains “a relatively unknown chapter of the Exilgeschichte [history of exile]” (2002, 4 [translation mine]),9 mostly associated with the short transit of some famous intellectuals such as Alfred Döblin, Hans Sahl or Lion Feuchtwanger. However, not only is the long absence of academic research frequently mentioned, but also a certain archival scarcity.10 In contrast to what happened in other countries of refuge, the immigrants and transients did not develop structures typical of exile communities such as journals, cultural associations, or clubs (zur Mühlen 1992, 165; Heinrich 2002, 21; Pimentel 2006, 365) and “only a few traces of the Portuguese exile station are to be found in autobiographical writings” (Heinrich 2002, 4 [translation mine]).11 The absence of material traces of the refugee presence is moreover often linked 8 In Portuguese this reads: “a memória da presença dos refugiados, durante os anos 30 e a II Guerra Mundial, permaneceu escondida até ao final dos anos 80 do século XX”. 9 In German this reads: “ein bis heute noch wenig bekanntes Kapitel der Exilgeschichte”. 10 In this context it should also be noted that, as Marion Kaplan observes, “[s]tudies on refugees emerged belatedly in Holocaust scholarship. In part, scholars had to wait until the sources came to light. Whereas concentration camp survivors began to share their accounts of the Holocaust in the early postwar era, refugees who travelled through Portugal [. . .] rarely recorded their journeys immediately upon their arrival in safe lands” (2020, 4). 11 In German this reads: “sich nur wenige Spuren der portugiesischen Exilstation in autobiographischen Schriften wiederfinden”.

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to the short duration of residence in Portugal. Several authors emphasise that, since the vast majority of foreigners arrived between June 1940 and summer 1941 and stayed only for a few days or weeks, contact between foreigners and the Portuguese society remained superficial (cf. zur Mühlen 1992; Teixeira 2001, Heinrich 2002; Pimentel 2006). Ronald Weber even suggests that “[t]here was a sense in which the Lisbon of the Portuguese scarcely existed for the transients and vice versa” (2011, x). Furthermore, the idea of an “essentially separate city” (Weber 2011, x) is also supported by the official attitude of the Portuguese authorities which is generally described as a vehement insistence on the non-existence of either a ‘refugee problem’ or a ‘Jewish question’ in the country. As Ansgar Schaefer argues, “the idea that in Portugal refugees did not exist gained the status of a leitmotiv” (2014, 41 [translation mine]).12 As a consequence, even in 1940 the massive arrival of people seeking refuge was not described as a ‘refugee crisis’ either in official discourses or the censored media, but instead as a rather “typical incident in times of war, an ephemeral phenomenon that would by no means affect the existing peace in the country” (Schaefer 2014, 196 [translation mine]).13, 14 This illustrates not only how “the identification of a crisis [. . .] depends greatly on the perspective of the observer” (Nünning 2012, 71), but also the effort of the regime to avoid any notion of an exceptional disruption of the existing order or a “critical moment of decision” that “the description of a scenario as a crisis implies” (Nünning 2012, 67). This does not mean, though, that the refugee presence in Portugal was completely omitted in the press, literature and cinema. In fact, the massive arrival of foreigners and the refugee situation in France was the object of several articles in Portuguese newspapers (cf. Schaefer 2014) and even the official Portuguese newsreel Jornal Português15 [Portuguese Journal] mentioned Lisbon’s role as “porta da Europa” [gate of Europe] (nº25, 27.03.1941). However, with some

12 In Portuguese this reads: “a ideia de que em Portugal não existiam refugiados viria a adquirir o estatuto de um leitmotiv”. 13 In Portuguese this reads: “um acontecimento típico de tempos de guerra, fenómeno efémero que em nada alteraria o sossego reinante no país”. 14 For the role of censorship in the articles reporting on the refugee situation in 1940 cf. Schaefer (2014). For a discussion of censorship and foreign propaganda of the belligerents in Portugal cf. Telo (1990). 15 From 1938 onwards, the Estado Novo regime (1933–1974) invested in the production of official newsreels. António Ferro, who presided over the Secretariat of National Propaganda SPN/ SNI (Secretariado da Propaganda Nacional/ Secretariado Nacional de Informação) from its foundation in 1933 until 1949, initiated the production of the first series, entitled Jornal Portugês. While the production of Jornal Portugês ended in 1951, in 1953 a new series entitled Imagens de Portugal was introduced.

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exceptions, the emphasis was clearly set on illustrious foreigners ’visiting’ Portugal with most articles resembling “lists of personalities who allegedly aspired to arrive at Lusitanian lands by travelling in the luxurious Sud-Express or their own automobile” (Schaefer 2014, 195 [translation mine]).16 While historians concur that “[t]he majority of the arriving refugees was destitute” (Heinrich 2002, 22 [translation mine]),17 the cultural and economic elite assumes a disproportionally dominant role in representations of the refugee presence. The official newsreels limited themselves to ‘inform’ about celebrities travelling through the country and in addition to the lists of remarkable fugitives published in journals, articles registered the presence of royals such as the Duke of Windsor18 or actors such as Robert Montgomery19 and announced the arrival of ships destined to accommodate Americans returning to their home country.20, 21 As Irene Pimentel stresses, the rich minority came to represent the “paradigmatic image” of the refugees at the time and then “was transmitted and persisted among the Portuguese” (Pimentel and Ninhos 2013, 469 [translation mine]).22 Interestingly, despite the attested absence of any political activity of the refugees and a rather superficial contact with the local population, their impact on Portuguese society is nonetheless usually described as profound. António José Telo (1998, 18) stresses that the massive arrival of fugitives in 1940 deeply influenced the conservative and traditionalist habits and mentality of the Portuguese population, which, in its vast majority, had scarcely ever had any contact with someone from outside of Portugal before. Particularly the female refugees are described as having provoked a “terramoto” [earthquake] (Telo 1998, 19) not only in Lisbon, but also in the smaller seaside and thermal towns such as Caldas da

16 In Portuguese this reads: “listas de personalidades que, alegadamente, logravam chegar às terras lusitanas viajando no luxuoso Sud-Express ou no seu próprio automóvel”. 17 In German this reads: “[d]er überwiegende Teil der ankommenden Flüchtlinge war mittellos”. 18 For exemple in the newspaper Diário de Notícias on 4 July 1940. 19 For example in the newspaper O Século on 17 July 1940. 20 For exemple in the newspaper Diário de Notícias on 4 July 1940. 21 One important exception is the report entitled “Gente sem lar” [people without home] published by the magazine Mundo Gráfico (nº 8, 30 January 1941), one of the main organs of British propaganda in Portugal (cf. Telo 1990), which included photographs by Roger Kahan of unidentified Jewish refugees at the Lisbon harbour and a soup kitchen. Although the article actually shows these ‘ordinary’ refugees and emphasises their suffering, it nonetheless also foregrounds Lisbon’s role as a hospitable transit station and includes an enumeration of curiously misspelled famous transients (Thomas and Heinrich Mahn instead of Mann, Léon Techtwanger instead of Lion Feuchtwanger, and Rostchild instead of Rotschild). 22 In Portuguese this reads: “imagem paradigmática” [. . .] “que foi transmitida e perdurou ao longo dos anos entre os portugueses”.

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Rainha, Ericeira, Curia or Figueira da Foz, where the Portuguese regime had created zonas de residencia fixa [areas of fixed residence]23 (cf. Caré Júnior 1998; Soure and Ximenes 1998; Alves and Faria 2010). While Portuguese women were confined to a private, familial sphere, the female Central Europeans displayed an unfamiliar independence and freedom. Moving through the streets without any male companion, they are reported to have frequented coffee houses, smoked and read in public and caused general excitement by using shorter dresses, modern haircuts and twopiece bathing suits (cf. Pimentel 2006; Ramalho 2012). However, despite the scandal caused by the refugees, their way of dressing and behaving in public came to represent a sort of symbol for modernity and was thus rapidly imitated by the local population (Telo 1998). In essence, it was therefore not the presence of the foreigners that passed unnoticed, but rather, as Matthias Albert Koch (2014, 450) claims, their misery – particularly financial – that remained widely hidden from the Portuguese. Instead of helpless and in need of support by the Estado Novo, the refugees were dominantly depicted as glamorous and wealthy personalities enjoying their temporary stay in sunny and hospitable Portugal. Quoting Alexandre Babo’s memoir Recordações de um Caminheiro [Memories of a wanderer] (1993), Irene Pimentel (2006, 253) describes the misleading appearance of the refugee presence that has shaped the dominant idea about the refugees as a privileged group among the Portuguese until today. Forced to sit out their time until they were able to obtain a visa and passage to continue their escape to any country of permanent asylum, the refugees passed their seemingly idle days walking around Lisbon or sitting in the coffee houses of the Portuguese capital, conveying an impression of an agreeable 23 Following Milgram (2010, 140–143), the Salazar regime wanted to keep the refugees away from the large urban centres because it feared that the presence of these foreigners could disturb the propagandistic image of social harmony of a corporatist society. When in June 1940 the number of those seeking refuge augmented significantly, the authorities decided to divide them into groups that would be installed in different smaller communities with touristic installations such as hotels or small guesthouses to house the foreigners. Irene Pimentel (Pimentel and Ninhos 2013, 470–477) states that the groups were divided according to nationalities and that they could move freely within these localities. Moreover, Milgram (2010, 145) reports that financial support was provided by relief agencies and from 1941 onwards, refugees still residing in Portuguese cities that had entered with transit visas but were not yet able to leave were also sent to an area of fixed residence in Caldas da Rainha. And, in early 1943, refugees that had entered Portugal illegally – some of them had been interned in Portuguese prisons until then – were installed at Ericeira (Milgram 2010, 145). Pimentel (Pimentel and Ninhos 2013, 485) emphasises that from 1942 onwards, the character of the areas of fixed residence created in Ericeira and Caldas da Rainha changed, as a result of an agreement between the Portuguese state and the High Commissioner for Refugees conceived to abolish the practice of imprisonment of illegal refugees in Portugal.

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touristic journey rather than a desperate attempt to save their lives (Pimentel 2006, 253). Particularly the area of Estoril with its beaches and the casino came to be described as a paradisiac oasis for affluent foreigners passing their time at the casino, the beaches and elegant hotels (cf., for instance, Pacheco 2004). Transit and temporary exile in Portugal thus came to be associated with an air of prosperity and elegance while apparently sophisticated and urbane Central Europeans mingled with famous celebrities and the diplomatic corps as well as secret agents of both belligerents and enjoyed the abundance of light and supplies that was lacking in the other countries of war-driven Europe. While censorship was also present in artistic productions – Maria João Martins (1994, 33), for instance, mentions that the title of a play at the Teatro Variedades in Lisbon had to be changed from “refugiados” [refugees] to “gente de fora” [foreign people] – the refugee presence was not entirely suppressed. In 1944, Francisco Costa, for example, includes a brief reference to the refugee presence in the novel Primareva Cinzenta [Grey spring] (1944). The French journalist Suzanne Chantal even makes the fugitives stranded in Lisbon the main topic of her book Deus Não Dorme [God does not sleep] (1944), which had first appeared as a serial with the title “Naufragos” [Castaways] in the Portuguese newspaper Diário de Notícias between April and July 1942. And the distinguished neorealist author Alves Redol deals with escape from Nazi persecution not only in his widely quoted novel O Cavalo Espantado [The startled horse] (1967 [1960]), but also in the short story Nasci com Passaporte de Turista [I was born with a tourist passport] (1940) published in a collection with the same title in 1940. Finally, there is the well-known novel Sob Céus Estranhos [Under strange skies] (2000 [1962]) by Ilse Losa who herself fled from Nazi Germany to Portugal in the 1930s – certainly the most paradigmatic fictional account of exile in Portugal.24 While the despair of the refugees is an important theme in Chantal’s, Redol’s and Losa’s novels, excerpts of these works are nevertheless usually quoted to document the dominant image of the refugees as a rather privileged elite whose behaviour and appearance caused estrangement, rebuke, but also a manifest fascination within the Portuguese population (cf. Teixeira 2001; Heinrich 2002; Pimentel 2006, Koch 2014). Whereas Deus Não Dorme, O Cavalo Espantado and Sob Céus Estranhos are recurrent references in present accounts of the World War II period in Portugal, the film Porto de Abrigo [Safe haven] (Coelho 1940), the novels Refugiada [Refugee]

24 There are also some subtle references to exile in Portugal in a number of her lesser-known short stories published in Histórias Quase Esquecidas . . . [Almost forgotten stories . . . ] (1950) and Aqui Havia uma Casa [Here stood a house] (1955).

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(Magno Júnior 1942), O Romance duma Refugiada Polaca [The novel of a Polish refugee] (Gama 1945) and A Minha Missão É Matar [My mission is to kill] (Haskins 1959), for instance, are usually not mentioned in this context. Nevertheless, they are examples of early appearances of the topic of refugees in Portuguese fiction during the dictatorship in rather popular formats. Manuel Magno Júnior’s and Fernão Dantes da Gama’s texts focus exclusively on romantic love and mischief between Portuguese men and foreign female refugees, while Porto de Abrigo and A Minha Missão É Matar revolve around espionage in Portugal. At the time described as a film seeking to adopt an “estilo internacional” [international style] (“Porto de Abrigo” 1940, n.p.),25 Porto de Abrigo revolves around Sónia Markoff, a former member of a foreign international group of spies seeking refuge on the coast of peaceful Portugal in order to hide the plans for a deadly weapon. In A Minha Missão É Matar a British spy as the protagonist travels to Portugal in disguise to uncover a ring of Nazi agents among a group of wealthy refugees in Lisbon and Estoril. While Porto de Abrigo avoids realistic references to the belligerents and fuses the notion of refugee and female spy seeking “this calm, this serenity, this light without shadows” (Coelho 1941, 197 [translation mine])26 in Portugal, in A Minha Missão É Matar, the refugees are recognisable as war refugees from different European countries caught up between German, British and American intelligence services. What is remarkable, however, is that both share a plot in which intrigue and crime take place among the foreigners while the Portuguese characters are either contained within romantic comedy (Porto de Abrigo) or merely appear in the form of an observant, cunning inspector (A Minha Missão É Matar). When interest in the topic of Lisbon during World War II intensified in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, this was also associated with a rediscovery and re-evaluation of the different archival sources. In addition to Portuguese journals, magazines and the above-mentioned fictional texts, scholars also turned to the image of Portugal portrayed by transiting authors, mostly within the context of the German Exilliteratur, and international, especially American and British, news coverage as well as cinema produced in Hollywood. Christina Heine Teixeira (2001) identifies 63 German-speaking writers that transited through Lisbon between 1940 and 1941 and describes an image of gratitude towards Portugal conveyed by those considerably fewer authors that address their Portuguese transit station in their autobiographical writings. Irene Pimentel (2006, 147) emphasises, however, that despite this considerable number of transients,

25 In Portuguese this reads: “estilo internacional”. 26 In Portuguese this reads: “desta calma, desta serenidade, desta luz sem sombras”.

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references to their experiences in Portugal do not abound and often merely mount up to a couple of pages or even paragraphs.27 Of the passage of some famous intellectuals such as Hannah Arendt there even seems to exist scarcely any material trace at all (Teixeira 2006). Among the most quoted authors that passed (not all in the condition of refugee) through Lisbon are Alfred Döblin, Heinrich and Erika Mann, Hans Sahl and the French Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (cf. Teixeira 2001; Pimentel 2006; Castro 2014). Moreover, frequent references are made to Arthur Koestler’s first novel written in English Arrival and Departure (1999 [1943]) and Erich Maria Remarque’s Die Nacht von Lissabon [The night in Lisbon] (1999 [1962]). While the latter was translated into Portuguese already in 1964, Alfred Döblin’s Schicksalsreise remained unavailable in Portuguese until the 1990s and most of the other texts, including Arthur Koestler’s novel, continue to circulate in Portugal mainly through the various remediations of quotes and excerpts. In the American context, Ronald Weber describes the news coverage “of Lisbon in 1940 and 1941” as “[s]o abundant [. . .] that it inevitably carried over from newspaper stories and magazine articles into film and fiction” (2011, 24). Indeed, quotes from respected newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times and Life Magazine are to be found quite frequently (cf., for example, Pimentel 2006; Weber 2011; Lochery 2011). Interestingly, while Weber states that most articles at the time drew attention to the majority of destitute fugitives, his work exemplifies a general tendency to draw on these articles to reconstruct the exciting life of those foreigners who had enough money to enjoy the pleasures Lisbon and particularly Estoril could still offer at a time when most other European capitals were wrought by devastation: beaches, the casino, fine restaurants, luxury hotels and English gin (Weber 2011, 18–19). A similar tendency of “dwelling on the luxurious and hedonistic environment of privileged exiles” is also described

27 Maria da Assunção Pinto Correia (1994) claims that Alfred Döblin’s Schicksalsreise (2014 [1949]) [Destiny’s journey] contains the most elaborate description of Lisbon produced within German Exilliteratur. As a matter of fact, Döblin wrote a whole chapter about his stay in which he describes his impressions of Lisbon. The passages in the memoirs of Hans Sahl (2008 [1990]), Heinrich Mann (2007 [1946]), Karl O. Paetel (1982) or Lisa Fittko (2004 [1985]), for example, are considerably shorter, whereas Friedrich Torberg and Fitz Teppich include entire chapters with quite detailed accounts of the conditions of their Portuguese exile. A German translation of Erika Mann’s (n.d.) report “Waiting for the Lifeboat” was first edited in 1991 in a collection of texts written by female German-speaking exile writers and since then has been quoted often under the German title “In Lissabon gestrandet” (Mann, 1995). References are also to be found to a number of articles published in the Jewish journal Aufbau in the 1940s, among others by Eugen Tillinger or Hertha Pauli (cf. Pimentel 2006; Castro 2014; Jürgens 2015).

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for Hollywood productions that mention Lisbon’s role during World War II (R. Lopes 2017, 27).28 Rui Lopes (2017) emphasises that Hollywood fostered a sanitised image of Portugal,29 foregrounding the flourishing night life and abundance in supplies while avoiding the association of the Estado Novo with the regimes of American enemies from the Axis.30 As a matter of fact, it is generally stressed that the Portuguese capital either barely receives screen time or merely figures in brief scenes of transit.31 Even in those motion pictures actually set in the city and its surroundings, the protagonists are mostly foreigners with stories touching Portugal and Portuguese society only on the surface (cf. Matos-Cruz 1989; R. Lopes 2017). In other words, although the dramatic dimension of the ‘refugee crisis’ always figures

28 Hollywood productions in the 1940s referring to Portugal’s role during the war include: Forbidden Passage (1941), International Lady (1941), One Night in Lisbon (1941), Journey for Margaret (1942), The Lady Has Plans (1942), Casablanca (1942), Storm over Lisbon (1944), The Conspirators (1944), The Hairy Ape (1944), Voice in the Wind (1944), The House on 92nd Street (1945) (cf. Matos-Cruz 1989; Mateus 2010; R. Lopes 2017). During the war only Storm over Lisbon, International Lady, Journey for Margaret and Voice in the Wind were exhibited in Portugal; Casablanca and The Hairy Ape aired shortly after the war in 1945 (cf. Pina 1993; R. Lopes 2017). 29 In this context it should be noted that Hollywood films were supervised by American as well as Portuguese authorities in order to make sure that they would neither betray American war interests nor offend Portuguese sensibilities. This occasionally led to changes of scripts, for example in the case of Storm over Lisbon (1944) and The Conspirators (1994), or the exclusion of films from distribution in Portugal not only due to Portuguese censorship, but also because they were judged unfitting by the Office of War Information (OWI), as was the case with The Conspirators (cf. R. Lopes 2017). Moreover, Hollywood had economic interests in not offending Portuguese authorities, as Portugal was one of the few free European countries where Hollywood could still stream its films (R. Lopes 2017). 30 In The Hairy Ape (1944), for instance, poor war refugees are explicitly referred to, but the few initial scenes in Lisbon show American sailors drinking in a Tavern and the beautiful female main character dancing in a fancy ballroom. And in One Night in Lisbon (1941) the Portuguese capital is explicitly described as a city still at peace and a place to laugh and have fun. Not only in these two films are many scenes set in expensive restaurants, hotels or nightclubs with the protagonists dancing in pretty evening dresses or gambling at the casino. Storm over Lisbon (1944), for example, takes place mostly in the fictitious casino-nightclub and palace of Deresco, with a ruthless gangster boss selling secret information to the highest bidder, and focuses on a beautiful dancer and an American journalist trying to protect secret documents from falling into the hands of the Nazis. And in The Conspirators (1944), Paul Henreid portrays an important Dutch resistance fighter stranded in Lisbon, who not only falls in love with a beautiful stranger at a rather elegant restaurant, but is also involved in the dismantling of a double agent in the casino in Estoril. 31 This is the case in Forbidden Passage (1941), International Lady (1941), Journey for Margaret (1942), Casablanca (1942), The Hairy Ape (1944), Voice in the Wind (1944), and The House on 92nd Street (1945).

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in the background,32 neither the official attitude towards the foreigners nor the political situation in Portugal are the focus of any of these films. The historiographical ‘discovery’ of the topic of Portugal’s role during World War II began in the late 1980s and was accompanied by a process of mnemonic popularisation that intensified in the early twenty-first century. The emergence of the first historiographical studies33 coincided with the rehabilitation and recognition of the former consul of Bordeaux, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, who in 1987 was distinguished with the Portuguese honorific Ordem da Liberdade [Order of Liberty] and in 1988 was officially rehabilitated (Milgram 2010, 103).34 The 1990s were mostly characterised by the publication of occasional individual articles, television documentaries35 as well as a number of exhibitions, most notably “Fugindo a Hitler e ao Holocausto. Refugiados em Portugal entre 1933–1945” [Fleeing from Hitler and the Holocaust. Refugees in Portugal between 1933–1945] organised by the Goethe-Institut in Lisbon in 1994, which was followed by exhibitions in former areas of fixed residence such as Caldas da Rainha or Figueira da Foz and the inauguration of the Espaço Memória dos Exílios [Exiles Memorial Centre] in Estoril in 1999. The first academic monograph on the topic appeared in 2000 when Ansgar Schaefer completed his master thesis about German refugees in Portugal between 1933 and 1940 (cf. Schaefer 2014). This situation changed dramatically in the period between the finalisation of his thesis and the publication of the work in book format in 2014. In 2006, Irene Pimentel presented Judeus em Portugal durante a II Guerra Mundial: Em Fuga de Hitler e do Holocausto [Jews in Portugal during World War II: Fleeing from Hitler and the Holocaust]. Generally mentioned as one of the reference works in the area, the study was also widely discussed within the non-academic public. In 2010 a Portuguese translation of Avraham Milgram’s monograph Portugal, Salazar e os Judeus [Portugal, Salazar and the Jews] and in 2012 Patrick von zur Mühlen’s 1992 Fuchtweg SpanienPortugal appeared as Caminhos de Fuga Espanha-Portugal: A Emigração Alemã e o Êxodo para fora da Europa de 1933 a 1945 [Escape routes Spain-Portugal:

32 Forbidden Passage (1941) is an exception in its approach to the ‘refugee crisis’. Part of the MGM series Crime does not Pay, it emphasises the risks of illegal immigration into the US. The story revolves around a refugee in Lisbon who ends up being drowned by the human traffickers that provided for the illegal passage to the US. 33 For an overview about historical research cf. Pimentel 2006; Schaefer 2014. 34 Only in 1996 was Sousa Mendes officially restored to the rank of Ambassador (Milgram 2010, 104). 35 For example on public television channel RTP, Aristides de Sousa Mendes: O Cônsul Injustiçado (Olga 1992).

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German emigration and the exodus out of Europe from 1933 to 1945]. Irene Pimentel furthermore published Salazar, Portugal e o Holocausto [Portugal, Salazar and the Holocaust] co-authored by Claudia Ninhos in 2013; O Comboio do Luxemburgo: Os Judeus que Portugal Não Salvou em 1940 [The train from Luxembourg: the Jews that Portugal did not save in 1940] (2016) together with Margarida de Magalhães Ramalho, and a book focusing on espionage in Portugal during World War II Espiões em Portugal durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial [Spies in Portugal during World War II] (2013). Ronald Weber’s The Lisbon Route: Entry and Escape in Nazi Europe36 (2011) and Neil Lochery’s Lisbon: War in the Shadows of the City of Light, 1939–194537 (2011) were translated in 2012 and in the same year Margarida de Magalhães Ramalho published Lisboa: Uma Cidade em Tempo de Guerra [Lisbon: A city in time of war]. The two latter authors were also responsible for two expositions hosted in Lisbon: Lisboa, Centro da Europa na Segunda Guerra Mundial [Lisbon, bottleneck of Europe in the Second World War] curated by Neil Lochery in 2012 at the Lisbon city hall, and A Última Fronteira – Lisboa em Tempo de Guerra [The Last Frontier: Lisbon during wartime] that inaugurated the new nucleus of the Museum of Lisbon at Terreiro do Paço in 2013. Moreover, in addition to a virtual museum and database about Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a museum about the refugee influx opened its doors in Vilar Formoso on the Portuguese-Spanish border in August 2017. This merely illustrative and not exhaustive picture reveals the growing visibility of the refugee presence within Portugal which also found expression in an increasing interest of newspapers and magazines, as well as the appearance of different artistic negotiations of Portugal’s role during World War II. On the one hand, the success of Robert Wilson’s A Small Death in Lisbon (2000 [1999]), which was translated in 2000, and Domingos Amaral’s Enquanto Salazar Dormia [While Salazar was sleeping] (2013a [2006]) initiated a still lasting flood of novels by international as well as Portuguese authors using Lisbon during the war as a setting for stories combining crime, love and espionage. And, in 2020, public television broadcast RTP launched the historical drama mini-series A Espia [The female spy] with a similar outline. On the other hand, a number of less commodified works appeared ranging from literature, including Vasco Graça Moura’s A Morte de Ninguém [The death of nobody] (1998) and Afonso Cruz’s O Pintor Debaixo do Lava-Loiça [The painter beneath the sink] (2011), to Daniel Blaufuks’s inter-art project Sob Céus Estranhos – Under Strange Skies (2002/2007) and the 36 The Portuguese title reads: Passagem para Lisboa: A Vida Boémia e Clandestina dos Refugiados da Europa Nazi (2012). 37 The Portuguese title reads: Lisboa: A Guerra nas Sombras da Cidade da Luz, 1939–1945 (2012).

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found footage documentaries Fantasia Lusitana [Lusitania illusion/Lusitanian fantasy]38 (2010) by João Canijo and Debaixo do Céu [Under the sky] (2017) by Nicholas Oulman. Interestingly, there is thus a conspicuous presence of historical fiction in different popular formats, on the one hand, and – although lesser in number – experimental archival visual art and documentaries, on the other.

1.2 A translational perspective on the memory of World War II refugees in Portugal In 2011 Astrid Erll described a point of saturation of the “site-bound, nationbound, and in a naïve sense, cultures-bound research” that had dominated memory studies since its institutional consolidation in the 1980s (2011c, 15). Her argument does not merely draw attention to the limitations and blind spots of an exclusively national framework, but addresses deeper conceptual implications with regard to how memory’s link to communities and cultures is traditionally conceived. As she argues, the focus of memory research within the humanities was set on “specific memories of (allegedly stable and clearly demarcated) cultures – the most popular social unit being the nation-state, which was then swiftly seen as isomorphic with national culture and a national cultural memory” (2011c, 6). In other words, memory studies did not only generally assume that acts of memory are often put at the service of cultivating and reinforcing ideas about homogeneous communities with common origins and a shared collective identity, but also that memory is necessarily the product of self-contained national or ethnic groups with clearly circumscribed roots and cultures. This paradigm of stable and mostly national mnemonic communities has received serious criticism in recent years. Rather than inscribed in stable sites, remembrance has come to be theorised as a dynamic process, in which mnemonic artefacts and media are embedded in social networks and circulate beyond the confines of territories, cultures and languages. Several authors have drawn attention to the existence of relevant social categories other than the nation-state, an increasing importance of processes of globalisation or foregrounded the circulation and transfer across and between national, ethnic and linguistic borders (for example Levy and Sznaider 2006; A. Assmann and Conrad 2010a; Erll 2011c; Den Boer et al. 2011; De Cesari and Rigney 2014a; Sindbæk Andersen and

38 While the oficial translation is Lusitania Illusion, I use the more literal translation “Lusitanian fantasy” that maintains the ambiguities and connotations of the Portuguese title.

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Törnquist-Plewa 2017; Bond et al.2017). During the last two decades memory scholars have become interested in the role of “connective memory work” that does not merely reproduce already existing relations and solidarities, but creates “affiliations across lines of difference” (Hirsch 2012b, 21). Memory has been conceptualised as “prosthetic” (Landsberg 2004), “multidirectional” (Rothberg 2009), “travelling” (Erll 2011c), “transnational” (De Cesari and Rigney 2014a; Sundholm 2012) and “transcultural” (Crownshaw 2011a; Erll 2011c, 2011b; Bond and Rapson 2014). Far from denying the importance of the nation-state for the analysis of mnemonic phenomena, these approaches call for a critical reconceptualisation of memory and the dynamic discursive practices it is made of, shifting the focus of analysis to the role of mediation, mnemonic transfer and movement (Erll 2011c; Erll and Rigney 2012a; Rigney 2018) as well as human displacement and migration (Creet and Kitzmann 2011; Rothberg and Yildiz 2011; Hirsch and Miller 2011; Glynn and Kleist 2012). The present study engages in this ongoing debate about the reconceptualisation of remembrance beyond the national framework and particularly in what Ann Rigney describes as one of the key challenges of contemporary memory studies: “to explain how the cultural constituents of memory feed into and are fed by social mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion” (2018, 245). This is in part a result of the object of analysis, as the memory of the refugee presence in Portugal before and during World War II transcends national, cultural and linguistic borders for several reasons. First, and most obviously, because it involves the Portuguese and their encounter with people in displacement, i.e. individuals and groups coming from different places, speaking different languages and identifying with different cultures. Second, because the archives of transit and asylum in Portugal actually cross the boundaries of Portugal, involving foreign authors, mostly yet not exclusively German Exilliteratur, Hollywood cinema and photographs stored in archives documenting the Holocaust in the United States, among others. And third, because, when dealing with World War II refugees, we have to take into consideration that, as Hannah Arendt argues in her famous essay “We Refugees” (1994) first published in 1943, the majority of these forced migrants were actually human beings violently stripped of any form of community that could grant them true legal protection. Although not all of those designated as refugiados in the Portuguese context were actually part of the Jewish refugees Arendt was referring to, the refugee presence nonetheless refers to a great extent to these unwanted, persecuted fugitives. In other words, it is to a great extent the memory of an involuntary, mostly temporary presence of human beings who had been deprived of their nationality and whose integration and belonging to the Portuguese national community was in its generality not desired and actively denied, at least from the side of Portuguese authorities.

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In view of this, the understanding of memory that I put forward in this study does necessarily challenge not merely a national framework, but also any straight association of memory with group identity. Before proceeding, it should be noted that even within memory studies the collective and cultural dimensions of remembering have been conceptualised in conspicuously different ways. This refers not only to a variation of terms and associated theoretical frameworks including, for example, Maurice Halbwachs’s “collective memory” [mémoire collective], Pierre Nora’s “lieux de mémoire” or Jan and Aleida Assmann’s “cultural memory” (das kulturelle Gedächtnis), but also to significant differences regarding (national) research traditions (cf. A. Assmann 2004; Radstone 2011; Erll 2011a). As a starting point I therefore draw on Richard Terdiman’s broad definition and conceive of memory as “the modality of our relation to the past” (1993, 7). On the one hand, this implies, to quote Michael Rothberg, that “memory is the past made present”, “a contemporary phenomenon, something that, while concerned with the past happens in the present” (2009, 3–4). On the other, this definition of memory allows for thinking about memory in culture without confining it to the self-image of mnemonic communities and instead focuses on instances where mnemonic processes challenge “the notion of ‘single memory cultures’” (Erll 2011c, 8). My study is therefore deeply indebted to the research perspective that Astrid Erll terms “transcultural memory” and its attempt to “look beyond established research assumptions, objects, and methodologies” (2011c, 9). Rather than denying the importance of tradition, myth and the remembrance of a collective past for the creation and legitimation of collective identities with all their political implications, I suggest differentiating between the observation that cultural memory is often put at the service of essentialising and nationalistic discourses about collective identities and the conceptualisation of the mnemonic processes that constitute the cultural dimensions of memory. As a consequence, my approach to the remembrance of the refugee presence in Portugal is characterised by a particular perspective not only on memory, but also on cultures, languages and media that I term translational. Through this approach, I embrace Doris Bachmann-Medick’s hope that the lens of translation “can offer the study of culture a way out of the culturalism trap” (2016a, 183). Indeed, the notion of translation places a particular emphasis on the “impure, blended ‘hybrid’ stratification of meaning and experience” and conceives of culture not as a “closed sphere that secures tradition and identity” but “as an expression or the result of translation processes” (Bachmann-Medick 2016a, 182). Accordingly, to adopt a translational perspective implies understanding and analysing cultures not as discrete entities, but as

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“constellations of conflicts, differences, superimpositions and blendings” (Bachmann-Medick 2016a, 184). Translation, thus, describes “a radical sense of trans-ness” (Hanenberg 2017, 194), an idea of culture and memory as always already translated. This notion of translatedness should, however, not be mistaken for an “exclusively positive use of such terms as hybridity” (Mirzoeff 2000, 9). Instead of celebrating an idea of freedom and resistance that is often observable in romanticising visions of mobility, non-locatedness and displacement, this translational perspective aims at “understanding the cultural encounter in a different way” (Solomon 2016, 77). The focus of this study is therefore not set on memory transfer between groups or mnemonic movement across borders, but on complex heterocultural processes of mnemonic signification resulting not from an exceptional act of mobility, but from an intrinsic “indeterminacy of language(s) and people(s)” (Solomon 2016, 85). In essence, memory is not assumed to truly converge and coalesce, although mnemonic reference points admittedly have this discursive function (for a discussion of convergence cf. Rigney 2005), but to unfold in networks of signification that transcend yet do not erase borders in terms of territory, language or culture. Following Doris Bachmann-Medick, a translational understanding of memory and culture should therefore not be understood in a simple metaphorical sense, for, “in contrast to claims of identity, standardization tendencies and essential determinations, the translation perspective reveals concrete structures of difference: heterogeneous discourse spaces within society, counter-discourses within cultures and even acts of resistance” (2016a, 183). As a consequence, the translational perspective is also associated with a reconceptualisation of memory’s link to communality. Again, my aim is not to challenge the idea that the ‘imagination’ of shared experience through the ‘invention’ of a common past and tradition may create and solidify social bonds. On the contrary, I understand the past as a powerful means within potentially violent processes of normalisation and exclusion associated with the idea of homogeneous ethnic and national communities. However, instead of accepting mnemonic homoculturality by assuming that “the boundaries of memory parallel the boundaries of group identity” (Rothberg 2009, 5), I intend to also look at what Michael Rothberg describes as memory’s “powerful creativity”: not only “its ability to build new worlds out of the materials of older ones”, but also its “potential to create new forms of solidarity and new visions of justice” (2009, 5). Making the past present is, therefore, not only understood as a multilayered, heterocultural process, but also as a productive form or action of working through with rather unpredictable outcomes that potentially reinforce or challenge existing power relations and forms of communality.

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1.3 Aims, methods and structure While a considerable number of historiographical studies about Portugal’s role as (temporary) refuge and transit station during World War II have emerged since the late 1980s, the remembrance and negotiation of the refugee presence within the arts has not yet been addressed systematically within the framework of memory studies. In fact, there are only a number of contributions analysing aspects such as diaspora, exile, the image of Portugal or the memory of the refugees in autobiographical writing by mostly German-language authors or particular works such as Ilse Losa’s Sob Céus Estranhos, Alves Redol’s O Cavalo Espantado, Daniel Blaufuks’s Sob Céus Estranhos, or João Canijo’s Fantasia Lusitana (cf. Becker 1995; Marques 2001; Pinho 2011; Rodrigues 2010; Neumann 2012; Grossegesse 2015, 2017; Lindemann 2017, Oliveira and Teixeira 2018). The present study intends to make a contribution to filling this gap by explicitly addressing how the refugee presence is remembered in artistic media in twentyfirst century Portugal. The focus of this book thus lies on what Astrid Erll (2011a) describes as the material dimension of cultural memory: i.e. it is concerned with the analysis of cultural artefatcs and artistic media rather than social institutions or shared mental schemata, for instance. Implicit in my approach to memory is an essentially semiotic understanding of culture as well as a critique of the idea of the unit that informs the concept of ‘discrete memory cultures’. Indeed, my aim is precisely to draw attention to the translational character of cultural objects and “the enormously complex problematic of cultural transmission or dissemination” (Calichman and Kim 2010, 3). As the previous considerations may have already foreshadowed, the aim of the present study is not to deliver an exhaustive inventory of how the refugee presence has been remembered in Portugal. Instead, I propose to pursue an “archive of implication” (Rothberg 2013) by looking at negotiations of the refugee presence during World War II in contemporary visual art, literature and cinema in Portugal. According to Michael Rothberg, “[t]he concept of implication asks us to think how we are enmeshed in histories and actualities beyond our apparent and immediate reach” (2014a, n.p.). Implication is therefore linked to an ethical dimension of memory that is not framed as a relationship to others or a human rights regime, but rather as an attempt to address concealed histories, traumatic experiences or social disparities. The concept of implication draws attention to absences in the present and describes the role of memory in confronting the legacies of complex histories that are linked to different forms of violence and exclusion. However, it needs to be emphasised that I appropriate Rothberg’s concept to focus on the creative and productive potential of memory rather than the theorisation of responsibility for “the manifold indirect, structural, and collective

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forms of agency that enable injury, exploitation, and domination” (Rothberg 2019, 1). Accordingly, I will look at how artistic media make the arrival of thousands fleeing Nazi persecution and war present, how they deal with the remnants of this history of flight and forced displacement, of granted visas and rejected entrance. In sum, my question is not only how they remember the refugee presence, but also how they implicate this past in the present, what kind of subject positions they take and what kind of relevance of the refugee presence they suggest for the present. My take on implication is therefore open, in the sense that it includes memories with different implications for the present, including critical approximations to the past as well as hegemonic visions. My claim is that, for two reasons, the idea of perusing an ‘archive of implication’ of the refugee presence in Portugal during World War II is necessarily linked to a reflection about mnemonic communities and a critique of memory as something with clear “limits and boundaries” that is “embodied by specific groups and therefore always partial and particular” (A. Assmann 2010b, 99). First, because the concept of refugee refers to contexts in which membership and belonging to a community is denied, or at least uncertain, or multiple. And second, because the notion of implication generally draws attention to the existence of mnemonic networks of signification that transcend borders of cultures, languages and communities. As a consequence, I argue that the remembrance of the refugee presence in Portugal calls for a particular perspective on memory: one that shifts the focus not only from national remembrance, stable lieux de mémoire and mnemonic communities, but also from transfer and circulation between groups to what I term heterocultural networks of signification and the essential translatedness of any supposedly discrete memory culture. The notion of heterocultural networks of signification is closely linked to the mediality of memory. As Astrid Erll and Ann Rigney emphasise, memory is always mediated, and media of all sorts “play an active role in shaping our understanding of the past, in ‘mediating’ between us (as readers, viewers, listeners) and past experiences” (2012b, 3). Indeed, historical events are created and recreated “by newspaper articles, newsreels, photographs, diaries, historiographic works, poems, novels, plays, paintings, memorials, films, TV series, comics and blogs as well as Twitter and Facebook status updates” (Brunow 2015, 4). Since the past cannot speak for itself, following generations have to draw on media and mediated memories to remake the past in the present. However, I regard mediality not only as relevant for later generations, but as an essential quality of all recollection. In fact, I argue that media do not merely store, share and circulate memories, but that the past, even if experienced by oneself, only becomes socially communicable and meaningful through mediation, i.e. the use of sign systems. This also implies that I do not regard media as mere externalisations of memory that are simply

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reinterpreted. Instead, I draw on Ludwig Jäger (2011) to conceive of remembrance as ‘transcriptive’, i.e. as a process in which memory emerges through constant referencing and quoting. As a consequence, I am particularly interested in the role of mediality and the reappropriation of previously existing media within artistic negotiations of the refugee presence in contemporary Portugal. The study consists of four chapters. Beginning with the outline of my theoretical framework, it then proceeds with the detailed analysis of the negotiation of the refugee presence in three artistic media, namely Daniel Blaufuks’s inter-art project Sob Céus Estranhos: Uma História de Exílio [Under strange skies: a story of exile], Domingos Amaral’s Enquanto Salazar Dormia [While Salazar was sleeping], and João Canijo’s Fantasia Lusitana [Lusitania illusion/Lusitanian fantasy]. I use the qualifier ‘artistic’ in a broad sense, including photography and visual arts, cinema and literature, as well as different degrees of aesthetic and conceptual complexity. While Domingos Amaral’s novel is clearly a product of commodified mass culture, Daniel Blaufuks’s book and film and João Canijo’s documentary manifest a reflexive density that Enquanto Salazar Dormia certainly lacks. At first sight, my selection may thus seem unexpected or even problematic. Yet, it is the expression of my aim to conciliate giving visibility to the heterogeneity of artistic negotiations of the refugee presence while at the same time analysing works that had a considerable projection within Portugal. They are not only among the most discussed and referenced artistic media in the context of Portugal’s role during the 1930s and World War II, but also address its memory in another way. They mobilise different heterocultural networks of signification, address and reappropriate different archives and thereby implicate the refugee presence differently in the present. They give expression to different subject positions and different modes of dealing with memory’s link to communality, solidarity, national identity and the ‘refugee other’. As has become evident throughout this introduction, my aim is to link artistic negotiations of the memory of the refugee presence in Portugal in the 1930s and 1940s with a theoretical reflection about memory. My study is therefore based on the development of a particular perspective on memory that is then applied to the close readings of three artistic media. Each of the works requires to a certain degree a particular analytical approach that does justice to the media specific attributes, on the one hand, and the difference in artistic and self-reflexive complexity, on the other. However, the close readings follow a similar structure, beginning with an analysis of the artistic strategies, followed by a discussion of the heterocultural referential network mobilised by the works, and ending with the debate on how the relationship to the refugee presence is negotiated. The works are therefore not analysed in isolation, but in the context of processes of referencing and quoting, remediation, transcription and translation of

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1 Introduction

other media and mediated memories. In other words, the translational perspective that I propose in this study also implies a particular mode of inquiry and analytical approach. The translational dimension of memory is not addressed in terms of transfer or mobility of memory between groups. Instead it is localised, on the one hand, at the level of the transcriptive logic of memory that becomes manifest in the heterocultural networks of signification that the different artistic media mobilise, and, on the other hand, at the level of the ethical dimension of remembrance and the question of how different artistic media may challenge or (re)produce hegemonic forms of communality. The study opens with a chapter that develops the theoretical framework. It is divided in three sub-chapters. In the first, I claim that the nation-bound and particularly identity-bound framework of memory proves not only problematic in contexts of migration, but is actually the expression of a problematic notion of mediality. Drawing on critiques by Vittoria Borsò (2001, 2011) and Ludwig Jäger (2011), I develop an understanding of memory as based on alterity rather than identity and as a process of constant transcription, referencing and quoting. The second sub-chapter then proceeds by giving an overview over existing transcultural and transnational approaches within memory studies in order to situate my own perspective against this background. Here I introduce not only the notion of a translational perspective on memory, but also the term ‘heterocultural’ to describe an intrinsic indeterminacy of cultures, languages, peoples and memories. Finally, the third subchapter discusses the ethical dimension of memory, particularly in regard to migratory phenomena. The chapter thus closes by drawing on Michael Rothberg’s concept of “archives of implication” (2013) to conceptualise the role of dialogical, multilayered networks of signification for different negotiations of violent and troubled pasts in the present. This chapter is followed by the first analytical chapter, dealing with Daniel Blaufuks’s inter-art project Sob Céus Estranhos: Uma História de Exílio from 2002/2007. At the centre of the analysis developed throughout this study stands the question of how the different artistic, literary and cinematographic works conceive of, stage and implicate the refugee presence in Portugal during World War II in the present and potentially even the future. This involves, on the one hand, shedding light on the complex networks of signification in which the works are inscribed or inscribe themselves. On the other, it calls for an analysis of how they relate to the ‘refugee other’ and help to maintain or critically engage in established forms of communality. The analysis and discussion of Daniel Blaufuks’s Sob Céus Estranhos is therefore divided into three subchapters. The first focuses on the aesthetic approach, highlighting how book and film link the memory of the refugee presence in Lisbon with a self-reflexive study of media, transmission and the materiality of memory. The second subchapter

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moves the discussion to a framework of memory and focuses on the referential web constructed throughout book and film. By linking Blaufuks’s work to “postmemory” (Hirsch 1997) and an “archival impulse” (Foster 2004), the analysis emphasises how Blaufuks stages generational transmission, family photography and public archives in order to critically scrutinise hegemonic archival practices and private as well as public memory. Finally, the last subchapter focuses on how Sob Céus Estranhos negotiates an affiliative relationship with the ‘refugee other’ through the lens of exile. In this context, I will also explore the relationship to Ilse Losa’s novel Sob Céus Estranhos and a common discursive and mnemonic referential space of the condition of exile and the experience of ‘living under strange skies’ in Portugal. The study then proceeds with the analysis of Domingos Amaral’s novel Enquanto Salazar Dormia. In a similar way to the previous chapter, the discussion of Amaral’s work is divided into three subchapters. While respecting the overall structure of the antecedent analysis, Enquanto Salazar Dormia requires a certain shift of emphasis that accounts for its conventionality. Taking into account that Sob Céus Estranhos is characterised by an aesthetic and self-reflexive complexity that Amaral’s novel clearly lacks, the first subchapter discusses the narrative strategies employed in the novel to convey an easily accessible and apparently authentic image of the past. While the first subchapter thus deals with the formal aspects of the novel, the second moves the discussion to the role of processes of recycling and appropriation, and Enquanto Salazar Dormia’s particular perspective on the past. Emphasising how Amaral’s novel appropriates dominant imaginaries of the World War II period in Portugal, it therefore examines the role of the heterocultural referential framework within an apparently authentic narrative about a glorious individual and national past. The last subchapter finally discusses how the novel negotiates the relationship to the ‘refugee other’ by focusing on the role of rich exiles and the figure of the refugiada, the female refugee. The study closes with the discussion of João Canijo’s documentary Fantasia Lusitana. This last chapter is also organised in three subchapters. The first begins the analysis by focusing on the aesthetic approach of Canijo’s documentary, emphasising the use of found footage as a means to encourage a critical reading of the propagandistic documentaries, newsreels and speeches as well as a kind of cinematographic literacy of the spectator. Situating the discussion within the framework of memory, the second subchapter deals with the role of remediation as archival intervention and critique of the politics of representation of the Estado Novo regime as well as hegemonic national memory. In this subchapter, the analysis focuses on the referential and intertextual web created through the remediation of found footage and other material. Finally, the last subchapter focuses on the role of the refugees in the documentary. It explores

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Fantasia Lusitana’s approach to the ‘refugee other’ in the context of a reflection about the realms of Portuguese identity and memory as well as the thresholds of national memory in general. The larger trajectory of the study can thus be described as moving from the theoretical to the analytical. Covering a period between 2002 and 2010, the analytical chapters follow a chronological order and provide an in-depth analysis of three of the most influential twenty-first-century artistic negotiations of the refugee presence in Portugal between 1933 and 1945. My study thereby offers a particular perspective on memory. Working through the complex heterocultural networks of signification that these works mobilise, it uncovers the different ways the refugee presence is implicated in the present and its role in redefining or supporting established forms of communality.

2 A translational perspective on the memory of the refugee presence in Portugal between 1933 and 1945 Memory studies have developed into a flourishing field of international and interdisciplinary research. The aim of this chapter is therefore not only to discuss the theoretical framework on which this study is based, but also to localise it within the range of heterogeneous approaches to remembrance. As Richard Crownshaw points out, “[i]n recent years memory studies has travelled from the collective to the cultural to the transcultural” (2011b, 1). This study is part of this effort to rethink memory outside the framework of national remembrance as it aims to draw attention to the theoretical implications of migratory phenomena for the conceptualisation of remembrance. Due to the emphasis traditionally set on clearly demarked communities, cultures and territories, migration, displacement and refugee experiences have been rather neglected topics within memory studies. More importantly, migratory phenomena also call into question the premises of many traditional frameworks of collective and cultural memory. The aim of this chapter is therefore twofold: first, to explore the theoretical and methodological challenges that artistic negotiations of migration, flight and refugee presences pose to memory studies; and second, to develop an alternative approach to the homocultural, identity-bound framework that has dominated memory studies for decades.

2.1 Theoretical challenges of memory studies faced with migratory phenomena: rethinking mnemonic communities and the mediality of memory Since memory in its collective, cultural and social dimensions emerged as an urgent topic in the 1980s, it has mostly been conceptualised as rooted in stable national, religious or ethnic communities. Particularly due to Pierre Nora’s influence on early work in memory studies, collective and “cultural memory was [virtually] reincarnated as, and became synonymous with, ‘national remembrance’” (Erll 2011c, 7). This emphasis on national memories went along with a focus on the memory work of supposedly discrete communities. Despite the heterogeneity of the field, collective and cultural memory thus generally came to be conceived of as closely tied to the self-image and cohesion of communities. As a consequence, studies in the humanities have predominantly been framed https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110733440-002

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within stable environments and focused on how cultural and collective remembrance is shared and transmitted within groups in order to form or consolidate collective identities. In recent years, however, this predominantly national framework has received considerable criticism (cf., for instance, Crownshaw 2011a; A. Assmann and Conrad 2010a; Bond and Rapson 2014; De Cesari and Rigney 2014a; Bond et al. 2017; Dorr et al 2019). A growing awareness of globalisation processes and forced as well as voluntary forms of migration and movement has exposed the limitations and blind spots of an exclusively national approach to memory. Several critics have highlighted the need to extend the scope of memory studies beyond established borders of national cultures. Due to the acceleration of information transfer and the increased mobility of people, memory, so the argument goes, no longer develops primarily within the limits of the nation-state (cf. A. Assmann and Conrad 2010b). However, the idea that memories “enter the global arena” and “migrate from one continent to another” (A. Assmann and Conrad 2010b, 2) does not necessarily challenge the link established between memory, community and identity. Aleida Assmann, for instance, claims that even within the context of global audiences and transnational movements, memories are always “tied to identities, they support the self-image of a group and are thus necessarily of a particular and distinctive nature” (A. Assmann 2010b, 99). This position illustrates how even sophisticated approaches which explicitly address processes of exchange and contact between groups, nonetheless often tend to confine memory within closed mnemonic communities and to limit it to the (re)production of collective identities of ultimately homogeneous groups. Especially in the context of migration movements, the notion of idiosyncratic mnemonic communities poses some serious theoretical and methodological challenges. In contrast to traditional settings of national memory studies, it often proves more difficult to determine whose group identity is set out to be confirmed by remembering migration and experiences of flight, violence, hospitality or exclusion. Migration does not only challenge the stability of place that most early work in memory studies took for granted. More importantly, displacements of groups or individuals can create contexts in which belonging is uncertain, multiple or denied. In fact, in migratory settings individuals may engage in processes of collective remembrance without being reflected in or identifying with the selfimage of the imagined mnemonic community of the majority (cf., for instance, Rothberg and Yildiz 2011; El Tayeb 2011). As a consequence, migratory settings and the remembrance of migratory experiences or presences expose the possibility of an incorrespondence and tension between cultural memory and group identity, for which traditional theories of collective and cultural memory can hardly account.

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When faced with migration and flight, it not only seems necessary to consider global or transnational phenomena, but also to rethink the link usually established between memory, community and identity. In “A Dialogue on the ethics and politics of transcultural memory”, Michael Rothberg has already drawn attention to the fact that “the foundational texts of collective memory studies are not simply or uniquely embedded in the assumption that remembrance can only be understood in national and local frameworks” (Moses and Rothberg 2014, 31 [emphasis in the original]). As he emphasises “[a]t an even deeper conceptual level these theories have reproduced assumptions about what constitutes a culture that are no longer tenable; they have assumed that only discrete homogenous cultures and social groups can become bearers of memory” (Moses and Rothberg 2014, 31 [emphasis in the original]). Astrid Erll equally identified a tendency of studying memory of so-called “container-culture[s]”, which assumes “an isomorphy between territory, social formation, mentalities, and memories” (2011c, 7). By tracing this research tradition back to the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, Erll does not merely illustrate the extent to which work in memory studies has focused on national remembrance.39 More importantly, she also succeeds in showing how it has been indebted to a highly problematic notion of clearly demarked and ultimately folkbound cultures and mnemonic communities. Pierre Nora’s concept of lieux de mémoire is certainly the most illustrative example of this approach to collective memory. Although arguably one of the most influential works about memory on an international scale, Nora’s collection has also received considerable criticism for the “implicit normative claim and the fixation on the nation-state as the sole possible (and imaginable) source for the articulation of authentic collective memories” (Levy and Sznaider 2002, 99). According to many critics, Nora’s collection promotes an antiquated image of a homogeneous French nation, omitting, as Hue-Tam Ho Tai (2001) for instance argues, the history of French colonialism. Michael Rothberg, moreover, claims that the collection “puts forward a starkly limited conception of the nation purged [. . .] of phenomena that trouble the linear narrative of historical

39 In her analysis, Erll explicitly draws on Wolfgang Welsch’s (1999) conceptualisation of ‘transculturality’ and his critique of the concept of ‘single cultures’ defended most notably by Herder. Claiming “transculturality” to be “the most adequate concept of culture today” (Welsch 1999, 194), Welsch vehemently rejects the idea of autonomous, ethnicised, single cultures bound to delimited territories. Although this idea of culture as essentially “multi-meshed and inclusive, not separatist and exclusive” (Welsch 1999, 200) seems promising, Welsch’s argumentation, unfortunately, remains somehow broad and unspecific, and ends up risking to obscure not only “polarities of the own and the foreign”, but also everything that is not “common and connective” (Welsch 1999, 200).

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progress” (2010, 4). These remarks already point to the fact that, in addition to nurturing a national(ist) vision of remembrance, Nora has also coined an ethnicised understanding of memory. In what follows, I will therefore dismantle Nora’s conceptualisations of collective memory, lieux de mémoire and milieux de mémoire. My aim here is not to elaborate on the problematic image of France sustained by Nora’s collection or his emphasis on the nation as the only conceivable origin of collective memory. Instead, I intend to shed light on the link between memory, community and mediality in order to get a grasp on the deeper conceptual levels that nourish his influential definition of collective memory as something that somehow naturally emerges out of existing communities and binds them together. Paradoxically, Nora’s famous collection committed to the relation that France establishes with its past, is based on a theoretical reflection that assumes that memory – or rather real or authentic memory – is about to disappear. Indeed, Nora’s lieux de mémoire are supposed to merely provide a “residual sense of continuity” (Nora 1996, 1) at a time when authentic memory is fading away. As such, lieux de mémoire or ‘sites of memory’ are defined as mnemonic tools created with the intent to preserve national memory, and opposed to “‘milieux de mémoire’, i.e. settings in which memory is a real part of everyday experience” (Nora 1996, 1). Nora’s central argument here is that sites of memory only assume such an important role because these mnemonic environments in which tradition is transmitted naturally are dying out. Milieux de mémoire are supposed to fall prey to a “sense of rupture with the past” caused by processes of “[g]lobalization, democratization, and the advent of mass culture and the media” (Nora 1996, 1). As the historian emphasises, “[s]ocieties based on memory are no more: the institutions that once transmitted values from generation to generation – churches, schools, families, governments – have ceased to function as they once did” (Nora 1996, 2). Ultimately, Nora’s perspective therefore “remains indebted to a rather teleological view of modernity [and what] he repeatedly calls ‘real’ or ‘true’ memory appears to give way to the artificial reconstruction of postmodern memory sites divorced from any organic community of remembrance” (Rothberg 2010, 4). The privileged role that Nora attributes to the nation-state as a source for the articulation of true collective memory has to be understood in this context. Nora is not simply interested in national memory and its relation with national identity, but his national framework is actually the outcome of this concept of milieux de mémoire in which memory emerges out of an organic national community. Drawing explicitly on Maurice Halbwachs’40 notion that there are “as many

40 Nora’s understanding of collective memory was decidedly inspired by Maurice Halbwachs’ (1985 [1925], 1991 [1950) concept of mémoire collective. However, it is important to bear in mind

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memories as there are groups” (Nora 1996, 3), Nora rests his understanding of collective memory on the assumption that “[m]emory wells up from groups that it welds together” (1996, 3). By associating memory to supposedly stable natural environments of genuine memory transmission, Nora implies not only the existence of “a geographically bounded community with a shared set of beliefs and a sense of ‘natural’ connection among its members” (Landsberg 2004, 8) but also that memory is lost once one leaves the milieux de mémoire of origin. And although he mourns the loss of true societies of memory and addresses the constructed character of memory sites of the French nation, the national realm therefore nonetheless remains the sole frame within which the last remnants of the experience of true, mnemonic communality seem to be imaginable. What is important to note, though, is that Nora’s framing of collective memory is also associated with a binary opposition of real memory and artificial history that ultimately excludes mediality from the mnemonic realm. In fact, Nora conceives of real memory as an embodied, affective and unmediated experience, while history is supposed to rely on an intellectual and conscious reconstruction and representation. In essence, mediation marks the difference between real memory and history. As Nora puts it, “[w]ith the appearance of ‘the trace’, of distance and mediation [. . .] we leave the realm of true memory and enter that of history” (1996, 2). Nora’s notion of mediation remains vague, though. Instead of referring to the role of media or signs, he implies that mediation corresponds to an experience of difference and rupture with the past. Although never explicitly defined in these terms, mediation is nevertheless suggested to refer to a particular relationship with the past, one that challenges the experience of continuity and unity of past and present. As Nora puts it, while “memory is always a phenomenon of the present, a bond tying us to the eternal present; history is a representation of the past” (1996, 3). In other words, whereas memory is conceived of as an experience of the past as present reality, history is defined as the outcome of representations, based on traces, and, consequently, always constitutes only one possible version among others.

that Halbwachs emphasises the role of changing social frameworks for individual memory as well as the existence of multiple groups within societies. As Olick argues, in Halbwachs, collective memory refers to two kinds of phenomena: “socially framed individual memories and collective commemorative representations and mnemonic traces” (1999, 336). In fact, as Erll convincingly argues, Halbwachs conceptualises individual memory as the result of “multiple mnemonic memberships” (2011c, 10).

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As a result of this binary opposition of ‘real memory’ and ‘artificial history’, Nora’s understanding of media,41 mediation and mediality seems to lead to an oversimplification of the link between memory, identity and mnemonic community. This is particularly revealing in his considerations about France in the nineteenth century. According to Nora, until the 1930s “the history of France’s development as a nation has been [the] most powerful collective tradition, [the] milieux de mémoire [of French people] par excellence” (1996, 3). As he underlines, [f]rom the chronicles of the Middle Ages to modern historians of ‘total’ history, France’s entire historical tradition has developed as a disciplined exercise of the mnemonic faculty, an instinctive delving into memory in order to reconstruct the past seamlessly and in its entirety. (1996, 3–4)

Despite this line of continuity, Nora recognises that history was “reinvented” in nationalistic terms during the nineteenth century when a national “memorial space” (1996, 5) emerged in which “history, memory, and the nation enjoyed an unusually intimate communion, a symbiotic complementarity at every level – scientific and pedagogical, theoretical and practical” (1996, 5). However, although he describes this process of justifying the “nationalistic definition of the present” through a “highlighting of the past” (1996, 5) as a reinterpretation and even a rewriting, he does not conceive of it as a truly mediated process. According to Nora, the nationalistic history remains in the realms of (unmediated) “true memory”, simply because in the “teleological perspective of the nation” (1996, 5) history continued to be experienced as a unity and as one unchallenged version of the past that provided the indisputable foundations for national identity. Interestingly, Nora’s nostalgic narrative of the decline of the national community and the loss of true memory ends up concealing not only the differences between topoi and media of memory (cf. Schmidt 2004) but also precisely those profound transformations in the apprehension of time and the role of media that are usually associated with the emergence of national “imagined communities” (Anderson 2006). As Benedict Anderson argues in his pioneering book on nationalism, the dissemination of print media throughout the eighteenth century – namely the novel and the newspaper – favoured fundamental changes in apprehending 41 The lack of definition of media manifests itself also in Nora’s conceptualisation of lieux de mémoire. Throughout the introduction of the collection, Nora offers several different definitions and leaves us with a concept that can incorporate almost everything from museums to landscapes, from linguistic expressions to novels (cf. Schmidt 2004). Even if this ‘openness’ of the concept may prove problematic in certain contexts, as it is insensitive to media specific aspects related to mnemonic processes, it also explains to some extent its popularity as it permits to collect a range of different cultural reference points which illustrate “the ways in which local memorial traditions are reproduced and transformed in a variety of media” (Rigney 2005, 15).

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the world that “made it possible to ‘think’ the nation” (2006, 22). In this process, memory did not simply emerge out of an already existing group, but this ‘imagined’ group came into being through complex processes in which media as well as the conception of time were essential: What has come to take place of the mediaeval conception of simultaneity-along-time is, to borrow from Benjamin, an idea of ‘homogeneous empty time’, in which simultaneity is, as it were, transverse, cross-time, marked not by prefiguring and fulfillment, but by temporal coincidence, and measured by clock and calendar. (Anderson 2006, 24)

Ironically, it is, thus, precisely a loss of “a simultaneity of past and future in an instantaneous present” (Anderson 2006, 24) that Anderson associates with the decline of Christian imagination and the emergence of the ‘imagined community’ of the nation. Indeed, Richard Terdiman characterises the “long nineteenth century” in Europe and particularly France through the notion of “memory crisis” to describe a period in which “people experienced the insecurity of their culture’s involvement with its past, the perturbation of the link to their own inheritance” (1993, 3). And Aleida Assmann stresses that “[t]he discovery of the gulf between present and past marked the invention of a national history and the construction of a collective memory” (2013a, 45). In contrast to Nora, Anderson does not limit mediation to any specific relationship of present and past, but tries to retrace the role of media in the perception of time, historical consciousness and the formation of ‘imagined communities’. Although Anderson’s work is not primarily concerned with memory, it helps to illuminate the paradox of Nora’s dichotomisation of memory and history: despite the importance of mediation within his narrative of the disappearance of memory, he does not develop a coherent definition of mediation and media and therefore fails to fully account for the fact that no mnemonic community exists prior to processes of mediation. Interestingly, the conceptualisation of mediality and the role of media has also been the basis for criticism of Jan and Aleida Assmann’s theoretical framework of cultural memory – another very influential body of work from early memory studies that has become particularly authoritative within the German context. In contrast to Nora, Jan and Aleida Assmann repeatedly emphasise processes of mediation for memory and the constitution of mnemonic groups, but nonetheless insist on conceiving of collective and cultural memory as an expression of the identity and values of a group.42 In fact, memory is repeatedly

42 The role of continuity and processes of transformation has, however, changed over the years. In earlier work Jan Assmann foregrounds the stability and durability of cultural memory. Claiming that cultural memory corresponds to “all knowledge that direct behavior and experience in the interactive framework of a society”, he underlines that it permits groups to “maintain their

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defined as the “faculty that enables us to form an awareness of selfhood (identity), both on the personal and on the collective level” (J. Assmann 2010a, 109). Following Jan Assmann (2010a), the social level of memory is supposed to be based on two different ways of remembering: “collective memory” is therefore divided into “communicative memory” to designate the non-institutionalised transmission of a close past based on direct interaction and communication, and “cultural memory” to refer to the realm of tradition and institutionalised transmission of a distant past.43 Accordingly, Jan Assmann argues that cultural memory “is exteriorized, objectified, and stored away in symbolic forms, that, unlike the sounds of words or the sight of gestures, are stable and situationtranscendent: they may be transferred from one situation to another and transmitted from one generation to another” (2010a, 110–111). In essence, cultural memory is therefore defined as relying on “external symbols” through which humans create “extended horizons of meaning production” that unfold in a “dynamics” between the poles of passive as well as active remembering and forgetting (A. Assmann 2010a, 97). The introduction of passive and active elements enables Aleida Assmann, on the one hand, to separate passive forgetting as a precondition for any recollection from active suppression and effacement of memory as it is practiced, for example, in totalitarian states. On the

nature consistently through generations” (J. Assmann 1995, 126). However, this emphasis on stability is somewhat challenged by the recognition that collective identities change over time and that members of mnemonic communities always belong to several groups. Accordingly, in a more recent article he claims that while “[m]emory is knowledge with an identity-index”, it is always “multifarious” and – at least to some degree – an “open system” (J. Assmann 2010b, 123). 43 Although it is one of the most sophisticated and precise terminologies within memory studies, their terms and definitions have nonetheless been refined and changed to some degree over the years. Whereas initially Jan Assmann divided “collective memory” only into “communicative” and “cultural memory”, nowadays Jan and Aleida Assmann also propose the categories of “social” and “political memory” (cf., for instance, J. Assmann 2010b). Peter Carrier and Kobi Kabalek even defend that “the Assmanns’ use of concepts is inconsistent” (2014, 46). Accordingly, the authors for example argue that, while communicative and cultural memory were originally defined as two ways of remembering within collective memory, more recently collective memory has been described as a “mediating category between the communicative and the cultural [. . .] that refers to the ‘functional’ and ‘bonding’ contribution of the past towards the creation of collective identities” (Carrier and Kabelec 2014, 47). In fact, when comparing different texts, the reader is left with a sense of confusion. In “Canon and Archive”, for example, A. Assmann (2010a) neutralises Nora’s opposition between history and memory by defining history as one of the ‘core areas’ of cultural memory next to religion and art. History is, in this text, understood as an identity-forming autobiography produced by nation-states. However, in “The Holocaust – a Global Memory?” (2010b), she bases her entire critique of global or universal memory on Nora’s dichotomy of universal history and particular memory.

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other hand, it is the premise for the distinction between the archive as passive and the canon as active remembering. According to Aleida Assmann, the archive passively collects the past as past, while the canon actively preserves the past as present. Passive storage or cultural reference memory is, thus, opposed to an active and identity-relevant remembering or cultural working memory. While the archive comprises material that “is stored and potentially available, but [. . .] not interpreted” (A. Assmann 2010a, 103), the canon “supports a collective identity” (A. Assmann 2010a, 100) by actively circulating a limited number of “normative and formative texts, places, persons, artifacts and myths” (A. Assmann 2010a, 100). In the introduction to a volume about memory and gender, Silke Wenk and Insa Eschebach (2002) point out that Jan and Aleida Assmann’s theorisation of cultural memory sets an emphasis on how a collectivity wants the past to be remembered. Indeed, the definition of memory as “knowledge with an identity index” or even “diachronic identity” (J. Assmann 2010b, 123) foregrounds positively the preservation of the self-image and the affective ties created by remembering within mnemonic communities, while neglecting power assymetries and their implications for categories such as gender or ethnicity and barriers to belonging associated with them. In fact, within Jan Assmann’s theorisation of collective, communicative and cultural memory, remembering becomes “a realization of belonging” (2010a, 114), with individuals attesting to their membership of a group through participation in a collective memory (2002, 39). Jan Assmann thus draws a straight line from contributing to or being shaped by a collective memory and belonging to a mnemonic community. In one of her latest books focusing on German memory culture, Aleida Assmann (2013b) furthermore argues that in democratic societies individuals may choose or ‘move autonomously’ between several versions of remembrance offered by different mnemonic groups. Democracies are actually understood as a heterogeneous composition of mnemonic groups that are, however, bound to a common “frame of memory” (Gedächtnisrahmen) based on moral consensus. In essence, this rather positive image of democratic memory cultures therefore not only suggests the possibility of an unrestricted choice of belonging and moving freely between different groups, but also ends up binding all heterogeneity under the umbrella of a consensual national memory. Within this framework that binds memory in affective mnemonic communities, which are tied to a common identity or self-image, it becomes particularly difficult to account for exclusion and non-belonging.44 Even if individuals are

44 Even if Jan Assmann (2002, 53–55) mentions the possibility of being excluded from the specialised knowledge of cultural memory in certain contexts (he mentions, for instance, women

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able to participate in different practices and forms of remembrance, there are certain important limits. Migrants or migrantised and racialised subjects, for instance, are often not accepted as equal members of the national mnemonic community.45 Even if they participate in national memory practices or discourses, they may still be excluded. Conversely, individuals may be shaped by frames of memory without fully belonging to the community or identifying with its self-image. As Monserrat Guibernau (2013) argues, in contemporary societies individuals are relatively free to choose and enter different groups, but this does not hold true for every existing group or community. On the contrary, “many of them set up specific conditions for membership, including a well-defined threshold and a set of barriers to belonging” (Guibernau 2013, 30). Thus, although shared memories may create communality, since remembrance “commonly serve[s] to legitimate a present social order” (Connerton 2003, 3), it is also often part of practices and discourses which (re)produce and (re)create ‘barriers to belonging’ and social divides. Moreover, although processes of change and actualisation are essential to the conceptualisation of mnemonic dynamics, cultural memory nonetheless seems to centre on some kind of cultural essence: a stored repertoire of knowledge and values, which is retrieved and reinterpreted according to different contexts. Cultural memory is supposed to be “maintained through cultural formation (texts, rites, monuments) and institutional communication (recitation, practice, observance)” (J. Assmann 1995, 129) and to contain “a number of cultural messages that are addressed to posterity and intended for continuous repetition and re-use” (A. Assmann 2010a, 99). The dynamics of change and actualisation are therefore actually limited to the retrieval and reinterpretation of knowledge that is stored in external memory media and preserved by earlier generations. Within this framework,

in Ancient Greece or Judaism), this idea merely refers to the possibility of access to a cultural elite responsible for the transmission of cultural memory, i.e. specialised ‘carriers’ of cultural memory such as teachers, priests etc. 45 This has already been discussed in the case of German memory culture. Rothberg and Yildiz, for instance, convincingly argue that – although performances of Holocaust remembrance by migrants in Germany may become acts of citizenship, which promote new “ways of beingin-common” – in the aftermath of the Holocaust, German memory culture preserved an “ethnically homogenous notion of German identity” (2011, 35), which actually reproduced modes of exclusion based on ethnicity, particularly in the case of the Turkish minority (cf. also Rothberg 2014b). Aleida Assmann (2013b, 127–33) also briefly discusses German memory culture in the context of migration and the ‘ethical paradox’ attested by Rothberg and Yildiz and other scholars. Although A. Assmann recognises the need to debate and reshape the relationship between nation-state and memory in a less ‘genealogical’ way, she simultaneously dismisses the ‘ethical paradox’ by claiming that at present most young Germans already developed a critical understanding of Nazism and the Holocaust (2013b, 129).

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knowledge may be selected from the archive or pass from active circulation to passive “intermediary storage” (A. Assmann 2010a, 103). However, it nonetheless circles around an essentially homocultural and self-centred repertoire of texts, art works and historical events and ultimately proves problematic in the context of migratory phenomena, because it risks implying that the binding tie of memory is the outcome of a common origin and an already shared culture. Vittoria Borsò (2001, 2011) and Ludwig Jäger (2011) challenge this identitybound understanding of cultural and collective memory by focusing on Jan and Aleida Assmann’s understanding of media as “the material support” (A. Assmann 2013a, 11) or “carriers” (J. Assmann 2010a, 111) of cultural memory. Drawing on Jorge Luis Borges’s “Funes el memorioso” [Funes the memorious], Borsò illustrates the non-correspondence between medium and remembrance (Erinnerung). The protagonist of Borges’s story is gifted with, or rather suffers from, an endless memory. As Borsò argues, Funes remembers “every single moment of all experiences [Wahrnehmungen] of every single thing” within the flux of time without “being subject to the translational and therefore selective activity of consciousness” (2011, 116 [translation mine]).46 This endless memory remains, however, untranslatable as Funes is neither able to express nor represent it. As Borsò highlights, “the ‘floating matter’ [fließende Materie] of memory” is not compatible with “the selective interpretation or translation of a medium (language or image), which uses discrete signs” (2011, 116–117 [translation mine]).47 As a consequence, Borsò emphasises that media cannot be conceived of as external supports that simply store memory. On the contrary, in her perspective they are actively involved in the production of coherent, meaningful remembrance by retaining the flux of time and localising experience within the context of the present. Ludwig Jäger sustains a similar argument, claiming that media should not be conceived of as “passive matter” [untätige Materie] (2011, 85). Drawing on Foucault’s (2010) critique of historical reason, Jäger actually argues that rather than simply conveying meaning or transmitting a “historical a priori”, which can be recovered or interpreted, meaning emerges within a discursive, “transcriptive” web of linguistic and non-linguistic media. As Jäger underlines, “[t]he semantic contents of media are not injected into discourse as transcendent signified, but discourse is rather the place where meaning is generated” (2011,

46 In German this reads: “er [erinnert] jede einzelne sinnliche Wahrnehmung und jeden einzelnen Augenblick im Zeitfluss [. . .] ohne der übersetzerischen und damit selegierenden Tätigkeit des Bewusstseins zu unterliegen”. 47 In German this reads: “[die] “fließend[e] Materie” [ist unvereinbar] mit der selegierenden Interpretation oder Transkription durch ein Medium (Sprache oder Bild), das diskrete Zeichen benutzt”.

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95 [translation mine]).48 Accordingly, the process of signification is intrinsically linked to the mediality and the materiality of sign systems. This “transcriptive logic of remembrance” (Jäger 2011, 82 [translation mine])49 has two important implications. On the one hand, it means that “there cannot exist an identic replication of an ‘original’ in different ‘media of representation’” (Jäger 2011, 94 [translation mine]).50 Photographs or other non-linguistic media, for instance, do not simply express something that could have been said verbally. On the other hand, it conceives of semantics “as an incompletable process of the transcriptive constitution of an irreversibly fragile meaning” (Jäger 2011, 86 [translation mine; emphasis in the original]).51 Referring explicitly to Jacques Derrida’s notion of différance, Jäger thus renounces the prioritisation of the signified over the signifier, since “a signified could not exist independently of the phenomenality of the sign” (Jäger 2011, 89 [translation mine]).52 In the context of cultural memory, this means not only that memory media can no longer be understood as “objectivation[s] or crystallization[s] of communicated meaning and collectively shared knowledge” (J. Assmann 1995, 130). More importantly, practices and techniques of remembrance can also no longer be thought to simply access archived messages or knowledge. Instead, as Jäger (2011, 94) argues, archives contain ‘scriptures’, which are only accessible within transcriptive processes of referencing and quoting. In this sense, Jäger’s understanding of the archive resembles Jacques Derrida’s argumentation in Archive Fever (1998). According to Derrida, the archive, as printing, writing, prosthesis, or hypomnesic technique in general is not only the place for stocking and conserving an archivable content of the past which would exist in any case, such as, without the archive, one still believes it was or will have been. No, the technical structure of the archiving archive also determines the structure of the archivable content even in its very coming into existence and in its relationship to the future. The archivization produces as much as it records the events. [. . .] [A]rchivable meaning is also and in advance codetermined by the structure that archives. (1998, 16–18 [emphasis in the original])

48 In German this reads: “Die semantischen Gehalte von Medien werden nicht als transzendente Signifikate in den Diskurs eingespeist, sondern dieser ist der generische Ort der Hervorbringung von Sinn”. 49 In German this reads: “transkriptive Logik der Erinnerung”. 50 In German this reads: “die identische Replikation eines ‘Originals’ [kann es] in verschiedenen ‚Darstellungsmedien’ nicht geben”. 51 The German text reads: “als einen unabschließbaren Prozess der transkriptiven Konstitution eines unaufhebbar fragilen Sinnes”. 52 The German text reads: “weil ein Bezeichnetes unabhängig von der Phänomenalität des Zeichens nicht existent sein könnte”.

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In essence, Jäger’s and Borsò’s perspectives on mediality imply not only a renunciation of the identity-based understanding of memory, but also the recognition that memory ceases to be inherently meaningful. Content is not only archived and excessed or transferred to living, functional memory through processes of (re)selection and (re)interpretation in order to provide collective knowledge to members of mnemonic communities about “their past, their way of life, their values, important references, and common orientations” (A. Assmann 2013a, 395). Although mnemonic discourses may serve to constitute or reinforce identity constructions, memory is not based on identity, but rather characterised by a constitutive alterity. Media do not simply circulate memory, which naturally possesses coherent meaning. Instead, they enable the generation of socially communicable meaning by suspending the flux of time and locating memory in the present. Socially communicable meaning only emerges through the use of sign systems that abstract from temporality and translate the “multiplicity of things” [Multiplizität der Dinge] (Borsò 2001, 35) into fragilely meaningful memory, or scriptures.53 Particularly when faced with migratory phenomena, this deessentialised perspective on memory may provide a promising starting point for (re)conceptualising the complex phenomena involved in collective and cultural processes of remembering. While traditionally the focus of attention lay on the identity-consolidating function of memory and processes of storage, forgetting and retrieval of archived content, this perspective shifts the emphasis of analysis towards complex networks of cultural signification that transcend the established limits of cultures, languages and national or other mnemonic communities. Processes of cultural and collective remembrance are essentially decentred: instead of confining memory within clearly demarked mnemonic communities, cultural remembrance emerges as a process that unfolds in “networks of temporality and cultural reference that exceed attempts of territorialization and (whether at the local or national level) identitarian reduction” (Rothberg 2010, 7). On the one hand, this implies a shift of attention from identity-generating collective memories to complex processes of organising, managing and conventionalising knowledge – preventing what, in reference to Foucault, can be termed ‘the proliferation of meaning’ of the past – and the possible violence involved in these processes. On the other, it substantiates a focus on how cultural and artistic practices rely on these entangled networks of cultural signification and how they address existent cultural and mnemonic frictions, indeterminacies and heterogeneities.

53 As Vittoria Borsò (2001) claims, this process also implies an ‘abstraction’ from the medium which usually surrounds human perception, i.e. time.

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2.2 Heterocultural networks of signification: from transfer, remediation and transcultural memory to a translational perspective on memory and migration Over the last decade, the field of memory studies has changed significantly and seen an increased interest in mnemonic phenomena which transcend national cultures and widen the focus beyond identity and stability. As already mentioned above, one of the main reasons for the need to develop new theoretical and methodological frameworks has been the reported impact and dimension of contemporary migratory phenomena. While the previous subchapter has focused on memory and its link to identity and mediality, the focus now shifts towards transnational and particularly transcultural frameworks and the conceptualisation of memory transfer and circulation. The main aim here is, therefore, to analyse relevant transcultural and transnational approaches and to develop a theoretical framework which allows for studying remembrance in its frictions and heterogeneity, without, however, denying or overlooking the existence of communality as well as borders and the continued influence of national and ethnic (or ethnicising) discourses. Since even the concepts of collective and cultural memory continue to be defined in conspicuously different ways, it does not seem surprising that neither ‘transcultural’ nor ‘transnational memory’ should be understood as a homogeneous methodological and theoretical field. In fact, under the umbrella of such diverse terms as “cosmopolitan” (Levy and Sznaider 2006), “travelling” (Erll 2011c) or “multidirectional memory” (Rothberg 2009), among others, scholars have developed analytical bodies which extend the scope of traditional memory studies and foreground processes of transfer as well as links between distant and apparently unrelated mnemonic communities and memories. What these approaches generally share is not an idea of some uniform global memory, but rather an interest in processes of mnemonic hybridisation and the transmission of memory across geographical, linguistic or diachronic borders.54 In this context, it is important to be aware of significant differences which are, in part, linked to the nuances and foci implied by the terms ‘transnational’ and ‘transcultural memory’. Generally speaking, transnational approaches are

54 This critique is sometimes mentioned in the case of Levy’s and Sznaider’s study The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age, although the authors explicitly highlight that they understand global culture as a process of hybridisation, in which “global topoi are inscribed into local and national discourse” and “[t]he same symbols have different meanings in different countries” (2006, 9).

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characterised by an interest in the continued importance of national institutions, cultures and values and describe a transformation of the national rather than its disappearance (cf. De Cesari and Rigney 2014b). As De Cesari and Rigney claim, “even in a so-called post-national age, ‘the national’ as framework for identity and memory-making is still a powerful one, indeed one that may be reinforced in response to calls for new types of confederation and integration” (2014b, 6). The term ‘transnational memory’, thus, tends to draw attention to the need for extending the dominant national emphasis while simultaneously foregrounding the importance of still-existing national borders, institutions and frameworks. ‘Transcultural memory’, on the other hand, has come to be widely understood as a “research perspective [ . . . ] which is directed towards mnemonic processes unfolding across and beyond cultures” (Erll 2011c, 9 [emphasis in the original]). Although transcultural frameworks acknowledge the existence of borders and local frameworks, they usually emphasise the movement and mobility of media, narratives and images. Accordingly, they generally foreground how memory can be shared by different groups rather than analysing factors that interfere or hinder memory transfer (De Cesari and Rigney 2014b, 4) or focus on “the hybridization produced by the layering of historical legacies that occurs in the transversal of cultural borders” (Rothberg 2014b, 130). Moreover, ‘transcultural memory’ not only challenges the nation-state as sole possible frame for the articulation of memory, but points to the necessity of deconstructing the underlying conception of discrete cultures and the respective self-contained mnemonic communities (cf. Erll 2011b; Moses and Rothberg 2014). The focus on transcultural and transnational processes is moreover often associated with a theoretical and methodological reorientation of memory studies, which underlines the role of media, transfer and circulation of memories. As Ann Rigney highlights, “shared memories of the past are [understood as] the product of mediation, textualization and acts of communication” (2005, 14). This view implies that media do not merely ‘represent’ remembrance, but it is through media that memories might be shared and become collective or cultural. Rather than framing memory in terms of static sites, monuments or texts, it is conceived of as a process embedded in social and cultural networks (cf. Confino and Fritzsche 2002; Rothberg 2009; Crownshaw 2011b, Bond et al. 2017). The mnemonic value of media and artifacts has been linked to social and cultural processes or even “social action” (Confino and Fritzsche 2002, 5). This does not only mean that cultural memory is conceptualised as dynamic, but also that mnemonic artefacts are thought to acquire and change their mnemonic value through transfer, circulation and use. As a consequence, media and other materials of memory are not analysed in isolation, but in their interaction with their environment. As Richard Crownshaw highlights, the materials of memory are “subject to a continual

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symbolic investment for them to retain their memorative value, and that may entail their substitution or modification by, or convergence with, other materials or media of memory” (2011b, 1–2). The recent work of Astrid Erll and Ann Rigney has been particularly productive in this context since it combines a theorisation of the role of media in mnemonic processes with a focus on memory transfer and transcultural dynamics. Rather than conceiving of media as discrete and distinct technologies, they are understood as complex systems or networks, which always exist in relation to each other (Erll and Rigney 2012b). Although media such as film or television are thought to have distinctive characteristics, they are also thought to constantly evolve in relation to other (often new) technologies (Erll and Rigney 2012b, 3). Moreover, media are analysed in a “complex interplay of various material and social factors” (Erll 2011a, 125) and assumed to acquire and change their mnemonic value in so called “pluri-medial contexts” (Erll 2010, 390), i.e. networks of different medial representations surrounding them, which guide their reception and memorial meaning (Erll 2010; Erll and Wodianka 2008).55 In the context of transcultural processes, or what Erll terms ‘travelling memory’ (2011c) and remembering “across time, space and cultures” (2012, 112), the concepts of “remediation” (Bolter and Grusin 2000) and “premediation” (Grusin 2004) are essential for Erll’s theoretical framework. Initially introduced in the context of new media studies, remediation was theorised by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin as “the representation of one medium in another” (2000, 45). Although the study focuses on the role of remediation as a defining trait of new digital media and contemporary culture, the authors claim that it has been a characteristic of visual media at least since the Renaissance.56 ‘Premediation’ was introduced

55 Erll proposes a broad definition of ‘medium of memory’ (cf. Erll 2004; 2011a). Drawing on Siegfried J. Schmidt’s “multi-level or multi-component model” of media, she distinguishes a material and a social dimension (Erll 2011a, 121). The material dimension refers to three components: 1. media as instruments of communication and means of externalisation; 2. media as technologies with a specific materiality (text, photography, the Internet etc.); and 3. particular mediated memories, i.e. particular material objectifications and aesthetic forms in a specific novel, film or image. Erll highlights that, in the context of memory, the material components only generate a “functional potential” and that it is only within the context of social processes that they cease to be a mere “medial phenomenon” and become a “medium of memory” (2011a, 123). According to Erll it is, thus, within the social dimension that media acquire their ‘status’ as ‘medium of memory’ in terms of production (messages intentionally encoded for posterity in monuments, texts etc.) and reception (forms of institutionalisation and use of media as transmitter of memory). 56 According to Bolter and Grusin, ‘our’ contemporary culture is characterised by a contradictory “double logic of remediation”, which seeks at the same time “immediacy” and “hypermediacy”,

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subsequently in an article published by Richard Grusin in 2004, arguing that the dominant media regime in the U.S. shifted after the attacks on September 11 from remediation to premediation.57 In this essay, Grusin actually applies a broader understanding of remediation, in which not only media may be remediated, but also the past or the future. Premediation then takes a “prophetic or predictive role of reporting what might happen” (Grusin 2004, 23), with media seeking to foresee all possible scenarios of future catastrophic events. Erll admittedly uses Bolter and Grusin’s concepts only as an ‘inspiration’ and adapts them to the “specific concerns of [her] cultural studies approach to memory” (2012, 135). In the context of memory studies, remediation thus comes to describe a kind of ‘working principle’ of cultural memory. Sharing Grusin’s assumption that “there was never a past prior to mediation” (Erll and Rigney 2012b, 18), Erll and Rigney argue that [c]ultural memory relies on [. . .] “repurposing”, that is, taking a “property” (in our case a memory-matter) from one medium and re-using it in another. In this process, memorial media borrow from, incorporate, absorb, critique and refashion earlier memorial media. (2012b, 5)

Bolter and Grusin exclude the mere re-use of a “‘property’ from one medium [. . .] in another” from the concept of remediation, arguing that in these cases the “interplay [of media] happens, if at all, only if the reader or viewer happens to know both versions and can compare them” (2000, 45). However, within the context of memory studies, ‘remediation’ is not limited to representations of one medium in

i.e. it “wants both to multiply its media and to erase all traces of mediation: ideally, it wants to erase its media in the very act of multiplying them” (2000, 5). However, as the authors underline, remediation does not always lead to an experience of immediacy, but potentially also reminds the viewer of the existence of the medium and mediation. 57 Although not theorised as the origin of this development, Grusin argues that “the catastrophe of 9/11” led to a caution about “the immediacy of digital technology”, which is associated with a distress about “the premediated future”, particularly in televisual media (2004, 22). According to Grusin, 9/11 has promoted a desire to be prepared for future catastrophes, which is answered by proliferating remediations of every possible scenario. The concept of ‘premediation’ thus describes a significant change within Western culture and its media environment: while, according to Grusin, in the 1990s and the end of the millennium, media were characterised by an interest in the present and past, “seeking both to erase the signs of their presence in the transparent remediation of history and to foreground their mediation of the present by relentlessly remediating earlier media forms” (2004, 32), the current historical moment of the early millennium is marked by a media environment which focuses on premediating the future. Grusin understands the shift from remediation to premediation as a development already emerging in the 1990s, with 9/11 marking simultaneously the first and “last global live media event” (2004, 20).

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another, but designates all forms of ‘borrowing’ or ‘repurposing’.58 As Erll and Rigney emphasise, every site of memory relies on remediation, on a network of media which implicitly or explicitly refer to technologies or representational logics of earlier media (2012b, 5). Although they acknowledge the ‘double logic of remediation’, the role of immediacy, transparency and hypermediacy are less important within their theorisation of the dynamics of memory. Instead, the focus lies on how social and medial processes interact and create, reinforce, reshape or even replace memory sites and memorial media within the public sphere. ‘Premediation’ is understood in a similar vein and detached from Grusin’s prophetic and predictive role. As Erll claims, the term describes “the fact that existent media which circulate in a given society provide schemata for new experience and its representation” (2012, 111). Whereas Grusin frames premediation in the context of a reaction to the traumatic experience of an unforeseeable catastrophe and a desire to anticipate all possible future disastrous events, Erll conceives of premediation as a process in which mnemonic media always draw on pre-existing forms, patterns and contents. Accordingly, she argues that “it is not only representations of earlier events that shape our understanding and remembrance of later events. Media which belong to more remote cultural spheres, such as art, mythology, religion or law, can exert great power as premediators, too” (Erll 2012, 111). In essence, the framework of remediation and premediation is used in order to define memory as a dynamic process, in which events become sites of memory through repeated representations in different media and over decades or even centuries. The remembrance of an event is understood as the outcome, not of the ‘event’ as such, but of circulating images, myths, topoi and narratives and the way these are institutionalised, disseminated or suppressed. All these medial representations are moreover shaped by pre-existing “patterns and paradigms”, which serve “to transform contingent events into meaningful images and narratives” (Erll 2012, 114). Accordingly, the dynamics of memory rely on the transfer and circulation of media and are subject to ongoing social, political as well as medial constellations. The outcome of this is by no means a homogeneous global memory. On the contrary, while on the individual level lieux de memoire are supposed to provide only ‘cues’ which activate different memories

58 Although this makes perfect sense within this theoretical framework, this ‘redefinition’ may cause some problems when applied to the analysis of aesthetic strategies in visual media and literature. The explicit incorporation of previously existing media in archival art or found footage film, for instance, has a quite different effect than a cinematographic adaptation of a novel or the (re)appropriation of narrative patterns or myths. While all of these phenomena refer to previously existing patterns and forms of signification, they nonetheless constitute specific aesthetic strategies and modes of mnemonic intervention, for instance.

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in every observer, on the collective or cultural level Erll (2011c, 2012) underlines how memories are always localised, i.e. how they always depend on concrete social, local and historical circumstances. In this context, Ann Rigney (2005) has fruitfully pointed out the use of Michel Foucault’s notion of the ‘internal proliferation of meaning’. Drawing on the concept of “scarcity”,59 she claims that “[c]ulture is always in limited supply, and necessarily so, since it involves producing meaning in an ongoing way through selection, representation and interpretation” (2005, 16). What actually is or can be said about the world has therefore never an absolute value, but its value is rather relative, depending on the usefulness in a given situation. As Foucault emphasises in The Archeology of Knowledge: [The] rarity of statements, the incomplete, fragmented form of the enunciative field, the fact that few things, in all, can be said, explain that statements are not, like the air we breathe, an infinite transparency; but things that are transmitted and preserved, that have value, and which one tries to appropriate; that are repeated, reproduced, and transformed; to which pre-established networks are adapted, and to which a status is given in the institutions; things that are duplicated not only by copy or translation, but by exegesis, commentary, and the internal proliferation of meaning. (2010, 119–120)

Rigney applies Foucault’s considerations to sites of memory, claiming that they work as a “principle of economy”, helping to prevent the proliferation of diversified memories by offering “‘cultural frameworks’ for remembrance” (2005, 18). Since Rigney’s focus lies on how memory provides communality, she stresses how lieux de mémoire accommodate disparate memories by concentrating them in a single material or symbolic site. In fact, Rigney uses Foucault’s conception of the process of transmission of statements – or utterances, as she puts it – to develop the notion of ‘recursivity’: “For it is through recursivity – visiting the same places, repeating the same stories – that cultural memory is constructed as such. When acts of remembrance are repeatedly performed, they can become part of a shared frame of reference” (Rigney 2005, 20 [emphasis mine]). This describes quite adequately the regulatory function of sites of memory and even mnemonic communities within discourse. They prevent the proliferation of meaning by limiting, excluding and selecting, and thereby regulating the circulation of mnemonic contents and forms. However, while for Foucault transmission is nonetheless constituted by difference, Rigney ends up suggesting that it relies on identity, on repeating the same stories and visiting the same places. In the end, such an understanding of recursivity runs the risk of concealing precisely what it had initially assumed: the internal proliferation of

59 Rigney translates Foucault’s “loi de rareté” as “scarcity”.

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meaning of every shared memory. For Foucault’s notion of internal proliferation presupposes that “we are difference, that our reason is difference of discourse, our history the difference of times, our selves the difference of masks. That difference, far from being the forgotten and recovered origin, is this dispersion that we are and make” (Foucault 2010, 131). Obviously, Rigney does not assume a static understanding of mnemonic communities, social frameworks or sites of memory. Memory is not conceived of as an unchangeable, given inheritance. On the contrary, her point is that memory is dynamic. Social frameworks of remembrance are seen as the outcome of mnemonic practices and mnemonic communities are set in relation to each other. As Rigney argues, “texts and images circulate and, in the process, they connect up people who, although they themselves never meet face-to-face, may nevertheless [. . .] come to share memories as members of ‘imagined communities’” (2005, 20). However, memory transfer is somehow conceptualised at a different level, as something that also takes place through the circulation of media but between different, apparently clearly demarked groups or communities. Within this notion of different forms of circulation, artistic media play a crucial role for memory transfer, because “[b]y virtue of their aesthetic and fictional properties they are more ‘mobile’ and ‘exportable’ than other forms of representation” (Rigney 2005, 25), and “[a]s such they may be instruments par excellence in the ‘transfer’ from one community to another, and hence as mediators between memory communities” (Rigney 2005, 26 [emphasis mine]). Within this framework, transfer, thus, appears as something that happens posterior to the formation of mnemonic groups. Although borders are not conceived of as static or unchangeable and the (co)existence of several relevant mnemonic communities is emphasised, the definition of a transcultural perspective as something that happens across borders suggests that these borders exist prior to transcultural mobility. As a consequence, transfer between groups remains somehow distinct from and posterior to the general process of circulation of memories within borders. This understanding, however, proves problematic, since it simply assumes different forms and outcomes of media circulation between groups without explaining how this movement across borders differs from the role ascribed to the circulation of media in the production of shared memories and the formation of mnemonic communities in the first place. If transcultural research perspectives mean to avoid the risk of operating within “relatively clear-cut social formations as containers of cultural memory” (Erll 2011c, 10), transfer, exchange and mobility should not be framed as secondary processes. With this I do not mean to deny the existence of borders or the possibility of exchange between groups. Rather I claim that it is necessary to develop a perspective that recognises the important role of borders, but conceives of them as something “posterior to an essential hybridity” (Sakai and

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Solomon 2006, 4). In other words, as Naoki Sakai argues, borders do not exist naturally, but are rather the outcome of processes of bordering: Physical markers such as a river, a mountain range, a wall, and even a line on the ground become a border only when made to represent a certain pattern of social action. In this respect, a border is always man-made and assumes human sociality. [. . .] Even if a border separates, discriminates or distances one group from another, people must be in some social relation for a border to serve as a marker or representation of separation, discrimination, or distance. A border is a trope that serves to represent primordial sociality. Therefore, a border is posterior to social relations, which may well include the act of exclusion, discrimination, or rejection. At the beginning there is an act of bordering. Only where people agree to border can we talk about a border as an institution. Thus, bordering always precedes the border. (2012, 348 [emphasis in the original])

Rephrasing Sakai (2012), one could therefore say that the question is not how memories travel between national or ethnic groups and cultures, but rather how acts of remembrance are “delimited, regulated, and restricted by the rules of the international world” (Sakai 2012, 357), and a corresponding discursive regime that conceives of culture(s), people(s) and language(s) as homogeneous units. What I suggest is therefore adopting a ‘translational perspective’ that shifts the focus from ‘transfer’ or ‘travel’ to the ‘heteroculturality’ of memory. The main idea behind a translational perspective would therefore be to no longer look at how memories journey from one community to another and are transformed within this process. As Doris Bachmann-Medick emphasises, the concept of translation provides a framework that permits to investigate “communication, interaction and media [. . .] as productive intersections” (2016b, 13) subject to particular structures of asymmetries and power relations. Within the scope of memory, a translational perspective therefore promises to provide a theoretical foundation for shifting the focus from movement between mnemonic unities to constant processes of translation and difference as characteristic qualities of remembrance. As a consequence, the lens of translation may help to readdress the role of memory in the negotiation of communality and belonging without laying claim to either identarian essentialism or cosmopolitan universalism. The use of the concept of ‘translation’ in the context of memory requires, however, some contextualisation. While translation had traditionally been a topic of either linguistics or comparative literature, during the 1980s and 1990s it developed into an ‘independent’ discipline. One important aspect of this process of consolidation of ‘translation studies’ was that the subject of inquiry expanded from language and literature to wider cultural, political and historical

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processes.60 As Doris Bachmann-Medick (2009, 2016a) points out, translation research underwent a cultural reorientation, which ultimately facilitated the appropriation of the concept within other fields such as cultural studies or social sciences. Particularly, ‘cultural translation’ has proven a productive, yet controversial, category which also seems promising in the context of memory studies.61 One indispensable text for the theorisation of ‘cultural translation’, which has inspired scholars such as Homi Bhabha, is Walter Benjamin’s “The Task of the Translator” [Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers] (1991, 2000) originally dating from 1923. Benjamin’s complex text is particularly stimulating, because it dismisses not only the link traditionally established between original and translation, but also the binary oppositions of fidelity versus freedom, and word-for-word versus sense-for-sense translation. Benjamin does not conceive of languages (of the original and the translation) and works of art as stable categories with fixed meanings. Instead, he claims that they are in constant transformation and change. As a consequence, his essential argument is that translation cannot aim at communication, or transmitting the meaning of the original, but instead serves “the purpose of expressing the central reciprocal relationship between languages” (Benjamin 2000, 17). 60 Obviously, as the famous example of Roman Jakobson’s essay “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation” (1959) illustrates, translation had already been conceived of as not exclusively linguistic before the so-called ‘cultural turn’ in translation studies. Jakobson proposed a distinction between 1) intralingual translation or rewording (“an interpretation of verbal signs by other signs of the same language”); 2) interlingual translation or translation proper (“an interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language”); and 3) intersemiotic translation (“an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems”) (Jakobson 1959, 233). The increasing metaphorical use and application of translation to non-linguistic phenomena is not uncontroversial within translation studies. For discussions of different possible uses of the term ‘translation’ cf., for example, Hanenberg (2015). 61 Although postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha (2004) has probably provided the most influential definition within the realm of the study of culture, it is important to bear in mind that the combination of culture and translation emerged in several disciplinary contexts. In cultural anthropology, for instance, translation is framed as the activity of the anthropologist, who seeks to deliver a comprehensive account of the foreign culture. In contexts of inter-cultural communication or debates about multiculturalism, cultural translation has also often been used in the sense of bridge-building between different groups. As Buden and Nowotny (2009) argue, this use known as “inter-cultural translation” serves as a metaphor for a number of interactions between communities or individuals of supposedly distinct cultural groups, which aim at increasing comprehension, tolerance and inclusion. This understanding of translation, obviously, stands in sharp contrast to Bhabha’s ‘cultural translation’ as well as other deconstructionist approaches or uses of ‘translation’ within cultural and translation studies, which I intend to appropriate for the context of a translational perspective on memory.

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By associating translation to a reflection about the relationship between languages, Benjamin detaches the theorisation of translation from the study of successful or unsuccessful transmission or transference and integrates it into a complex analysis of processes of signification. Drawing on the distinction between the “intended object” [das Gemeinte] and the “mode of intention” [die Art des Meinens] (Benjamin 2000, 18), Benjamin deconstructs the illusory correspondence between signifier and signified. According to Benjamin, every language is distinct in its ‘mode of intention’, i.e. the way how the ‘intended object’ is expressed or signified. However, languages also share a “suprahistorical kinship, which, as he highlights, “rests upon the intention underlying each language as a whole – an intention, however, which no single language can attain by itself, but which is realized only by the totality of their intentions supplementing each other” (Benjamin 2000, 18). As a consequence, a translator should not aim to convey the meaning of the original, but must seek to “lovingly and in detail incorporate the original’s mode of signification” (Benjamin 2000, 21). By doing so, translation may contribute not only to an enrichment of the translating language, but also to expose the illusion of the apparent correspondence or unity between signifier and signified in the language of the original. In essence, for Benjamin, translation therefore constitutes a ‘space’ where the fragmentary character of languages, the impossibility to fully attain the “intended object” through one particular “mode of intention”, may materialise. Hence, Benjamin’s “task of the translator” refers to something already inscribed in “all great texts [. . .] between the lines” (Benjamin 2000, 23): a translatedness or difference that refers to a conceptualisation of languages not only as being subject to constant transformations, but as essentially decentred and fragmented modes of signifying. Homi Bhabha (2004) extends this notion of a decentralised and ambivalent structure of reference and meaning with his concept of “Third Space of enunciation”. Bhabha challenges an understanding of culture as a homogeneous and unified entity, whose source of authentication lies in a shared historical origin. As he highlights, “[i]t is only when we understand that all cultural statements and systems are constructed in this contradictory and ambivalent space of enunciation, that we begin to understand why hierarchical claims to the inherent originality or ‘purity’ of cultures are untenable” (Bhabha 2004, 55). For his appropriation of translation, Bhabha explicitly draws on Benjamin’s deconstructionist vision of languages and applies it to culture and “migrant life” (2004, 321). As he argues, [l]iving [. . .] caught in-between a ‘nativist’, even nationalist, atavism and a postcolonial metropolitan assimilation, the subject of cultural difference becomes a problem that Walter Benjamin has described as the irresolution, or liminality of ‘translation’, the element of resistance in the process of transformation, ‘that element in translation which does not lend itself to translation’. (Bhabha 2004, 321)

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Bhabha is therefore interested in the “foreignness of languages” that, according to him, describes the “performativity of translation as the staging of cultural difference” (2004, 235). The foreign element of migrant or diasporic culture and identity manifests itself as indeterminacy, i.e. as the untranslatable, that which cannot be integrated into binary oppositions of inside-out, or cultural identity versus difference. As such, it is not only a space of hybridity and transgression, but also a point of resistance against cultural binarisms. Cultural translation is thus understood as a process of negotiation, which makes the untranslatable visible and consequently unsettles smooth cultural categorisations. Not simply as a foreign element, but as an indicator of the essential intermediacy of culture. Harish Trivedi, in a somewhat exemplary critique of Bhaha, is, therefore, correct in pointing out that cultural translation does not correspond to the translation of cultures and that “[i]n fact, it spells [. . .] the very extinction and erasure of translation as we have always known and practiced it” (2005, n.p.). Significantly, however, Trivedi reads this erasure as a dystopian image of a world in which translation between distinct languages and cultural entities is extinguished for good in favour of some hegemonic global-English. Although addressing the pressing issue of power relations between languages, he unfortunately falls back into an identitarian relativism, so frequently mobilised in the name of rights to cultural difference and resistance to foreign domination. Trivedi’s critique actually illustrates the pitfalls of simply dismissing the crucial argument for Bhabha’s cultural translation: he overlooks that ‘cultural translation’ is mobilised as the dissolution of binary divisions, not in favour of homogenising unification, but, on the contrary, in favour of the recognition of an essential internal heterogeneity and alterity. In this context, Naoki Sakai’s work may prove particularly productive to better understand the deeper implications of the notion of internal heterogeneity and its relationship to translation. In the introduction to Translation & Subjectivity, Sakai (1999) proposes a re-conceptualisation of translation based on a critique of the idea of homogeneous linguistic and cultural units. Grounded on his situation as a scholar writing for ‘multiple linguistic audiences’ (in his case English and Japanese), he problematises the conventional understanding of translation as bridging between two separate languages. As he emphasises, “[t]his view of translation always presumes the unity of one language and that of another because their separation is taken for granted or already a given; it is never understood to be something drawn or inscribed” (2012, 349). Sakai’s intriguing move is to draw attention precisely to the process of drawing or inscribing a border between languages. Rather than pre-given, according to Sakai, linguistic units come into being through a particular form of representing translation, which only “became possible as a consequence of a new discursive transformation in the eighteenth century” (2012, 2). Drawing on “Kantian schematism”, Sakai terms this new

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“discursive apparatus” “the schema of cofiguration” (1999, 15): “a means by which a national community represents itself to itself, thereby constituting itself as a subject [. . .] by making visible the figure of an other with which it engages in a translational relationship” (1999, 15–16). As Sakai points out, [t]he modern is marked by the introduction of the schema of co-figuration, whithout which it is difficult to imagine a nation or ethnicity as a homogeneous sphere. As Antione Berman taught us about the intellectual history of translation and Romanticism in Germany, the economy of the foreign, that is how the foreign must be allocated in the production of the domestic language, has played the decisive role in the poietic – and poetic – identification of the national language. Without exception, the formation of a modern national language involves institutionalization of translation according to the regime of translation. (2012, 353–354 [emphasis in the original])

This ‘regime of translation’ is closely associated with a certain conceptualisation of communication, which Sakai (1999) describes as “homolingual address”, i.e. the assumption that translation is only required when one addresses someone who is not part of the same supposedly homogeneous linguistic community. Accordingly, translation is framed as an exceptional act, which is required because “incommensurability exists not necessarily between addresser and addressee but essentially between one linguistic community and another” (Sakai 1999, 10). In other words, Sakai argues that homolingual address assumes a correspondence between addressing and communicating, suggesting that within one linguistic community addressees usually understand and react in similar ways to what has been said or written. Yet, the practice of “writing for multiple audiences” has led Sakai to reconsider this manner of addressing (1999, 3). As an alternative, he proposes the “heterolingual address”: “to reach out to the addressees without either an assurance of immediate apprehension or an expectation of uniform response from them” (Sakai 1999, 4). This form of address highlights the difference between addressing and communicating, establishing the former as prior to the latter and thus emphasises the performative character of communicating. As Sakai underlines, communication actually fails very often and not always because two linguistic communities are involved. Instead, communication fails because it “takes place only as ‘exscription’”;62 since the attempt to communicate implies that one has to expose oneself to “a certain exteriority that cannot be reduced to the externality of a referent to a signification” (1999, 7). As Sakai emphasises, homolingual address “assumes the normalcy of reciprocal and transparent communication so that translation does not make sense unless a positively heterogeneous medium is involved” (1999, 8). Heterolingual address, on the contrary, does not sustain this

62 For his notion of ‘exscription’ Sakai draws on Jean-Luc Nancy (1993).

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idea of normalcy, but instead presumes that “every utterance can fail to communicate because heterogeneity is inherent in any medium, linguistic or otherwise” (Sakai 1999, 8). As a consequence, within the framework of heterolingual address translation is no longer understood as an exceptional act, but rather as a process that, “in principle, occurs whenever the addressee accepts a delivery from the addresser” (Sakai 1999, 9). By juxtaposing homolingual and heterolingual address, Sakai is able to distinguish forms and processes of translation from its representation within the modern regime of translation. While he analyses the impact of the schema of cofiguration within the modern regime of translation, he simultaneously proposes a redefinition of translation as a social relationship permeating every semiotic activity. In this context, heterolinguality refers to an essential alterity or otherness of the addressee, which does not correspond to him or her not belonging to the same linguistic and cultural community but characterises address in general. What Sakai suggests is in essence a fundamental reframing of linguistic and cultural difference by conceiving of indeterminacy as “the foundational modality of sociality” (Sakai 2012, 357). Sakai’s reflection about translation therefore acquires critical importance beyond the realm of the linguistic, because it describes a process of “political labor to overcome points of incommensurability in the social” (Sakai 2012, 350). Yet within the modern regime of translation, this indeterminacy and incommensurability in the social is cofiguratively represented as specific difference between linguistic and cultural units. As Sakai emphasises, the idea of “the unity of national language ultimately serves as a schema for nationality” (2012, 352 [emphasis in the original]) and is therefore closely linked to the representational “regime of the nation-state” and “methodological nationalisms permeating knowledge production in the Humanities” (2012, 348). In “The Translational Study of Culture and the Indeterminacy of People(s) and Language(s)”, Jon Solomon (2016) takes up Sakai’s argument and extends it explicitly to the (transnational) study of culture. Solomon’s argument focuses on linguistic, ethnic and cultural “indeterminacy” in order to develop “a nonnational, non-normative, and, finally non-anthropological understanding of the past as well as the present and the future” (2016, 69). The aim is to engage in a “critique not just of national narratives but also of the fundamental assumptions about human collectivity (species-being) and knowledge” (Solomon 2016, 69). Solomon’s critique unfolds on a philosophical as well as political level and challenges the disciplinary structuration of the humanities as well as the use of anthropological difference as a means of population management. In sum, Solomon claims that – although usually associated with the project of eliminating prejudice and superstitious myths in favour of liberty and equality – in its essence modern postEnlightenment thought is, in truth, about securing anthropological knowledge and

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institutionalising anthropological difference based on scientific reasoning. According to Solomon, this anthropological project developed through the realisation of a classificatory system for all biological forms of life, including humans, and led to what he describes as “the institution of human speciation” (2016, 70). Solomon thus de-naturalises discourses of ethnical, linguistic and cultural differences, foregrounding how deeply entrenched contemporary scholarship continues to be in post-Enlightenment thought: We simply lack the vocabulary to talk about people(s) and language(s) in a way that recognizes their essential fluid and unbounded nature – not to mention the long history of repression of difference, homogenization and normalization undertaken under the nation-state. [. . .] The study of culture, as it has been institutionally practiced until now, is complicitous with a racism that is broader, and no less profound for being subtle, than any phenomenon known under that name today. It might be called an anthropologism, with all the negative connotations of the word ‘racism’ attached. In the face of such anthropologism, the only form of study that would make any sense would be devoted, in accordance with the indeterminacy of language(s) and people(s) and the plasticity of the human, to subjective formation. (Solomon 2016, 72–73 [emphasis in the original])

Drawing on Sakai and Solomon, a translational perspective thus only makes sense if it seriously considers identities and specific differences as secondary discursive entities. Translation is not to be conceived of as a bridging between two linguistic and cultural communities or as transference of a message or information from one language into another. Translation is moreover not to be framed as an exceptional activity, which is only necessary when two different sign systems or communities are involved. This does not mean that it is merely used in a metaphorical way. Instead, translation is re-conceptualised based on the recognition of an essential heterogeneity or indeterminacy of people(s), culture(s) and language(s). Conceived within this framework, the power relations involved in translational processes are not ignored. On the contrary, the way translation has been implicated in the ‘anthropological project’ is analysed. However, rather than simply highlighting how translation has been used in the name of the ‘schema of cofiguration’, it is also re-framed in order to make visible how translation constitutes a moment in which hybridity, indeterminacy and the truly heterocultural modes of signification within any supposedly discrete culture may become visible. Applied to memory studies, a translational perspective thus implies a reconceptualisation of memory, which conceives of culture and memory as intrinsically heterocultural. Memory comes to be understood as a process consisting of endless translations, whose outcome is not any homogeneous mnemonic

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community, but heterocultural networks of signification.63 Within this translational process, artistic media are thought to not only circulate memories, but, instead, to participate actively in remediating and transcribing previously existing media and mediated memories by drawing on different explicit and implicit forms of incorporating, referencing and quoting. Rather than centred around a relatively stable set of identity-constitutive texts, myths and other shared reference points, memory is thus supposed to unfold in a constant process of (re)transcribing and (re)translating ‘the multiplicity of things’ into fragilely meaningful and communicable remembrance. The translational perspective does not refer only to this ‘transcriptive logic’ of referencing and quoting, though. It moreover expressedly points towards an indeterminacy of cultures, languages, peoples and memories by assuming an inherent heterogeneity within any of these entities. Borders do actually assume an important role within this framework. Collective remembrance is always involved in power relations, and, as has been underlined by many memory scholars, particularly in the context of nation-states it has very often been put at the service of maintaining the status quo. Instead of denying limits and boundaries, a translational perspective rather suggests the de-naturalisation of these borders as well as cultural memory in terms of a specific memory of a group, which is comparable to a specific memory of another group. Taking into consideration the indeterminacy of people(s) and language(s) does not only require dismissing the idea of transfer as a process happening to already formed memories between groups and across borders. This reconceptualisation of memory also presupposes the recognition that the categorisation and identification of specific mnemonic communities and memory cultures is actually not only an analysis of existing mnemonic practices, but also part of the process that consolidates and brings them into being in the first place.

63 Astrid Erll also suggests conceiving of memory cultures (Erinnerungskulturen) as “eine unablässige Übersetzung von Gedächtnismedien” [an unceasing translation of memory media] (2011b, 137). Accordingly, memory cultures should rather be framed as a field that is not constituted within clearly separable territories or discrete groups, but instead by movements across these spaces and social formations. In other words, memory cultures seem to be the outcome of routes rather than roots (2011b).

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2.3 A translational perspective on ethical and political dimensions of memory: heterocultural ‘archives of implication’ and the remembrance of the refugee presence By now it has become a commonplace in public and academic discourses to acknowledge that remembrance and collective memories are important political and social processes, which can be potentially used as instruments of power. Memory is usually also associated with a strong moral and ethical claim, which is grounded on the idea that remembrance produces and solidifies shared values for the future. As Aleida Assmann claims, “within the medium of memory [Erinnerung] one sets common goals for the future in the present” (2013b, 21 [translation mine]).64 Holocaust memory and its demand to remember in order to assure that history will not repeat itself is certainly an illustrative example. However, like memory in general, usually this ethical dimension is also tied to the bonds of communities and their common values and identity. As such, memory is supposed to solidify social ties and is associated not only with a sense of belonging, but also compassion and identification among group members. As Avishai Margalit claims, memory is “the cement that holds thick relations together and communities of memory are the obvious habitat for thick relations” (2003, 8). By distinguishing thick and thin social relations, Margalit, in fact, argues that memory regulates our relationships to close and emotionally significant persons, while it has almost no hold on our behavior and attitude towards remote people or strangers.65 As such, his position exemplifies what Michael Rothberg and Yasemin Yildiz describe as the “key assumption underlying organicist notions of memory”, namely that empathy, communality and “thickness of social relations requir[e] a common history” (2011, 43). The link commonly established between memory and mnemonic communities has, therefore, also deep ethical and moral implications. In fact, it suggests that remembrance of a shared past ‘naturally’ creates and solidifies bonds among individuals simply because they perceive it as their ‘own’. The persuasiveness of this logic is undeniable and probably explains why still today ethical relations among group members are usually framed as ‘naturally’ given, while strangers remain somehow ‘naturally’ excluded. The assumption that memory has little or

64 The German text reads: “Im Medium der Erinnerung setzt man sich in der Gegenwart für die Zukunft gemeinsame Ziele”. 65 Margalit (2003) explicitly distinguishes ethics and morality, confining ethics to thick social relations, while morality guides the behaviour and attitudes towards strangers or remote people (thin social relations).

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no hold on our relations with strangers or ‘others’ is obviously extremely important in the context of memories of forced but also voluntary migration. For it not only implies that immigrants have to make a particular effort to connect with the ‘foreign past’ of the receiving country – usually by relating it to the history of their country of origin –, but also suggests that memory, empathy and identification are organised among lines of pre-established ‘kinship’ and that therefore the remembrance of a past that is not perceived as one’s ‘own’ has little or no impact on our ethics, morals or politics. Aspects such as the relationship of remembrance and human rights,66 or the influence of memory discourses on enhancing or hindering empathy or even identification with ‘others’, have consequently only seldom been the focus of analysis in memory studies – at least in the humanities. In addition, attempts at linking memory with more ‘universalistic’ ethic claims and global forms of solidarity have often been treated with suspicion. As the discussion around the ‘universalisation’ or ‘globalisation’ of Holocaust memory67 – its emergence as a universal trope and global symbol for evil – best illustrates, there are, in fact, troubling paradoxes linked to the de-contextualisation of memory: “while Holocaust comparisons”, as Andreas Huyssen convincingly argues, “may rhetorically energize some discourses of traumatic memory, they may also work as screen memories or simply block insight into specific local histories” (2000, 24). In other words, the dominance of the Holocaust in mnemonic discourses may not only repress the memory of local histories of oppression and violence, as has been discussed in the context of the USA. The comparison with other genocidal events and persecution of minorities may also obscure historical particularities and differences, and even risks being exploited for revisionist visions of the past that ultimately trivialise the Holocaust. However, as Huyssen (2010, 2014) also recognises, in view of pressing social issues such as migration, globalisation and mass cultural technologies, it has become indispensable to re-conceptualise memory’s link to individual and human rights, ethics, and politics. An important example of such an attempt to rethink memory and its moralpolitical impacts in an age of globalisation is Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider’s concept of “cosmopolitan memory” (2002, 2006). Highlighting the “inauthentic” nature of national memory, the authors aim to devitalise common objections against global memory and its possibilities to shape the “everyday local experiences and moral life worlds” of an increasingly significant number of

66 For a discussion of memory discourses and human rights see Huyssen (2010, 2014). 67 For a discussions of the ‘globalisation’ or ‘universalisation’ of the Holocaust see for instance Alexander (2009); A. Assmann (2010b); Craps and Rothberg (2011).

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people (2006, 2). According to the authors, in the beginning of the nation-building process, national communities were far from being perceived as authentic. Identification through remembrance did not come naturally, but was instead an instrument for constructing a shared identity with quite remote and unknown others. While the printing press was the central institution in the emergence of the national imagined community, Levy and Sznaider defend that, at present, globalised electronic media play a similar role in “the formation of an imagined world community” (2006, 37). In fact, they argue that contemporary globalisation parallels the process of nation-building and its hold on memory: “The nation was the global when compared with the local communities that preceded it” (2006, 33 [emphasis in the original]). Accordingly, Levy and Sznaider claim that through globalised media events “the world is transported into the local” and “[d]istant others can be part of strong feelings of everyday life” (2006, 38). However, ‘cosmopolitan memory’ does not simply assume an identification with any ‘distant other’ one sees on television or the Internet. Rather, identification presupposes that global or distant events have a resonance on the local level. In fact, it is precisely an ethnocentric focus that the authors hold responsible for the disposition to adopt and behave according to universal values. Accordingly, Levy and Sznaider defend that “[t]he basis of a wider shared morality is identification with distant others. However, this is produced through a connection of the global with the local. The new identity is produced not instead of the old but by transforming it – just as in the building of nations” (2006, 38). Although Levy and Sznaider provide interesting insights into the role of global media and particularly Holocaust memory in an international context, some caution seems necessary regarding the understanding of global (Holocaust) memory as an exclusively “progressive development that fosters solidarity and human rights” (Rothberg 2009, 264). While national communities are anything but natural and national memories are certainly not authentic in the sense of being unmediated, the notion of an ‘imagined world community’ seems nonetheless highly problematic. Even if there are some similarities, the parallel between the process of globalisation and nation building seems somehow flawed. More importantly still, as the term ‘cosmopolitan’ itself suggests, the authors seem to overemphasise a positive vision of this new hybridised, contemporary form of memory. According to Levy and Sznaider, “cosmopolitan memory” not only challenges national myths self-critically but overcomes the focus “on a ‘friend-versus-foe’ dichotomy” and places its focus not on heroes, but on victims (2006, 192). In view of the developments in Europe and the USA during the first two decades of the twenty-first century, it seems more than debatable that Western societies are currently experiencing a process of ‘cosmopolitanisation’ in which transnational memoryscapes foster solidarity and moral obligations with ‘others’. In fact,

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the debates surrounding the so-called ‘refugee’ or ‘migrant crisis’, current migration and asylum policies, as well as the enduring success of populist right-wing parties with openly xenophobic and racist agendas in several European countries seem to clearly contradict Levy and Sznaider’s diagnosis that “[c]osmopolitan memory [. . .] is establishing itself in Europe as the new ‘European remembrance’” (2006, 201). In contrast to Levy and Sznaider, in Prosthetic Memory Alison Landsberg focuses on memory’s ability to enable empathy “across existing stratifications of race, class, and gender” (2004, 22) without necessarily providing any shared group identity. ‘Prosthetic memories’ are conceptualised as the product of global, commodified mass culture and its respective technologies and media (particularly cinema). According to Landsberg, these technologies “open up a world of images outside a person’s lived experience, creating a portable, fluid and nonessentialist form of memory” (2004, 18). In other words, Landsberg argues that the mnemonic technologies developed throughout the twentieth century not only made it increasingly possible to disseminate memories of distant pasts but actually enabled people to take on memories to which they do not have any ‘natural’ biological, national or ethnic claim. What is particularly interesting is that although these ‘prosthetic memories’ are supposed to originate in mass-mediated experiences, they are nonetheless expected to shape the way a person thinks and feels and may even “be instrumental in articulating an ethical relation to the other” (2004, 21). The central point here is that people do not assume ‘prosthetic memories’ as if they were their own. On the contrary, they are inhabited as the memories of others and therefore recognise the distance and difference of oneself to these memories. As Landsberg highlights, ‘prosthetic memories’ presuppose empathy and not sympathy, acknowledging therefore the “alterity of identification” and the necessity of negotiating distances (2004, 135). What Landsberg, thus, shares with Levy and Sznaider is a positive vision of contemporary, globalised and mass-mediated mnemonic practices. Although she underlines that mass cultural technologies do not necessarily promote empathy, the focus is nonetheless set on the capacity of (even commodified) cinematic, literary and other artistic representations to encourage thinking beyond one’s own immediate needs and desires. This emphasis is understandable, since, like Levy and Sznaider, Landsberg writes against the assumption that global, commodified mass-mediated memories necessarily produce problematic or simply inauthentic remembrance. However, the positivist emphasis nonetheless risks producing an analytic imbalance, which overlooks the problematic aspects of providing an all too comfortable morality based on smooth good vs. evil oppositions, as well as

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the power relations regulating whose traumatic or violent pasts enter the global mediascape and whose remain excluded. Michael Rothberg (2009, 2013, 2014a, 2014b, 2019) proposes a less prescriptive and more multifaceted account of the ethical and political dimensions of memory. Indeed, Rothberg foregrounds not only how different histories are entangled in each other, but also the grey-zones of how subjects are implicated in violent pasts and presents. Recognising how memories of injustice and violent pasts have often been framed in competitive settings against each other, Rothberg focuses on particular situations in which different histories have been articulated and remembered productively in relation to each other. While Multidirectional Memory discussed Holocaust memory’s “dialogic interactions with the legacies of colonialism, decolonization, racialization, and slavery” (Rothberg 2009, 265), subsequent research addresses remembrance in migratory settings (Rothberg and Yildiz 2011; Rothberg 2014b) as well as the complex subject positions involved in multidirectional memory (Rothberg 2013, 2014a). Interestingly, the “ethical dimension of multidirectional memory” is understood not so much in terms of a particular relationship to others or a human rights regime, but rather as the attempt of making visible or “uncovering hidden histories, traumas, and social divisions” (Rothberg 2009, 272). Inspired by Alain Badiou’s “ethics of truth” (2001), Rothberg suggests that the “ethical subject emerges out of the investigation of gaps in the present” and “seeks to foster not [. . .] societal unification via history but rather attentiveness to the multidirectional echoes that constitute the terrain of politics” (2009, 272–273). Instead of merely recognising the manifold expressions and forms of solidarity and exclusion produced by memory, Rothberg thus links remembrance to an ethical obligation or demand: “[B]y virtue of the accident of birth, national (and other) subjects inherit the imperative to investigate the multiple forms of violence that have been perpetrated in their name” (2009, 279). The important point here is that Rothberg draws attention to different subject positions and thereby challenges a merely positive notion of identification, empathy and solidarity with victims and marginalised groups. As Rothberg argues, [t]he concept of implication asks us to think how we are enmeshed in histories and actualities beyond our apparent and immediate reach, how we help produce history through impersonal participation rather than direct perpetration. It shifts attention to the other side of precariousness: to complicity and privilege. In calling for this change of course, my argument is not that we should do away with the concepts of vulnerability and precariousness (nor of trauma, victimization, and perpetration), but rather that a shift of focus to implication and implicated subjects may help us address pressing political issues, including climate change, globalization, and the transgenerational legacies of slavery, genocide, and indigenous dispossession. (Rothberg 2014a, n.p.)

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As a consequence, Rothberg suggests investigating memory not only from the perspective of militant or minority positions, as was the focus of Multidirectional Memory, but to pursue a more comprehensive “archive of implication” (2013). This “archive of implication” is thought to include “various modes of historical relation that do not necessarily fall under the more direct forms of participation associated with traumatic events [. . .] encompass[ing] bystanders, beneficiaries, latecomers of the postmemory generation and others connected ‘prosthetically’ to pasts they did not directly experience” (2013, 40). It is important to highlight that the recognition and exploration of different subject positions is not only directed towards the past. Instead, it is meant to actively participate in understanding the complex legacies of exploration and violence in their dialogical, multilayered networks of signification in the present. As Rothberg argues in The Implicated Subject, implication is a means to think about collective responsibility in a realm where people are entangled in injustices that fall outside the purview of the law and where categories into which we like to sort the innocent and guilty become troubled. Indeed, implication consists precicely of those discomforting forms of belonging to a context of injustice that cannot be grasped immediately or directly because they seem to involve spatial, temporal, or social distances or complex causal mechanisms. (2019, 8)

While the subject positions suggested by the notion of implication “move us away from overt questions of guilt and innocence and leave us in a more complex and uncertain moral and ethical terrain” (Rothberg 2013, 40), they also allow us to rethink the ethical and political dimensions of memory within the framework of a translational perspective on memory. Within this framework, memory is no longer understood as a medium within which shared values of a mnemonic community are established and confirmed for a common future. Faced with memory not as a means of merely promoting solidarity and providing a binding frame for mnemonic communities but as an inherently heterocultural process of constant translations, it seems rather necessary to shift the analytical focus beyond established mnemonic groups. Within the realm of remembrance, the manifold subject positions and forms of implication in past and present may become visible, discussed and contested. By shedding light on the complex heterocultural networks of signification and the indeterminacy existing within every mnemonic community, this not only opens up a ground on which apparently distinct histories of repression and violence may be thought together, but also enables us to critically scrutinise mystical pasts and national or ethnic memories in order to participate in the creation of alternative forms of solidarity. In this light, the question of the memory of the refugee presence in the arts and commodified mass culture does not merely entail the possibility or impossibility of enabling empathy or an ethical relation to the ‘other’. Instead, it seeks

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to understand how different subject positions may be negotiated and how memory may contribute to modes of exclusion and maintaining hegemonic power structures as well as making visible dividing structures and processes of marginalisation. Particularly in the context of migration and flight, it seems necessary to develop alternative notions of national or diasporic memory68 that allow us to challenge clear-cut categorisations and address the continuities among racialisation, colonialism and immigration. The translational perspective on memory does not therefore imply any normative outcome but instead aims to shed light on how mnemonic media are entangled in hegemonic power structures. In this context, the question is not how different artistic media reflect, articulate or critique implication but rather how they (re)produce and (re)inscribe the refugee presence in the present. Without presupposing either a positive outcome of remembrance in the form of new modes of solidarity or negative impacts in the form of new structures of exclusion, a heterocultural archive of implication may shed light on how artistic and mass cultural negotiations of the memory of the refugee presence may participate in reinforcing or challenging established forms of communality.

68 Andreas Huyssen (2007) points out that although diaspora is often assumed to represent the opposite of the nation, in terms of the formation of memories and mnemonic communities, diaspora and nation often have more parallels and affinities than it seems at first sight. As Huyssen argues: “[i]maginaries of belonging with their constructed deep histories, deliberate forgettings, and false memories, do not only characterise nations. The attempt to create a unified homeland, of the history of displacement, and the desire to return, may be as much a temptation for the diaspora as the creation of a unitary memory is for the nation. Often enough it is precisely the national mechanism of exclusion by a majority that generates and strengthens this diasporic counter-nationalism” (2007, 83). However, as the work of various scholars in cultural and postcolonial studies and concepts such as ‘queer diaspora’ illustrate, there are, of cause, also several examples where ‘diaspora’ is mobilised to undercut forms of ethnic, religious and state nationalisms.

3 An affiliative (post)memory of the ‘condition of exile’: postmnemonic archival critique and the ethics of memory in Daniel Blaufuks’s Sob Céus Estranhos Daniel Blaufuks’s inter-art project Sob Céus Estranhos [Under Strange Skies] has a certain pioneering role in addressing the memory of the refugee presence before and during World War II within the artistic and public sphere in Portugal. While historiographical and journalistic research about the role of Portugal as a country of asylum and transit station had already begun in the late 1980s, the refugees continued to be almost absent from the public sphere when Blaufuks first presented the film Sob Céus Estranhos / Under Strange Skies at the film festival Indie Lisboa in 2002. The essayistic documentary received positive critical and academic attention and was shown not only in Portugal, but also in the United States and Canada. Moreover, in 2007 the Lisbon based editor Tinta da China published a book version of the work with the title Sob Céus Estranhos – Uma História de Exílio [Under Strange Skies – A Story of Exile], which also included a DVD of the film. In the year of its publication, it received the award for the Best Photography Book of the Year in the international category at Photoespaña. While film and book are both bilingual, in the book the English translation of Blaufuks’s narrative is added at the end, whereas the DVD contains two independent versions in Portuguese and English. As a descendant of Jewish refugees who grew up in Lisbon, Blaufuks approaches the topic of transit, asylum, and exile in Portugal before, during and after World War II through the lens of the story of his own family. He retraces the history of his maternal grandparents, and particularly his grandfather Herbert August, who fled from Nazi Germany before the outbreak of war and arrived in Portugal in 1936. In contrast to the vast majority of Jewish refugees, the couple decided to settle in Portugal instead of continuing their journey to the United States as they had initially planned. However, Daniel Blaufuks’s art project is not limited to a familial approach. Instead, it intersects the private with the official, making visible how the past of his grandparents is entangled with the history of World War II and Portugal’s role as country of (temporary) asylum and how both personal and public memory are interconnected. The following chapter is divided into three subchapters. It begins with Daniel Blaufuks’s aesthetic approach to his familial past and the role of Portugal as country of exile and transit station between 1933 and 1945. The analysis then https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110733440-003

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proceeds by focusing on the referential web mobilised in film and book and concludes by discussing how Blaufuks’s inter-art project negotiates his notion of ‘condition of exile’ and the relationship with the ‘refugee other’.

3.1 The materiality of (post)memory: regarding the traces of a familial past Daniel Blaufuks’s Sob Céus Estranhos is, as Nuno Crespo (2007) points out, difficult to classify. It is all at once: a film, a book, and a reworked and remediated archive. Working with found material (photographs, footage, texts and official documents), it combines literature with visual media, and works with the relations and tensions, limits and overlaps of different media. Both versions – film and book – consist of an arrangement of ‘after images’:69 re-photographed and re-filmed private and official artefacts. Blaufuks intersects images of family photographs, home movies and material items related to his family with photographs of refugees in Lisbon, quotes from texts by intellectuals who transited through Lisbon, as well as other official archival documents and footage. The visual media are combined with a narrative voice identified as the proper artist.70 The narrative unfolds around the visual media, using them as anchors for the history not only of Blaufuks’s own family, but also of all the other Jewish refugees before and during World War II who sought refuge and passage through Portugal and whose entry was in part denied. While the book version begins directly with Blaufuks’s narrative and remediated images of the Jewish cemetery in Lisbon, in the film version these are preceded by footage taken from the 1938 first edition of the official Portuguese newsreel Jornal Português reporting on the visit of German and British warships to Lisbon. Emphasising how the warships came to Portugal’s capital in peace, the newsreel footage foreshadows Portugal’s official neutrality in the imminent war. As the narrator of the newsreel proudly announces: “Lisboa sorri, toda branca, toda linda” [Lisbon smiles,

69 In an interview with Kathleen Gomes, first published in the Portuguese Newspaper Público in 2010 but also available at the website of the artist, Blaufuks uses the term ‘after images’ in order to characterise his method of working with already existing images to produce a new ‘corpus’ (Gomes 2010). James E. Young intruduces the notion of after-images in his book At Memory’s Edge to discuss avant-garde artistic projects of the generation born after the Holocaust and their negotiations of a necessarily “hypermediated experience of memory” (2000, 01). 70 In the Portuguese version of the film, the narration is delivered in Blaufuks own voice. In the English version Balufuks’s narrative is spoken by Luka Clarke.

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all white and all beautiful] (Sob Céus Estranhos/Under Strange Skies, 00:02:12).71 The film thus opens with the official propagandistic image of Portugal as a neutral safe haven, which remained unaffected by the global conflict. However, the propagandistic discourse of the Estado Novo is not developed further. Instead, it serves to inscribe the history of Blaufuks’s family within the wider context of World War II and its memory in Portugal. These newsreel sequences are correspondingly succeeded by remediated private footage of the Jewish cemetery in Lisbon (Figure 1). With these images, Blaufuks switches to the montage characteristic of film and book, which consists of the juxtaposition of visual archival material of private and public origin and a personal narrative with Blaufuks in the role of narrator that is occasionally interrupted by quotes from writers that transited through Lisbon or his grandfather. Accompanied by remediated footage of tombs, the narrator links the images to the refugees and Blaufuks’s own memory: When I walk among the graves of the Jewish graveyard in Lisbon, I recognize the names on the stones, as in a village cemetery. Some are of my grandparents’ closest friends, those who were part of the canasta group, others of people who attended, as we did, the synagogue on holy days or the community center on Saturday afternoons. Other names are older than these. Grandparents, uncles or parents, who also managed to escape. Of the 50 to 200 thousand people who passed through Lisbon, only around fifty remained. (Blaufuks 2007, iii)

By opening the personal narrative with images of the Jewish cemetery, Blaufuks localises his artistic project and his memory work. Motivated by the death of his maternal grandfather, Herbert August, the artist seeks out to remember transit and exile at a moment when he is losing those who experienced it at first hand. Blaufuks’s memory work does not refer to a past the artist witnessed himself. Instead, he tries to make sense of the traumatic journey of his grandparents and its meaning in the present. Sob Céus Estranhos is, therefore, not only a work about the refugee experience in Lisbon, but also a working through of the impact that this traumatic past of his grandparents continues to have on the artist and grandson in the present.

71 Quotations always refer to the English version of the film and book. In the case of the book, the quotes are taken from the English translation at the end. If not mentioned otherwise by indicating either book or film version, I use the title Sob Céus Estranhos to refer to the inter-art project as a whole.

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Figure 1: Sob Céus Estranhos – Under Strange Skies. Dir. Daniel Blaufuks. LX Filmes, 2002; courtesy of the artist.

As a consequence, Daniel Blaufuks’s project is driven by a reflection about his relation to a past that he can only remember through mediation and distance, through words and images that have been passed down to him and that he addresses in his quest to remember decades after the events. Sob Céus Estranhos therefore embodies what Marianne Hirsch (2011) describes as “postmemory”:72 the relationship that the generation after those who witnessed cultural or collective trauma bears to the experiences of those who came before, experiences that they “remember” only by means of the stories, images, and behaviors among which they grew up. But these experiences were transmitted to them so deeply and affectively as to seem to constitute memories in their own right. Postmemory’s connection to the past is thus not actually mediated by recall but by imaginative investment, projection, and creation. (Hirsch 2012b, 5)

However, Sob Céus Estranhos is not only adequately described as a postmnemonic project, but it also reveals Blaufuks’s awareness of the importance of mediation and the imaginative processes described by Hirsch. The use of visual documents of different origins signals more than the artist’s interest in the past, but actually constitutes an inquiry into the role visual media play in the context of memory which involves a past that was not witnessed directly. As the example

72 The reading of Blaufuks’s Sob Céus Estranhos within the context of postmemory has already been suggested by Rodrigues (2010), Pinho (2011), I. Gil (2012a), Quintais (2015) and Grossegesse (2015, 2017).

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of the initial images of the cemetery and narrative illustrates, the images are neither ‘explained’ nor properly contextualised. The visual media inspire remembering and even substantiate or evidence the narrative, but, at the same time, the viewer remains in the dark about the exact context and circumstances of their production. In fact, Blaufuks explicitly challenges the referential, documentary claim of visual media and particularly photography. As Marianne Hirsch argues, photography has a privileged status as a medium of postmemory because of its “uniquely referential relation to the real” (2001, 223). Applying C. S. Peirce’s terminology, this means that the photograph is simultaneously iconical, as it represents the object by virtue of mimetic similarity, and indexical, due to its connection to the object in front of the lens. Comparing it to other forms of representation Roland Barthes even argues that [p]hotography’s referent is not the same as the referent of other systems of representation. I call “photographic referent” not the optionally real thing to which an image or a sign refers but the necessarily real thing which has been placed before the lens, without which there would be no photograph. Painting can feign reality without having seen it. Discourse combines signs which have referents, of course, but these referents can be and are most often “chimeras.” Contrary to these imitations, in Photography I can never deny that the thing has been there. (2000, 76 [emphasis in the original])

Barthes describes this relationship to the referent as “umbilical cord” (2000, 81). Accordingly, it not only links the body of the photographed object to the gaze of the beholder, but also establishes the relation that photography holds to the past. Barthes, thus, describes the fact that what we see in a photograph has been in front of the lens in the past, but the event or moment we see has nonetheless always already passed. Photography, as Barthes puts it, “attest[s] that what I see has indeed existed” (2000, 82), but it also shows the “that-hasbeen” (Barthes 2000, 94) of the person or object photographed, the fact that what we see is already gone. The photograph embodies a material connection between past and present, between the photographer, the object or person photographed and the beholder. Still photography not only has this evidential force of the ‘that-has-been’, but also opens up a space of subjective affiliation. “When we look at photographic images from a past world [. . .] we look not only for information or confirmation, but for an intimate material and affective quality of the events” (Hirsch 2012b, 38). Roland Barthes describes this subjective and affective aspect of photography as punctum, as “that accident which pricks” (2000, 27) the observer of the photograph. The punctum is the detail or element of a photograph that breaks the studium: it interrupts the trained reading and understanding of the intentions

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embedded in the photograph. The punctum is therefore any aspect that triggers a personal and subjective relation to what we see in the image. However, Barthes also assumes the existence of another punctum. A punctum that refers specifically to the past. As Barthes explains, this punctum is Time, the lacerating emphasis of the noeme (“that-has-been”), its pure representation. [. . .] [T]he punctum is: he is going to die. I read at the same time: This will be and this has been; I observe with horror an anterior future of which death is the sake. By giving me the absolute past of the pose (aorist), the photograph tells me death in the future. What pricks me is the discovery of this equivalence. [. . .] I shudder [. . .] over a catastrophe which has already occurred. Whether or not the subject is already dead every photograph is this catastrophe. (2000, 96 [emphasis in the original])

In other words, in essence, this punctum of time refers to the incommensurability between the meaning of the object or person in the past when the picture was taken, and the meaning it holds in the present, when we look at the photograph. Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer discuss this notion of punctum in the context of postmnemonic processes in order to describe how “images, objects, and memorabilia inherited from the past” may work as “‘points of memory’ – points of intersection between past and present, memory and postmemory, personal remembrance and cultural recall” (2012, 61). These ‘points of memory’ are at the same time spatial and temporal, referring to points on a map and moments in time. They serve to highlight the “intersections of spatiality and temporality in the workings of personal and cultural memory” (Hirsch and Spitzer 2012, 61) and – by analogy with Barthes – they do not simply supply information about the past. Instead, they touch, disturb and expose the unexpected or suggest what lies outside the frame. In sum, ‘points of memory’ inspire recall: “[T]hey are useful for purposes of remembrance” (Hirsch and Spitzer 2012, 62 [emphasis in the original]), and serve as anchors for transgenerational memory. It is precisely in this sense of ‘points of memory’ that Sob Céus Estranhos makes use of the photographed images, objects and documents. Blaufuks incorporates photographs and other documents from familial and public archives, using them as visual traces of the past. Since the visual artefacts do not necessarily relate directly to the narrative that accompanies them, they inspire recall and remembering that then clearly exceeds the events, persons or objects the viewer sees in the photograph. At the beginning of the book, for instance, the narrator stresses that for the vast majority of refugees Portugal was merely a transit station while only a very small number, for some reason or other, decided to stay. On the left page we can see a total number of eight small photographs of refugees at the harbour in Lisbon, apparently waiting to embark on one of the ships going to destinations overseas. On the right page a small image

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of Blaufuks’s grandfather with his grandsons (Blaufuks and his brother) at the beach is positioned above two small paragraphs commenting on the refugee experience in Lisbon (Figure 2): Thousands of refugees came through Lisbon, and just a few remained. For one reason or another, the transit harbor became their final destination. Here they died and here they lived their lives. These would have been totally different, had they, like so many others, continued their journey to the Americas, north or south, as was originally planned, to escape a Europe in flames. (Blaufuks 2007, iii)

Figure 2: Daniel Blaufuks, Sob Céus Estranhos: Uma História de Exílio, Lisbon: Tinta da China, 2007; courtesy of the artist.

Although the images relate remotely to what the narrator is telling, especially the family picture has no direct link to it. It is a photograph of a film reel in colour that was apparently taken after the war. The image implies familial life – a grandfather with his grandchildren at the beach – and therefore in a way ‘documents’ visually the existence of the minority of refugees who stayed in Portugal. Still, the viewer is not provided with any further information about the origin of this image. When was the film made? Why did the artist choose this footage? What happened this day at the beach? Who made the film? In fact, it is not even mentioned who these three persons at the beach are. All these details are left out and are apparently secondary. Instead, the point rather seems

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to be that the image inspires a creative and inventive process of remembering: although the visual media are used as memory anchors, the (post)memories actually exceed the limits of the frame. They refer to what remains hidden, obscured, invisible – in sum, to something the visual media merely suggest. The importance of processes of mediation is further underlined by the fact that Blaufuks builds his work on the selection and remediation of already existing private and public archival material. The above-mentioned image of the Jewish cemetery in Lisbon, for example, is not a picture taken by the photographer, but an image taken out of an old family film. As Blaufuks (2014c, 202) explains in an interview, he reused a film originally made by his great-uncle in 1968, giving it a different, new meaning within the context of his work. Indeed, photographs and footage included in book and film are remediated images: images of images. Blaufuks (re)photographs and (re)films old photographs and other visual artefacts, whose material conditions are clearly marked by aging. However, it is not only the passing of time, the difference between now and then, which is evoked by this arrangement. More importantly, the viewer of Sob Céus Estranhos is engaged in a kind of ‘double image’. When looking at the remediated footage of the cemetery, we do not only look at old images taken by an unknown photographer (or, in this case, filmmaker), but we actually also look at a film or photograph taken by Blaufuks himself. This added layer of mediation is not exclusive to the first image, but characterises film and book. Blaufuks photographs or films pre-existing photographs, reels or documents, integrating his own hand in the image or highlighting the material condition of the artefacts he selected. He inscribes mediation in the images, challenging the medium’s reliability in the process of reconstructing or documenting the past. However, Blaufuks also highlights that they are “as close as we get sometimes to the information lying within” (2012, 23). Thus, although the artist challenges the ability of the visual media to simply ‘represent’ a past event, he still considers them as indispensable for remembering the past and probably also for experiencing the present. As David Drake highlights in the context of Blaufuks’s work, when presented in a series images encourage us to “look for patterns and relationships, to build a coherent meaning from the chards and fragments of personal or collective memory” (2012, 7). Although photography functions as a kind of leitmedium in Sob Céus Estanhos, the way the mnemonic force of visual media is made visible and challenged exceeds photography and especially any individual image. As the artist foregrounds in an e-mail conversation published in his book Works on Memory, he is “not interested at all in the single image, but in the sequence or flux, in a kind of cinematic prose” (Blaufuks 2012, 25). Accordingly, book and film do not merely consist of a collage of old photographs and archival documents. Rather,

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the artist arranges images of different visual artefacts and has them accompanied by his texts varying between his own family narrative, general information on the refugees in Lisbon during the war, excerpts of letters and the diary of his grandfather,73 as well as autobiographical, fictional and essayistic texts by German-speaking intellectuals who passed through Lisbon during the war. Blaufuks thereby documents the performative force of visual media in processes of (post)memory: the visual media are used as visual traces, which inspire the working through of the past not by merely providing information, but by suggesting what lies outside the frame and remains invisible. Although the narrative voice never explicitly discusses the origins of the photographs, the moments and situations when they were taken or the purpose they had, Blaufuks invites the viewer to reflect about the different uses and readings a photograph can hold. This is also facilitated through the ‘materiality’ of the images. Rather than using undamaged visual documents and photographs, Blaufuks foregrounds the material conditions of aging and the signs of the various purposes they fulfilled. The photographs and documents are yellow, they have stamps and fractures and people wrote on them. The artist alludes to different usages of the photographs as part of archives, family albums or visa applications by photographing not only the photographs but also the documents or albums to which they belonged. At the same time, he frequently captures only parts of the documents or uses images that are blurred, and thereby consciously frustrates the viewer’s desire to ‘get the whole picture’ and to extract coherent information from the visual media (Figures 3–5). Through this explicit manipulation, he makes his own appropriation and contextualisation of the archival material as well as the different gazes involved in the (re)photographed images visible. Sob Céus Estranhos emphasises that the artefacts have been used in different contexts and that they can serve many needs. By doing so, Blaufuks not only foregrounds the performative role that the images acquire as ‘points of memory’ in his work, but also engages the different gazes and usages they had before. He works against the invisibility of the photograph – the adherence of the referent, as Barthes puts it – forcing us to become aware of the visual media as anchors for his ‘story of exile’. This does not only apply to a cinematographic prose of private or familial postmemory. In fact, Blaufuks also addresses official mnemonic practices and discourses and proposes a critical engagement with Portugal’s role as country of transit and asylum for Jewish and other refugees before, during and after

73 Read in German with Portuguese subtitles in the film version. In the book version they are translated into Portuguese by the artist, except for one sentence in the beginning which remained in German with Portuguese translation below.

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Figure 3: Daniel Blaufuks, Sob Céus Estranhos: Uma História de Exílio, Lisbon: Tinta da China, 2007; courtesy of the artist.

Figure 4: Daniel Blaufuks, Sob Céus Estranhos: Uma História de Exílio, Lisbon: Tinta da China, 2007; courtesy of the artist.

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Figure 5: Daniel Blaufuks, Sob Céus Estranhos: Uma História de Exílio, Lisbon: Tinta da China, 2007; courtesy of the artist.

World War II. By introducing ‘after images’ of rejected visas and documents of relief agencies, photographs of registers of those whose entry was denied and photographs of refugees waiting at the soup kitchen, train station or harbour, the artist documents the complex and ambiguous position of Portugal. As he combines the images and narrative of his own family with these official documents and general information about the refugees in Lisbon, the artist localises the story of his grandfather within this context of the problematic memory of World War II refugees in Portugal. Blaufuks thus keeps record of what has been forgotten or erased from the public sphere, using the photographs of the documents as evidence for Portugal’s attitude towards the refugees fleeing Nazism and war. In fact, Sob Céus Estranhos works with an imbalance between authentication and representation, highlighting that, as Roland Barthes claims, “in the Photograph the power of authentication exceeds the power of representation” (2000, 89). As intentionally produced traces of an event, photographs stand between subjective and objective reference (cf. Ruchatz 2004). According to Susan Sontag, photographs are “both objective records and personal testimony, both faithful copy or transcription of an actual moment of reality and an interpretation of that reality” (2003, 26). However, their objective status as traces and evidence

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of the past also remains precarious precisely due to the subjective imprint of the photographer. As Sontag argues, “[t]hose who stress the evidentiary punch of image-making by cameras have to finesse the question of the subjectivity of the image-maker. [. . .] [P]eople want the weight of witnessing without the taint of artistry, which is equated with insincerity or mere contrivance” (2003, 26). By foregrounding his point of view and inscribing his subjective appropriation of the visual artefacts, Blaufuks thus contradicts the expectations of viewers regarding authentic representations of an event and draws attention to the media that surround the images. In other words, Blaufuks makes visible not only that his (post) memory relies on a subjective appropriation of precariously representational visual artefacts, but also how the interpretation of these visual artefacts depends on contextualisation and is influenced by other media, particularly words. In sum, in Sob Céus Estranhos Blaufuks simultaneously uses visual supports as indispensable traces of the past and challenges their reliability for ‘showing’ or ‘documenting’ past events. In the words of Foucault’s critique of historical reason, one can say that Blaufuks appropriates the archival material not as readable “documents”, but as “silent monuments” (Foucault 2010, 7). Rather than deciphering an inherent, original meaning, Blaufuks makes the different usages and purposes of the artefacts visible. Although he integrates the archival material into a coherent narrative, he maintains a lack of isomorphism between the seeable and the sayable, which foregrounds the creative imagination involved in his (post)memory. As Isabel Gil argues: Blaufuks presents the Entstellung of the visual memory as the necessary path for the representation (Darstellung) of the past. [. . .] [The] restitution [of the past] is necessarily limited, made out of a present that relates itself discontinuously with the past, and cannot (2012, 178 [translation mine]) cease to be fictional as well.74

The complexity of images is foregrounded, presenting them not as independent, but rather as subject to different readings and usages. By (re)photographing the different documents and photographs, Blaufuks not only draws attention to the mediality of memory, but also records the importance of contextual information for the reading of visual media. Blaufuks’s (post)memory is the outcome of a web of selected and arranged visual and audio layers, photographs and texts. In Sob Céus Estranhos (post)memory emerges through

74 In Portuguese this reads: “Blaufuks apresenta a Entstellung da memória visual como caminho necessário para a representação (Darstellung) do passado. [. . .] [A] restituição [do passado] é necessariamente limitada, feita a partir de um presente que se relaciona de forma descontínua com o passado, e não pode deixar de ser também ficcional”.

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“imagetexts” (Mitchell 1994),75 in a space in-between images and language, and relies on a knot of linguistic and non-linguistic media. The artefacts, documents, photographs and footage that Blaufuks remediates do not sustain their referential claim. Instead of supporting the realistic illusion of the visual media as evidence corroborating the narrative’s authenticity, they reveal the alterity of memory: the past can never be recovered in its totality, but only within the unstable web of its media. In other words, in Sob Céus Estranhos Blaufuks incorporates previously existing archival material to allow the emergence of an understanding of memory as an endless process of transcription and translation in which communicable remembrance only emerges fragilely through constant referencing, appropriating and (re)signifying.

3.2 (Post)mnemonic archival critique: transcending essentialistic appropriations of the memory of the refugees In Sob Céus Estranhos Daniel Blaufuks engages in a critical memorial and archival practice, in which he reworks a heterocultural memoryscape in order to make sense of his familial past. In this sense, the incorporation of other media serves what Hal Foster (2004) describes as “archival impulse”: Sob Céus Estranhos is not only composed by archival material, but also produces a (post)memorial archive sui generis. The remediation of already existing photographs, film reels, texts excerpts and documents expresses a will to connect, to uncover relationships and to create a complex referential network. Accordingly, Blaufuks seems to be less interested in absolute origins than in hidden, interconnected traces. Sob Céus Estranhos produces an archival web that seems to “ramify like a weed” (Foster 2004, 5) and simultaneously relies on and transcends boundaries of particular mnemonic discourses, traditions and communities. While his aesthetic strategies place him in dialogue with other artists descending from Holocaust survivors and war refugees, the references and literary quotes he incorporates into his work moreover refer to a past in which German exile literature intersects with the multitude of cultural and linguistic contexts of the refugees transiting through Lisbon and official Portuguese documents and newsreels. Through his imagetexts, Blaufuks addresses the transcriptive logic of (post)memory, exploring not only the complex networks

75 W.J.T. Mitchell defines ‘imagetexts’ as “composite, synthetic works (or concepts) that combine image and text” (1994, 89). For the link to memory and postmemory see Hirsch (1997).

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of cultural signification that have shaped his subject position, but also the workings of public and private archival practices. Although the artist never refers to her theoretical framework or terminology, the artistic practices described by Marianne Hirsch in the context of postmemory are, as already argued in the previous subchapter, an important point of reference for the understanding of Blaufuks’s works in general and Sob Céus Estranhos in particular.76 Working primarily within the context of descendants of Holocaust survivors,77 Hirsch focuses on the analysis of familial constellations and the “generational structure of transmission” of trauma (Hirsch 2008, 114 [emphasis in the original]). Although easily extendable to later generations, her primary focus is set on “the relationship of the second generation to powerful, often traumatic, experiences that preceded their births but that were nevertheless transmitted to them so deeply as to seem to constitute memories in their own right” (Hirsch 2008, 106–107). Hirsch thus establishes a distinction between first-hand memories of survivors and the belatedness of postmemory, without, however, diminishing the emotional and affective impact that these memories acquired through transmission and creative investment. Although postmemory is conceptualised as a “structure of inter- and transgenerational transmission” (Hirsch 2008, 106 [emphasis mine]), rather than a method, movement or subject position, the authors and visual artists discussed by Hirsch manifest a number of common motives and aesthetic characteristics (cf. Hirsch 2012a, 2012b). Explaining her notion of “generation of postmemory” (Hirsch 2008, 2012b),78 Hirsch argues that

76 In fact, as Ana Quintais’s (2015) description of an interview with Blaufuks suggests, the artist was not familiar with Marianne Hirsch’s work at the time he was working on Sob Céus Estranhos. 77 The terms ‘survivor’ or ‘Holocaust survivor’ were initially used to designate only those who had survived in concentration camps and not those who escaped death and camps in hiding or emigration (cf. Suleiman, 2006). Although within Hirsch’s work children of camp survivors play an important role, in Generation of Postmemory (2012b, 2008) she applies the term in a broad fashion, which includes not only all descendants of victims in a broader sense – including for instance descendants of Jewish refugees – but even later generations of by-standers, perpetrators and people whose antecessors were not even involved in the Holocaust. These forms of “affiliative postmemory” (Hirsch, 2008) do not even require a familial connection to the traumatic or catastrophic event. 78 Despite its apparent appeal and intuitiveness, it needs to be acknowledged that the term generation is problematic. Not only because, as Susan Rubin Suleiman puts it, “[i]t is hazardous to generalize about large groups of people” (2006, 180) based on the notion that they were formed by a shared collective experience which differentiates them permanently from other age groups. The term generation is also potentially ambiguous as it refers not only to a kind of ‘cultural’ generation of persons born and stamped by certain historical events or a particular

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children of those directly affected by collective trauma inherit a horrific, unknown, and unknowable past [. . .]. Second generation fiction, art, memoir, and testimony are shaped by the attempt to represent the long-term effects of living in close proximity to the pain, depression, and dissociation of persons who have witnessed and survived massive historical trauma. (2008, 112)

Blaufuks’s artistic project inscribes him in precisely such a postmnemonic community of descendants of survivors of the Holocaust, Nazi persecution and forced exile. This kind of heterocultural mnemonic community exceeds not only national and linguistic but also generational borders, and even includes descendants of perpetrators and bystanders and all others who try to make sense of this “immense block of granite that landed in the middle of European history” (Blaufuks 2014b, 182). In Toda a Memória do Mundo – Parte Um, Blaufuks conceives of this as follows: So we continue to write, we make new films, we make new art projects, still trying to understand, to try to remember something so shamefully that would better be forgotten, to try to read between the lines, to try to speak with the dead, to ask what did we do wrong, we the assassins, we the victims, we the children of the murderers, we the grandchildren of the persecutors, we the grandchildren of the exiled. (2014b, 182)

A reading of Sob Céus Estranhos within the referential web of postmemory artists seems, therefore, more than justified. In fact, most of Blaufuks’s works are

period with its respective values and beliefs, but also to a strictly familial or genealogical sequence of children, parents and grandparents, etc. Often both meanings tend to conflate, although, strictly speaking, the grandparents of two membres of one ‘cultural’ generation do not necessarily have to belong to the same ‘cultural’ generation. (For a discussion of the term generation in the context of memory studies cf. for instance Reulecke, 2010). In the context of Holocaust, trauma and postmemory, the term generation moreover raises some particularly problematic questions. Should all children of Holocaust survivors be considered part of one generation even if their date of birth differs by 20 years? Should child survivors be considered part of a ‘first generation’ or ‘1,5 generation’ (cf. Suleiman, 2006)? Are there important differences between the ‘second’ and ‘third generation’, i.e. children and grandchildren of survivors? Does the ‘generation of postmemory’ include only children of victims, or also children and grandchildren of perpetrators, bystanders, and unaffected? And, in analytical terms, does the notion of generation necessarily refer to the author or artist of a work? Or may it be more productive to consider the ‘generational structure of transmission’ addressed in a work, or even different generations of Holocaust cinema and literature based on their time of production? Gerd Bayer, for instance, refers to a “third generation of Holocaust cinema” (2010, 118), which is not based on the generation of the filmmaker (he actually analyses a film by Holocaust survivor Marceline Loridan-Ivens as part of this third generation), but on the time of production of the film, arguing that more recent Holocaust films move beyond postmemory, focusing more on ethical implications for the future than on trauma and the reconstitutive power of art.

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characterised by aesthetic features of postmemorial art and its quest for an ultimately irretrievable past. As Ana Quintais (2015) points out, this holds particularly true for Sob Céus Estranhos, as it makes use of a number of aesthetic practices and categories which are also present in the work of other writers and artists of the ‘generations of postmemory’,79 such as Art Spiegelman, Christian Boltanski, W.G. Sebald, George Perec or Jonathan Safran Foer.80 Accordingly, Blaufuks’s ‘story of exile’ does not only share the (manipulative) use of photography and ‘points of memory’ with other works by postmemorial artists and writers, but also the characteristic interplay of images and words, the link of private and public memories and archives, the archival practice or ‘impulse’ as such, the critical interplay of realistic autobiography and fiction, and finally the importance of family photographs and albums. Although the notion of ‘generation(s) of postmemory’ raises many questions concerning the distinction of different generations, and the inclusiveness of the concept (whose descendants are part of this generation?), inter- and transgenerational transmission remains a central aspect of artistic and literary negotiations of a past not experienced at first hand – especially in familial settings.81 This certainly also applies to Sob Céus Estranhos, in which the transmission within the familial framework plays an important role. Blaufuks’s artistic project is characterised by an awareness of the belatedness of his mnemonic

79 I deliberately use the term ‘generations’ in its plural, to draw attention to significant differences among these artists, filmmakers and others who try to make sense of the Holocaust without having any own experience of it, because they were born after the events. 80 Blaufuks frequently refers explicitly to Perec and Sebald in his works following the film Sob Céus Estranhos, particularly in Terezín (2010), and Toda a Memória do Mundo, Parte Um – All the Memory of the World, Part One (2014c). However, in an interview available at the website of the artist, which was first published in the Portuguese newspaper Público in 2010, and in a conversation included in All the Memory of the World, Part One (2014c), Blaufuks explains that when he worked on the film Sob Céus Estranhos he was not yet familiar with Sebald’s work (cf. Gomes 2010; Coignet and Blaufuks 2014). 81 Marianne Hirsch (2008) acknowledges that the notion of ‘generation of postmemory’ may raise as many questions as it actually answers. Although she includes descendants of perpetrators and bystanders, she also recognises the troubling and problematic aspect of it. Moreover, postmemory actually refers to intergenerationl transmission in mostly familial settings (embodied memory) as well as transgenerational transmission referring to political/national and cultural memory in the tradition of Aleida Assmann’s conceptualisation of memory. As Hirsch argues, “[p]ostmemorial work . . . strives to reactivate and reembody more distant social/national and archival/cultural memorial structures by reinvesting them with resonant individual and familial forms of mediation and aesthetic expression. Thus less-directly affected participants can become engaged in the generation of postmemory, which can thus persist even after all participants and even their familial descendants are gone” (2008, 111).

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project, which is consciously addressed through the foregrounding or visibility of the materiality and mediatedness of his memory-imagetexts. Although obviously related to mnemonic processes in general, the focus set on mediality also emphasises the importance of a generational distance to the experience of flight and exile. The artist has no direct memory of the past he evokes, but a ‘second’ or even ‘third hand’ remembrance shaped by a generational structure of transmission. His remembering does not only take place within a web of private and public images and narratives, it is moreover shaped by a twofold process of transmission from grandparents to parents and from parents to children. As Blaufuks puts it, he constructs “a memory of a memory from a memory” (2007, v): I remember my mother telling me the story of her mother telling her one of her wartime memories. Both were walking along downtown together and, as they passed in front of a shop window filled with candy, my mother stretched her arm against the glass, trying to grab those unreachable sweets. My grandmother cried for not having enough money to buy them. (Blaufuks 2007, v)

Considering the emphasis set on transmission, it seems important to not only acknowledge the traits that, as Ana Quintais (2015) correctly points out, Sob Céus Estranhos shares with works of other artists of the 1.5, second and third ‘generations of postmemory’,82 but to actually analyse the specific generational

82 In this context it is also important to underline that several scholars have addressed particularly generational aspects of art and literature in relation to the Holocaust (cf. among others Suleiman 2006; Hirsch 2012b; Aarons and Berger 2017). Following these authors, one can assume a generational differentiation based on what Suleiman terms a “‘family resemblance’ in tone, genre, and emotional or narrative content that place them in specific dialogue with each other” (2006, 184). Accordingly, it is possible to establish a distinction between the “1.5 generation”, with “[t]hemes of unstable identity and psychological splitting, a preoccupation with absence, emptiness, silence, a permanent sense of loneliness and loss including the loss of memories relating to family and childhood” (Suleiman 2006, 184) and the “second generation’s most salient shared experience [of] the feeling of belatedness” (Suleiman 2006, 180) and of being exposed to a combination of “silence and transmission” (Suleiman 2006, 178). While second and third generation share the experiences of belatedness and (silent) transmission, the disappearance of direct witnesses and the increased generational distance seem to characterise the memory work of grandchildren. This seems to manifest itself in an even more critical engagement with memory, an urge to fill gaps and address untold family stories or even family secrets, and to face the places of trauma in real or imaginary journeys. Such tendencies have been observed not only in the case of descendants of Holocaust survivors, refugees and emigrants that fled Nazism, but also in a so-called ‘cultural’ third-generation of writers and filmmakers coming after the Holocaust (Horstkotte 2009; Aarnos and Berger 2017). Pertinent examples are, among others, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated (2003), the documentaries The Flat (2011) by Arnon Goldfinger and Farewell Herr Schwarz (2014) by Yael Reuveny; or Marcel Beyer’s Spione (2010) in the case of grandchildren of perpetrators and

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space of transmission constructed in Blaufuks’s work. Instead of comparing his work to other artists or writers, I will therefore take a closer look at how Blaufuks actually works through a specific constellation of intergenerational transmission, which takes place in a familial constellation of grandparents, mother and son, characterised by particular chains of transmission and relational bonds. In this context, it is important to acknowledge not only the generational specificity – that Blaufuks is a member of the third and not the second generation – but also that Sob Céus Estranhos consciously constructs a ‘generational space of transmission’, foregrounding not only the temporal gap and ‘second-handedness’ of the past recovered in the present, but also the elements that structure the process of memory transfer across the generations of his family, namely family photography. In Sob Céus Estranhos generational transmission and family photography are actually part of Blaufuks’s critical interrogation of memory, visual media and archival practices. Instead of engaging family simply as a naturally given institution, Blaufuks arranges family photographs and parts of family albums as organising elements of both familial relations in general and the story of his family in particular. In other words, Sob Céus Estranhos challenges a naturalisation of family as well as visuality. As Blaufuks emphasises in a different context, he is very “aware of the importance of ‘reading’ an image, understanding its possible layers and connections, perceiving that the family snapshot or the war image are indeed not ‘natural’” (2012, 23). In Sob Céus Estranhos, he therefore draws attention to the different elements of his family album: a photograph of a ship is re-photographed, covered by the characteristic white-transparent paper separating the pages of photo albums (Figure 6);83 pages of the family album of his grandparents are included, which show the interior of their apartment and the young couple with their newborn baby – Blaufuks’s mother Manuela – with the handwritten description in German

bystanders in Germany. This very brief discussion underlines that despite common aesthetical strategies and emotional and traumatic contents, the application of the concept of ‘generation of postmemory’ to Blaufuks’s work without further differentiation seems quite problematic. Sob Céus Estranhos is not a quest to recover unattainable childhood memories, as it can be the case in works included in the ‘1.5 generation’ such as George Perec’s W ou le Souvenir d’enfance [W or the Memory of Childhood] (2011) or W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz (2008). And even if there are some important parallels between Art Spiegelman’s Maus (2003) and Daniel Blaufuks’s Sob Céus Estranhos – particularly, certain aspects of their critical reflection about the processes of representation, mediation and documentation – not only did Blaufuks not grow up in a household of camp survivors, the ‘generational structure of transmission’ is also different in his work. 83 This image of the photograph of the ship in the album does not appear in the film version.

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Figure 6: Daniel Blaufuks, Sob Céus Estranhos: Uma História de Exílio, Lisbon: Tinta da China, 2007; courtesy of the artist.

stating: “Januar 1937. Die stolzen Eltern mit ihrer süssen Manuela” [“January 1937. The proud parents with their sweet Manuela”] (Blaufuks 2007, n.p.)84 (Figure 7). In Family Frames Marianne Hirsch (2012a) analyses similar patterns of familial relationality. Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s notion of the “optical unconscious”, she argues that “the camera and the photograph can expose a complicated and otherwise invisible network of looking” which “is very powerful, especially in relation to the family and the family picture” (Hirsch 2012a, 10). According to Hirsch, the family is an affiliative group, which is formed through a number of historical, cultural, institutional and relational processes. Ascribing an important role to photography and visuality, Hirsch argues that we are simultaneously subject to an external “familial gaze”, which frames the “image of an ideal family and of acceptable family relations”, and “familial look[s]”, which are understood as “an engagement in a particular form of relationship, mutually constitutive,

84 Although two of the photographs of this page of the family album are reproduced in the film in a different context – the grandparents with Blaufuks’s mother as a baby and the grandfather with his daughter –, this particular page of the album does not appear.

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Figure 7: Daniel Blaufuks, Sob Céus Estranhos: Uma História de Exílio, Lisbon: Tinta da China, 2007; courtesy of the artist.

mediated by the familial gaze, but exceeding it through its subjective contingency” (2012a, 11). In Sob Céus Estranhos, Blaufuks also works with a network of looks. This is particularly evident in an image in which Blaufuks re-photographs two pictures of his grandparents with his baby-mother in their arms (Figure 8).85 The two photographs are placed in Blaufuks’s hand as if he was looking down on them. On one we see both his grandparents with their little daughter. While his grandfather and his mother are looking at the camera, his grandmother looks down on the baby. On the other, there are only the grandfather and the child looking at each other. The whole arrangement conveys a feeling of intimacy, of entering a protected space of familial affection, which is maintained throughout book and film. The familial images and their arrangement convey a feeling of an intimate bond among the family, which furthermore sustains the proximity

85 The image is included in film and book, but in different places. While in the film the picture appears quite at the beginning, juxtaposed with a part of the personal narrative in which the arrival of Blaufuks’s grandparents in Lisbon and the birth of his mother is told, in the book the image is placed in two pages without text and follows a description of the working conditions of his grandparents in Portugal.

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between Blaufuks and his grandparents. As the narrator in film and book explains relatively at the beginning, the artist grew up in the same building with his grandparents and film and book both sustain a sense of how his childhood was immersed “in a universe of traces from [the] refugee experience” (Spitzer 2008, 165). The family photographs and re-captured pages of the family album are, however, not used for criticising or challenging a family narrative. Blaufuks is not searching for some hidden, untold secret, or interested in exposing problematic family structures. Instead he acknowledges how these photographs are engaged in a process of creating a familial narrative, which has marked his subject position decidedly. In the end, it is in part through the network of affiliative looks that Blaufuks is defined and defines himself. The familial photographs and the way they are transmitted and used implicate past in present and link him to the experience of exile. As he puts it, looking at the old photographs and films of his family he even becomes exiled as well: Now, I am on this side of the screen, looking at all those photographs and old 8 mm reels and I can see all, who have left, one by one, taking a part of me forever. Strangely enough, in some ways, I became exiled as well. Where is my home? I don't really know. Probably in that house outside of Lisbon, under the trees my grandfather loved so much. (Blaufuks 2007, xii)

Figure 8: Sob Céus Estranhos – Under Strange Skies. Dir. Daniel Blaufuks. LX Filmes, 2002; courtesy of the artist.

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Blaufuks’s ‘becoming-an-exiled’ is thus associated with the mnemonic engagement with the family pictures, and his eventual home is located not in Lisbon and the apartment he grew up in, but within his grandparents’ country house in Birre – the place where his grandfather eventually found some kind of home. However, at the same time Blaufuks also challenges the family image and narrative constructed through the various photographs and films and their transmission. Through his narrative and its juxtaposition with the photos of his family, Blaufuks exposes what the visual media hide: the traumatic experience of his grandparents of being forced to leave the country they had grown up in; the challenges they faced in Portugal because of their precarious condition as refugees and immigrants; the loss and separation of their families; and the “condition of exile, the feeling of always being far away from home” (Blaufuks 2007, xii), of which both his grandparents seem to have suffered until their death. The family album fails to reveal what it meant to live in Portuguese exile. Instead, the photographs and films seem to be limited to a kind of conventionality and a “[t]ension between the photographs’ flatness and its illusion of depth, between the little a photograph reveals and all it promises to reveal” (Hirsch 2012a, 119). As Marianne Hirsch so pointedly argues, [f]amily pictures, in particular, offer conventional surfaces resistant to deeper scrutiny. They say more about family romances than about actual details of a familial life. Since they say more through their absences than through their present content, they can illustrate the workings of an optical unconscious. Only the narratives that take shape in relation to the pictures can provide insight into the actual workings of unconscious optics: the confrontation of a family romance and the particular circumstances through which it is mediated [.] (2012a, 119)

Admittedly Sob Céus Estranhos does not aim at exposing the hegemonic ideologies of the family analysed by Hirsch, but the inter-art project nevertheless makes use of the inherent surfaces of family photography and retraces invisible structures of seeing which guide how we perceive the world around us. In Sob Céus Estranhos, Blaufuks explores familial photographs and their different contexts and purposes: the grandson looking at pictures of his grandparents and mother as a child; the family album; and the letters with photographs and films that his uncle and aunt sent from Canada – in each of these cases, the pictures are not only subjects of the desire of the viewer, but they actually end up showing as much as they hide.

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An illustrative example is the arrangement of two photographs of his uncle and aunt and the text combined with them in the book version (Figure 9).86 One image shows the uncle, the other the aunt. They both sit alone in a remarkably similar pose in a deck chair smiling at the camera. Blaufuks places the photographs on two pages and juxtaposes them with a text that contradicts the happy image conveyed by the photographs. After explaining that his aunt Ursula married his uncle in the synagogue in Lisbon, the narrator recalls how “fifty years later, I could still see a shiny tear in her eyes, when mentioning the ones she never saw again” (Blaufuks 2007, viii). As the narrator underlines, the pictures sent by his uncle and aunt with “houses and lakes and cars and people wearing huge sunglasses against endless blue skies” (Blaufuks 2007, viii) always transmitted a sense of glamour to him as a child. Through the subtle mismatch between images and words, Blaufuks exposes how these apparently ‘glamorous’ photographs do in a sense lie.87 Not because his aunt and uncle would have wanted to deceive his grandparents, but because ultimately, they fail to really show what they promise to show: the life of his uncle and aunt in Canadian exile. In the end, it is only through the use of his imagetexts that Blaufuks is able to convey some sense of the experience of loss and exile. As mentioned above, the full meaning of this use of family pictures only seems to become understandable in the context of Blaufuks’s archival practice and his interrogation of memory and visual media in general. Sob Céus Estranhos engages and exposes the conventions and structuring aspects of family photography as part of a reflection about memory – the recognition that, although unable to ever fully recover the past, the present remains deeply implicated by it. Blaufuks thus simultaneously works with and challenges family photography – the photographs as such as well as their uses in albums, for instance – as part of private archives and the way they structure the workings of memory. Through the use and arrangement of family photography, Blaufuks does not just engage the trauma of exile and explores the ruptures and absences caused by it. In fact, this practice is also an integral part of an archival aesthetics that develops an explicit counter-memory and critique of the workings of cultural memory and official as well as private archives.88

86 Both photographs are only included in the book version. Even the text about the letters sent by his uncle and aunt during his childhood, which is positioned on the right page, does not appear in the film version. 87 For a discussion about the role of the ‘lie of representation’ in Blaufuks work see I. Gil (2012b). 88 As already mentioned above, the use of archival material has been described as an important characteristic of many postmemorial artists and writers. However, in the context of postmemory, Hirsch (2012b) has set the emphasis of the ‘archival impulse’ on a corrective and

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Figure 9: Daniel Blaufuks, Sob Céus Estranhos: Uma História de Exílio, Lisbon: Tinta da China, 2007; courtesy of the artist.

As already briefly mentioned in the previous subchapter, the most visible aspect of Sob Céus Estranhos’ archival critique and counter-memory is directed towards absences and amnesiac tendencies of public archives and official, hegemonic memory in Portugal. Film and book critically engage with an invisibility of the Jewish refugees during World War II and the Jewish presence in Portuguese History in general. As Isabel Gil foregrounds, in this work one feels the transgenerational legacy of the remnants of anti-Semitism in Portuguese society, the legacy of a silenced alterity reaching from the unspeakable trauma of the expulsion in 1497 and the Pogrom of Lisbon [. . .] to the traumatic passage of thousands of European Jews (2012a, 176 [translation mine]) through Lisbon in the terrible years of the Third Reich.89

reparative move, which seeks to reconstitute and recover ruptures and losses rather than to produce counter-memory and to challenge cultural memory or historical archives. This is certainly understandable in the context of trauma and its transgenerational transmission, but it does not seem to account for the archival aesthetics of Sob Céus Estranhos. 89 In Portuguese this reads: “a herança transgeracional dos resquícios do antissemitismo da sociedade portuguesa, a herança de uma alteridade silenciada que vai desde o indizível trauma da expulsão em 1497 e do Pogrom de Lisboa [. . .] até à traumática passagem de milhares de judeus europeus por Lisboa nos anos terríveis do Terceiro Reich.”

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In an interview with Luís Miranda (2007), Blaufuks highlights that he wanted to challenge the idea of Portugal as the guardian angel of the refugees fleeing Nazism. For this purpose, the artist introduces archival material which documents that the Estado Novo rejected visas to Jewish refugees, making, as he puts it, “good use of the ‘J’ for Jews, stamped on German passports” (Blaufuks 2007, ix) (Figure 10). Moreover, the precarious situation of the refugees in Portugal is addressed: their dependence on relief organisations, soup kitchens and visa concessions, but also the tensions caused by their apparently “useless lives”, “spending their days in street cafés” (Blaufuks 2007, 4). This is moreover emphasised by the inclusion of a reference to “a rare telegram to Germany” sent by “the Portuguese dictator Salazar [. . .] condoling Hitler’s death and declaring two official days of mourning in Portugal” although “[b]y then, he [Salazar] had surely read the extensive report on the camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau, sent to Lisbon in August 1944 by the Portuguese Consul in Bucharest” (Blaufuks 2007, xi).

Figure 10: Daniel Blaufuks, Sob Céus Estranhos: Uma História de Exílio, Lisbon: Tinta da China, 2007; courtesy of the artist.

Sob Céus Estranhos actually draws an ambivalent image of Lisbon as ‘safe haven’. On the one hand, it stresses that reaching Portugal meant safety and often survival for the refugees, in a place surprisingly unaffected by war. On the other, it emphasises that the authorities were mostly interested in preventing a “refugees’

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invasion” (Blaufuks 2007, vi), and that the suffering and psychological stress of the foreigners passed unnoticed by the local population as their seemingly comfortable life in cafés and hotels generated “some hostility or even envy” amongst the Portuguese (Blaufuks 2007, v). However, Sob Céus Estranhos not only engages the absences and (mis)representations of Portugal’s role as country of asylum in official memory, but also retraces an invisibility of Lisbon and Portugal in the literary quotes of writers and intellectuals in exile included in the work. As the narrator underlines: Lisbon is just a short passage or note in the memoirs of the writers Heinrich Mann, Hans Sahl and Hertha Pauli. Erich Maria Remarque didn’t pass through Portugal during the war. In his famous novel A Night in Lisbon written only in 1962 the city is not much more than a title and a backdrop for another story. One can more easily recognize it in Arthur Koestler’s imaginary Neutralia, with its palm tree avenues and cafés full of emigrants, as described in Arrival and Departure, published during the war, but in which Lisbon is never actually mentioned.90 (Sob Céus Estranhos/Under Strange Skies: 00:06:45–00:07:23)

Most of the short quotes integrated into Sob Céus Estranhos actually convey a sense of profound disencounter between refugees transiting through the country, on the one hand, and the Portuguese population and social life, on the other. According to Blaufuks, one recognises Lisbon best in a short description of Neutralia, in Arthur Koestler’s novel Arrival and Departure (1999). However, this short passage rather resembles a touristic impression of streets, places and people in cafés than any profound description of life in Lisbon in the 1940s. The short excerpts by Hans Sahl, Erika Mann, Alfred Döblin, Hertha Pauli and Karl O. Paethel provide only schematic representations of Lisbon and Portugal, which evoke not only the existing poverty, but also a backwardness and strange contrast to the European cities and countries at war. Consumed by the horrors suffered during their flight and the challenges still ahead of them, Lisbon with its political and social life seems to remain distant and to be met with a certain incomprehension and perplexity, as Balder Olden’s short comment on the regime best illustrates: Just imagine! There is a dictator there, who is so good; a good-natured, old university professor that all people praise. What could one call this system; a democratic dictatorship?

90 Although the text passages in the Portuguese versions of film and book are identical, the English translation of the paragraph about Remarque’s novel differs in the book version. There it reads: “In A Night in Lisbon, the famous novel by Erich Maria Remarque, who only wrote in 1962 and was not here, the city is not much more than a title and a backdrop for another story” (Blaufuks 2007, iv).

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A dictatorship with butter and no canons? For they have butter there, and in the most humble boarding houses menus that never end, light and cheerful noise the whole night long. (Blaufuks 2007, xi)

In the film version, the idea of a disencounter, of misrepresentations and an inability to communicate is also emphasised by the difference not only in narrative voice but also in language. The letters of his grandfather are read by the actor Christoph Eichhorn and all other quotes by the actor Bruno Ganz. All of these quotes are in German – even those taken from Arthur Koestler’s novel Arrival and Departure, which was originally written in English. Transit through Lisbon is characterised by a process of (mis)translations, of partial accounts and multiple perspectives, which cannot be integrated into a neat unity: neither do the writings of the intellectuals transiting through Lisbon enter the public sphere in Portugal, nor do the refugees have real access or understanding of the political and social situation in the country. This applies not only to the situation of the 1930s and 1940s, but also to the preservation and storage of the archival material. Photographs, documents and different texts are confined within institutionalised borders, they belong to different spheres, different archives, different mnemonic communities and different modes of circulation. Through the composition of the archival material, Blaufuks connects artefacts, which at first sight seem unrelated and independent and thereby draws attention to boundaries and gaps within the heterocultural memoryscape that constitutes the memory of the refugees in Portugal. The re-used and re-contextualised artefacts in Sob Céus Estranhos are not only of public and private origin; they are also stored and preserved in different archives and libraries at different places. Film and book contain excerpts of texts by well-known authors such as Arthur Koestler, Erika Mann or Alfred Döblin, letters of his grandfather, images of pages of books, official Portuguese documents, but also official papers of his grandparents in German. Blaufuks connects archival material from different places, in different languages, stored for different reasons and produced in different circumstances. Sob Céus Estranhos’ postmnemonic archive is thus not composed by a closed repertoire of canonical artefacts, but presents instead a constant process of translation and (re)appropriation of material belonging to a heterocultural referential web. The artist collects and arranges polyphonic fragments,91 which were dispersed through private and public archives, collections or storages located in different cities and

91 I use the term polyphony in a Bakhtinian sense here. The different found artefacts included into Blaufuks’s work generate a dialogue of different perspectives or points of view, which cannot be integrated into a simple single (historical) truth. For a discussion of Bakhtin’s use of the term cf. Morson and Emerson (1990).

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even on different continents. Blaufuks’s personal narrative provides a frame for the different artefacts, illustrating how, in a sense, everything is connected. However, the archival material also remains independent, suggesting the simultaneity of various perspectives and voices rather than a coherent unified version of the past. Sob Céus Estranhos does not propose a closed reading of the incorporated material, but suggests connections of artefacts that remain open to new appropriations, new arrangements, and new meanings.92 The challenge of Blaufuks’s archive is therefore not only that it introduces what has been omitted in public mnemonic discourses in Portugal and what has remained invisible within the public sphere. Sob Céus Estranhos’ archival aesthetics exceeds the realm of countering official, national mnemonic discourses and archives. Resisting easy classifications, it rather develops a critique of the archive in Michel Foucault’s terms in the sense that it engages hegemonic, representational processes that determine how the past is preserved, ordered, selected and interpreted. Family pictures and albums that are composed and handed on to following generations; different kinds of archives and registers that keep official documents and correspondences; but also autobiographies, diaries, fictional literature and articles in newspapers and literary (exile) journals kept in libraries: all these are structuring elements not only of Blaufuks’s (post)memory but also of memory in general. Their structuring principles, material condition, technologies and the way they are preserved and stored determine how we can remember the past. Yet, although the found artefacts are integrated into a coherent narrative, they also suggest a ramified net of associations, foregrounding not only the impossibility to fully recover the past, but also the complex networks of signification which exceed any cultural or linguistic border. The artist confronts the viewer with a “labyrinth of images” and texts “as part of the chain of transmission between generations, knowledge that we pass on” (Blaufuks 2014a, 214). Memory is simultaneously presented as subject to the structuring principles of the media surrounding us and as a necessarily open-ended translational process of continuous re-signification, reimagination, and re-narration. The idea of memory and remembering as an ultimately infinite process is furthermore conveyed through several processes of translation, re-arranging, re-appropriating, re-imaging and re-writing present in the inter-art project.

92 In this sense, Sob Céus Estranhos evokes what Nicholas Mirzoeff describes as the “intervisuality” of the “diasporic visual image”: the viewer “needs not only to bring extratextual information to bear on what is seen within the frame in order to make full sense of it”, Blaufuks inter-art project also “create[s] multiple visual and intellectual associations both within and beyond the intent of the producer of that image” (2000, 7).

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While the texts in book and film mostly correspond,93 the visual media included and the way they are arranged actually vary significantly. The letters and literary quotes are translated in the book, while in the film they are read aloud in German and only subtitled in Portuguese and English respectively. Whereas the DVD contains two ‘complete’ versions of the film in Portuguese and English, the book only includes a translation of the text at the end of the book, making it impossible to have a similar reading experience in English. What seems important here is not so much an analysis of the differences between film and book, or the different linguistic versions; instead, it is the notion of incompleteness that is conveyed at different levels: the whole project is characterised by an open-endedness not only of memory itself, but also of the process of viewing and reading, of making sense of the archives and memories which book and film construct and on which they are based. Blaufuks’s project is therefore more than an individual account of his familial history and a means of approaching traumatic (post)memory. The artist confronts memory on different levels: national archival practices and memory politics are critically put in relation to private and familial memory. His subject position emerges out of his personal narrative which is entangled in private and public mnemonic practices; it is knotted into networks of references, signification and temporality that exceed clear-cut classifications in terms of territories or identities. In Sob Céus Estranhos the remembrance of the refugee presence and the experience of exile in Portugal is therefore associated not only with a conscious and critical reflection about mediality, but also about memory and its realms. Memory is framed as essentially heterocultural: not only as an open-ended process subject to continuous layers of re-signification, but also as an archival practice that transcends – but does not erase – linguistic, national and cultural borders. Even if Blaufuks affirms his subject position through the construction of a coherent (post)mnemonic narrative, the mnemonic process always remains open to re-signification. Blaufuks’s (post)memory therefore resists and transcends any essentialistic appropriation of the memory of the refugees. Instead, memory is negotiated in an open-ended process and remains always in need for self-critical subjective interrogations, rather than simplistic identitarian self-assertions. Even the viewer is invited to immerse into this (post)memorial archive, to search for references, to make sense of the labyrinthic imagetexts and to follow the traces laid out by the artist, without ever being able to fully grasp the past.

93 Some short passages of the text and a few quotes and letters, which are included in the book version, do not appear in the film.

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3.3 Remembering the ‘condition of exile’: a translational perspective on the ethics of (post)memory and the heterocultural position of being exiled Sob Céus Estranhos approaches the memory of the refugee presence in Portugal in the 1930s and 1940s through an affiliative perspective on exile. The point of departure is a twofold absence or void: the journey into the past of his family begins at a moment of loss and mourning. Looking at the graves at the Jewish cemetery in Lisbon Blaufuks engages the gap left behind by the death of his grandfather and the meaning of the disappearance of the last direct witnesses of forced flight and exile. However, Blaufuks confronts not only the loss of his grandparents, but also an invisibility of the refugees who transited through Lisbon and Portugal before and during World War II. As Blaufuks puts it, although “[t]housands of refugees came through Lisbon [. . .] there is almost no trace of those who went on” (Blaufuks 2007, iii). As a consequence, Blaufuks’s inter-art project is not only an attempt of retracing the history of his family, but a reparative gesture of mourning. It is an acknowledgment that the past continues to be implicated in (his) present and that, as the images of the graveyard signal, the dead have a claim to be remembered. Taking an explicitly subjective approach, the artist explores the ethical implications of remembering the violent and traumatic experience of the war refugees in Portugal from the perspective of a grandson. Like the work of many thirdgeneration artists and writers,94 Blaufuks’s (post)memory project is characterised by a self-critical reflection about memory and transmission. What stands at the centre of this reflection is the “doença do exílio” [disease of exile] (Blaufuks 2007, n.p.), or, as the English translation puts it, the “condition of exile” (Blaufuks 2007, xii). This ‘condition of exile’ is explored against the background of the Holocaust, linked to the fate of Jewish refugees all over the world, and inscribed in the history of transit and permanent exile in Portugal. It is entangled not only in official and public memory, but also in private mnemonic practices and familial transmission. It is precisely Sob Céus Estranhos’ awareness of the particularity of the history of Blaufuks’s family and his subject position as part of a complex

94 Although ethical questions related to the remembrance of violence and catastrophes have always been at the centre of concerns of memory and Holocaust scholars and artists (cf. Hirsch 2008), the focus on ethical concerns seems, however, to be even more present in the third generation. As Gerd Bayer, for instance, claims, the increased generational distance to traumatic events seems to lead to a move away from a perspective focused on the traumatic past and the reconstitutive power of art towards “ethical concerns directed at future generations” (2010, 117).

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web of unrelatedly related images, histories, narratives, memories and media that characterises its aesthetics as well as its ethics of (post)memory. The inter-art project retraces the story of exile of Herbert and Ursel August back to their decision to leave Germany. Shortly after their marriage in March 1936, they travel from their hometown Magdeburg to Hamburg, where they embark on a ship, the Monte Olivia, to Portugal – “the only open country in Europe” (Blaufuks 2007, iii), according to a note of Herbert August included in book and film. Although Blaufuks’s grandfather refers to the bad conditions in Germany at the time, the exact reason or cause for leaving the country in 1936 and going to Portugal remains unclear. They arrive in Lisbon in early April. Sob Céus Estranhos recounts their struggles at the beginning and later on: the limitations of not being permitted to be employed; Blaufuks’s grandmother working as dressmaker at home, as a housekeeper for wealthy Portuguese families and at a kindergarten at Lisbon’s zoo; the successive entrepreneurial activities of Blaufuks’s grandfather, from imaging to producing ice cream at home to a small manufacture of toys made of cloth called MUNA (which closed after the war because it could not compete with the newly arriving imported articles) and a number of import-export businesses. In contrast to the vast majority of refugees, Herbert and Ursel August eventually decide to stay in Portugal. It is the construction of a country house in Birre, a small town close to Lisbon, that for the grandson comes to symbolise their final decision to remain in Portugal and to build a new life there: The decision to stay here, in the case of my family had probably been made much earlier, although I see it now metaphorically associated with the construction of the house in Birre. A new house, a new home, a new history, a new beginning. And that was maybe the reason my grandfather dedicated himself so much to it. For someone who, because of his religion, had been thrown out of the homeland of his ancestors, this bit of land, in his name, could only be felt as a new world. “My homeland is where my legs are standing”, he said later. And it seems that it was on that piece of land that he stood firmer. (Blaufuks 2007, xi–xii)

Sob Céus Estranhos describes a gradual integration of Blaufuks’s grandparents into Portuguese society after the war, but also a certain distance to the country and its social life. As the narrator states, they “were no longer seen as refugees, but were now included in the better accepted category of immigrants” (Blaufuks 2007, xii); they learned the language, worked, and even had “a Portuguese daughter, and later two Portuguese grandchildren” (Blaufuks 2007, xii). They lived a quiet life, but never had Portuguese friends and continued to be surrounded by other former refugees, who shared with them “a German-Jewish heritage, mixed with the Portuguese daily life” (Blaufuks 2007, viii). The condition of exile eventually comes to be defined in the context of a tension between having successfully rebuilt a new home and a continued

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feeling of remoteness, estrangement and non-belonging. Although Sob Céus Estranhos stresses that Blaufuks’s grandparents succeeded in constructing a new life, that eventually on that piece of land in Birre “for the first time in so many years [his] grandparents must have felt at home” (Blaufuks 2007, xii), at the end of his life, already ill, Blaufuks’s grandfather nevertheless kept making the mistake of thinking he was in Germany as if “in his head he had never actually left” (Blaufuks 2007, xii). And it is precisely in terms of this irrecoverable displacement, loss and estrangement that the ‘condition of exile’ is finally characterised. As the narrator puts it, “this is, I think, the condition of exile, the feeling of always being away from home, from the mother tongue, from the books and food of our childhood and the culture of our parents” (Blaufuks 2007, xii). Sob Céus Estranhos defines exile as something impossible to overcome, a condition that one cannot surmount. As Edward Said underlines, exile is “unbearably historical” (1994, 138), not an abstract concept, but something bound to specific contexts and power structures, linked to violence and exclusion, and “terrible to experience” (1994, 137). Through the web of archival documents, letters, memoirs, diaries, photos and the narrative, Sob Céus Estranhos insists on this historical specificity. Exile is not simply understood as an abstract category “compelling to think about” (Said 1994, 137), to borrow Said’s words again. It is a doença, an illness, a condition from which his grandparents suffered their whole lives. Exile is something that was done to them and all the other refugees: they did not ‘choose’ to leave their homes and go somewhere else, but they were forced to do so. And although it was exile that saved their lives, they were unable to ever fully overcome the traumatic experience of being persecuted, discriminated, excluded, of having, as Hannah Arendt puts it, forever lost “the familiarity of daily life” (1994, 110). The refugees experienced what it meant to be exposed to “the fate of human beings, who unprotected by any specific law or political convention, are nothing but human beings” (Arendt 1994, 118), or, borrowing Giorgio Agamben’s words, what it meant to be “stripped of every political status and reduced completely to naked [bare] life” (2000, 41). However, in Sob Céus Estranhos exile is also associated with a literary and artistic tradition and a feeling of estrangement that exceeds the traumatic experience of Blaufuks’s grandparents and other refugees. As the artist argues in an essay included in All the Memory of the Word -Part One, exile is a keyword of post-war literary and artistic production. The involuntary crossing of borders, the abrupt loss of home and childhood places, the disruption of the natural bound [sic] between families, seems to provoke an incessant flow of thought, originated, alas in melancholy, nostalgia, memory and its loss. And [. . .] absence [. . .] of something that we are at loss of knowing exactly what it is, but that is irretrievably lost. (Blaufuks 2014b, 182)

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Without attenuating the horrors of being forced to seek refuge, Sob Céus Estranhos explores exile also in terms of this creative and disruptive force: it describes it as a feeling or “sense of estrangement”, “a sensation of not belonging” (Blaufuks 2014b, 183), a way of perceiving “the entire world as a foreign land” (Said 1994, 147),95 which challenges the naturalness of belonging, of home, of being part. It is this sense of exile that is linked not only to Herbert August’s claim that his “homeland is where [his] legs are standing” (Blaufuks 2007, xii), but also to Blaufuks’s identificatory, affiliative (post)memory and exilic position: the experience of becoming exiled “on this side of the screen, looking at all those photographs and old 8mm reels” (Blaufuks 2007, xii.). Through the title Sob Céus Estranhos, Blaufuks not only alludes to both of these meanings or aspects of exile – the unbearable, historically specific experience of being forced to flee, and the unsettling, thought-provoking, productive force of exile –, but he also inscribes his own exilic position into a premediated literary and discursive sphere. Admittedly borrowed from the homonymous novel by Ilse Losa, the title links Blaufuks’s work to probably the most significant literary text about the refugee experience in Portugal during the 1930s and 1940s. First published in 1962, Ilse Losa’s Sob Céus Estranhos is in fact one of the very scarce examples of literature explicitly addressing World War II refugees in Portugal that was published in the country during the Estado Novo. Yet, although Blaufuks reuses her title, neither novel nor author are ever mentioned or quoted in either film or book.96 While Blaufuks includes quotes from German-speaking intellectuals who transited through Portugal, he does not use any excerpt of Losa’s novel, although not only the biography of the writer, but also the story of the protagonist seem to have much more in common with the history of Blaufuks’s grandparents than those of these transiting intellectuals. Blaufuks thus simultaneously distances his work and the history of his family from Losa’s novel and biography and intervenes in a premediated public sphere (re)writing, (re)imagining and remembering the experience of exile in the present – and from the perspective of a grandchild. In other words, although Blaufuks’s narrative is in a sense exclusively about his own family, he nonetheless contextualises it in a public mnemonic sphere in Portugal in which Losa and her literary work about the refugee experience in the 1930s and 1940s play a crucial role.

95 Edward Said refers here to a quote from Hugo of St. Victor in Erich Auerbach’s “Philology and Weltliteratur” (1969). 96 Only in the list of references and archives at the end of the book does Blaufuks mention that the title was taken from Losa’s novel.

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As one of the first Portuguese literary texts explicitly addressing transit and asylum in Portugal and the sole written by a former refugee,97 Ilse Losa’s novel Sob Céus Estranhos holds a paradigmatic position within Portuguese literature and culture.98 Despite the fact that the protagonist is a man, when first published in 1962, the novel was interpreted as a fictionalised autobiography of the female author, and an account of “the attempt to integrate into a foreign country” (Marques 2001, 127 [translation mine])99, 100 The novel centres on the story of José Berger, a young refugee who flees to Portugal before the outbreak of the

97 Ilse Losa arrived in Porto in 1934 at a time when German citizens, including Jews, could relatively easily enter the country. Coming from a Jewish family, she experienced the increasing anti-Semitism and discrimination in Germany. After having been interrogated by the Gestapo, because of a postcard to a friend in which she had criticized Hitler and National Socialism, she emigrated from Germany to Portugal. In 1935, she married the Portuguese architect Arménio Losa and was therefore granted Portuguese citizenship. They had two daughters with whom they lived in Porto, where she died in 2006. 98 Although already a well-known writer in Portugal in the 1950s, critics usually read Losa’s novels exclusively as autobiographical reports of her own experiences (cf. Hammer 1997). A few articles about Ilse Losa were published in Portugal during the 1950s, which were mainly concerned with her literary work as a whole (cf. Marques 2001). Academic research about Sob Céus Estranhos only intensified in the 1990s, at a time when the topic of the refugees began to gain more visibility within the public sphere (cf. Holzschuh 2013; Marques 2001). In this context, a qualitative change also occurred in terms of the reception of her novel(s), which shifted the attention to questions of interculturality and acculturation. Sob Céus Estranhos was Losa’s second novel. In addition to three novels, she also wrote short stories, novelettes, chronicles and children’s literature. Her two novels O mundo em que vivi (translated by Maralde Meyer-Minnemann) and Sob Céus Estranhos (translated by herself) were published in German in the 1990s. Until then she was almost unknown in Germany. 99 In Portuguese this reads: “a tentativa de integração num país estrangeiro”. 100 Obviously, it is impossible to deny parallels between the character José Berger and the author. Ilse Losa fled to Portugal before the outbreak of the war. She arrived in Porto in 1934 and was one of the few refugees who stayed in the country after the war. However, an autobiographical reading of the novel seems problematic since the differences between writer and character in terms of gender/sex, ‘racial classification’ by the Nazis (in contrast to Losa, José Berger is classified as so-called ‘half-Jew’) and religion (Berger is actually Protestant) mark a clear distance between the story of the novel and Losa’s own biography. These differences are not only significant because of their actual impact in the life of the refugees, but most importantly because the effects of social categorisations on the individual are a central topic of the novel. José’s lack of a clear racial, religious and national identity exposes identities as constructed, context bound and potentially flawed. While in Germany he is excluded and loses his citizenship because of his Jewish father, in Portugal his German origins and Protestantism mark him as culturally different. However, these characterisations not only define him as part of a minority in both countries, but also emphasise his essential hybridity: he is neither really German nor Portuguese, neither completely Jewish nor Christian, but always in-between.

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war and eventually settles in the country. Having been classified by the Nazi regime as a ‘Halbjude’ [half-Jew] (his father is Jewish, his mother Protestant), Berger sees himself forced to leave Germany due to the increasing discrimination. Unable to obtain a visa for the United States due to the lack of financial resources, he travels to Portugal with the intention of waiting for his American visa. While he initially sees Porto only as a temporary asylum station, he eventually settles in the northern Portuguese city and marries a young Portuguese woman with whom, at the end of the novel, he has a son. The novel consists primarily of an autodiegetic narration by José Berger, starting at the moment when he decides to leave Germany and ending with a journey to his country of birth after the war. In this journey Berger not only realises the impossibility of ever returning to Germany, but his wife also informs him that she is expecting a child. These memories are framed by the first and last chapter, which are told by a heterodiegetic narrator, and set in post-war Portugal at a moment when Teresa, José’s wife, is in the hospital, giving birth to their son.101 His recollections are thus embedded within his experience of waiting for the birth of his son and his memories of the different experiences in Germany and in Portugal are not separated from each other, but actually both linked to the moment when the birth of his child confirms his new familial bonds: the, however precarious, reaffirmation of belonging to someone and of constituting a new family and home. Although there is obviously much more to say about Losa’s novel, there are three aspects of the construction of exile which seem essential in relation to Blaufuks’s work and its link to a kind of common mnemonic and discursive sphere. The first aspect refers to an impossibility of ever returning to Germany after the violence and atrocities committed against the Jewish population and other minorities. Losa addresses this aspect explicitly through José Berger’s trip back to Germany after the war. Visiting his hometown, Berger realises that he is unable to find or recover the places and people of his childhood in this country of amnesiac

101 In Paisagens da Memória – Identidade e Alteridade na Escrita de Ilse Losa [Memory landscapes – identity and alterity in Ilse Losa’s writing] Ana Isabel Marques divides the novel into “quatro sequências diegéticas” [four diegetic sequences] and “uma espécie de moldura narrativa” [a kind of narrative frame] (2001, 137). While she locates the narrative frame in the first and last two chapters, she understands the four diegetic sequences “como referentes aos diferentes períodos da estada do protagonista por terras portuguesas” [as referring to the different periods of the protagonist’s stay in Portuguese territory] (2001, 137.). By doing so, she is able to separate José’s life in Germany from his life in Portugal in order to define Sob Céus Estranhos in terms of José Berger’s gradual – but never complete – integration and acculturation into Portuguese society and culture.

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denial where “[n]obody seem[s] to have killed anybody” and everyone claims to have been “absent” from the “butchery” (Losa 2000, 173 [translation mine]).102 It seems impossible to live among these people who have assaulted him and his family or who simply abandoned them and stood by. However, what Losa’s text conveys is not merely an impossibility to forget or forgive. Instead, it is Berger’s realisation that the normalcy of belonging and of having an ordinary life can never be recovered after having been reduced to a human being stripped of all rights. Whatever home existed in Germany once, it is forever lost. While not as explicitly addressed as in Losa’s novel, a similar notion is also present in Blaufuks’s work, most notably in a note by his grandfather. In this excerpt from the period shortly after the war, Herbert August describes his bewilderment when after the war Portuguese authorities were “going to great lengths to honor all Jews with the German nationality when they renew[ed] their residence papers” because apparently it was suddenly “over with the race laws” (Blaufuks 2007, xi). As he continues: “This is really the limit! Some people have no notion of the honor and dignity of others” (Blaufuks 2007, xi.). Although this note obviously censures the bureaucratic absurdities emigrants were subjected to, it actually also seems to reach the essence of the traumatic experience of Blaufuks’s grandparents. In fact, it conveys a deeper sense of the realisation that nationality cannot simply be reattributed after it was taken away for reasons of religion: for Herbert August, it seems impossible to ever return to the protective sphere of the law of those who have declared him stateless and reduced him to fair game that can be hunted down and murdered without any punishment. The second aspect of the experience of living ‘under strange skies’ conveys a quite different layer of meaning. Although still a troubling experience, it is less related to the traumatic experience of being reduced to bare life than to a disruptive force of memory and an inability to ever fully belong to a new place and community. As the heterodiegetic narrator of Losa’s novel claims, to a foreigner like him [José] [the old buildings] did not mean anything, they did not inspire this nostalgia that the indigenous feel because they believe themselves to be the continuation of this past in which he, the foreigner, did not participate, not only because of his origins, but mainly because the nostalgia for a historic past is cultivated during

102 In Portuguese the whole passage reads: “Ninguém parecia ter assassinado ninguém. E nenhuma daquelas pessoas solícitas tinha cara de assassino de crianças. Lamentavam, sentiam muito, algumas até choravam. Mas não se apresentou um único que se confessasse presente nos dias da carnificina. Estiveram ausentes, todos”.

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childhood, just like habits and customs. [. . .] The battles and glories of a country which is not his own remain distant to him because his childhood was populated with other bat(Losa 2000, 15 [translation mine]) tles and glories.103

Losa thus links the experience of exile to memory and the immersion into particular mnemonic frameworks of a (national) community during childhood. Instead of having lost his roots or origins, it is precisely the enduring effect of memories acquired during childhood that hinders the foreigner from identifying with the imagined community of the receiving country. The essential aspect here is that Losa’s text does not suggest that José feels alienated because ‘of his origins’, but “mainly because the nostalgia for a historical past is cultivated during childhood” (Losa 2000, 15). National memory and identity are thus described as something constructed, acquired and ‘cultivated’ through the use of myths. To José, the refugee and exile, memory does not provide any identificatory link to the Portuguese past. He has not been socialised in a mnemonic framework that suggests a natural tie between him, his present, the national community and its construct of a shared past. The ‘battles and glories’ of his childhood are not simply forgotten; they cannot simply be substituted. They continue to have an impact and do not merely disappear. Blaufuks’s art project also conveys a sense of continuation through memory and ritual within the exile community in Lisbon. Although the grandparents and their friends are described as well integrated into Portuguese society, Blaufuks, as already mentioned above, also foregrounds a certain remoteness to Portugal and Portuguese society. While his grandmother receives significantly lesser attention than his grandfather throughout Sob Céus Estranhos, being defined predominantly through her dedication to her husband,104 her weekly canasta group assumes a central role in Blaufuks’s childhood memories. The weekly encounters of the refugee ladies and the “famous apple pie” that his grandmother used to prepare the day before are explored with some detail (Blaufuks 2007, viii): Of these ladies a few had married Portuguese men and here they found a part of themselves again, a Jewish-German heritage, mixed with the Portuguese daily life. It surely

103 In Portuguese this reads: “Mas a um estrangeiro, como ele, [as casas velhas] não diziam nada, não lhe inspiravam essa nostalgia que podem sentir os indígenas por se suporem a continuação desse passado do qual ele, o estrangeiro, não participava, não só pela sua origem mas sobretudo porque a nostalgia de um passado histórico se cultiva na infância, tal como os usos e costumes. [. . .] As lutas e glórias dum país que não é seu permanecem-lhe alheias porque a infância foi-lhe povoada de outras lutas e glórias”. 104 As Blaufuks puts it in book and film, his grandmother “dedicated her whole life” to his grandfather (Blaufuks 2007, ix).

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would have been impossible to find this combination anywhere else in the world. Some of what the Nazis had denied to them could be found again in that room. (Blaufuks 2007, viii)

It is not only significant that this part of the narrative constitutes one of the few examples of Blaufuks’s own childhood memories and his immersion into the world of his grandparents. These afternoons are presented as a kind of reconstitutive ritual in which Ursel August and her exile friends could express some “need of an identity” (Blaufuks 2007, viii). As Blaufuks emphasises, “[t]hat canasta table was a country, whose inhabitants got together Tuesday afternoon” (Blaufuks 2007, viii). They could find some of the daily life, the language, and food of their childhood, but also something else “that the Nazis had denied to them” (Blaufuks 2007, viii): a kind of normalcy, of not being different, but part of a group with a common experience of Portuguese exile, which refers not only to flight and loss, but also to this particular combination of Portuguese daily life and German-Jewish heritage. The ability to belong to the ‘receiving country’ is, however, also associated to a relational aspect. It is portrayed as a consequence not only of one’s own feelings and memories, but also of the way one is seen by others. This aspect is very present in Losa’s novel. The text highlights several times that José Berger is seen as a stranger and the protagonist explicitly expresses his astonishment at always being identified as alien: “Strange how easily people here identify foreigners, even when they have dark hair and eyes like me. They are like watchdogs who sense even at a long distance the people who do not belong to the house” (Losa 2000, 76–77 [translation mine]).105 Losa’s novel criticises not only social injustices and the position of women within Portuguese society, but also a latent xenophobia,106 with which José sees himself confronted. Even if her description of Porto sometimes may appear to transmit a rather stereotypical portrayal of a patriarchal, profoundly catholic and somehow provincial and antiquated city,107 it

105 In Portuguese this reads: “Curioso como nesta terra distinguem à légua os estrangeiros, mesmo que tenham cabelo e olhos escuros, como os meus. São como os cães da guarda, que pressentem à distância as pessoas que não pertencem à casa”. 106 D. Alice, the sister of one of José’s landlords, for example, gives voice to the prejudices against foreigners: “Portugal estava dum lado e todo o resto do globo e os que lá habitavam do outro [. . .]. Os estrangeiros eram gente ‘de fora’, diferentes da gente de cá, e portanto cheios de defeitos deploráveis.” [Portugal was on one side and the rest of the globe and all people living on it were on the other. Foreigners were people ‘from outside’, different from the people from here and had therefore several deplorable negative characteristics.] (Losa 2000, 111). 107 Losa has been criticised for her critique of prejudices and social conditions, most notably poverty and the patriarchal structure of the Portuguese society (Becker 1995). Neumann (2012)

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nevertheless also conveys a sense of the ‘violence’ an exile, foreigner or immigrant is confronted with. Not in the sense of physical aggression, but in the sense that real belonging is denied: the exile always remains in a certain state of exception, subjected to the concession of hospitality,108 irrespective of one’s own feelings or decisions. As Ilse Losa emphasises in an interview, “we are not only what we feel, but what others feel in us, and everybody sees in me a foreigner” (Mendes 1988, 6, apud. Marques 2001, 40 [translation mine]).109 In Blaufuks this kind of reciprocal experience of difference and estrangement becomes even more complex as it is linked not only to personal and national mnemonic frameworks, but also to a familial space of transgenerational transmission and postmemory. Blaufuks becomes exiled through remembering, through looking at the old photographs and reels, although he himself was never forced to flee. In Toda a Memória do Mundo – All the Memory of the World the artist explains his interest in memory, referring precisely to this complex relational condition of feeling and being seen as foreigner and its link to memory: I was born in a country that doesn’t have much memory, into a family that had to change its memory. In Portugal, the other children had relatives, grandparents, lots of cousins and, above all, villages to which they headed off at Christmas or for summer vacations. Their personal memory is entangled with their family memory. During my childhood, there were no foreigners in Portugal. I wasn’t really considered a foreigner, but I didn’t share this history. My history was that of the five people who formed my family. The past was somehow intangible, virtual. There was no village to head to. Nor were there many objects; they stayed in Germany. (Coignet and Blaufuks 2014, 196)

The experience of not ever being able to restore home implies therefore more than the impossibility of returning to one’s homeland. It also refers to a sense of never being able to fully belong to the country of exile either. In the case of the refugees or exiles, memory seems to work as a disruptive force, which separates them from any national imagined community. On the one hand, because the experience of being reduced to bare life, stripped of any protective law and

even argues that her novel conveys simplistic, negative stereotypes about Portugal as archaic, backward, socially unjust, patriarchal and mostly illiterate country, which he compares to common stereotypes in contemporary travel guides. 108 In Of Hospitality, Derrida (1997) discusses hospitality in terms of a ‘pact’, i.e. as a conditional concession of hospitality involving certain rights and obligations of the foreigner. Due to the conditionality of hospitality, the foreigner is also subjected to different “act[s] of violence” (Derrida 1997, 15) such as the imposition of translation into one’s own language (being able to understand and speak the language of the receiving country) in order to be “able to welcome him into our country” (Derrida 1997, 15). 109 In Portuguese this reads: “nós não somos só aquilo que sentimos, mas o que outros sentem em nós, e toda a gente vê em mim uma estrangeira [. . .]. Nunca me aceitam como portuguesa”.

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excluded from the realms of the national community, makes it impossible to return. On the other, because they not only grew up in a different national mnemonic framework, but also continue to be seen as foreigners, as someone who does not belong to the national imaginary of the receiving country.110 The experience of living under ‘strange skies’ is therefore neither simply defined in terms of lost roots or origins, nor of a difficulty to integrate or assimilate into a new country. Instead, it is constructed as an awareness of difference and of losing the naturalness of belonging, home, mother tongue, memory and culture. The third essential aspect in Losa and Blaufuks is precisely this loss of familiarity and unchallenged state of the world and its link to the creative force of exile. In Losa and Blaufuks the ‘condition of exile’ is associated with a creative force of a sense of estrangement and its link to the materiality of language and memory respectively. In an article about Losa’s novel, Alexandra Lopes convincingly argues that “the text draws attention to ‘the materiality of language, to words as words, their opacity, their resistance’”, challenging “what might be described as ‘a mindless, unselfaware naturalness of expression’” (2016, 202–203).111 As Lopes illustrates by means of several examples, Losa’s novel is characterised by a foreignisation of the Portuguese language through the use of unfamiliar structures and expressions. Instead of reading these irregularities as an inscription of a specific linguistic and cultural difference, Lopes frames it within Walter Benjamin’s notion of “translatability” and therefore as an example of an element of resistance: these irregularities disrupt the illusionary naturalness of linguistic and cultural signification. In essence, the novel – as the halfway-translated name of the protagonist also indicates – resists any binary categorisation and instead develops an exilic position situated in some space in-between. In Sob Céus Estranhos, Blaufuks takes a similar stand towards memory and home: he disrupts the naturalness of remembrance, staging it instead as an endless process of translation and construes a notion of home embedded in multilayered references. Localised in the country house of his grandparents – under the trees his grandfather loved so much – this sense of home is conveyed through the recurrent images of trees: blurred pictures and footage of what appears to be leaves and branches of treetops continue reappearing throughout book and film (Figure 11). They are left uncommented, coupled only with the sound of someone walking over

110 In Portuguese this reads: “Curioso como nesta terra distinguem à légua os estrangeiros, mesmo que tenham cabelo e olhos escuros, como os meus. São como os cães de guarda, que pressentem à distância as pessoas que não pertencem à casa”. 111 A. Lopes quotes “the materiality of language, to words as words, their opacity, their resistance” from Lawrence Venuti’s introduction to Rethinking Translation. Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology (1992).

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foliage in the case of the film. Rather than any clear image of home, Blaufuks links his sense of home to his exilic position, suggesting hidden meanings and connections rather than clear origins. For these blurred, fuzzy images not only evoke the trees in the garden of his grandparents but, as Ana Quintais (2015) remarks, also seem to refer to the landscapes of Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985).112 Again, Blaufuks therefore entangles his wary definition of home not only in his own familial past but also in a labyrinth of public images and the traumatic past of the Holocaust. What these images and Blaufuks’s cautious approximation to a place like home suggest is not a clearly defined homeland, but a fuzzy image of a place linked to a net of archival references, familial as well as public, and a past marked not only by violent persecution, but also familial intimacy and affection. This illustrates how Blaufuks’s affiliative (post)memory is not only based on a creative, and, to a certain degree, fictional investment, but also an identificatory position in which the artist embraces the experience of living ‘under strange skies’ and the ‘condition of exile’. However, becoming exiled does not imply a simplistic appropriation or identification with the traumatic past of his grandparents and the other refugees.

Figure 11: Sob Céus Estranhos – Under Strange Skies. Dir. Daniel Blaufuks. LX Filmes, 2002; courtesy of the artist.

112 Blaufuks also appropriated these images in his work Memory Landscapes (Shoah) (2008) in which he integrated several still shots of landscapes with trees of Lanzmann’s film into one single image.

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Instead, Blaufuks’s own exile emerges out of a creative and disruptive force of untranslatability: an awareness of the usually invisible materiality of media and memories and intrinsic indeterminacy of cultures, languages, communities and memories. Blaufuks integrates the archival material into a coherent narrative, but nonetheless maintains a lack of isomorphism between the seeable and the sayable, foregrounding not only the creative imagination, but also the different media layers involved in his (post)memory. Remembering is therefore framed not as the natural outcome of the past, but as a complex process enmeshed in a web of media and references. As a consequence, memory fails to provide a clear-cut identity, but rather generates a complex subject position in which past and present are deeply implicated by each other. Blaufuks is defined by and defines himself through a sense of estrangement, which makes him, to quote Said again, perceive “the entire world as a foreign land” (1994, 148). As Blaufuks argues in the context of Sebald’s and Perec’s work, the experience of exile refers to a “bigger sentiment [. . .], the sheer impossibility of returning to a place, making all of us, modern travelers, in fact, exiles, people in constant motion, always longing for a home and never actually finding it” (2014b, 183). In order to fully grasp the complexity of Blaufuks postmnemonic exile it seems, however, necessary to take a closer look at the way film and book make use of multilingual practices. It has already been mentioned that Sob Céus Estranhos is a multilingual work in several aspects. On the one hand, there are two versions of film and book, a Portuguese and an English one. On the other hand, film and book include archival material and texts in several languages, most notably Portuguese and German but also English and French. In the film, multilinguality is even more salient because the quotes by German-speaking intellectuals as well as Blaufuks grandfather are read in German by Bruno Ganz and Christoph Eichhorn respectively. While Blaufuks gives his own voice to the Portuguese narrative, in English the narrative is read by an English native speaker (Luka Clarke). Language change thus goes along with a shift of different voices and different ‘mother tongues’. In fact, – except for some particular words – in Sob Céus Estranhos, one only hears native speakers speaking their native language. There are neither accents, nor any visible marks of translation. Blaufuks not only chooses not to speak English or German in the film – despite being fluent in both languages – but also uses German translations of texts originally written in English, as in the case of Arthur Koestler’s and Erika Mann’s quotations, for example. This is by no means an insignificant detail since this staging of different languages sustains not only the impression of a multilingual polyphony of perspectives and materials, but also a difference or border between distinct linguistic and cultural identities. Languages actually come to symbolise a sort of identity

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marker, which anscribe the refugees and the artist himself to particular ‘mother tongues’ and respective cultural backgrounds. Surprisingly, Sob Céus Estranhos is thus characterised by a polyphonic multilinguism which simultaneously emphasises the multiplicity of perspectives as it remains indepted to what Yasemin Yildiz (2012) terms “the monolingual paradigm”. As Yildiz argues In Beyond the Mother Tongue, monolingualism is much more than a simple quantitative term designating the presence of just one language. Instead, it constitutes a key structuring principle that organizes the entire range of modern social life, from the construction of individuals and their proper subjectivities to the formation of disciplines and institutions, as well as of imagined collectives such as cultures and nations. According to this paradigm, individuals and social formations are imagined to possess one “true” language only, their “mother tongue,” and through this possession to be organically linked to an exclusive, clearly demarcated ethnicity, culture, and nation. (2012, 2)

Despite the presence of several languages, Daniel Blaufuks’s film does not only exclude accents and multilingual practices of the refugees, but the way it stages languages also presupposes a straight association between native tongue and cultural affiliation or identity. In contrast to Ilse Losa’s novel, Blaufuks’s film neither draws attention to the ‘materiality of language’ nor advances a critical stand towards the ideological framework of the ‘monolingual paradigm’. Instead, particularly in the film, different languages symbolise identity and cultural origins, or, to put it differently, multilingual practices are used to mobilise dominant associations between belonging or identity and native or ‘mother tongue’. However, while this surprisingly unreflexive use of language leaves the implications of the ‘monolingual paradigm’ for the refugees and the ‘condition of exile’ untouched, it is nevertheless an important aspect of Blaufuks’s affiliative approximation to the past. For the different languages emphasise not only a non-belonging of the transients and his grandparents to Portuguese society but at the same time the difference of Blaufuks’s own subject position. Despite his identificatory approximation to the past, Blaufuks does not share the fate of these refugees forced into exile by the Nazis. Although he grew up in the traces of the German-Jewish experience of his grandparents, he does no longer truly belong to it. There is a sense of an unbridgeable loss, an irreversible gap caused by the Holocaust and the destruction of German-Jewish culture, which separates him from the refugees. Although he continues to be implicated in the past and compulsively seeks to make sense of the traces, he is also aware that he is neither a refugee nor an immigrant. By exclusively speaking Portuguese, Blaufuks thus also foregrounds his belonging to Portuguese society. He was not forced into exile, but instead assumes an exilic subject position in which he consciously embraces the impossibility of an untainted home: the violence of

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the refugee experience troubles a naturalness of belonging and calls for a reflection about the complex contexts of injustices that continue to inform our present. Because, as Blaufuks adds in the end credits of his film, at present (i.e. in 2002) “there are 35 million refugees in the world” (Sob Céus Estranhos/Under Strange Skies 00:56:14).113 It is precisely his exilic subject position entangled in labyrinths of images and words that defines Sob Céus Estranhos’ ethics of (post)memory. From his exilic position rooted in this (post)mnemonic, translated web of visual and verbal media, Blaufuks presents his necessarily transitory response to the remnants of this (hi)story of exile and proposes a subjective and always invariably preliminary version of the past. Sob Céus Estranhos suggests an affiliative (post)memory which challenges the naturalness of memory, identity and belonging. Instead of providing a comforting identification with the victims of Nazi persecution, film and book are characterised by an ethics of (post)memory, which engages in a complex reflection about the legacy of the refugee experience during World War II in the present. Blaufuks examines not only the enmeshed remnants of past violence and persecution but also the complex networks of signification in the present, including the structuring principles, gaps and boundaries of private as well public archives. In this sense, his position can best be described as heterocultural: although his narrative guides the audience, he does not propose a closed reading of the experience of exile in Portugal, but invites the viewer and reader to engage in his unattainable quest of making sense out of the labyrinth of images and words. In essence, Sob Céus Estranhos is thus based on a reflection about the materiality and mediality of (post)memory, which frames the process of remembering not only as outcome of a constant process of quoting, (re)appropriating and (re)signifying, but also as always already translated. Instead of a closed, selfcentred repertoire or archive, Sob Séus Estranhos presents itself as entangled in constant processes of translation, inserted not in a self-contained memory culture, but enmeshed in a de-centred web of media and references. In this sense, Blaufuks makes the heteroculturality of his (post)mnemonic subject position visible. This (post)memory is based on an archival practice of endless translations, on a practice of addressing the past without supposing some homogeneity or common origin or even shared form of implication. The artist as archivist participates in a potentially endless process of (re)signification and translation; producing

113 At a screening of his film at the Deutsche Schule in Lisbon in 2019, Blaufuks underlined that for him this number, i.e the number of refugees at present, is the most important number in his film.

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always more archive and memory instead of closing them. Sob Céus Estranhos’ exilic position is thus linked to a ‘memory fever’, a compulsive need to continue to make sense of the past despite the impossibility of ever attaining this goal, and the ethical attitude towards memory consists in a simultaneous insistence on the need to remember and a refusal of clear origins. Remembering emerges as a heterocultural process of endless translations, which transcends essentialising notions of cultures, identities and belonging, requiring instead a continuous reflection about how the past continues to be implicated in our present, including our forms of communality and belonging.

4 Lisbon as centre for transit and espionage: nostalgia, rich exiles and the figure of the female refugee in Domingos Amaral’s Enquanto Salazar Dormia Domingos Amaral’s Enquanto Salazar Dormia . . . : Memórias de um Espião em Lisboa [While Salazar was sleeping . . . : memories of a spy in Lisbon] (2013a [2006]) can most aptly be described as a “big hit” (Sabine and Williams 2009, 197). With more than 20 successive editions between 2006 and 2017, a paperback version and over 50,000 copies sold,114,115 this light popular fiction is an example of not only “the huge success of novels set in the not-so-distant past” (Sabine and Williams 2009, 197), but also of the particular appeal of the Estado Novo, Salazar and the period of World War II in twenty-first-century Portugal. However, Amaral’s novel should not be aligned with the self-conscious debates about recent national history in Portuguese literature by acclaimed authors such as José Saramago, António Lobo Antunes, José Cardoso Pires or Lídia Jorge, that have been the object of several studies. On the contrary, and in contrast to Daniel Blaufuks’s Sob Céus Estranhos, Enquanto Salazar Dormia does not develop a critical approach about either memory or history, but rather presents an easily accessible narrative in which the autodiegetic narrator remembers his (amorous) adventures as a British spy in Portugal during World War II. In fact, Enquanto Salazar Dormia is part of a process of mnemonic popularisation of the topic of the World War II period in Portugal. Especially from the mid-2000s onwards, television formats such as Os Grandes Portugueses [The Great Portuguese]116 with its documentary about Aristides de Sousa Mendes, widely discussed historiographical research117 and a number of newspaper

114 This number is based on the advertisement of the publisher Casa das Letras. 115 Amaral also published a sequel entitled O Retrato da Mãe de Hitler [The portrait of Hitler’s mother] (2013b), which is set in Lisbon after the end of World War II. The novel revolves around Jack Gil when he is not working for the British intelligence service anymore, but instead helps his father finding Nazi art objects that German war criminals sell in Lisbon on their way to escape punishment by fleeing to overseas. 116 Adapting BBC’s format 100 Greatest Britons, in 2007 public broadcasting station RTP1 organised a public poll contest featuring documentaries about the top ten candidates presented by different Portuguese public figures. While the vote put Salazar on the top of the list, Aristides de Sousa Mendes was placed third. 117 Most notably Judeus em Portugal durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial by Irene Pimentel (2006). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110733440-004

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articles contributed significantly to the increased visibility of the refugee presence and the activities of foreign intelligence agencies on Portuguese soil. The role of Lisbon as a transit station and centre of international espionage has since then been the topic of a number of expositions, articles, films and literary texts. Particularly in popular literature, a number of novels have chosen wartime Lisbon and Costa do Sol as a setting for stories centred on romance, crime and espionage. Among them are translated novels by international authors such as Robert Wilson’s Portuguese series including Último Acto em Lisboa (2000b) [A Small Death in Lisbon (2000a [1999])] and A Companhia de Estranhos (2002) [The Company of Strangers (2001)], as well as publications by Portuguese authors such as A Última Noite em Lisboa [The last night in Lisbon] (2014) by Sérgio Luís de Carvalho or Sob os Céus do Estoril [Under Estoril’s Skies] (2017) by Maria João Fialho Gouveia. However, due to its relatively early moment of publication in 2006 as well as its undeniable success on the Portuguese book market, Enquanto Salazar Dormia has gained an exceptional importance in the circulation of the imaginary of Lisbon during World War II in Portugal. In contrast to Sob Céus Estranhos, Enquanto Salazar Dormia is characterised by conventionality and the absence of self-critical theoretical reflection about memory and therefore requires a certain shift of focus in the analysis. Nevertheless, the present chapter follows a similar structure to the previous. Opening with a discussion of the narrative strategies, it then shifts the focus to the referential web and processes of recycling and appropriation. Finally, the last-subchapter addresses how the novel negotiates the relationship to the ‘refugee other’.

4.1 Memories of a spy: entertaining authenticity in a popular format Enquanto Salazar Dormia weaves a portrayal of Lisbon in the 1940s into a tale of espionage and amorous conquests. The image of Portugal’s capital as a contradictory oasis of peace serves as background for the adventures of a young AngloPortuguese naval agent who comes to work for the British intelligence service in Portugal. Domingos Amaral explores the image of Lisbon during World War II in a highly popular format. Characterised by an absence of literary complexity and critical metafictional as well as historiographical reflection or debate, it develops a particular image of the past through fiction and inserts its representation of war-time Portugal in a vividly commodified public sphere. The title already introduces a number of fashionable cultural and mnemonic references, associating Salazar with the imaginary of espionage in Portugal during the war. Enquanto Salazar Dormia presents war-time Lisbon as a “unique site in Europe, beautiful

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and full of light, but also of fear” (Amaral 2013a, 12).118 In essence, Lisbon is characterised as the capital of a neutral country involved in the war through the presence of transiting refugees and spies “where the maelstrom of emotions of the time made the skirts of women rise faster” (Amaral 2013a, 12.).119 Advertised as Memórias de um Espião em Lisboa [Memories of a spy in Lisbon], the novel takes the form of a fictional autobiographical account. Set in Lisbon between 1941 and 1945, the main storyline is told as a recollection by an autodiegetic narrator who revisits Lisbon 50 years later. In June 1995, 85-yearold Jack Gil Mascarenhas returns to Lisbon on the occasion of the wedding of his grandson Paul, who is about to be married to a young Portuguese woman. Enquanto Salazar Dormia begins with a prologue that establishes the relationship between the different timelines. Framed within the present of the 1990s, the remembered events of war-time Lisbon actually dominate the novel. While the visit to Lisbon and the wedding of his grandson set the context, the focus actually lies on the remembered events of the 1940s: Lisbon, 22 June 1995 I never expected to return to this street, and I never expected that my old heart would feel such a strong emotion when I stepped on the sidewalks of the Lapa neighbourhood. When I got out of the taxi in front of the hotel it was as if I had been hit by a wrecking ball. For a few moments I couldn’t breathe, overrun by emotions, memories of smells, images and voices. I don’t even remember that I paid for the taxi, nor do I recall the words of the doorman who directed me courteously to the reception. Suddenly, nothing existed. Only Lisbon 50 years ago. My Lisbon, where I loved so much and so many times.120 (Amaral 2013a, 11)

The storyline set in 1995 is indeed quite rudimentary and remarkably eventless: Jack Gil travels to Lisbon because of the wedding of his grandson Paul; he revisits some places in the city and its surroundings, attends the wedding at the Seteais Palace in Sintra; and, as he decides to extend his journey, spends some time with his grandson telling him the memories of his time as a British spy in 118 All translations of the Portuguese quotations from Enquanto Salazar Dormia are my own. In Portuguese this reads: “Local único da Europa, linda e cheia de luz, mas também de medo”. 119 In Portuguese this reads: “onde o turbilhão de emoções da época fazia subir as saias das mulheres mais depressa”. 120 In Portuguese this reads: “Lisboa, 22 de Junho de 1995. Nunca esperei regressar a esta rua, e nunca esperei que meu velho coração sentisse tanta emoção ao pisar os passeios da Lapa. Quando saí do táxi em frente ao hotel foi como se uma bola de demolição tivesse chocado comigo. Fiquei sem respiração por momentos, invadido por sentimentos, memórias de cheiros, imagens e vozes. Não me lembro sequer de ter pago o táxi, nem me recordo das palavras do porteiro, a dirigir-me com cortesia para a recepção. Nada, de repente, existia. A não ser Lisboa, 50 anos atrás. A minha Lisboa, onde amei tanto e tantas vezes”.

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Salazar’s Portugal. In fact, the sole event in the sense of an incident “being singled out from the continuous flow of occurrences and thereby being qualified as something special or surprising” (Nünning 2010, 197) is the accident of the unnamed bride of the grandson.121 At the end of the wedding, she breaks her ankle and has to be taken to the hospital, thereby spoiling not only the end of the festivities but also Paul’s honeymoon. In essence, the 1995–present serves to frame the memories set in the 1940s as a contemporary, informed retrospective. The storyline of the present is thus reduced to short passages that inspire recall and comments about the history of the Estado Novo, World War II or how Portugal has changed in comparison to the 1940s: Weddings annoy me. All this agitation, this frenzy of the youth, seem to me a meaningless excitement. I’ve never been a great dancer, and when rock became popular, I was already over 45 years old, my time for dancing had already passed. Besides, here at the Seteais Palace, I don’t know anybody. I spent most of the dinner watching the young women filling the room. In my youth the country used to hide its beautiful pearls. Those who exhib(Amaral 2013a, 223) ited themselves [. . .] paid a price.122

Through the juxtaposition with the present, the thrill and movement characteristic of the city in the war period is contrasted with a dreary present in 1995 Lisbon. On his arrival at the Lapa district, Jack Gil is literally overcome by his memories, realising “50 years later, [. . .] that Lisbon has always been with” him and that he has “never completely left” (Amaral 2013a, 13).123 Wandering through the streets of Lapa – one of the most animated quarters of the town in the 1940s, with informants “leaning against the cars [. . .] to spy on the exits of the embassies” – Jack Gil “cannot but wonder about the quietness” of the area at the end of the twentieth century (Amaral 2013a, 18).124 While almost nothing unexpected or memorable happens during his visit to Lisbon in 1995, his stories 121 The narrator refers to her usually as “a rapariga” [the girl] and, during the wedding ceremony, asserts that he believes her name to be Teresa (Amaral 2013a, 210). 122 In Portuguese this reads: “Os casamentos aborrecem-me. Aquele alvoroço todo, aquele frenesim da juventude, parecem-me uma excitação a despropósito. Nunca fui grande dançarino, e quando o rock chegou ao mundo já tinha mais de 45 anos, a minha época de danças já passara. Para mais, aqui no Palácio de Seteais, não conheço ninguém. Passei o jantar a observar as raparigas que enchiam a sala. No meu tempo, o país escondia as suas belas pérolas. Quem se exibia [. . .] pagava um preço”. 123 In Portuguese the whole sentence reads: “Agora, sentado na cama deste quarto do Hotel da Lapa, 50 anos depois, dou por mim a pensar que Lisboa sempre esteve comigo e que nunca parti completamente”. 124 In Portuguese this reads: “não posso deixar de estranhar esta calma da Lapa [. . .] homens encostados aos carros [. . .] para espiarem as saídas das embaixadas”

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of the 1940s are eventful and exciting. Through the aged narrator, the reader is confronted with a world of adventure and seduction, with a Lisbon in which the protagonist lived his heyday, the “epic hours” of his past (Amaral 2013a, 11).125 The novel is divided into a prologue, an epilogue and three parts, each figuring the name of one of Jack Gil’s most significant love adventures of the wartime period: Mary, Alice and Anika. The narrative evolves chronologically on both timelines, with expositional episodes and reflections in the present being intersected by a detailed, rather eventful narration of the events in the past. While the prologue frames the novel by describing the arrival at Lisbon, all three parts as well as the epilogue are dominated by Jack Gil’s memories. The remembered events begin on the night of 15 February 1941 when a terrible cyclone hits Lisbon. On his way out of a cocktail party hosted by British ambassador Campbell, Jack Gil is approached by Mary who asks him for a ride home. However, this seems to be just a pretext as she ends up inviting him not only into her apartment and bed, but also to work for the MI 9. It is thus Mary who draws Jack Gil into the clandestine world of seduction and intrigue in Lisbon. He not only begins being unfaithful to his virginal Portuguese fiancé Carminho – “a girl from a good family, very important in the regime” (Amaral 2013a, 26)126 – but also abandons his intention to settle down in a quiet existence working for his father as a naval agent. While maintaining the appearances of his former life, he starts an affair with Mary, a married woman working at the British Embassy, and helps her in the repatriation of British pilots. Although his relationship with Mary involves Jack in some espionage adventures linked particularly to the activities of her husband James Bowles, the fictional head of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in Portugal, it is only when he begins his affair with Alice in part II that he engages in serious espionage work. Since Mary has given up her post in Lisbon and his engagement to Carminho came to an end, Jack Gil is left depressed in Lisbon. At this point he is not only recruited for the MI6 by his friend Michael but also keeps crossing paths with Alice, “the monument” (Amaral 2013a, 157). 127 Although this “[s]exually famous”, “greedy” and “dangerous” “luxury escort” had “all the characteristics of a woman to be avoided” (Amaral 2013a, 183),128 according to 85-year-old Jack Gil it was her who made him recover from his depression (Amaral 2013a, 184). Happy for a short time, eventually it was “the reality” of the world 125 In Portuguese this reads: “épicas horas”. 126 In Portuguese this reads: “menina de boa família, muito importante no regime”. 127 In Portuguese this reads: “o monumento”. 128 In Portuguese the entire passage reads: “Sexualmente famosa, acompanhante de luxo gananciosa, perigosa: Alice tinha todas as características de uma mulher a evitar”.

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of espionage in Lisbon that “intrude[d] into [their] love, interrupting it, destroying moments of happiness” (Amaral 2013a, 217).129 The second part is consequently not only characterised by his passionate, complicated affair with Alice, but also by his participation in an important espionage mission. Instructed to uncover the most dangerous espionage ring of Nazis in Portugal, Jack Gil happens to blow the cover of a crucial British double agent. “DragonFly”130 turns out to be none other than Alice, who, after Jack’s unfortunate exposure of her as a German spy, is forced to flee Portugal clandestinely at night. She is taken out of the country by the British Intelligence Service, leaving Jack alone at the Guincho beach. The departure of Alice coincides with the abatement of Lisbon as battlefield of international espionage. As the narrator asserts, “the excitement that fascinated those who lived in Lisbon between 1940 and the end of 1943 was in the process of disappearing” (Amaral 2013a, 314).131 Jack Gil finds himself alone and depressed again, when he suddenly receives a note from an unknown woman who wants to meet him to discuss important affairs. While part II contained the serious espionage work and the double agent as a lover, part III leads into the centre of doom and gloom in Lisbon. While trying to save the enchanting Anika and her brother Karl John132 from the Gestapo because of their involvement in the July 20 plot of 1944 to assassinate Adolf Hitler, he loses his best friend and superior at MI6: Michael is shot by Gestapo agents in front of his eyes. Having made up his mind to avenge Michael, Jack Gil kills the Gestapo official with his friend’s knife and gets rid of his corpse with the help of Klopp, the most sinister of collaborators of his small spy ring. Jack Gil’s memories are not merely presented as a sentimental account of the protagonist’s thrilling youth but also as a rather neglected aspect of the memory of World War II. While the stories that Jack Gil tells about ‘his’ Lisbon

129 In Portuguese this reads: “a realidade se intromete[u] no amor [deles], interrompendo-o, quebrando momentos de felicidade”. 130 The codename Dragonfly for a British double agent during World War II is well documented. However, according to Pimentel (2013, 367–368), it was a male agent, born in London of German parents, who was married to a German woman, and stayed in Lisbon between 1940 and 1943. 131 In Portuguese this reads: “a excitação, que fascinava os que viveram em Lisboa entre 1940 e finais de 1943, estava a desaparecer”. 132 This character is probably inspired by Otto John. Working as a lawyer at Lufthansa at the time, John was involved in the July 20 plot and passed through Portugal on his way to Great Britain in 1944. Before the attempted coup, John contacted British agents in Madrid and Lisbon, who eventually declined their support following direct orders from London to cease all contacts with the German resistance (zur Mühlen 1992, 149; Weber 2011, 116–117).

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confer meaning to his fictitious autobiographical self, they are actually framed as a relevant portrayal of Portugal’s capital as an international centre of espionage. The autodiegetic narrator presents his narrative as a testimony directed at later generations and addresses the difficulty of transmitting his memories precisely by comparing them to supposedly better-known or more visible aspects of the war and the atrocities related to it: It is difficult to explain what I did to a young man from the 1990s. They understand the heroism of RAF pilots, the abnegation of the nurses, the courage of the French resistance, even the spirit of Churchill’s speeches. They understand the horror of Auschwitz or Dachau, the Iron Curtain, the atomic bombs. But it is difficult for them to understand the mystification, the corruption, the psychological war, the art of deceiving, the hidden wars that were taking place in Lisbon. They don’t know what spies are.133 (Amaral 2013a, 13–14)

Leaving aside for now the troubling idea that it is easier for following generations to understand “the horror of Auschwitz or Dachau” and the “atomic bombs” than espionage in neutral Portugal, what becomes apparent in this short paragraph is how the narrator entwines past and present, the story he tells with the historical topic and memory. Through the comparison with paradigmatic mnemonic reference points, Enquanto Salazar Dormia does not only bestow relevance on Lisbon’s role during the global conflict. It also conveys an image of a mysterious, heroic past that is irrecoverably lost and somehow unintelligible to later generations: They can’t understand one of the secrets of humanity, a strange and disturbing secret: in times of war despair governs the souls and people love like maniacs. [. . .] This is what my grandson isn’t able do understand, because society and time mark men, and the good life and abundance of the 1990s in the Western world don’t produce this kind of despair.134 (Amaral 2013a, 14)

It is precisely this irretrievability of an ambience of despair, of a world in a state of exception that the novel evokes as reason for the continuing appeal of Jack Gil’s Lisbon for later generations. Although Enquanto Salazar Dormia is not constructed as a narrative directed at his grandson, intergenerational transmission 133 In Portuguese this reads: “É difícil explicar o que eu fazia a um rapaz dos anos 90. Eles compreendem o heroísmo dos pilotos da RAF, a abnegação das enfermeiras, a coragem da Resistência francesa, até o espírito dos discursos de Churchill. Compreendem o horror de Auschwitz ou Dachau, a cortina de Ferro, as bombas atómicas. Mas dificilmente compreendem a mistificação, o suborno, a guerra psicológica, a arte de enganar, as guerras surdas que se passavam em Lisboa. Não sabem o que são espiões”. 134 In Portuguese this reads: “Não podem compreender um dos segredos da humanidade, o desespero toma conta das almas e as pessoas amam como loucas. [. . .] É isso que o meu neto não pode compreender, pois a sociedade e a época marcam os homens, e a boa vida e a abundância dos anos 90, no mundo ocidental, não produzem esse tipo de desespero”.

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plays a role right from the beginning. While the conversations with Paul about the war are actually only depicted from chapter 41 onwards, the importance of Jack Gil’s stories for his grandson is highlighted already in the prologue. Although the narrator continuously reflects about the difficulty of passing along his adventures and the atmosphere of Portugal’s capital during the war, Paul is represented as quite a keen listener. In fact, the stories of his grandfather about Lisbon seem to fascinate Paul to the point that, as he announces at the beginning of the novel, it was because of them that he fell in love with a Portuguese woman (Amaral 2013a, 13). And after his wedding – when his newly-married wife has to stay in hospital with limited visiting hours – Paul asks for more of his grandfather’s ‘adventures’ to avoid getting depressed because of his missed honeymoon. Indeed, diving into the world of espionage of his grandfather seems to be a worthy distraction from the boring state of affairs in 1995 and a due compensation for the “amazing trip to the Maldives” that he had to cancel (Amaral 2013a, 261).135 With his interest and uncritical, escapist consumption of Jack Gil’s narrative, Paul figures as a kind of exemplary addressee that mirrors how the text is suggested to be read: staged as authentic retrospective, Enquanto Salazar Dormia invites the reader to immerse in this contradictory world of amorous affairs, espionage adventures, and human despair. As the narrator does not fail to emphasise, his stories refer to the things that took place “while Salazar was sleeping” in an “occult and nocturnal” Lisbon governed by “immoral or illegal rules” (Amaral 2013a, 105).136 Without any critical reflection, the novel thus proposes a nostalgic view of the atmosphere of doom and gloom in war-time Lisbon, where the horrors of the distant war supposedly produced a catastrophic, desperate atmosphere that intensified the experience of life. Put into contrast with the dreary, insignificant stability of the 1990s, the novel proposes not only a wistful memory of the adventurous youth of an aged former spy, but also offers the possibility of diving into a nostalgic image of a mysterious, challenging and indeed meaningful past. The uncritical consumption of the image of war-time Lisbon is supported by a fluid, easily accessible language and a somehow hyper-reliable narrator. Despite his age, his memories are characterised as solid and trustworthy. In fact, it is emphasised that he “remember[s] everybody. The ambassadors and secretaries. The policemen and chambermaids. The millionaires and Jewish refugees. The journalists and soldiers. The lighthouse keeper and taxi driver” (Amaral 135 In Portuguese this reads: “viagem bestial às Maldivas”. 136 In Portuguese the whole passage reads: “As coisas que se passavam ‘enquanto Salazar dormia’. Michael usava sempre a frase para classificar episódios de um mundo oculto e nocturno, onde se usavam regras imorais ou ilegais”.

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2013a, 14).137 Possible pitfalls and distortions of either his version of the past, or of processes of representation, remembrance and transmission in general are not addressed at all. His is the sole authoritative voice of the novel, the sole unquestionable point of view and as such his stories and world view are never challenged. Instead, Jack Gil presents his tale in an oral, colloquial register that not only favours a certain familiarity and intimacy, but emphasises also an impression of immediacy as if his story opened a clear window to the atmosphere of war-driven Portugal. While foregrounding the fictitious character of Jack Gil’s story, Enquanto Salazar Dormia nonetheless emphasises the authenticity of his portrayal of Lisbon as transit station and centre of espionage.138 In fact, Amaral’s novel is characterised by an effect of transparency that borrowing Astrid Erll’s words can be described as “the illusion of an unmediated access to the past” (Erll 2011b, 130 [translation mine]).139 Rather than foregrounding processes of mediation or representation, the novel relies on remediation in order to authenticate its portrayal of the past. This impression of authenticity is supported by the massive inclusion of hetero-referential elements – i.e. references to aspects of the ‘real’ world, such as historical events, circumstances, figures or objects.140 In fact, most of the chapters set in the past contain a number of heteroreferential substantiations: the prologue introduces a topography of Lisbon as well as some contextual information regarding World War II; Part I starts with a reference to the cyclone that hit Lisbon in 1941; Chapter 4 then proceeds by introducing Nubar Gulbenkian, a figure well-known in Portugal; Chapter 6 mentions the visit of Josephine Baker; and so it goes on and on. References to places and events in Lisbon and Portugal, visits of famous actors, film premieres of Hollywood productions and Portuguese films, Portuguese newspapers, dates of the war, national and international politicians and institutions, famous refugees and spies in Lisbon, but also costumes and objects such as Jack Gil’s car or the typical haircut of female refugees. The list of examples is truly abundant. It is however not only the number of hetero-referential details, but also their 137 In Portuguese this reads: “Lembro-me de todos. Dos embaixadores e das secretárias. Dos polícias e das criadas de quarto. Dos milionários e dos judeus refugiados. Dos jornalistas e dos militares. Dos faroleiros e dos taxistas.” 138 This framing corresponds to Amaral’s own assertion at the end of the novel, in which he claims it to be based on ‘true events’ including historical figures depicted according to their biographies, while the main characters are the outcome of his own imagination (Amaral 2013a, 399). 139 In German this reads: “die Illusion eines unmediatisierten Zugangs zur Vergangenheit”. 140 For a general discussion of the role of hetero-referential elements as a means to increase the appearance of authenticity in historical novels see, for instance, Nünning (2007).

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variation and scope that supports the impression of a well-grounded, reliable, and exhaustive portrayal of the life and political situation in Portugal in the 1940s. The importance of presenting his tale as an authentic and trustworthy account becomes even more evident when considering the surprisingly high extent of expository discourse. Indeed, a great part of Enquanto Salazar Dormia consists of descriptions and comments on a wide range of topics: from the role of memories in our life (“Our life is made of memories” (Amaral 2013a, 37)141), changes in language use and culture (“In 1941, people didn’t use as much dirty words as today [. . .]. In 1941, an insult was something serious” (Amaral 2013a, 37),142), to value judgements about the regime, opinions on the role of espionage in Portugal and even ‘revelations’ about the war: Although the censors of the regime monitored the press, the observable division of opinions reflected the situation of the country. In 1941, Portugal was split into two halves in its sympathies. Families, people, press, circles of power, were divided into the Anglophile and Germanophile party, both fighting for the soul and sympathy of the Portuguese.143 (Amaral 2013a, 48) Many people still believe that it was the Normandy landing, the famous D-Day, that changed the course of the war. In truth, it wasn’t. The war was actually won by the Soviets, a fact that took me a long time to accept. The destiny of Nazi Germany was decided on 12 and 13 July 1943, in Kurk, in the biggest battle of human history: 4000 Russian (Amaral 2013a, 273) tanks faced 2700 German tanks, backed by 1800 airplanes.144

The autodiegetic narrator presents himself not only as a reliable memorialist of his own life, but also as a dependable commentator of the past and the present. Although not a central figure of the British intelligence service in Portugal, he nonetheless reveals knowledge of the procedures and the course of events, corroborating the credibility of his opinions about past and present. Indeed, Jack 141 In Portuguese this reads: “A nossa vida é feita de memórias”. 142 In Portuguese this reads. “Em 1941, as pessoas não usavam tanto os palavrões como usam hoje [. . .]. Em 41, um insulto era uma coisa grave”. 143 In Portuguese this reads: “Embora a censura do regime vigiasse a imprensa, a divisão de opiniões reflectia o estado do país. Em 1941, Portugal estava rachado ao meio nas suas simpatias. Famílias, povo, imprensa, círculos de poder, dividiam-se entre o partido anglófilo e o partido germanófilo, ambos em luta pela alma e pela simpatia dos portugueses”. 144 In Portuguese this reads: “Muitas pessoas ainda acreditam que foi o embarque da Normandia, o célebre dia D, que alterou o curso da guerra. Na verdade, não foi. Quem ganhou a guerra foram os soviéticos, coisa que me levou muito tempo a aceitar. O destino da Alemanha nazi ficou selado nos dias 12 e 13 de Julho de 1943, em Kursk, na maior batalha terrestre da história da humanidade: 4000 tanques russos confrontaram 2700 tanques alemães, apoiados por 1800 aviões”.

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Gil’s ‘authoritative’ worldview is constantly manifested, not only in the expository passages, but also in his conversations with his friend Michael and particularly those with his grandson Paul. What this autodiegetic narrator tells is not merely his own life story, but the story of a witness of an important episode of Portugal’s role in international history. In essence, Enquanto Salazar Dormia thus combines an entertaining plot organised around masculine adventures and amorous conquests with an ambiance of historical veracity. The main storyline of the past takes the form of a fictional memoir of a former spy that nonetheless provides the illusion of an authentic and engaging image of Lisbon during World War II. Jack Gil’s retrospective of his years as a young man at the service of the British intelligence service thereby gains a meaning that exceeds his own (fictitious) autobiography. The novel favours uncritical readability over narrative, linguistic or historiographical complexity or debate, and thereby invites the reader to let him/herself immerse not only in the story of the protagonist but also in the portrayal of Portugal in the early 1940s. Through the memories of the autodiegetic narrator, the novel suggests a kind of immediate impression and experience of the atmosphere of the past emplotted in masculine adventures and intergenerational transmission.

4.2 Recycling the dominant imaginary of Portugal during World War II: heterocultural references in a nostalgic narrative about a glorious national past Despite the absence of any critical reflection about processes of (re)appropriation, it is nonetheless through the incorporation of a varied heterocultural referential network that Enquanto Salazar Dormia supports an uncritical immersion in a specific image of war-driven Lisbon. While foregrounding the impression of a not only authentic but also unbiased account of the World War II period in Portugal, the novel actually develops a nostalgic narrative about a glorious national past. Rather than any sort of counter-memory or critical chronicle of the 1940s, Enquanto Salazar Dormia remediates memory matters from hegemonic Portuguese memory as well as topoi and media from global popular culture to design an image of a past in which Portugal came to play a decisive yet almost invisible role in world history. In fact, Enquanto Salazar Dormia does not include an arbitrary arrangement of historical places, figures and dates, but rather recycles canonical images and narratives that are either firmly inscribed in hegemonic memory or at least have been highlighted in most accounts of the period. Accordingly, Amaral’s novel

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appropriates a general setting in which Lisbon is presented as a sad yet peaceful cosmopolitan safe haven and transit station suddenly confronted with the presence of foreigners that do not conform to the quiet traditionalism propagated by the regime. Similar descriptions are indeed to be found in several works that have appeared since interest in Portugal’s role during the global conflict intensified in the late 1990s. In the catalogue of one of the early exhibitions in 2004, Irene Pimentel, for instance, describes the area as an “exchange centre of espionage, information, goods and people” with refugees mingling between “[the] Baixa of Lisbon and [the] Avenida da Liberdade” (Pimentel 2004, 34–35 [translation mine]).145 And in Maria João Martins’s chronicle of the city during the years of the global conflict, Lisbon is pictured as a Paraíso Triste [Sad paradise] where “female refugees from Central Europe introduced new fashions and shook up a Lisbon mentally still pertaining to the nineteenth century” (1994, 27 [translation mine]).146 To this day, one of the dominant associations with the war-period in Lisbon is precisely the impact of the female refugees in Lisbon. As Irene Pimentel stresses, “[t]he street cafés and the less contained attitude of the female refugees seated there, seemed to have been the phenomena that most affected the Portuguese during the war” (Pimentel 2006, 167 [translation mine]).147 In contrast to Portuguese women, the refugiadas [female refugees] frequented coffee houses, read and smoked in public and not only used shorter, modern haircuts and dresses, but also walked through Lisbon without covering their legs with stockings or their hair with hats. In a country ruled by a conservative regime that propagated a desexualised “sanitized female whose role was to preserve the Catholic faith and reproduce and nurture the family” (Halloway 2014, 142), the independence and liberality of many of the foreign women caused some scandal but also fascination. Commenting a reproduced photograph originally published in the Portuguese version of the German propaganda magazine Signal,148 Margarida de Magalhães Ramalho, for instance, describes how Portuguese men “were enjoying [the] female foreigners walking by”149 (2012, 41 [translation mine]), only to emphasise a

145 In Portuguese this reads: “placa giratória de espionagem, informações, mercadorias e pessoas” [. . .] “[a] baixa de Lisboa e [a] Avenida da Liberdade”. 146 In Portuguese this reads: “refugiadas vindas da Europa Central introduziam novas modas e sacudiam uma Lisboa mentalmente parada no Século XIX”. 147 In Portuguese this reads: “[a]s esplanadas e a atitude mais liberta das refugiadas que nelas se sentavam, parecem ter sido os fenómenos que mais marcaram os portugueses no período da guerra”. 148 In Portugal the magazine was distributed under the name Sinal. 149 In Portuguese this reads: “apreciando a passagem d[as] estrangeiras”.

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few pages later that Portuguese women feared that their husbands could be “enchanted by so many beauties” (2012, 44 [translation mine]).150 Enquanto Salazar Dormia not only introduces the most emblematic places and establishments in Lisbon, but also explores this idea of the simultaneous estrangement and fascination provoked particularly by the appearance and behaviour of the foreign women that suddenly arrived in Lisbon: My friend started walking towards the Suíça and I followed him. The coffeehouse, where the large number of refugees frequenting the establishment had forced the opening of a terrace on the street, was baptized by the Portuguese as “Bompernasse”,151 because one could observe many a beautiful leg of foreign women there. French, Belgian, Dutch, Jewish women from Germany or Poland, wore socquettes and walked outside without neither stockings, nor gloves or hats, and their hair cut short, “in refugee fashion”. Relieved that they had been able to escape the war, the blackouts, the bombs or the persecution by the Gestapo, they enjoyed Lisbon like an oasis, a nirvana of peace and happiness, and exposed their legs in the sun while reading magazines and smoking cigarettes with a liveli(Amaral 2013a, 41–42) ness foreign to Lusitanian custom.152

The majority of Jack Gil’s memories are not localised in the cafés of Lisbon’s Baixa, though. Besides the elegant district of the embassies and the finest hotels and restaurants of the Portuguese capital, Enquanto Salazar Dormia takes the reader to the famous Costa do Sol in the 1940s. According to the narrator, this “Portuguese Riviera” assembled “a cosmopolitan and lighthearted rich society that enjoyed the sun, quietness and diversion that Estoril offered” (Amaral 2013a, 197).153 As a matter of fact, (temporary) refuge in this littoral region is generally associated with the charm of a paradise for wealthy tourists. Maria João Martins, for instance, writes that “[i]n the summer that followed the occupation of France – 1940 – already the pilots, diplomats, movie stars and even individuals with royal blood, among other ordinary mortals searching literally for a place in the sun, 150 In Portuguese this reads: “se deixem enfeitiçar por tantas beldades”. 151 ‘Bompernasse’ is a play on words based on the conjugation of the expression ‘boas pernas’ [nice legs] and the Parisian area Montparnasse. 152 In Portuguese this reads: “O meu amigo começou a andar na direção da Suíça e segui-o. A pastelaria, onde a afluência de refugiados obrigara a abrir uma esplanada para a rua, fora baptizada pelos portugueses de ‘Bompernasse’, pois podiam observar-se por lá muitas e belas pernas de mulheres estrangeiras. Francesas, belgas, holandesas, judias da Alemanha ou da Polónia, calçavam soquettes, saíam à rua sem meias, luvas ou chapéus, e penteavam o cabelo curto ‘à refugiada’. Aliviadas por terem escapado à guerra, aos black outs, às bombas ou às perseguições da Gestapo, viviam Lisboa como um oásis, um nirvana de paz e felicidade, e mostravam as pernas ao sol, lendo revistas e fumando cigarros, numa animação estranha aos costumes lusitanos”. 153 In Portuguese this reads: “Riviera Portuguesa [. . .] uma sociedade rica, cosmopolita e despreocupada, que aproveitava o sol, a tranquilidade e a diversão que o Estoril proporcionava”.

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sought Estoril’s sands” (1994, 27 [translation mine]).154 And Cristina Pacheco (2004) pictures the area as an agreeable waiting room, with a colourful mix of residents, intrigues and leisure activities. According to the author, at Costa do Sol the refugees waiting for their passage and visas “played at the Casino of Estoril, frequented the terraces of the cafés at the Tamariz beach, went to the beaches if the weather allowed it, and enjoyed [. . .] lawn-tennis tournaments, rallies, horse races, Concours d’Elegance events for cars, fashion shows, dances” (Pacheco 2004, 71 [translation mine]).155 Rather than a particular genre or homogeneous image of Lisbon and Portugal as country of (temporary) asylum, it is precisely the setting of entertaining narratives within this luxurious environment of the political and intellectual elite of the exile community that prevails in international commodified culture and particularly a number of popular novels that have been appearing since the late 1990s.156 Focusing in various degrees on intrigue, crime or romance, these novels vary in genre as well as approach to Portuguese history, but nonetheless share a common repertoire of historical references and places such as the casino and the Hotel Palácio in Estoril or the Rossio and Pastelaria Suíça in Lisbon (cf. Wilson 2000a, 2001; Gabbay 2008b; Carvalho 2014; Tiago-Stanković 2016). Except for Robert Wilson’s successful A Small Death in Lisbon and The Company of Strangers, most of them were published after the first edition of Amaral’s novel. My claim is therefore not that Enquanto Salazar Dormia recycles the representations of the war-period in these novels. Instead, I suggest that the novel is part of a process of mnemonic popularisation that is characterised by a particular setting and an emphasis on characters that are members of the German and British legations, secret or double agents and some exceptional individuals of the Portuguese high society. All these novels explore Lisbon as a cosmopolitan safe haven and uncertain terrain of intrigue and distrust, where, as a character in A Small Death

154 In Portuguese this reads: “[n]o Verão que se seguiu à ocupação da França – 1940 – já os aviadores, diplomatas, estrelas de cinema e até pessoas de sangue real, entre outros comuns mortais à procura de um lugar ao sol, buscavam as areias do Estoril”. 155 In Portuguese this reads: “jogava-se no Casino do Estoril, frequentavam-se as esplanadas do Tamariz, a praia, se o tempo o permitisse, e desfrutavam-se dos [. . .] campeonatos de lawntennis, rallies, corridas de cavalos, concursos de elegância automóvel, desfiles de moda, bailes”. 156 The most prominent examples are: A Small Death in Lisbon (Wilson 2000a [1999]), translated into Portuguese as Último Acto em Lisboa (2000b); The Company of Strangers (Wilson 2001), translated into Portuguese as A Companhia de Estranhos (2002); Every Secret Thing (Cole 2006), translated into Portuguese as Tudo o que É Secreto (2008); The Lisbon Crossing (Gabbay 2008a [2007]), translated into Portuguese as Encontro em Lisboa (2008b); A Última Noite em Lisboa (Carvalho 2014), Estoril, ratni roman (Stanković 2015), translated into Portuguese as Estoril, um Romance de Guerra (2016).

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in Lisbon puts it, “[e]verybody’s a spy [. . .]. From the lowest refugee to the highest members of the legations” (Wilson 2000a, 88). Still, Amaral’s novel does not merely explore this dominant imaginary of the Portuguese capital and its nearby coastline as a meeting point for rich exiles, Jewish refugees and spies. As already mentioned above, it also includes a remarkably broad and detailed set of widely circulated mnemonic images and narratives. All these elements are knotted into the plot of Enquanto Salazar Dormia and convey the impression of a well-grounded, balanced and even canonical portrayal of the situation and events in the 1940s: Fifty years ago, the hotels in Lisbon were extremely animated places. Sometime in 1942, when I was already working for the British secret service, I saw the document that classified the main hotels according to their political orientation. The Avenida Palace, the secret corridor, was pro-Nazi, as were the Duas Nações and the Atlantic [. . .]. On our side were the Metrópole, the Europa, the Grande Hotel do Estoril, the Grande Hotel da Itália (despite the Italy), the Palácio Estoril and the Aviz. [. . .] [T]he Aviz was the most luxurious, exquisite and glamorous hotel, and the Germans were not immune to its charm. Baron Huene, the German ambassador in Lisbon, or even Von Kastor, the chief of the Abwehr, were regular costumers of the restaurant. German members of the military and businessmen crossed with Englishmen, Americans and even kings that escaped countries they had invaded.157 (Amaral 2013a, 97)

Indeed, Enquanto Salazar Dormia presents itself as a cautiously balanced account by including a certain dose of criticism of the official Portuguese attitude towards the refugees and the belligerents, as well as the situation in Portugal. Poverty and misery existing in the country are mentioned as well as censorship, the existence of political prisoners in the Aljube prison in Lisbon and torture. Mary criticises Portuguese neutrality (Amaral 2013a, 24), and Jack Gil’s best friend and superior at the intelligence service even disapproves of the idea that Portugal is “the only country in Europe where [the refugees] can live in peace and quiet” (Amaral 2013a, 46).158

157 In Portuguese this reads: “Há cinco décadas, os hotéis de Lisboa eram locais animadíssimos. Algures no ano de 1942, quando já trabalhava para os serviços secretos ingleses, vi o documento que classificava os principais hotéis consoante a sua tendência política. O Avenida Palace, o corredor secreto, era pró-nazi, bem como o Duas Nações e o Atlântico [. . .]. Quanto aos nossos existiam o Metrópole, o Europa, o Grande Hotel do Estoril, o Grande Hotel da Itália (apesar da Itália), o Palácio Estoril e o Aviz. [. . .] [O] Aviz era o hotel mais luxuoso, requintado e com glamour, e os alemães não eram imunes ao seu charme. No restaurante eram habituais as presenças do barão Huene, o embaixador alemão em Lisboa, ou mesmo de Von Kastor, o chefe da Abwehr. Militares e homens de negócios alemães cruzavam-se com ingleses, americanos, e até reis fugidos de países por eles invadidos”. 158 In Portuguese this reads: “o único país da Europa onde eles podem viver em paz e sossego”.

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However, beneath the appearance of an unbiased, well-grounded or even objective account of the past, the novel puts forward a decidedly conservative perspective on the war period and the regime. Jack Gil’s conservatism is a seemingly secondary, yet recurrent theme in the novel. The narrator actually characterises himself as conservative and emphasises that he has always voted for conservatives (Amaral 2013a, 315). While he, according to his own account, always disliked dictatorships and, at the time, the right-wing dictatorships seemed even worse (Amaral 2013a, 315), he likewise “[n]ever believed in communism” (Amaral 2013a, 77).159 The father of his fiancé Carminho and his future wife Luisinha – who is introduced as an important figure within the regime and a confidant of Salazar himself – is furthermore described as “a great guy” and “[a] conservative like me” (Amaral 2013a, 388). While criticising repressive political forces, he justifies the attitude of his father-in-law by claiming that all conservatives supported Salazarism at the time. Moreover, Jack Gil also defends Salazar from the beginning as the man that was “able to keep Portugal out of the war” (Amaral 2013a, 24).160 While distancing himself from the repressive government of the Estado Novo, the narrator, nonetheless, highlights Salazar’s virtues in terms of his skills and dedication to his country. This continues until the end when talking to his grandson about the dictatorship: “[Salazar] was a very hard dictator”, said Paul. “Yes”, I confirmed, “In the 1950s and 1960s he became even more repressive. But in the years of war, he displayed a remarkable ability to keep Portugal out of the conflict”. “This gives the impression that you admired him, grandfather”, commented Paul, with a smile as if he had caught me on a lie. I looked at him and said: “On the one hand, his secret police, his repressive methods and his opposition to democracy disgusted me. But I recognise that he was an extremely intelligent (Amaral 2013a, 271) man who defended the interests of his country intransigently”.161

On closer examination, the novel thus conveys a relativist position regarding the Estado Novo regime and exposes an admiration for Salazar, the omnipotent dictator who “knew about everything” and “[n]ever slept even when he was sleeping”

159 In Portuguese this reads: “[n]unca acreditei no comunismo”. 160 In Portuguese this reads: “[t]em conseguido manter Portugal fora da guerra”. 161 In Portuguese this reads: “-Era um ditador muito duro – afirmou Paul. -Sim- confirmei. Nos anos 50 e 60, tornou-se ainda mais repressivo. Mas nos anos da guerra, mostrou uma habilidade notável para manter Portugal fora do conflito. -Dá ideia que o avô o admirava. – comentou Paul, com um sorriso, como se me tivesse apanhado em falso. Olhei para ele e disse: – Por um lado, repugnavam-me a sua polícia secreta, os métodos repressivos e a sua oposição à democracia. Mas reconheço que era um homem extremamente inteligente, e que defendia com intransigência os interesses do seu país”.

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(Amaral 2013a, 372).162 Emplotted within the transmission of Jack Gil’s masculine adventures is thus not an uninterested perspective on the past, but indeed a rather favourable image of Salazar, as a somehow ‘more humane dictator’, whose exceptional abilities assured Portuguese ‘neutrality’ during the war. Not only is the regime not held responsible for the depicted poverty in the country, but the criticism of the institutions is also always paired with an excuse. Through Michael’s informed opinion, the reader, for instance, learns that PVDE agents were poorly qualified brutes, who usually would not speak any foreign language and “persecute and torture without being able to distinguish a Frenchman from a Pole” (Amaral 2013a, 42). Moreover, in addition to presenting the stupidity and ignorance of its officers as an attenuating justification, the real source of violence within the PVDE is ascribed to particular individuals and their admiration for Nazi Germany: However, although he recognised that influences of German and Italian fascism existed within the PVDE, Michael considered that the Gestapo did not dominate Salazar’s police. He explained to me that Captain Agostinho Lourenço, the head of the PVDE, wasn’t proNazi but “neutral”, following strictly the orders of Salazar. According to my friend, there were much more dangerous men in the PVDE than its chef, such as lieutenant Marrano who Michael considered “a sun of a bitch”, trained in Germany by the Gestapo, he was a sinister henchman who enjoyed persecuting Jews and communists.163 (Amaral 2013a, 42)

It is remarkable how the novel simultaneously introduces Agostinho Lourenço’s supposed political ‘neutrality’, dismisses the dominance of Germanophile influences within the PVDE and singles out a particular officer as villain within Salazar’s political police.164 Through the informed opinion of a British MI6 agent, 162 In Portuguese this reads: “Salazar sabia de tudo. Não dormia, nem mesmo enquanto estava a dormir”. 163 In Portuguese this reads: “Porém, embora reconhecesse que existiam influências germânicas e do fascismo italiano na PVDE, Michael considerava que a Gestapo não dominava a polícia de Salazar. Explicara-me que o capitão Agostinho Lourenço, o chefe da PVDE, não era prónazi mas sim um ‘neutro’, que cumpria estritamente as ordens de Salazar. Para o meu amigo, havia na PVDE homens mais perigosos do que o chefe, como o tenente Marrano, que Michael considerava ‘um filho da puta’, formado na Alemanha pela Gestapo, um sinistro esbirro a quem dava gozo perseguir os judeus e os comunistas”. 164 According to Pimentel (2013, 166–167) the opinions of British officials staged in Lisbon at the time regarding the political orientation of the head of the PVDE differed to a great extent and even today it continues to be an object of debate within historiography. Occasionally described as anglophile (Pimentel 2006, 91), there are also reports of Agostinho Lourenço having collaborated with and received bribes from the Germans (Pimentel and Ninhos 2013, 132–133). His commitment to preventing Portugal from becoming a country of asylum seems to be well-documented, namely his support for the expulsion and imprisonment of refugees (cf. Pimentel 2006; Schaefer 2014; Pimentel and Ninhos 2013). As an institution, the PVDE is usually considered tendentially Germanophile

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the narrator presents a clearly biased view of the PVDE in which the head and the institution as a whole are dettached from the imprisonment and violence against Jewish refugees and even the political opposition. Characterised as the “evil soul of the Nazis in the PVDE” (Amaral 2013a, 115), Enquanto Salazar Dormia presents lieutenant Marrano165 and ‘his men’ as villains within the political police. Being in charge of the supervision of the Cabo Ruivo airport, Marrano passes lists of passengers and goods to the Nazis (Amaral 2013a, 208), orders brutally executed arrests at the airport (Amaral 2013a, 208), and systemically steals valuables from the luggage of Jewish and other refugees (Amaral 2013a, 225). Interestingly, this character is not only introduced as ‘Nazi’, but his name also establishes a link to Jewish history in the Iberian Peninsula, since marrano was the offensive designation for those Jews who were forced to convert to Christianism in the Middle Ages but were suspected to continue practising Judaism in secret. Through his name, the ‘evil soul’ within the secret police is thereby insinuated to be himself a descendent of converted Jews, introducing yet another distinguishing mark between him and the profoundly Catholic regime and Portuguese majority. Marrano is indeed an interesting example to illustrate how Amaral’s novel takes up a widely-circulated episode of war-time Lisbon and weaves it into his plot in order to substantiate its version of the past. In June 1943, the famous actor Leslie Howard boarded a flight in Lisbon that was shut down by the Germans during its journey to London. One popular explanation for the attack is that a German agent mistook one of the passengers for Winston Churchill (cf. Martins 1994, 48; Pimentel 2006, 280; Weber 2011, 167–168; Lochery 2011, 158–159). In Enquanto Salazar Dormia it is Marrano and his men who in April [sic] 1943 send the message about Churchill boarding an airplane in Lisbon to the Germans (Amaral 2013a, 241). The mysterious tragedy of Howard’s flight thus leads to Marrano’s downfall, because Jack Gil and his informants are able to trace down Marrano’s involvement in the incident. Based on a report written by Jack Gil, the British Ambassador Campbell exposes Marrano’s “atrocities” (Amaral 2013a, 209)166 to Salazar, who dismisses the PVDE officer. What is particularly striking in this episode is not only the mistake regarding the date that probably goes unnoticed by most readers – not the only example of

in the years during the war with several (also high-ranking) officers admiring or maintaining close relationships with Germany and the Gestapo, most notably Paulo Cumano (Pimentel 2013, 166–167). 165 The character of Marrano is probably inspired by Paulo Cumano, who is generally mentioned as a PVDE officer with very close ties to Germany and the Gestapo (cf. Milgram 2010; Pimentel 2013). 166 In Portuguese this reads: “atrocidades”.

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this sort of flaw –, but the contextualisation of the incident within the novel. Indeed, not only does the villain of the PVDE end up being dismissed by Salazar, but Jack Gil is actually surprised and upset about him going unpunished. While Michael seems contented with the outcome of their actions against Marrano, Jack insists that he “should be sent to the Aljube prison, so that he could see how the people he sent there suffered” (Amaral 2013a, 243).167 Indeed, Jack seems appalled that the Portuguese authorities did not arrest the PVDE officer; that, as he puts it, this “dishonest bad guy” that “[t]ortured, spied and stole” “does not even get a trial” (Amaral 2013a, 243).168 Obviously, this is yet another example of how the morally unquestionable democratic values of the narrator are emphasised in the novel. However, it also illustrates how the violence of the Portuguese dictatorship is subtly individualised and dislocated. For the possibility of a trial for the PVDE officer presupposes the existence of a legal system in which the persecution, torture and violence against political enemies are not accepted as an integral part of the political apparatus, but instead treated as a punishable crime. What this episode thus insinuates is that Marrano’s ‘atrocities’ – his violence against refugees and communists and his collaboration with the Nazis – were indeed condemned by Salazar and thus the reason for his dismissal from the PVDE. Neither Salazar, nor Agostinho Lourenço or the political police as an institution are thus presented as the driving force behind the violence against refugees and the political opposition, but instead Marrano, a particular officer “encouraged by the Gestapo” (Amaral 2013a, 115).169 Furthermore, Enquanto Salazar Dormia’s conservative perspective that suggests a contrast between Salazarism on the one hand and Fascism and Nazism, on the other, is paired with a nostalgic view that emphasises the importance of Lisbon as global centre of transit and espionage. In order to portray Portugal’s role during the war in glorious tonalities, Amaral again draws on the dominant imaginary of Lisbon suddenly pushed to “the center of world attention” (Lochery 2011, 2) due to its status as “spyland” (Pimentel 2013, 24) and main “gateway of escape for victims of Nazi terror” (Weber 2011, 1). However, in this context it is crucial to note that Enquanto Salazar Dormia emphasises the importance of the national past mainly by inscribing itself into global popular culture, mobilising not only Hollywood productions from the 1940s, but also the imaginary of espionage.

167 In Portuguese this reads: “Devia ser metido no Aljube, para ver como sofreram os que mandou para lá!” 168 In Portuguese this reads: “um crápula” que “[t]orturou, espiou, roubou” “nem sequer vai ao tribunal”. 169 In Portuguese this reads: “instigado pela Gestapo”.

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Indeed, it is particularly through the transcription of Casablanca that Enquanto Salazar Dormia stresses Lisbon’s particular charm and significance during the war-period. Frequently cited as the film that brought Lisbon’s importance as transit station to international notice (cf. Weber 2011; R. Lopes 2017), Casablanca’s combination of unfulfilled love, refugees and characters of dubious morals and loyalties significantly contributed to Lisbon’s image as an escape gate where war fugitives mingle with international agents. Despite Lisbon’s absence on screen, Casablanca continues to symbolise the global acknowledgment of Portugal’s role as escape gate during the war (cf. R. Lopes 2017) and has been a recurrent reference in all sorts of accounts of the country’s part during the period in question.170 It is precisely the idea that “one of the most popular films ever made” (Wright 2002, 63) mentions Lisbon that is also mobilised in Enquanto Salazar Dormia. As Jack Gil highlights, [t]he Portuguese also felt proud because the film awakened their patriotism. “What is in Lisbon? The plane to New York.” This small and short sentence in Casablanca sounded like a recognition of the role as safe haven and transit station that Portugal had played during the war and naturally the Portuguese were moved by the reference.171 (Amaral 2013a, 393)

Curtiz’s film is indeed a sort of intertext through which the novel inscribes itself into global popular culture and Casablanca’s charismatic narrative about failed romance, human corruption, refugee tragedies and World War II heroism. Figuring on the cover of the novel,172 Casablanca appears several times throughout the narrative, either in form of short references, the description of its reception in Portugal, or even the explicit remediation of scenes. Amaral draws on the film in order to mimic the captivating catastrophic atmosphere of the fictional version of the Moroccan transit station and the existential conflicts of the protagonists: Enquanto Salazar Dormia designs a world in which men eventually come to ‘stick out their necks’ for the right cause and a better future to come.

170 Casablanca continues to be a recurrent reference in very different media dealing with Portugal and Lisbon’s role during the war. To name just a few examples ranging from exposition catalogues to journal articles: Martins (1994), Pimentel (2004), Filipe (2010), Weber (2011), Lochery (2011), Kaplan (2020). 171 In Portuguese this reads: “[o]s portugueses também se sentiam orgulhosos porque o filme despertava-lhes o patriotismo. ‘O que há em Lisboa? O avião para Nova Iorque.’ Esta pequena e curta frase do Casablanca soava a reconhecimento da função de porto de abrigo e passagem que Portugal desempenhara durante a guerra, e naturalmente os portugueses comoveram-se com a referência”. 172 This refers to the cover of the hardcover edition. On the cover of the paperback edition figures the drawing of a man with a black hat and coat from the back.

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The memories of Jack Gil describe a glorious past in which Lisbon, imagined as some sort of real-life Casablanca, was not the capital of a poor and peripheral European country, but the true global centre of despair, espionage and romance, where the course of the war was decidedly influenced by intelligence gathered by secret agents working on Portuguese soil. As it condenses Enquanto Salazar Dormia’s nostalgic view, the role of Casablanca thus exceeds a marketing strategy that capitalises on the popularity of the film. In essence, Amaral’s novel describes a process of male redemption in a world in which it was still worth fighting for a better future. The narrator in the 1990s yearns for a precious, gloomy past where despite all quarrels and moral ambiguities male heroes ended up fighting for the right cause. Enquanto Salazar Dormia thus draws on Humphrey Bogart’s character Rick for the characterisation of his male protagonists. Michael, like Humphrey Bogart in the film, does the contrary of what he says by risking his life for others despite his apparent indifference regarding their fate. Jack Gil is not only described as smiling like Bogart (Amaral 2013a, 276) but the narrator actually also explains his own story through his interpretation of Rick’s development in Casablanca: as he abandons his apparent detachment and neutrality, he eventually takes sides with the Allies and sticks out his neck for his country: A similar thing happened to me. I had neither enlisted nor fought but as the war was raging, I felt more and more that I had to stick out my neck for my country. First, I became an assistant of Mary and then a soldier of Michael because I didn’t want Hitler to rule over (Amaral 2013a, 313) us. When it became necessary, I stuck out my neck.173

Casablanca thereby becomes the model not only for the description of wardriven Lisbon but actually for the main theme of the novel: the development of Jack Gil into “a Man with a capital M, a man that did what had to be done” (Amaral 2013a, 374).174 From an insignificant member of the British community in Lisbon, engaged to a reserved Portuguese girl of good origin, the protagonist turns into an agent of the MI6, involved in serious intelligence activity who finally saves his last amorous adventure, Anika, and her brother, the Lufthansa pilot Karl John, from the Gestapo.

173 In Portuguese this reads: “Coisa semelhante se passara comigo. Não me alistara, nem combatera, mas à medida que a guerra crescera sentira que também tinha de arriscar o pescoço pelo meu país. Tornei-me ajudante de Mary, primeiro, e depois soldado de Michael, porque não queria Hitler a mandar em nós. Quando foi preciso, arrisquei o pescoço”. 174 In Portuguese this reads: “um homem com H grande, um homem que fizera o que tinha de ser feito”.

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Moreover, seeing loved women part actually becomes a kind of leitmotiv of Jack Gil’s story through which the novel (mis)recycles the end of Casablanca. As the narrator claims, “[t]he war, for me, was almost always like that. Women that I loved, women that I desired, women with whom I experienced a lot and very intensely and that one day left for the sea. Mary, Alice, Anika” (Amaral 2013a, 373).175 However, the denouement of Jack Gil’s own romantic drama is quite the opposite of Rick’s decision to let Ilsa part with her husband Victor Laszo in Casablanca. Jack Gil’s story does not end with watching Anika leave on a boat, but instead with finally finding his one true love Luisinha. The discovery of his feelings for Luisinha – the sister of his former fiancé Carminho – is set during the premier of Curtiz’s film in Portugal in 1945176 and explicitly contrasted with the model of true, yet lost love represented by Rick and Ilsa in Casablanca: We seated us and watched the rest of the film together holding each other’s hands until the end, while love was taking control over us. And I knew that this was not the beautiful love without future of Bogart and Bergman in Casablanca. I had had several loves like that during my years in Lisbon and I didn’t want another like that again. This time I wouldn’t let the woman I loved leave as I did with Mary, Alice and Anika. This time the (Amaral 2013a, 396) woman would come with me.177

As these examples illustrate, Amaral recycles elements of the film not only uncritically, but also very freely, arranging them in an amalgam of stereotypes and clichés. Interestingly, this process of appropriation resembles to a certain degree what Umberto Eco, when explaining the appeal of Casablanca, describes as “intertextual archetypes”: preestablished and frequently reappearing narrative situation[s], cited or in some way recycled by innumerable other texts and provoking in the addressee a sort of intense

175 In Portuguese this reads: “A Guerra, para mim, foi quase sempre assim. Mulheres que eu amava, mulheres que eu desejava, mulheres com quem vivia muito e muito fortemente, e que um dia partiam para o mar. Mary, Alice, Anika”. 176 Casablanca had its premiere in Lisbon in the Politeama cinema on 17 May 1945. In contrast to the favourable atmosphere described in the novel, with most of the audience singing enthusiastically the Marseillaise (Amaral 2013a, 395–396), the film is reported to have caused a “briga entre germanófilos e apoiantes dos Aliados” [quarrel between Germanophiles and supporters of the Allies] in the movie theatre (I. Gil 2011, 181). 177 In Portuguese this reads: “Sentámo-nos e vimos o resto do filme de mão dada até ao fim, o amor a tomar conta de nós. E eu sabia que aquele não era o amor bonito, mas sem futuro de Bogart e Bergman em Casablanca. Já tivera vários amores assim, nos meus anos em Lisboa, e não queria mais nenhum. Desta vez, eu não ia deixar partir a mulher que amava, como deixei partir Mary, Alice e Anika. Desta vez, a mulher vinha comigo”.

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emotion accompanied by the vague feeling of dejá vu that everybody yearns to see again. [. . .] It is [. . .] a topos or standard situation that manages to be particularly appealing to a given cultural area or a historical period. (2002, 200)

In contrast to Casablanca, which, following Eco, is not necessarily a work of art but rather a cult object (2002, 197), Enquanto Salazar Dormia does not qualify for either of these two categories. However, its popularity might be partly explained through its intensive use of referential archetypes and stereotypes. Although, in the case of Amaral’s novel, mixing “a little bit of everything” (Eco 2002, 201) does result in kitsch rather than in genius, he nevertheless succeeds in providing an escapist yearning that has proven quite successful on the Portuguese book market. Like in the case of Eco’s intertextual archetypes, one does not have to know Casablanca or any of the other references incorporated in the novel to understand Enquanto Salazar Dormia. On the contrary, critical knowledge might even hinder full compliance with the narrative. Despite being presented as unquestionable truths, Jack Gil’s interpretations of history or the media incorporated in the novel are at least debatable. This concerns not only his portrayal of the Estado Novo, its institutions and Salazar, but also the way he, for instance, ‘explains’ Rick’s attitude in Casablanca as having “stuck out his neck for the woman he loved” (Amaral 2013a, 396). Readers may recognise a varied range of references without necessarily having to be aware of their precise meaning, tradition or adequacy. Rather than establishing any real dialogue that would require a critical reflection of the reader, Amaral entwines historical references with popular culture to provide a comforting familiarity of topoi that “everybody yearns to see again” (Eco 2002, 200). In this context it is also interesting to look at the way Enquanto Salazar Dormia draws on the imaginary of espionage. The novel is actually often described as an “espionage thriller” (Sabine and Williams 2009, 197) or spy fiction by critics as well as the author (cf. Rocha 2017). However, while intelligence work on Portuguese soil is certainly a central theme, the plot actually revolves around Jack Gil’s amorous conquests and the ultimate fulfillment of his love for Luisinha. In truth, only the second part in which Jack Gil is involved with the double agent Alice is truly dealing with spying. During his relationship with Mary, the focus of his work is still set on the repatriation of British pilots and part III deals with the saving of Anika and her brother in 1944 when Lisbon had already lost importance as escape gate and hub of espionage. Spying is therefore more of an episode within the adventures that guide Jack Gil’s individual development than the driving force of the plot. Instead, Enquanto Salazar Dormia blends different popular genre formulas crossing romance with espionage, masculine adventure story and historical novel. This obviously does not mean that the novel does not qualify for the classification as a spy thriller – whose definition per se causes some difficulties and often resumes to focus on a set of common themes such as the protagonist’s tie

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to espionage178 or an emphasis on suspense within a series of adventures or a mission (cf. Denning 1987). Rather than localising Enquanto Salazar Dormia within the typology and characteristic formulas of whatever genre, it is important to note that the novel establishes a horizon for its reception by classifying itself as “memories of a spy”. Indeed, espionage is used as an essential element for the characterisation of the protagonist and his tale. Drawing on the popularity of the figure of the spy in contemporary culture,179 Enquanto Salazar Dormia chooses a spy as protagonist and includes a number of references to British espionage to inscribe Jack Gil in the tradition of a ‘foreign’180 and “predominantly British genre” (Denning 1987, 11). What is particularly interesting about the figure of the spy is that, in addition to its enduring success with an international audience, it is commonly associated with dramatisations of nationhood. As Rosie White stresses, the “spy embodies fears that national identity is under threat and that in order to maintain the status quo, clandestine activities normally considered illegal or invasive must be endorsed” (2007, 1). In this light it seems remarkable that Jack Gil’s memories are set within the British intelligence agencies operating in Lisbon and entangled in the history of British espionage with several central figures such as Graham Green or even Kim Philby figuring in the novel. With this I certainly do not mean to suggest that Enquanto Salazar Dormia develops any sort of serious debate about either British identity or British spy fiction. Instead, the protagonist is inscribed in a vivid and highly popular imaginary with worldwide appeal at the same time as his awakening patriotism and consequent fight is displaced from Portugal. As a consequence, not only is the British nation the one that Jack Gil seeks to protect, but the fantasy of “individual political agency” (Denning 1987, 151) associated by many critics with the secret agent is also moved to an international terrain in which Portugal is a mere bystander. While the novel deals with

178 Cawelti and Rosenberg, for instance, define the spy story “as a story whose protagonist has some primary connection with espionage” (1987, 5). 179 Representations of espionage have obviously existed long before the twentieth century – one may remember, for instance, Dolon in Homer’s Iliad –, but the emergence of the figure of the spy at the centre of popular culture is commonly discussed as a post-World War II phenomenon (cf. Denning 1987; Cawelti and Rosenberg 1987; Woods 2008; Goodman 2016). 180 Circulating mainly within series and anthologies of the policial [police novel/story], spy stories were part of a popular genre that, particularly during the Estado Novo, was considered ‘foreign’. Not only were most of the works either translations, pseudotranslation or written by Portuguese authors using Anglo-Saxon pseudonyms, in their majority the settings for crime and violence were also situated outside of Portugal (cf. Kayman and Sampaio 2001; Sampaio 2008, 2016).

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the period of World War II in Portugal and addresses the political situation in the country – including political opposition and repression by the regime – Jack Gil is involved in a conflict that is taking place elsewhere. His mission is neither to save or protect the Portuguese nation and empire nor to get involved in any other way with the state of affairs of the Estado Novo.181 Neither Portuguese nationhood nor empire are thus subject to debate in the novel. Instead, the protagonists engage in a global fight against Nazism that not only remains distant from any political involvement within the county, but actually displaces the political and ethical realm from Portuguese society. As a matter of fact, even the inner conflicts of Carminho’s and Luisinha’s family are disputed along the lines of being either pro-German or pro-British. And Jack Gil’s disappointment in the Portuguese regime is explained by his indignation about Salazar maintaining close relations to the Germans and Japanese rather than with internal politics or Estado Novo’s ideology. This displacement of struggle and conflict is even reflected in Jack Gil’s Luso-British identity. Although the British community is somehow criticised for reminding him of his hybrid status as son of an English father and a Portuguese mother by constantly using his Portuguese name Gil (Amaral 2013a, 33), his biography remains closely tied to the British empire. Born in Cape Town, he later moved to Sydney and Hong Kong before coming to Portugal at age 25. His perspective on Portugal always remains the view of an informed outsider and his Portuguese life circumscribed to a private sphere. Enquanto Salalzar Dormia mobilises gendered stereotypes to contrast a familial passive bond embodied in the relationships with his Portuguese mother, fiancée and wife, with Jack Gil’s political activism as a secret agent in service of the homeland of his father. The world “while Salazar was sleeping” with its seduction, sex, intrigue and crime has nothing to do with his social life in Portugal, where Carminho represents the possibility of becoming “a good Portuguese, family man and member of the football club Benfica” (Amaral 2013a, 27–28).182 Interestingly, Enquanto Salazar Dormia thereby succeeds in glorifying Portugal’s role during World War II without dramatising issues of Portuguese identity openly. Amaral’s novel revolves around Jack Gil’s development into a ‘man with a capital M’, someone who ‘sticks out his neck’ for his country and the women he loves. However, this development is completely unrelated to any aspect of Portuguese politics or the attitude of Portuguese society during the war. 181 Jack Gil maintains contact with the republican opposition in Portugal. However, this is in service of British interests and ordered by the British ambassador Campbell (Amaral 2013a, 315). 182 In Portuguese this reads: “um bom português, pai de família e sócio do Benfica”.

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Instead, Amaral’s novel dwells on the paradisiac charm of Lisbon and Costa do Sol, where decisive intelligence for the war was gathered and illustrious refugees crossed their ways with famous double agents and some of the most iconic names of the British secret service. Like the recycling of Casablanca, the imaginary of espionage is therefore not used critically, but mobilises widely circulated topoi and stereotypes for the construction of Jack Gil’s Luso-British identity and the role of his work for the British intelligence service. Lisbon does not merely emerge as a ‘real-life model’ for Casablanca and the “effect of seduction [. . .] [of] this ambience coinhabited by refugees, spies, beautiful women tortured by fear or alcohol, corrupt or collaborating police men, and intense loves” (Amaral 2013a, 394).183 By stressing Portugal’s importance for espionage during the decisive years of the war, Enquanto Salazar Dormia also seems to compensate for what some Portuguese intellectuals have identified as the “most acute national trauma [. . .] grounded in the centuries-old lament that their country’s historical contributions to the formation of modern Europe have been overlooked, underestimated, or forgotten” (Sapega 1997, 174). Rather than discussing any sort of national identity issue, Amaral’s novel simply reestablishes the small peripheral country at its righteous place at the heart of world affairs.

4.3 Blending espionage and transit: a translational perspective on the imaginary of rich exiles and the figure of the refugiada Informed by the dominant imaginary of Lisbon during World War II and representations of the Lisbon area in global popular culture, Enquanto Salazar Dormia approaches the refugee presence in Portugal through the eyes of its narrator Jack Gil. As a consequence, the novel does not focus on the perspective of the refugees, but on their role within the imaginary of the cosmopolitan safe haven filled with intrigue and desperate love adventures. The reader encounters the refugees whilst Jack Gil moves through Lisbon and Costa do Sol, enjoying the sight of beautiful foreign women and the hedonistic environment of Lisbon’s and Estoril’s most exclusive establishments. The poor masses arriving in Lisbon and the humble Portuguese population, on the other hand, are confined to details of the

183 In Portuguese this reads: “efeito de sedução [. . .] [d]aquele ambiente onde conviviam os refugiados, os espiões, as mulheres belas e torturadas pelo medo e pela bebida, os polícias corruptos ou colaboracionistas, os amores intensos”.

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atmosphere of a story in which protagonists and important characters are not ‘merely’ refugees, but foreign exiles working either for the European anti-fascist resistance or for any international intelligence service or espionage ring. While the great embarkation port serves as a setting, the focus does not lie on women, men and children stranded in Lisbon because they had to flee persecution or war, but on exceptionally beautiful women and important men involved in politics, intrigues or espionage. In contrast to the German exile writers quoted by Daniel Blaufuks or the protagonist of Ilse Losa’s novel, the refugees that appear in Enquanto Salazar Dormia do therefore not reflect about any condition of exile, but assume the glamourous image of Ilsa Lund’s and Victor Lazlo’s desperation in Casablanca. As a film that has often been referred to as an important or even “the ultimate film” (Barber 2017, n.p.) about World War II refugees in the media,184 the remediation of Curtiz’s film actually helps to design a figure of the refugee that mirrors what Ansgar Schaefer (2014, 15) describes as the dominant yet misleading idea about those fleeing Nazi Germany and occupied Europe: the almost exclusive association with members of the cultural, political or literary elite. This does not mean that the ‘ordinary masses’ of the ‘refugee crisis’ are entirely excluded. However, in similarity to what happened in Curtiz’s film and other Hollywood productions from the 1940s, in Enquanto Salazar Dormia the ‘refugee crisis’ only figures in the background, while the reader or viewer is invited to identify with heroic individuals fighting Nazism and be repulsed by unmoral German agents. However, this focus does not only stand in line with representational patterns of Casablanca and other Hollywood productions in the 1940s, but actually reflects the emphasis set on stars, “crowned heads, former members of governments, bankers, businessmen etc.” (Ramalho 2012, 93 [translation mine])185 in many contemporary accounts of the time. Moreover, most visiting celebrities referred to in the novel, such as Josephine Baker or Lawrence Olivier and Vivien Leigh (Amaral 2013a, 45), were already part of Portuguese news in the 1940s.186 Although at the time the Estado Novo authorities officially denied the existence

184 In fact, in Curtiz’s film “almost every main character [. . .] is (or becomes) a refugee” (Wright 2002, 63). However, while ‘poor masses’ assembling in the Moroccan city are briefly mentioned, the protagonists are actually beautiful, elegant and brave individuals eventually united by their fight against Nazi Germany and Vichy-France. 185 In Portuguese this reads: “cabeças coroadas, membros de governo, banqueiros, homens de negócios etc.”. 186 Josephine Baker as well as Vivien Leigh and Lawrence Olivier are, for instance, all mentioned in Jornal Português nº 25 (3/27/1941) and the magazine Vida Mundial Ilustrada documented Baker’s stay in October 1941.

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of a refugee problem (cf. Schaefer 2014), transiting celebrities had nevertheless frequent appearances in Portuguese newspapers as well as the official newsreel Jornal Português. Whereas the presence of politicians from the occupied countries was silenced as a consequence of Salazar’s politics of ‘neutrality’, lists of important personalities passing through the country were published on a regular basis (cf. Schaefer 2014) and short reports about visiting stars were an integral part of the official newsreel in the late 1930s and early 1940s.187 In 1942, even a book entitled Hollywood em Lisboa [Hollywood in Lisbon] (Fragoso 1942) was published that reunites a list of short chronicles about actors and directors who passed through the Portuguese capital in consequence of the war. Moreover, a focus on wealthy refugees is even observable among the scarce examples of fictional works dealing explicitly with the war-period in Portugal that were published during the Estado Novo. This is the case in Alves Redol’s O Cavalo Espantado (1967 [1960])188 as well as two works that combine the environment of privileged exiles with espionage: Adolfo Coelho’s189 espionage film Porto de Abrigo [Safe Haven] dating from 1940, and Dick Haskins’s190 detective novel A Minha Missão É Matar [My mission is to kill]191 first published in 1959. In Enquanto Salazar Dormia one actually encounters almost exclusively wealthy or remarkable foreigners frequenting some of the most emblematic establishments in Lisbon and its surroundings. Jack Gil is part of the British exile community, dines at the restaurants of the most elegant hotels and frequents the casino in Estoril. The storyline of the 1940s begins with Jack leaving the British embassy after a cocktail party organised by Ambassador Campbell and his first ‘assignment’ working for Mary is to meet the eccentric millionaire Nubar Gulbenkian. With this meeting, the novel also introduces one of its central localities: the luxury hotel Aviz in Lisbon frequented by “refugiados de luxo” [luxurious refugees] (Amaral 2013a, 187) as well as British and German agents. Befriended with the owner Harry Ruggeroni, who is described as

187 The following editions of the Jornal Português reported on celebrities visiting Lisbon: nº 11 (10/13/1939), nº 12 (12/21/1939), nº 13 (2/7/1940), nº 25 (3/27/1941), nº 27 (7/3/1941), nº 28 (9/17/ 1941), nº 34 (11/6/1942). 188 For a detailed discussion of the novel cf. Lindemann 2017. 189 Working for the cinematographic department of the Ministry of Agriculture (serviços cinematográficos do Ministério da Agricultura), Adolfo Coelho was a well-known director of agricultural documentaries (filmes agrícolas) and an author of several spy, crime and adventure novels. While he is responsible for over 50 documentaries in the period between 1930 and 1950, Porto de Abrigo (1940) remains his sole feature film (cf. Baptista 2018). 190 Dick Haskins is the British pseudonym of Andrade de Albuquerque, a prominent figure of the policial in Portugal. 191 The novel was subsequently reedited in 1966 as Lisboa 44 [Lisbon 44].

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secretly collaborating with the British, Jack Gil frequents this emblematic establishment regularly. It is at the Aviz that he initiates his career as a spy while dining with Nubar Gulbenkian; where he has his first erotic encounter with Mary and Rita; where he crosses paths with famous spy Popov; where he first sets his eyes on Alice. Moreover, as Nubar Gulbenkian reveals to Jack during their dinner, it was at the restaurant of this glamourous hotel that the Duke of Windsor was convinced to leave for the Bahamas with his wife Wallis Simpson rather than to accept the German proposal of signing a peace treaty and being reinstituted at the British throne in return (Amaral 2013a, 63). Although Amaral’s novel is more concerned with the description of the “characteristics of such illustrious visitors” (Amaral 2013a, 32)192 of Lisbon than with a serious reflection about the conditions of (temporary) asylum in Portugal, this does not mean that the novel omits difficulties or even harassment. On the contrary, it mentions not only depreciative comments about the strange habits of the foreigners (Amaral 2013a, 54), but also police brutality (Amaral 2013a, 207; 228) as well as the establishment of residências fixas [fixed residences]. However, these constraints are subtly relativised: the prohibition against foreigners working in Portugal is mentioned in the context of Josephine Baker’s exceptional permission to give a concert; the depreciating comments about the habits of the refugees are ascribed to Luisinha’s and Carminho’s mother, who is generally depicted as the devoutly Germanophile tyrant of the family; police brutality is referred to in the context of the villain PVDE officer Marrano who collaborates with the Nazis; and residências fixas are uncritically described as “places where the refugees caused less problems” (Amaral 2013a, 350)193 and explicitly contrasted with internment camps: Since June 1940, confronted with the torrent of refugees arriving at the Portuguese borders whose return was not accepted by the Spanish authorities, the PVDE decided to redirect many of them to seaside or thermal resorts [. . .] From 1942 onwards the PVDE created the so-called “fixed residences” for them. Their passports were taken from them and they received a “refugee card”. They were sent to a particular place where they could live in free(Amaral 2013a, 350) dom, although they could not leave without permission.194

192 In Portuguese this reads: “as características de tão ilustres visitantes”. 193 In Portuguese this reads: “sítios onde os refugiados causavam menos problemas”. 194 In Portuguese this reads: “Desde Junho de 1940, perante a torrente de refugiados que chegava às fronteiras portuguesas e que as autoridades espanholas não aceitavam de volta, a PVDE decidira desviar muitos deles para estâncias balneares ou termais. [. . .] A partir de 42, a PVDE criou para eles as chamadas ‘residências fixas’. Os passaportes eram-lhes retirados e recebiam uma ‘carta de refugiado’. Eram enviados para um determinado local, onde viviam em liberdade, embora não se pudessem deslocar sem autorização”.

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Although Amaral dedicates two paragraphs to the explanation of these measures, there is no further elaboration on the meaning of the obligatory and restricted areas of habitation for the refugees. While the objective tone and detailed information corroborate the credibility of the account, the reasons for the creation of fixed residences as well as the foreigners sent to the resort towns actually remain undisclosed.195 What is most remarkable, however, is that the residências fixas are introduced in the last chapter that deals with Anika and her brother Karl John – the two characters that go into hiding in Portugal after the failed coup against Adolf Hitler in July 1944. Jack Gil visits Ericeira, one of the most prominent areas of fixed residences, to search for the siblings at the house of a former professor of Anika. This professor had escaped Germany with the help of Karl’s group at the Abwehr. Instead of the mass of foreigners installed in the small town in 1940 or the illegal refugees unable to continue to any permanent country of asylum after 1942, in Enquanto Salazar Dormia one thus encounters an exceptionally beautiful young German woman, a ‘resistance fighter’ associated with Admiral Canaris and a Jewish professor who escaped persecution disguised as a secret agent of the Abwehr. Indeed, Anika and Karl John are central in the context of Enquanto Salazar Dormia’s negotiation of the refugee presence. Although they are never explicitly described as refugees, they are not only the sole noteworthy characters that actually inhabit the spaces associated with the refugee presence, but their story is also framed in a way that accentuates their status as victims of Nazi persecution. Not only do they seek hiding in Ericeira, but Anika’s first appearance is also set at the Pastelaria Suíça, the emblematic coffeehouse described as Bompernasse because of its popularity among the refugee community. Most importantly, however, it is in essence through the saving of Anika and Karl that Jack becomes “a Man with a capital M” (Amaral 2013a, 374),196 a man who does “what is right and not merely obey[s] orders” (Amaral 2013a, 354).197 Despite the fact that Anika arrived as an official German cultural attaché and Karl is first introduced as a Lufthansa pilot working for the Abwehr, the siblings are indeed represented as mere victims of the historical circumstances. This is facilitated, on the one hand, by a rather simplistic (and highly problematic), unequivocally

195 While the decision in 1940 is usually explained as a simple reaction to the high number of refugees arriving in Portugal, in 1942 the situation was quite different. These residências fixas were the result of an agreement between the Portuguese government and the High Commissioner for Refugees of the League of the Nations aiming to substitute the practice of imprisonment of illegal immigrants (Pimentel and Ninhos 2013, 485). 196 In Portuguese this reads: “um homem com H grande”. 197 In Portuguese this reads: “o que é certo e não apenas cumprir ordens”.

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positive representation of resistance within the Abwehr with Michael claiming that the “Abwehr never liked Hitler” (Amaral 2013a, 326)198 and Anika defending that “Canaris is not a Nazi” (Amaral 2013a, 340). On the other, by the explanation of London’s refusal to support Karl and his co-conspirators. While at the time Jack was unaware of the reasons for London’s instructions, the aged narrator suggests that Kim Philby made this decision because of his status as double agent secretly working for the Russians. In this light, Karl and Anika seem to fall prey not only to the failed coup and German agents in Portugal, but even to Russian infiltration in the British secret service. This reading of Karl and Anika’s role in the novel is moreover supported by the fact that their story is constructed in a way that explicitly accentuates resemblances with Casablanca’s famous protagonists. Although not husband and wife, Anika is like Ilsa a beautiful young woman supporting a heroic resistance fighter of unquestionable morals. Jack, like Rick in Casablanca, eventually “stick[s] out his neck for them” (Amaral 2013a, 374), even if this bears the risk of compromising his position at the MI6 and forces him to let his loved woman part. Like Rick who sees Ilsa part next to her husband at the airport in Casablanca, Jack also sees Anika part boarding a ship next to her brother in a scene that (mis)quotes the departure of the famous Hollywood couple for Lisbon to finally escape “the Nazi yoke” (Amaral 2013a, 374).199 In Enquanto Salazar Dormia Anika and Karl thus become a sort of epitome of the refugees escaping through Portugal, thereby producing a space of imprecision in which the differences between a Jewish refugee, a fugitive from an occupied country and a member of any legation in Lisbon tend to blur. In this context, it is not surprising that Alice can be mentioned in the same breath as “[t]he luxurious refugees making their pilgrimage to the Aviz, relishing the delightful dishes of chef Ribeiro” (Amaral 2013a, 187).200 Or that Michael and Jack can joke around Bompernasse without making any distinction between Rita, a new secretary at the embassy, or Stephanie, “the mythic” Belgian with “this blond face, [. . .] these great legs, [. . .] these voluminous breasts” (Amaral 2013a, 49).201 As a matter of fact, Enquanto Salazar Dormia is simply disinterested in the perspective of those escaping Europe through Lisbon. Instead, the refugee

198 In Portuguese this reads: “A Abwehr nunca gostou do Hilter”. 199 In Portuguese this reads: “o jugo nazi”. 200 In Portuguese this reads: “[o]s refugiados de luxo marchavam em romaria até ao Aviz, saboreando as delícias da cozinha do chefe Ribeiro”. 201 In Portuguese this reads: “aquela cara loira, [. . .] aquelas pernas enormes, [. . .] aqueles peitos volumosos”.

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presence is framed as a spectacle, something to be observed by locals and Jack and Michael alike: Around us hundreds of people populated the [Rossio] square. The majority were foreigners and you almost didn’t hear any Portuguese, but instead French, English, German, Polish, or Dutch. Since June 1940, after the French defeat to the Nazi blitzkrieg, Portugal had been invaded by refugees who spent their idle days between the Baixa and the Avenidade da Liberdade. They dragged luggage, bags full of clothes, children. Accommodated in guesthouses and hotels, they sat in the cafés or formed lines in front of the post office, (Amaral 2013a, 39–40) shipping companies or the British or American consulates.202

In most cases, this spectacle is moreover explicitly associated to the female refugees. Many references to the fugitives and particularly to their impact on Portuguese society are actually revolving around the foreign women: the short haircut à refugiada [in female refugee fashion] that is eventually imitated by young Portuguese women; the scandal and fascination caused by the comparatively progressive appearance and habits of female refugees; and particularly their way of dressing and their presence in coffeehouses. Paired with recurrent descriptions of the refugee presence as an ‘invasion’ is therefore a constant display of the simultaneous fascination and shock caused by the refugiadas, or, to borrow Jack Gil’s words, by “the beautiful legs of the female refugees that invaded Lisbon” (Amaral 2013a, 12).203 Jack Gil and his friend Michael seem indeed to experience the presence of these foreign women essentially as a pleasure to the eye. With their arrival Lisbon had turned into a visual and erotic spectacle, in which the young Belgian Stephanie acquired the status of an “inaccessible goddess” (Amaral 2013a, 49) and ideal model of foreign beauty for all others to hold up to, while her story and fate are simply omitted. Whereas the idea that “the maelstrom of emotions of the time made the skirts of women rise faster” (Amaral 2013a, 12)204 is introduced as one of the central aspects of Jack Gil’s Lisbon of the 1940s right at the beginning, the female refugees are conspicuously absent in terms of characters or own perspectives and voices. Even Anika, “this beautiful, fragile, German girl” 202 In Portuguese this reads: “À nossa volta, centenas de pessoas enchiam a praça. A maioria eram estrangeiros e quase não se ouvia falar português, mas sim francês, inglês, alemão, polaco ou holandês. Desde Junho de 40, após a derrota da França pela blitzkrieg nazi, Portugal fora invadido por refugiados, que passavam os seus dias ociosos entre a Baixa e a Avenida da Liberdade. Arrastavam malas, sacos cheios de roupa, crianças. Instalaram-se nas pensões e nos hotéis, sentavam-se nos cafés, ou formaram filas, à porta da estação dos Correios, das companhias de navegação, ou dos consulados britânico ou americano”. 203 In Portuguese this reads: “as belas pernas das refugiadas que invadiam Lisboa”. 204 In Portuguese this reads: “o turbilhão de emoções da época fazia subir as saias das mulheres mais depressa”.

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(Amaral 2013a, 11)205 waiting to be saved by Jack, has no real story of her own. Instead, she is circumscribed to the role of the beautiful sister of Karl John that always seems to support and accept his decisions whether that means contributing to the resistance, meeting with a British agent or staying in Portugal in hiding. While Jack remembers Karl as “one of this type of man that would give his life for a just cause, upright and with integrity” (Amaral 2013a, 374),206 of Anika he recalls “the last image [. . .] of her” with “these blue eyes, blue like the Caribbean ocean, blue where I lost and found myself” (Amaral 2013a, 374).207 Indeed, Anika is not only keen on letting Jack and her brother do the thinking, but also on being conquered by this British agent who stuck out his neck for her. Hidden from the Gestapo at Jack’s house in Estoril, she slips into his bed so that he could “make love to her for hours, until the break of dawn” (Amaral 2013a, 360).208 In essence, in Enquanto Salazar Dormia the figure of the refugiada is confined to an object of male gaze and desire that ultimately comes to represent foreign beauty and femininity in general. The presence of female refugees becomes associated with a change in Lisbon’s cityscape where one suddenly encounters women in modern dresses frequenting coffeehouses, reading and smoking in public (Amaral 2013a, 41). Again, Enquanto Salazar Dormia does not truly distinguish refugees from any other foreign women present in Lisbon. While the refugiadas figure prominently in the background, the foreign female characters that the reader encounters in the novel are not refugees, but women that move within the circles of the privileged exile community: Mary is a married agent of the MI9 who apparently has already gained quite a reputation for her extramatrimonial affairs (Amaral 2013a, 40); Rita is a secretary at the British embassy who is not only described as Bompernasse but is also part of a triangle relationship with Mary and Jack; and Anika is a fragile beauty that starts an affair without hesitation while fearing for her life. If one essential aspect of Jack Gil’s Lisbon in the 1940s is the idea that “the war made skirts rise faster” (Amaral 2013a, 12), this does not refer to the skirts of every woman though. Enquanto Salazar Dormia draws a clear line between the Portuguese women and those moving within the exile community in Lisbon and Estoril. The world while Salazar was sleeping with its gambling, intrigues, spying and unleashed sexuality is limited to members of the legations, refugees or the famous luxury escort and double agent Alice, a disguised actress coming

205 In Portuguese this reads: “dessa menina linda, frágil e alemã”. 206 In Portuguese this reads: “aquele tipo de homens que dava a vida por uma causa justa, recto e íntegro”. 207 In Portuguese the whole passage reads: “a última imagem que tenho dela são aqueles olhos azuis, azul mar das Caraíbas, azul onde eu me perdi e me encontrei”. 208 In Portuguese this reads: “Amei-a horas a fio, até o dia nascer”.

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from the Portuguese colonies whose reputation was in truth created by Michael and the MI6. Carminho and Luisinha, in contrast, are confined to a domestic sphere and occasional visits to the cinema or coffeehouses with Jack. It is therefore not only the appearance of the foreign women, but also a sexual availability that is contrasted with the local feminine population right from the beginning. Enquanto Salazar Dormia portrays an opposition between Jack’s sexual adventures and the innocent engagement with Carminho. Indeed, the character of Carminho can be read as a projection of the conservative values of Portuguese society in the 1940s. Virginal, but also unpassionate, she refuses to even kiss Jack and limits their relationship to holding hands and meetings in which at least her sister is present as chaperon. However, although Jack resents her constant rejections, when he first met her, he was actually charmed that she avoided “any type of protagonism and talked little” (Amaral 2013a, 141).209 His attraction to her is grounded precisely in her discrete traditionalism and shy domesticity that came to embody a longing to settle down, a fantasy of a “terra prometida” [promised land] (Amaral 2013a, 141) in which he would be a good family man with a devoted faithful Portuguese wife. And while it is ultimately her disloyal Germanophile inclination that leads to their definite separation, Jack’s first disenchantment is caused by her new haircut à refugiada that challenges her image of pudicity: “By changing her haircut it seemed as if she wanted to change her personality. It made her look more beautiful and desirable, but she lost her modesty and that frightened me” (Amaral 2013a, 51).210 Despite his appetite for the adventures provided by the women encountered in his life as a spy in Salazar’s Portugal, none of his affairs is able to fill “the void of [his] days” (Amaral 2013a, 392).211 Although his relationship with Carminho ends in disillusion, Jack Gil nonetheless finds happiness by returning to the fold provided by the love of a Portuguese woman. After the disappointment of a failed engagement and numerous adventures that ended with his lovers parting, it is eventually in Luisinha that Jack discovers his true love: [H]ow blind had I been for such a long time! During all these years I had always had another woman close to me, the only one that always stayed, and always remained loyal. Luisinha never allowed me to leave her life, and it was her persistence that maintained her close to me, always a friend, always wanting to see me, even if only once a month.212 (Amaral 2013a, 392)

209 In Portuguese this reads: “qualquer tipo de protagonismo e falava pouco”. 210 In Portuguese this reads: “Ao mudar de penteado, parecia querer mudar de personalidade. Ficava mais bonita e desejável, mas perdia o recato e isso assustou-me”. 211 In Portuguese this reads: “o vazio dos [seus] dias”. 212 In Portuguese this reads: “[C]omo fui cego durante tanto tempo! Ao longo daqueles anos, sempre tivera por perto outra mulher, a única que continuava, que ficava, sempre leal. Luisinha

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Although Jack Gil explicitly criticises patriarchal structures of Portuguese society (Amaral 2013a, 277), the novel nonetheless stylises the figure of the Portuguese woman as embodiment of emotional and domestic safety and peace. Enquanto Salazar Dormia develops a particular economy in which erotic adventures without future are situated within the realm of the exile community while true love, security and emotional commitment are confined to relationships with Portuguese women: the absent mother Jack lost as a child; the illusion of a life with Carminho and ultimately the realisation of true love in Luisinha. Emphasised by this contrast, the presence of female foreigners brought to Lisbon by the war is thus presented as an exceptional excitement. As objects of pleasurable looks and ephemeral sexual adventures, they are not the material for true fulfilment, but rather for adventures and entertaining memories of one’s youth. Interestingly, this framing of the figure of the refugiada as exceptional visual and erotic spectacle is once again part of Enquanto Salazar Dormia’s recycling of the dominant imaginary of Lisbon during World War II. As has been briefly mentioned above, references to the simultaneous attraction and scandal caused by the way of dressing and the behaviour of the female foreigners are to be found not only virtually in almost all historical accounts by Portuguese authors (cf. for example Martins 1994; Pimentel 2006; Ramalho 2012), but also in Portuguese literature and exhibitions. Indeed, in popular imaginary in Portugal the female refugees figure simultaneously as a consumable pleasure and apparent threat to the traditionalist local morality and decency. The idea that, to borrow Alves Redol’s words in O Cavalo Espantado, during World War II Lisbon turned into a “display window of legs” (Redol 1967, 77 [translation mine])213 seems to be very persistent. Even in Porto de Abrigo (1940, 1941) a romantic conflict revolves around the temporary fascination that the foreign adventurer Sónia provoked in her Portuguese host Jorge before he finally realises that his true happiness lies with the Portuguese girl Maria da Graça. Through its setting of the narrative within the environment of wealthy exiles and by designing a figure of the refugiada that is confined to its role as object of male gaze and desire, Enquanto Salazar Dormia does neither invite to identify with the foreigners, nor to develop any sort of empathetic relationship to those forced to flee, nor even a mere attempt of describing and understanding what this meant. Far from developing any serious debate about Portugal’s role during World War II, it presents an enjoyable narrative in which prohibitions for refugees to work,

nunca admitira que eu iria sair da sua vida, e foi a sua persistência que a manteve a meu lado, sempre amiga, sempre a querer ver-me, mesmo que não fosse mais de uma vez por mês”. 213 In Portuguese this reads: “uma montra de pernas”.

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tedious waiting and repeated visa applications are mere background details. Amaral’s novel is not interested in the daily life of the refugees, neither in those trying to make their life in Portugal nor those trying to obtain passage or visa for any country overseas. Within Jack Gil’s tale, the individuals seeking refuge in Portugal are mere sidelines to Lisbon’s glorious past as centre of transit and espionage. Working with a popular format that is characterised by an absence of literary complexity and critical metafictional as well as historiographical reflection or debate, Amaral’s novel not only inserts itself in a vivid commodified culture, but also illustrates the role of heterocultural networks of signification within popularised memory. Although, in contrast to Daniel Blaufuks’s work, Amaral’s novel lacks any kind of critical debate, processes of recycling nevertheless play a crucial role for Enquanto Salazar Dormia’s fictional world and its portrayal of Portugal during World War II. While Blaufuks develops a sophisticated reflection about the heterocultural archive(s) of exile and transit in Lisbon, Amaral’s novel relies on an uncritical appropriation of the dominant imaginary of Portugal during World War II and references from global popular culture. Within its popular format Enquanto Salazar Dormia mobilises a web of heterecultural references that mostly belong to different archives than those incorporated in Sob Céus Estranhos. No quotes by exile writers, photographs from private and public archives showing those forced to flee Nazi persecution and images of rejected visa applications can be found in Enquanto Salazar Dormia. Instead it offers stereotyped images of Casablanca, an impoverished pastiche of James Bond crossed with Rick Blane as protagonist and a set of recycled commonplaces about Lisbon and Costa do Sol in the early 1940s. With its focus set on members of the privileged exile community, Amaral’s novel thus confers a glamourous image to the foreigners stranded in Portugal in which state officials, famous movie stars, wealthy refugees and secret agents subtly conflate. As the promotional description of the novel emphasises – even before mentioning any aspect of Jack Gil’s story – in “1941 [. . .] [t]he refugees arrive in their thousands and Lisbon is filled with millionaires and actresses, Jews and spies. Portugal becomes the theatre of a secret war that Salazar permits, while keeping a close eye from a distance” (Amaral 2013a, n.p.).214 Within the imaginary of Lisbon as cosmopolitan centre of transit and espionage, the borders between the rich elite, foreign spies and Jewish stateless people are indeed secondary. Rather than interested in the condition of (temporary) asylum in Portugal, the novel explores the glorious past of Lisbon as crossroad for

214 In Portuguese this reads: “[o]s refugiados chegam aos milhares e Lisboa enche-se de milionários e actrizes, judeus e espiões. Portugal torna-se palco de uma guerra secreta que Salazar permite, mas vigia à distância”.

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famous war fugitives and spies. In Jack Gil’s memories, there is no space for waiting and fear for those one left behind. Instead, the world “while Salazar was sleeping” is made up of thrilling adventures, intense feelings, and impossible love taking place in a gloomy port city where “it was difficult to find someone to trust” (Amaral 2013a, 25).215 Through the appropriation of the blending of transit and espionage within the luxurious exile community, the novel is therefore in essence characterised by a contradictory relationship with the refugee presence in the country. On the one hand, the refugees are a central element of the atmosphere of the cosmopolitan safe haven and constantly evoked throughout the novel. On the other hand, they are conspicuously invisible not only as individuals, but as specific groups with different political statuses and conditions. Within the imaginary of Lisbon as international centre of transit and espionage, the term refugee subtly conflates millionaires, actresses, refugees and spies within an indistinctive mass, at the same time that it confers a glamourous image to the foreigners stranded in Lisbon and its surroundings: the focus does not lie on ‘common’ women, men and children, but on the political and economic elite, celebrities, beautiful women and secret agents; not on the Jewish middle class or workers from Central and Eastern Europe, but on intellectuals, artists and members of the opposition. Disinterested in engaging in any serious reflection about the refugee situation during World War II, Enquanto Salazar Dormia explores the memory of the refugee presence within an ultimately trivialising account of the Estado Novo and Portugal’s role during the war. Amaral’s novel therefore illustrates how easily the refugee presence can be integrated within a comforting, nostalgic narrative about a ‘great moment of the national past’ without challenging in any way hegemonic forms of communality.

215 In Portuguese this reads: “era difícil encontrar gente de confiança”.

5 Thresholds of national memory: the Estado Novo and the ‘refugee other’ in João Canijo’s Fantasia Lusitana When João Canijo’s documentary Fantasia Lusitana was first released at the 7th edition of the IndieLisboa in 2010, it was announced as a film foregrounding the contrast between testimonies of famous refugees transiting through Lisbon and the illusionary images of the propaganda produced by the Estado Novo regime. Fantasia Lusitana is based on found footage and incorporates archival material from Portuguese and international archives. Focusing on the period of World War II in Portugal, Canijo reedits not only propagandistic images of official Portuguese documentaries and the newsreel series Jornal Português but also sequences of fiction films produced at the time and speeches by the so-called ‘Presidente do Conselho’ [Council President], António de Oliveira Salazar. This material is moreover juxtaposed with footage from international archives, photographs of refugees, images from newspapers and quotes by three writers who transited through Lisbon in 1940, namely Alfred Döblin, Erika Mann and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. João Canijo is at present a recognised filmmaker of contemporary Portuguese cinema with considerable success at international festivals such as Cannes or Venice. However, Fantasia Lusitana assumes a somewhat exceptional or atypical status within his filmography (cf. Ribas 2014). While mostly known for his critically acclaimed fiction features surveying contemporary Portugal through the portrayal of different rather marginal communities,216 in Fantasia Lusitana Canijo explores the period of World War II through a documentary and historical approach. However, Fantasia Lusitana actually picks up some of the aesthetic and political questions characteristic of the reflection about Portuguese identity in Canijo’s fictional films. While the film originated in a commission for a documentary about famous transients in Lisbon (cf. Câmara 2010), the project developed into a film about the propagandistic discourse of the Estado Novo and its remnants in present-day Portugal.

216 Canijo’s career started in the late 1980s with the film Três Menos Eu [Three less me] (1988). After a period in which he primarily worked for television, he returned to cinema in 1997 with Sapatos Pretos [Black Shoes]. Since then his work has gained increasing national and international visibility and received considerable critical recognition, most notably for Ganhar a Vida [Get a Life] (2001), Noite Escura [In the Darkness of the Night] (2004) and Sangue do meu Sangue [Blood of my Blood] (2011). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110733440-005

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Similarly, to the preceding chapters, the present analysis is organised in three subchapters. Beginning with Fantasia Lusitana’s aesthetical approach to the incorporated archival material, it then proceeds with a discussion of the referential framework in the context of remediation as archival intervention and critique of representational and mnemonic practices in pre- and post-revolutionary Portugal. The chapter closes with an analysis of Fantasia Lusitana’s negotiation of the refugee presence in the context of a reflection about the realms of national identity and memory.

5.1 Claiming cinematographic literacy: Fantasia Lusitana’s use of found footage Opening with a title sequence that reappropriates the opening credits of an official Portuguese documentary from 1941217 – including the characteristic frame with the official approval by the unit responsible for censorship218 (Figure 12) – Fantasia Lusitana is composed of reedited found footage and characterised by an apparently minimalistic manipulation of and an aesthetical approximation to the incorporated material. The documentary does not include a narrator but in some parts retains the original audio and in others combines the visual material with an additional audio layer. In some sequences the original audio is thus maintained, leaving voice-over narration, speeches by Salazar and the rarely included sound recorded on location intact, whereas in others the original audio is substituted by recordings of speeches by Salazar, music or quotes from writers transiting through Lisbon with the original audio figuring in the background. Leaving the original archival visual and audio layer seemingly unadulterated, Canijo invites the spectator to review and rehear this material in the present. However, at the same time, the minimalistic manipulation of the footage, its aesthetic framing within the Portuguese cinema of the 1940s and the absence of a narrative voice-over, foreground not only the importance of montage as a

217 The credits of Fantasia Lusitana seem to have been simply cut into the footage of Lopes Ribeiro’s documentary A Grande Exposição do Mundo Português (1941), leaving music and framing of the opening credits intact, while inserting the names of those responsible for the production of Canijo’s film. 218 Created in 1927 the Inspecção-Geral dos Espectáculos [General Inspection of Entertainment] was responsible for the approval and censorship of cinema produced and exhibited in Portugal (cf. Vieira 2011). Preceeding the opening credits, films usually contained a frame indicating “visado pela Inspecção dos Espectáculos” [viewed by the Inspection of Entertainment].

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Figure 12: Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010.

cinematographic tool in general but also as a means of reappropriation and recontextualisation in Fantasia Lusitana in particular. While at first glance Fantasia Lusitana seems to assume an approach similar to that of Blaufuks’s Sob Céus Estranhos, their aesthetic strategies and referential frameworks are, in fact, quite different. In contrast to Blaufuks, whose (post)mnemonic artistic project is based on a reflection about memory and visual media – particularly photography – Canijo enters into dialogue with the history of (documentary) filmmaking, cinema in Portugal and its use for propaganda during the dictatorship. His focus is set on official productions of the Estado Novo during the period of World War II, although there are also some sequences originating from before and after the war. The state-supervised documentaries and newsreels and the few excerpts from fictional films are juxtaposed with other material: some international archival footage, images of newspapers and photographs as well as documents of refugees. Moreover, the documentary features an additional audio layer consisting, on the one hand, of archival recordings of speeches by Salazar, and, on the other, of excerpts of texts by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Alfred Döblin and Erika Mann read aloud by professional actors (Christian Patey, Rüdiger Vogler and Hanna Schygulla) in French and German. At least in terms of their recordings, these quotes constitute the only material which was not merely ‘found’ and reappropriated but produced particularly for the film.

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When discussing the practice of incorporating pre-existing film and audio recordings in Fantasia Lusitana, it has to be noted that the reuse of found archival and other footage is a popular strategy in contemporary documentary filmmaking.219 In New Documentary, Stella Bruzzi introduces a basic, twofold distinction according to which films incorporate footage either “illustratively, as part of a historical exposition to complement other elements such as interviews and voiceover; or critically, as part of a more politicised argument or debate” (2000, 26). While this is a rather simplified categorisation of the variety of different “paradigms of artistic practice and cultural theory” in the diverse field of conventional and experimental documentary filmmaking (Wees 1993, 34),220 Bruzzi’s distinction

219 As William Wees underlines, “[t]he practice of making new films from pieces of earlier films is nearly as old as the institution of cinema itself” (1993, 34). Wees refers to a filmic account of the Dreyfus case from 1898, which used pre-exiting footage of an officer leading French troops on a parade in Paris and apparently convinced the audience at that time that they were seeing Dreyfus before his arrest (1993, 34–35). However, Baron (2014) points out that the practice of appropriating old footage in documentary film to contemplate historical events only dates back to the 1920s, when, in The Fall of the Romanova Dynasty, Soviet filmmaker Esfir Shub reused existing newsreel footage from the end of the Czarist empire in Russia to retell the story of the triumph of Russian communism. 220 A common distinction of documentaries composed of or based on pre-existing footage refers to the terms ‘compilation film’ and ‘found footage film’. What Jay Leyda in the 1960s was the first to call ‘compilation films’ can be characterised as documentaries composed of “shots taken from films that have no necessary relationship to each other; a concept (theme, argument, story) that motivates the selection of the shots and the order in which they appear; and a verbal accompaniment (voice-over or text on the screen or both) that yokes the shots to the concept” (Wees 1993, 35). The term ‘found footage film’ is rather linked to experimental avantgarde cinema and critical reflections about the construction of ‘historical facts’ through media. As Zryd (2003) argues, ‘found footage films’ usually incorporate not only footage from official archives, but also from private and commercial stocks. However, as Jamie Baron underlines, “boundaries between compilation film and found footage film and archival footage and found footage are often nebulous” and remain even in excellent extensive studies about the phenomenon “unclear or, at the very least unstable” (2014, 8). Crista Blümlinger (2009) moreover draws attention to different histories of archival avant-garde filmmaking, which complicate a simplistic differentiation between conventional and experimental uses of found footage. Although Blümlinger also highlights the limitations of clear-cut definitions of different genres such as ‘found-footage’ and ‘compilation’, she retraces different genealogies of archival filmmaking linked, on the one hand, to the American avant-garde of the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, and, on the other, to a rather European tradition of essayistic compilation films. Blüminger describes the former as ‘avant-gardist found footage’, characterised by a focus on collages which challenge the filmic material as such and retraces the origins of these “materialbewußte Collagen” [material conscious collages] to ironical misuses of stock shots such as in Adrian Brunel’s work and dadaistic-collectionistic gestures of artists like Joseph Cornell (Blümlinger 2009, 59). The latter are termed ‘essayistic compilations’ and are, on the one hand, linked to the history

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is nonetheless useful to understand common uses of found footage in documentaries and the expectations of spectators confronted with them. What shines through these two modes of incorporation is an initial contrast between conventional and experimental documentary practices. While conventional historical documentaries usually incorporate archival and other found footage as a means of authentication and support of a straightforward verbal narrative, experiential uses are rather characterised by an interest in uncovering representational or ideological frameworks. This means, on the one hand, that spectators are more used to encounter mostly illustrative archival footage in documentaries. On the other, it implies that despite all differences, experimental uses generally share an interest in repetition, i.e. in reworking, rewriting and recontextualising pre-existing footage in order to uncover alternative and “‘hidden meanings’ in film material” (Zryd 2003, 41). An intention to rework material in order to suggest a reevaluation of the film material also characterises Fantasia Lusistana. Through the incorporation, appropriation and recontextualisation of sequences of documentaries, newsreels and speeches produced or supported by the Estado Novo during the 1930s and 1940s, the film seeks to reveal the ideological construction of Portuguese identity conveyed by these official productions. As the tittle already suggests, Canijo aims to deconstruct the ‘Lusitanian fantasy’ propagated by the regime and to encourage a critical engagement with the propagandistic images promoted by the incorporated film sequences and audio recordings. However, instead of using the found footage as means to corroborate a straightforward verbal counter-narrative, Fantasia Lusistana is characterised by a refusal of illustrative modes of incorporating archival material. While there are some scarce examples of contextualising texts and subtitles,221 one of the essential and most notable features of the documentary is the inexistence of a narrator who guides the spectator through the film. Instead of inserting the sequences of documentaries and newsreels in order to substantiate a clearly guided verbal narrative, Canijo bases his reappropriation on selection,

of documentary filmmaking and its emancipation from propaganda, and, on the other, to essayistic strategies of the ‘European’ Avant-garde, including montages by Dziga Vertov or Esfir Schub as well as those by Michael Romm or Harun Farocki. Blüminger characterises these ‘essayistic compilations’ as “textbewußte Remontagen” [text conscious remontages]. The acknowledgement of different genealogies and cultural-theoretical frameworks is important for the contextualisation of aesthetic strategies of incorporation and the interpretation of distinct connotations and functions that particular practices such as the inclusion of voice-over may have in different documentaries. 221 Canijo occasionally introduces text in the form of separate frames or subtitles. For instance, the quotes of the international intellectuals are all introduced by subtitles including name and some referential information such as the year and month of their transit through Lisbon.

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montage and juxtaposition. As the director highlights in an interview published in the Portuguese newspaper Público, from the very beginning of the project, he intended to make a film without voice-over narration in order to provoke an individual, autonomous reading of the sequences shown (cf. Câmara 2010). This corroborates the view that the absence of a narrator should be understood as an intentional frustration of viewer expectations more used to conventional (historical) documentaries and their illustrative use of archival material. As Ana Rodrigues (2010) argues, Canijo confronts the spectators with a disquieting silence and the need to make sense of the suggestively combined images and discourses. By presenting a flux of images of increasingly contrasting visions of Portugal during World War II, Fantasia Lusitana forces the spectator to leave a certain comfort zone, in which remediated material only allows for one reading. Through the juxtaposition of contrasting visions, Canijo simultaneously challenges the fantasy proposed by the propagandistic documentaries and exposes the manipulative use of montage on which Fantasia Lusitana is based. The documentary is therefore characterised by a twofold movement: on the one hand, it leads from an immersion into the propagandistic images and discourses to a deconstruction of the ‘Lusitanian fantasy’; on the other, it successively exposes the manipulative appropriation of the apparently unadulterated found footage. Particularly during the first part of Fantasia Lusitana, in which official documentaries, newsreels and speeches of Salazar dominate the film, the manipulation and montage can pass almost unnoticed as the sequences are integrated into a natural flux of shots. This also explains why the reedited found footage appears almost ‘unmanipulated’. According to Daniel Ribas, Canijo’s approach has the effect of the spectator watching the sequences “almost like they were seen” in the past (2014, 277 [translation mine]),222 facilitating an immersion into the propagandistic footage and speeches remediated in Fantasia Lusitana. The title sequence represents an illustrative example of this aesthetic appropriation of found footage. Maintaining the music as well as the ornaments surrounding the credits, Canijo reuses footage from the documentary A Exposição do Mundo Português [The exposition of the Portuguese world] (1941) by António Lopes Ribeiro, one of the central figures of Portuguese cinema during the Estado Novo.223 While the spectator may not be aware of the link to A Exposição

222 In Portuguese this reads: “quase como foram vistos”. 223 Born in Lisbon in 1908, Ribeiro started his career as journalist and critic. In the 1920s and 1930s he founded the cinematographic journals Imagem (1928), Kino (1930) and Animatógrafo (1934). During the Estado Novo he worked closely with the regime. He was the artistic director of the Missão Cinegráfica às Colónias de África [Cinematographic Mission to the African Colonies] in 1938 and supervisor of the Sociedade Portuguesa de Actualidades Cinematográficas (SPAC)

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do Mundo Português – especially because the following sequences belong to another documentary – or even the fact that the title sequence is an adapted version taken from an already existing film, through this appropriation Fantasia Lusitana nonetheless clearly adopts the cinematographic language of the archival footage. Instead of highlighting the distance to the incorporated material, Canijo thus chooses to begin the film with an aesthetic approximation, using a title sequence transmitting the impression that one sees a film dating from the 1940s. While the extent of editorial intervention and manipulation remains almost hidden during these first minutes, in which montage creates a symbiosis between the footage, the original voice-over narration and Salazar’s discourse, Canijo quickly begins to disrupt the propagandistic ‘fantasy’ of the Estado Novo. The opening credits are followed by remediated sequences taken from a different propagandistic documentary dating from 1939. Produced directly by the Secretariat of National Propaganda (SPN), Mocidade Vitoriosa (1939)224 [Victorious Youth] is a film about the Portuguese Youth Organisation Mocidade Portuguesa [Portuguese Youth]. Canijo selects and rearranges the sequences of the documentary in a way that emphasises the fascistic aesthetics of ordered, homogeneous, athletic masses conveyed by the original footage. At the beginning he displays images of a group of the Mocidade Portuguesa performing the phrase “Tudo pela nação” [Everything for the nation] in semaphore characters (Figure 13). They thus stage what Salazar later in the film describes as the “devisa política” [political motto] of the Estado Novo regime: “Tudo pela nação, nada contra a nação” [Everything for the nation, nothing against the nation] (Fantasia Lusitana, 01:00:27–01:00:32). The narrator of the remediated sequences translates the meaning of the arm movements and the festivities and marches on the screen, inviting present and past spectators to immerse into the propagandistic image of the Portuguese nation promoted by the regime. Images of the Mocidade Portuguesa marching and performing the roman salute (Figure 14), and of President Carmona next to Salazar equally performing the roman salute (Figure 15), are combined with a speech by the dictator praising [Portuguese Company for Cinematographic News]. He directed the propagandistic motion pictures A Revolução de Maio [The may revolution] (1937) and Feitiço do Império [Enchantment of the empire] (1940) as well as documentaries produced by the Secretariat of National Propaganda (SPN) such as A Exposição do Mundo Português [The exposition of the Portuguese world] (1941) and the official newsreels Jornal Português. In his non-fictional productions, he not only appears as director, but often also as narrator of the documentaries and newsreels. 224 Produced by the Secretariat of National Propaganda in 1939, Mocidade Vitoriosa shows several commemorations and activities, focusing particularly on the display of the athletic performance of the Mocidade Portuguesa. In contrast to the documentaries directed and narrated by Ribeiro, Mocidade Vitoriosa has a female narrator, Áurea Rodrigues.

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Figure 13: Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010.

Figure 14: Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010.

Portuguese history as well as the singularity of Portuguese identity. After these sequences an excerpt follows of the official Jornal Português newsreel about the commemorations of the “Batalha de Ourique” [Battle of Ourique], in which the narrator praises not only Afonso Henrique’s victory over the Muslim forces in 1139 but also the military ceremony orchestrated by the regime.

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Figure 15: Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010.

The initial collage of propagandistic archival footage culminates in the images of the masses celebrating Salazar which are combined with a speech of him claiming that due to the virtues of Portugal and its “civilizing mission” “one cannot but be proud to be Portuguese” (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:05:53). However, the seemingly unchallenged immersion into the propagandistic image shows the first evidences of fissures when the final images of this manifestation in favour of Salazar are suddenly interrupted by footage from an edition of the newsreel Fox Tönende Wochenschau225 from 1933 that documents the boycott of Jewish businesses in Berlin. The footage figuring Salazar performing the roman salute while he is praised by the omnipresent voice of the narrator of the newsreels as “the man who has kept Portugal out of the fires of war” (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:06:15) is thereby contrasted with the shouts on German streets: “Kauft nicht bei Juden!” [Do not buy from Jews!] (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:06:30). Two central strategies of Fantasia Lusitana are in fact the selection and montage of contrasting materials and the ‘effect of posteriority’. The sequence 225 The German-American newsreels Fox Tönende Wochenschau appeared in Germany between 1930 and 1940. Following their rise to power, the National Socialists increasingly supervised the production of all newsreel series, including Fox Tönende Wochenschau. Finally, the Nazi government assumed total control over the production of newsreels in the country. This led to the disappearance of Fox Tönende Wochenschau as Ufa started to distribute a unified German weekly newsreel (Deutsche Wochenschau). Fox Tönende Wochenschau reappeared after the war in Western Germany (cf. Winkel 2006).

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documenting the discrimination against Jews in Germany is therefore followed by a report by Fernando Pessa226 explaining the German ‘Blitzkrieg’. As Canijo points out in an interview, the credulous lightheartedness of Pessa’s description, which compares the noise of the aircraft bombings to “cerejas [. . .] um pux[ando] outro” [cherries one pulling the other] (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:07:55),227 “is a total idiocy” (Câmara 2010, n.p. [translation mine]).228 Placed immediately after the sequences documenting the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses, the cheerful tone of Pessa’s account of the bombings clearly shocks with the serenity of the Portuguese newsreels celebrating Portuguese history and the Estado Novo. To a contemporary viewer informed about the violence of World War II, it has to appear rather grotesque to hear Pessa commenting on how “enemy aircraft[s] are certain to leave behind their calling cards” (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:08:19) – especially while seeing bombs falling and leaving nothing but destruction behind (Figures 16 and 17).

Figure 16: Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010.

226 Fernando Pessa (1902–2002) was a famous Portuguese journalist, who is well known for his war coverage while working for the BBC in London during World War II (cf. Martins 1994; Câmara 2010). 227 The English subtitles actually do not convey this comparison, which refers to a Portuguese proverb: “As palavras/conversas são como as cerejas: vão umas atrás das outras” [Words/Conversations are like cherries: one follows the other]. 228 In Portuguese this reads: “é uma idiotice total”.

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Figure 17: Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010.

This ‘effect of posteriority’, of reviewing and rehearing the images and speeches in the present, also affects earlier sequences. Canijo certainly creates a symbiotic montage of the incorporated found footage, leaving viewers unaware of the actual extent of editorial manipulation (the shots selected from Mocidade Vitoriosa, for instance, appear in a completely different order than in the original film). However, there can be no doubt that the contemporary viewer sees neither the fascistic aesthetics of ordered marching masses nor the constant repetition of the roman salute (almost) as they were seen in the past. In addition, the montage of contrasting visions of the war period in Portugal becomes increasingly visible throughout Fantasia Lusitana. Whereas the first half of the documentary consists mostly of official documentary and newsreel footage from Portuguese archives foregrounding the propagandistic image of Portuguese neutrality and the celebration of Portuguese identity, in the second part several excerpts from transiting writers and other archival artifacts are incorporated: found footage of non-official origin, photos of refugees, and pictures of visa applications (Figure 18). Quotes from Alfred Döblin’s Schicksalsreise [Destiny’s Journey] (2014) are read aloud in German while the visual layer figures images of refugees in the city and at the Portuguese border. Footage and photographs from the beach and the famous casino in the small Atlantic town Estoril are combined with Saint-Exupéry’s sad remark that “Lisbon pretended to believe in its own happiness” (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:37:23) (Figure 19). The desperate impression conveyed by Erika Mann’s description of the situation of the refugees

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Figure 18: Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010.

Figure 19: Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010.

arriving “without luggage, without money, often without identification” (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:23:15) is followed by two sequences taken from the Jornal Português featuring the film premiere of António Lopes Ribeiro’s Feitiço do Império [Enchantment of the empire] (1940) and a chronicle about film stars in Lisbon highlighting Danielle Darrieux’s delight during her honeymoon in Portugal.

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By successively increasing the visibility of the contrasting montage, Canijo not only confronts the propagandistic documentaries and Salazar’s speeches with alternative views, but also draws attention to his own editorial intervention. Refusing to use the archival material to authenticate a verbal narrative, Canijo leaves room for the spectator to become aware of the role of montage and the manipulative intervention of the editing process within the deconstruction of the ‘Lusitanian fantasy’. In other words, by juxtaposing contrasting visions Fantasia Lusitana not only disrupts the all too smooth vision of Portuguese identity and History celebrated by the Estado Novo, but also draws attention to the cinematographic apparatus as such: not only the essential role of montage for the construction of meaning and guidance of a narrative, but also the fact that the camera is never completely neutral, but provides highly coded representations. Fantasia Lusitana therefore not only debunks the propagandistic instrumentalisation of the official newsreels and documentaries of the Estado Novo, but also holds the potential to expose its own extremely partial and interested recycling of the pre-existing material. Far from being a film from the 1940s, or an ‘uninterested’ selection of found footage, Fantasia Lusitana is itself clearly manipulative, seeking to make the spectator ‘see’ and ‘read’ the different layers of the remediated material. In other words, the provocative use of archival material does not just serve the deconstruction of the ‘Lusitanian fantasy’. At the same time, Fantasia Lusitana also invites the spectators to think, challenge and question the fantasies presented to them and to become aware of the coded nature of cinematographic representation as such. In fact, Fantasia Lusitana relies on a technique of reincorporation and montage which by neither foregrounding nor explaining the process of reuse and recontextualisation emphasises the need to develop an autonomous critical reading of the incorporated footage. Through the refusal of voice-over narration and the juxtaposition of contrasting visions, Canijo is able to develop a sort of ‘didactic line’ without imposing one particular reading of either the remediated material or Fantasia Lusitana. Confronted with a silent director, the spectator has to engage the syntax created by the selection and edition of the documentary. The director uses the found footage in order to prompt the viewer to develop a kind of ‘cinematographic literacy’, allowing them to think and question not only the propagandistic images conveyed by official cinema and political discourse in the past but also the film presented to them by Canijo in the present. In contrast to the openly guiding and didactical narratives of the propagandistic documentaries, newsreels and speeches, Canijo constructs meaning exclusively through the process of editing, relying on the montage of contrasting visions and voices as well as an ‘effect of posteriority’. By revisiting and restaging the propagandistic images and speeches, Fantasia Lusistana foregrounds the manipulative nature of

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cinematographic representation. However, at the same time, it develops a narrative about the role that documentary and fictional films as well as other cultural and artistic expressions have played in constructing the ‘Lusitanian fantasy’ of Portuguese identity. Still, Canijo’s deconstruction of the ‘Lusitanian fantasy’ and the cinematographic apparatus as such should not merely be understood in terms of a Brechtian exposure of how our perception of reality is constructed. Canijo’s documentary is rather characterised by a commitment to a certain realism and a tension created through a combination of a seemingly unadulterated representation of the archival footage and a foregrounding of elements which disturb the apparent ‘authenticity’ of the film. As Ana Rodrigues claims, the absence of a narrator and the alleged reluctance to manipulate the archival footage can be interpreted as a refusal of the propagandistic, excessively manipulative mode of cinema during the Estado Novo and a “defense of a filmography closer to direct cinema, supposedly able to show reality as it is” (2010, 73 [translation mine; emphasis in the original]).229 Nevertheless, by successively disrupting this apparent transparency of the archival remediation, the ironical and manipulative use of the found footage becomes more and more evident. Rather than producing supposedly transparent images of the ‘reality’ of Portugal in the 1940s, the montage of the documentary creates a narrative about the discursive construction of the ‘Lusitanian fantasy’ of Portuguese identity without, however, providing a univocal, unambiguous counter-memory about Lisbon during World War II. Fantasia Lusitana does not simply confront the ‘illusion’ of propaganda with one unquestionable ‘truth’, but constructs an effect of authenticity and transparency, which is then successively disrupted. This points to a notion of realism that is dedicated to a simultaneous recognition of a material reality and the conventions and constraints always implicit in its representation. However, rather than merely exposing these constraints of representation to the spectator, Canijo elevates the spectator to an active participant in the negotiation of the meaning of the film and thereby refuses to confine him/her to the role of victim of the cinematographic apparatus. Aiming to expose the role of cinema in the ideological framing of the regime, Fantasia Lusitana’s aesthetic strategies stand in sharp contrast to the remediated newsreels and documentaries supported by the Estado Novo. In opposition to the omnipresent hegemonic voices of the regime, Canijo does not force one particular reading, but rather encourages the spectator to engage the multilayered

229 In Portuguese this reads: “defesa de uma filmografia mais próxima do cinema-directo, supostamente capaz de mostrar a realidade tal qual ela é”.

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counter-images and counter-narratives proposed by the montage of the found footage, audio records and photographs in their ambivalences. Instead of a clearly guided, unambiguous image of the war period in Portugal, Canijo thus presents contrasting visions and successively discloses his ironic and manipulative appropriation of the archival material. The absence of a narrative voice and the increasingly visible montage are a sign not only of an aesthetic but also of an ideological distantiation from the newsreels and the documentaries produced during the Estado Novo, and, one could add, a critique of António Lopes Ribeiro’s filmography. In sum, Fantasia Lusitana relies on an experimental practice of found footage, which not only challenges the fantasy conveyed by the appropriated material, but also renegotiates the role ascribed to the spectator. Rather than appropriating the remediated archival material as evidence of a narrative about the period of World War II and the refugee presence in Portugal, Canijo relies on an increasingly visible montage of contrasting visions, an ‘effect of posteriority’ and a discomforting silence, i.e. an absence of a narrative voice-over that provides an explanation and guides the spectator through the film. Whereas the beginning is dominated by the propagandistic imaginary of the official cinematographic productions and speeches, and thereby invites the spectator to immerse into the ‘Lusitanian fantasy’ supported by the Estado Novo, the documentary then successively introduces disruptive elements that not only disturb the official propaganda but also slowly draw attention to the ironic and manipulative appropriation of the remediated footage. Fantasia Lusitana thus alludes to the clearly manipulative uses of cinema, not only by the Estado Novo, but also within its own montage of contrasting visions. This aesthetic strategy reflects a ‘didactic line’, which aims to prompt an autonomous, critical reading of both the remediated material and Fantasia Lusitana itself. By refusing to present a simple counter-image and counternarrative to the ‘fantasy’ presented by the official films, Canijo reveals his interest in encouraging the spectator to actively engage in the interpretation and reading of the documentary and its negotiation of the remnants of the complex history of the Estado Novo and World War II in Portugal. Yet, this is also a risky strategy. By refusing any contextualisation, Canijo’s ‘didactic line’ ends up presupposing a maturity and visual literacy of the spectator which might not always be taken for granted.

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5.2 Reappropriating the nationalistic fantasy of the Estado Novo: remediation as archival intervention and critique of the politics of representation Despite being a documentary about World War II, Fantasia Lusitana is not primarily interested in representing the ‘historical event’. Through the remediation of archival footage Canijo rather seeks to expose different “layers of reality in Portugal, the world in war and the fantasy of the neutral country, the myth created by Salazar” (Câmara 2010, n.p. [translation mine]).230 However, as a result of its experimental use of found footage and the absence of a verbal, explanatory narrative, Fantasia Lusitana does not merely disseminate an alternative countermemory. Instead of providing an apparently ‘authentic’ account of Lisbon during World War II, the film relies on remediation to uncover the ideological discourse of the Estado Novo and its repercussions in present-day Portugal. Through a collage of different visual and audio layers of archival material, the documentary conveys contrasting memory images and confronts the propagandistic construction of Portugal with alternative, potentially disruptive perspectives. Rather than presenting the remediated footage as an exact copy of ‘reality’, Fantasia Lusitana invites the spectator to reconsider hegemonic national identity and memory, as well as the role of cultural politics and particularly cinema in supporting the ‘Lusitanian fantasy’. Through the recycling and recontextualisation of the official footage, the documentary thus develops a critical archival transcription that aims to actively intervene in public debates in present-day Portugal. Whereas the mnemonic potential of widely distributed fiction films and conventional documentaries is usually framed in terms of its impact on the construction of cultural memory (cf. Brunow 2015),231 Fantasia Lusitana requires a shift of focus towards its critical reflection about the role of media, filmmaking and representation in the shaping of national identity and memory. As Erll argues, most memory media are

230 In Portuguese this reads: “os [. . .] níveis de realidade em Portugal, o mundo em guerra e a fantasia do país neutral, o mito criado por Salazar”. 231 Erll and Wodianka (2008) have discussed the mnemonic impact of film through the notion of “memory films” (Erinnunergsfilme). Theorised as widely distributed fiction films with an important role in the construction of cultural memory, ‘memory films’ are thought to achieve their mnemonic potential through their reception. Rather than an outcome of inherent qualities, their impact in terms of disseminating memory images thus depends on multiple remediations in what the authors term ‘plurimedial networks’ (marketing strategies, reviews, awards, academic and political debates, insertion in school curricula etc.).

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characterised by a logic of immediacy, which in memory discourse is often associated with the term ‘authenticity’. They stage themselves as transparent media, which open a ‘window’ to the past to the user of the medium. Their presence is to be forgotten throughout the process of reception. Memory media thereby produce an illusion of an ‘unmediated memory’; they suggest the (impossible) possibility of accessing the pre-medial events of the past.232 (2011b, 129 [translation mine])

Fantasia Lusitana, in contrast, works with a successively increasing visibility of remediation and montage. Instead of framing itself as an apparently transparent window to war-time Lisbon, the narrative of the documentary remains within the realm of a discursive analysis of Salazarist propaganda. Fantasia Lusitana’s remediation of archival material thus does not strive to authenticate an account of the past, but rather serves as the basis for an analysis of the politics of representation during the Estado Novo and its lasting impact on contemporary national memory. Drawing attention to the role of “entangled discourses, [. . .] iconographic traditions, narrative formula and specific media technologies and their dispositifs” (Brunow 2015, 6) within the propagandistic construction of Portuguese identity and memory, Fantasia Lusitana thus holds a critical potential with regard to hegemonic archival practices and memory. On account of this, Fantasia Lusitana’s recycling of archival material can be read as a form of mnemonic activism and archival intervention that challenges hegemonic national memory from within the perspective of the majority. The documentary proposes a reflection about the crucial role of cinema within the propaganda machine of the Estado Novo during the period of World War II. By approaching the propagandistic discourse of the Estado Novo based on cinematographic productions and official discourses by Salazar, Fantasia Lusitana conveys a specific image of the propagandistic discourse of the regime. Based on the remediation of archival material, the documentary proposes to retrace and (re)construct the ‘Lusitanian fantasy’ of Portuguese identity and history supported by cultural politics and statefinanced or supervised cinematographic productions in the 1930s and 1940s. In fact, Fantasia Lusitana enters into dialogue with the role that cinema played within the propaganda machine of the Estado Novo. While Salazar’s interest in the ‘seventh art’ was apparently more of a strategic nature, he nonetheless recognised its potential within the context of propaganda, especially in 232 In German this reads: „[D]ie meisten Gedächtnismedien [zeichnen sich] durch die Verfahrenslogik transparenter Unmittelbarkeit (immediacy) aus, die im Erinnerungs-Diskurs häufig mit dem Begriff der ‚Authentizität‘ belegt wird. Sie inszenieren sich als durchsichtige Medien, die dem Mediennutzer ein ‚Fenster‘ auf die Vergangenheit eröffnen. Ihre Präsenz soll im Rezeptionsakt vergessen werden. Gedächtnismedien erzeugen so die Illusion einer ‚unmediatisierten Erinnerung‘; sie suggerieren die (unmögliche) Möglichkeit eines Zugriffs auf das prä-mediale Geschehen der Vergangenheit”.

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view of the high levels of illiteracy in the country (cf. Torgal 2001; Piçarra 2006, 2011; Vieira 2011). António Ferro, who presided over the Secretariat of National Propaganda (SPN/SNI) from its creation in 1933 until 1949, was moreover not only a film critic and enthusiastic admirer of cinema, but also keen on making use of its propagandistic potential. He not only maintained close contacts with directors and producers, but also incentivised the Cinema Ambulante [Travelling Cinema],233 the production of propagandistic documentaries and fiction films as well as an official newsreel series.234 While the Secretariat of National Propaganda set its focus on the production of documentaries, the cinematographic industry was nonetheless closely supervised and often indirectly controlled through the attribution of funds.235 The work of António Lopes Ribeiro assumes particular importance within Fantasia Lusitana’s remediation of archival footage. One of the central figures of the cinematographic industry in the first decades of the Portuguese dictatorship, this “cineasta do regime” [filmmaker of the regime] (Piçarra 2006, 103)

233 A program created in 1937 and designed for the screening of propagandistic or ideologically desirable films outside commercial cinemas and particularly at remote places where the population usually had no access to cinema at all. While its main target audience was the ‘working classes’, it also facilitated particular screenings at schools and soirées and matinées for the Legião Poruguesa and Mocidade Portuguesa. 234 Although the first edition of Jornal Português only appeared in 1938, the institution of the official Portuguese newsreel was part of António Ferro’s plans right from the beginning, when the Secretariat of National Propaganda was created in 1933 (cf. Piçarra 2006). 235 The SPN/SNI was mainly responsible for the production of documentaries about diverse topics such as improvements in infrastructures, public works, festivities, political events, sports and military parades. Although supervised by the state, the production of documentaries was not centralised, but executed by private companies such as the Sociedade Portuguesa de Actualidades Cinematográficas (SPAC), a production company and distributor which belonged to the wife of António Lopes Ribeiro (cf. Torgal 2001). In addition to documentaries, the SPN/SNI was also involved in the official newsreel Jornal Português (1938–1951) and some feature films, particularly A Revolução de Maio (1937) and Feitiço do Império (1940) – the only fiction films commonly described as propagandistic in the strict sense (cf. Torgal 2001; Vieira 2011). Whereas A Revolução de Maio and Feitiço do Império were directed by António Lopes Ribeiro and produced by the SPN and the Agência Geral das Colónias [General Agency of the Colonies], most of the feature films of the 1930s and 1940s did not rely on direct stateintervention. However, cinema was not only subjected to censorship, but, due to the economic structure of the Portuguese film industry, was often also dependant on state-subsidies, which clearly favoured films, filmmakers and producers close to the ideology of the regime (cf. Torgal 2001; Piçarra 2006; Vieira 2011). As Patrícia Vieira summarises, “we do not have, with regard to feature-length fiction films, an industry with a blatantly propagandistic slant, but rather films that fit into the worldview of the New State and that reproduce Salazarist principles through their settings, choice of characters, and even the narrative plot” (Vieira 2013, 9).

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was not only responsible for both explicitly propagandistic fiction films, but also for many documentaries as well as the official newsreel Jornal Português. He was named artistic director of the Missão Cinematográfica às Colónias de África236 [Cinematographic Mission to the African Colonies] (1938), supervised the production company and distributor Sociedade Portuguesa de Actualidades Cinematográficas (SPAC) and was responsible for the production of a number of well-known films such as O Pátio das Cantigas [The courtyard of songs] (1942), Aniki-Bobó (1942) or Camões (1946). A fervent defender of cinema as a means of propaganda for the Estado Novo, his work is characterised not only by his dedication to the nationalist cause, but also by an involvement in multiple tasks related to the cinematographic projects in which he participated: apart from producer and director, he wrote arguments and – a characteristic feature of his documentary work (including some editions of the newsreels) – he often wrote the scripts as well as the texts for narrative voice-overs and even figured in the role of narrator himself. António Lopes Ribeiro was actually involved in almost all of the Portuguese archival footage remediated in Canijo’s documentary. Beginning with the sequence of the opening credits taken, as already mentioned, from the documentary A Exposição do Mundo Português (1941), followed by the numerous sequences appropriated from various editions of the Jornal Português and the scenes integrated from the fiction film O Pátio das Cantigas, which, although directed by his brother Francisco Ribeiro (“Ribeirinho”), was produced and partly written by António Lopes Ribeiro. Throughout the film, Fantasia Lusitana thus develops a powerful critique of the aesthetics and ideology conveyed through Ribeiro’s newsreels, documentaries and fiction films. While most of the remediated footage actually belongs to editions of the official Portuguese newsreel under Ribeiro’s direction, the documentary A Exposição do Mundo Português not only supplies the title sequence, but its depiction of the exposition also assumes a central position within the film’s deconstruction of Salazarist propaganda. Feitiço do Império is referred to through the integration of a newsreel report about its movie premiere; and O Pátio das Cantigas is the sole fictional feature film quoted through the integration of entire scenes. Due to the extent of the footage incorporated from different editions of the Jornal Português, commentators usually foreground the role of the official newsreel

236 In 1938 the minister of the Colonies, Francisco Vieira Machado, initiated the so-called “Missão Cinematográfica às Colónias de África”. In this context, a film crew was sent to the African Colonies of Portugal for several months (from February to October 1938). António Lopes Ribeiro was the artistic director of the project, which resulted in material for several documentaries and outdoor recordings for the film Feitiço do Império (Matos-Cruz 2001).

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within Fantasia Lusitana’s critique of propagandistic discourse (cf. Rodrigues 2010; Macedo, Bastos and Cabecinhas 2015; Ribas 2014). As a matter of fact, Canijo appropriates, edits and recontextualises several sequences of the total of 101237 editions of the Jornal Português. The montage of this newsreel footage supports a diachronic reading of the remediated material that culminates in the appropriation of the victory of the allies by the Estado Novo and ultimately in the final sequence featuring the inauguration of the monument of the Cristo Rei in Almada in 1959. Through the inclusion of this sequence about the inaugural ceremony of this monument in homage to the end of World War II and Portuguese neutrality, the documentary ends suggesting the continuation of the ‘Lusitanian fantasy’ even after the war. Despite their apparently diachronic arrangement, the sequences of the Jornal Português do not actually appear in a chronological order. The first footage incorporated from the newsreel series (several short sequences from edition number 12 showing the Mocidade Portuguesa during the commemorations of December, 1) dates, for instance, from 1939, while two sequences from the first edition in 1938 (the visit of the German ship Deutschland and the British Home Fleet) only appear later in the film. Indeed, the montage of Fantasia Lusitana operates quite intrusively, collaging material from different years and episodes as if belonging to the same event, and separating at the same time news reports belonging to one and the same edition. The sequences from edition number 12 showing the Mocidade Portuguesa, for instance, are put directly after footage taken from the documentary Mocidade Vitoriosa. Although the audio layer indicates a break by switching from the original voice-over narration by Áurea Rodrigues to a speech by Salazar with the original music of the newsreels featuring in the background (the song of the Portuguese youth organisation), visually there is no clear indication that this footage belongs to a different source than the preceding images. The footage taken from the Jornal Português clearly serves as a characterisation of the propaganda machine and the Estado Novo regime in the 1930s and 1940s. Most of the remediated material of the official Portuguese newsreel editions focus on military parades, marches of the youth organisations, official ceremonies celebrating Portugal’s history, culture, and ‘civilising mission’, as well as manifestations in honor and support of Salazar and Carmona. As has already been mentioned, the visual layer foregrounds a ‘fascistic’ aesthetics supported by images of ordered masses, staged ceremonies, the repeatedly performed roman salute and a certain cult of the leader(s) constantly cheered by the masses.

237 Between 1938 and 1951 a total of 101 numbers of the Jornal Português were produced, of those 95 were regular editions and 6 special editions.

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By emphasising the mobilisation of the masses and the importance of the figure of the leader, Canijo approximates the Portuguese dictatorship to other European fascist regimes of the period, challenging not only positions that highlight the absence or lesser articulation of ‘fascist’ and ‘totalitarian’ elements in the Estado Novo, but also a certain particularity ascribed to the regime.238 Rather than distinguished by singular aesthetic features, Fantasia Lusitana foregrounds the totalitarian imaginary of Estado Novo’s visual regime. The Jornal Português is portrayed as relying on a visuality and cinematographic language that is shared with its fascistic counterparts in Europe and that is ultimately also characterised by an engagement with the audience as homogenised masses. The remediated Jornal Português not only provides unquestionable explanations and interpretations of the filmed material, it also presupposes and aims to achieve uniform reactions from the audience.239 This is particularly attained through the accentuation of the dominant voice-over narration, which, as Maria do Carmo Piçarra emphasises, “silences” not only the visual layer, but also the sound on location of the recordings (2006, 168). As the propagandistic orchestrations of the Estado Novo prevail in the first part of the documentary, the spectator is invited to immerse in the imaginary of the documentaries and newsreels, and the ideologically loaded discourses proclaimed by the omnipresent voices of the narrators and Salazar. Following the initial sequences with the Mocidade Portuguesa and marching masses, Fantasia Lusitana introduces a contextualising intertitle – one of the few elements not pertaining to found footage: “And so it was that on the 4th of June 1940 even as an atrocious war raged, dividing Europe and the World, Portugal was proud to celebrate, peacefully and in prayer with cheers and flowers, the eight illustrious centuries of its History” (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:03:19). This frame is followed by newsreel footage covering a visit of Carmona to the North of Portugal (Jornal Português, nº 16) (Figures 20 and 21).240 While the sequence begins with the

238 As has been briefly mentioned in the introduction, the question whether the Portuguese Estado Novo should or can be considered ‘fascist’ or ‘totalitarian’ has caused numerous debates among political scientists and historians. Essential aspects of these debates are the role of corporatism, Catholicism and the Catholic Church, as well as the less articulated mobilisation of the masses and the cult of the leader. Canijo’s take on the propaganda of the Portuguese regime which foregrounds both the mobilisation of masses and the staging of the figure of Salazar is therefore significant and should be read as a conscious statement about the nature of the Estado Novo and its cultural politics at the period. 239 For a discussion of the Jornal Português and its relationship with the audience see Piçarra (2006, 2011). 240 A special edition dedicated to the commemorations of the double centenary of Portuguese nationhood entitled “Visita ao Norte do Chefe do Estado” [Visit to the North of the Head of the

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Figure 20: Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010.

Figure 21: Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010.

State]. Although it is Carmona who visits the North of Portugal, the narrator of the edition states that the masses where “cheering also for Salazar and the New State Government” (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:03:40).

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original voice-over narration, it then switches to a discourse of Salazar, which continues while the visual layer moves to footage from another edition of the Jornal Português (nº 17) showing some of the important figures of the regime exiting the Sé Cathedral in Lisbon. In this speech Salazar establishes the importance of memory within the propagandistic project of constructing and consolidating Portuguese identity based on a highly ideological image of Portuguese history and the ‘national character’ of the Portuguese: When next to the bridge or road that we build for the welfare of the people we also repair the castle or monument or even restore the small, age-old church or abandoned monastery some are unable to see that we work to uphold the identity of the collective being thus reinforcing our national character. This is what we do. Those attributes which were revealed and crystallized and which make us ourselves and not others; that sweetness of temper; that modesty; that humanity, which is so rare in today’s world; that measure of spirituality which, despite all forces against it, still inspires the Portuguese way of life; the spirit of endurance; the unassuming heroism; the adaptability and the capacity to imprint our way of being on the outside world; the regard for moral values; the faith in the law, in justice, in equality between men and peoples; all of the above unprofitable as they may be as principles constitute nonetheless the mainstay of our national character. (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:03:48–00:04:52)

The documentary thus constructs a narrative about how during World War II the official newsreel series served as an important instrument to propagate the idea of the ‘privileged’ political and social situation in Portugal owed to Salazar and the regime.241 The remediated footage of the Jornal Português is used to link the image of Portuguese identity promoted by the Estado Novo to mnemonic discourses and the propagandistic exaltation of Portugal’s noninterference in the global conflict. Fantasia Lusitana emphasises the role of History, the supposed “enduring union between Past and Present” (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:03: 12–00:03:15) for the propagandistic identity and memory supported by the official productions. However, Fantasia Lusitana not only retraces how Portuguese neutrality was ascribed to Salazar’s exceptional achievements and character, but also associates this praise of order, peace, and neutrality with a particular notion of Portuguese identity and the peaceful ‘collective character’ of Portuguese people. In fact, Fantasia Lusitana conveys what Eduardo Lourenço in his Psicoanálise Mítica do Destino Portuguès [Mythical psychoanalysis of Portuguese destiny] characterises

241 In her extensive study of the Jornal Português Piçarra (2006) underlines that the official newsreels were used for the dissemination of a positive image of the political and social situation in Portugal, emphasising the neutrality in the global conflict and the prevailing peace and order in the country.

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as the “official fiction” created by the Estado Novo: “[an] image without any possibility of control or contradiction of a country without problems, an oasis of peace, example of nations, archetype of the ideal solution that conciliates capital and work, order and authority with a harmonious development of society” (2017, 33 [translation mine]).242 Combined with images of youth groups and sports clubs marching through Lisbon ‘cheering Salazar’ (Jornal Português, nº 26), it is again a speech by the ‘Presidente do Conselho’ that is used to characterise the official view of Portuguese identity in its continuity from past to present: If [. . .] we consider the awe-inspiring History of this small people, almost as destitute today as it was before it discovered the world; the traces it left on the newly conquered or rediscovered world; the beauty of the monuments it erected; the language and the literature it fashioned; the vastness of the dominions where it continues to exert exemplary fidelity to its History and character, an exceptional civilizing mission, we can only conclude that one cannot but be proud to be Portuguese. (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:05:28–00:05:56)

The montage creates a sense of continuation linking Salazar’s discourse about Portuguese identity to the staging of gratitude for peace, tranquility and stability in Portugal. Salazar’s discourse is thus followed by the original audio of the newsreel edition in which the voice-over narrator explains that “many thousands of young men and women [. . .] walked to the Terreiro do Paço Square to demonstrate their dedication and appreciation for the man who has kept Portugal out of the fires of war” (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:06:05–00:06:11). As Canijo points out in an interview, Fantasia Lusitana foregrounds that the war was generally represented as something distant that “had nothing to do with us [the Portuguese]” (Câmara 2010, n.p. [translation mine]).243 The documentary actually emphasises the glorification of neutrality and the staging of Portuguese military meant to ‘assure’ the maintenance of peace and order in Portugal. This orchestration of ‘Portuguese neutrality’ finally culminates in remediated photographs and newspaper articles documenting “preparations for the defense exercises against air-raids in Lisbon” (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:12:55–00:12:58) combined with an audio-layer consisting of a Cante Alentejano praising the Portuguese nation and Salazar: “Leader of our nation. Unmatched by any other. We shall all fight and struggle. To save Portugal [. . .] Hail to his Excellency Oliveira Salazar” (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:13:48–00:14:28).

242 In Portuguese this reads: “ficção oficial, imagem sem controlo nem contradição possível de um país sem problemas, oásis da paz, exemplo das nações, arquétipo da solução ideal que conciliava o capital e o trabalho, a ordem e a autoridade com um desenvolvimento harmonioso da sociedade”. 243 In Portuguese this reads: “[n]ão tinha nada a ver connosco”.

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The remediation of footage reporting on the commemorations of the duplo centenário [double centenary] of eight hundred years of nationhood and three hundred years of independence from Habsburg Spain is particularly important in this context. Carefully planned by the regime, the programme of the festivities included a series of cultural events that culminated in the Exposição do Mundo Português [Exposition of the Portuguese World].244 The prestigious propaganda project of the double centenary commemorations was covered not only by several editions of the Jornal Português, but also by António Lopes Ribeiro’s above-mentioned feature length documentary A Exposição do Mundo Português. Fantasia Lusitana appropriates this archival footage in order to stage the exposition as the greatest realisation of the ‘Lusitanian fantasy’ that moreover summarises the essence of the propagandistic image of the Portuguese nation promoted by the regime. While the remediated sequences portray the population of the ‘metropole’ as essentially agricultural and humble, the nation is characterised by historical glory, destined for imperial greatness and the civilising mission in its colonies. As António Lopes Ribeiro proudly announces: “When Portugal was born, the nation that was to have the greatest influence [in] the world was founded” (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:33:09–00:33:11). It is moreover in the context of these festivities that Fantasia Lusitana’s montage of contrasting ‘realities’ existing in Portugal in the 1940s becomes most evident. The documentary foregrounds the contrast between the brutal war raging in Europe causing thousands to seek refuge and the apparent indifference of the regime with regard to this situation as it proceeded in preparing the events seemingly unperturbed. In fact, the fall of France in June 1940, which led to the massive influx of refugees to Portugal, coincided with the inauguration of the Exposição do Mundo Português.245 Challenging the propagandistic representation of the exposition commemorating Portuguese History and “the myth of Salazar’s historical inevitability” (Sapega 2008, 24), Canijo juxtaposes footage from Lopes Ribeiro’s official documentary with the observations of Antoine de SaintExupéry contesting the illusionary character of the festivities (Figure 22): 244 The exposition took place on the banks of the Tagus River in Belém, where a number of pavilions and monuments had been constructed specifically for this purpose. According to Ellen Sapega “[i]n essence, the exposition used conceptions of modernity and national progress to assume the continuity of conservative values in the future. By isolating key moments in the nation’s past (the reconquest, the discoveries etc.), their importance in preparing the way for the present was highlighted. The present, on the other hand, was viewed as a means of assuring the transmission of values of the past into the future, a future that, finally, was posited as the moment of eternal triumph for the Estado Novo and Salazarist ideology” (2008, 49). 245 The armistice between Germany and France was signed on June 22 and came into effect on June 25. The World Exposition in Lisbon was inaugurated on June 23.

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Figure 22: Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010. In December 1940, Lisbon struck me as a kind of bright and sad paradise. The immanent invasion of Portugal was much discussed and Portugal hung to the illusion of its happiness. Lisbon having organized the most beautiful exhibition in the world showed a pale smile like that of a mother without news of her son gone to war and who attempts to save him through self-assertion: “my son must be alive I am smiling”. (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:28:45–00:29:11)

The sequences preceding the remediated footage from the documentary Exposição do Mundo Português already contain quotes by Alfred Döblin and Erika Mann, which are set in contrast to the newsreels covering the visits of film stars and the film premier of Feitiço do Império. The montage of contradicting visions builds up to the sequences about the world exposition in which the audio layer switches several times between Saint-Exupéry’s observations read aloud in French and the original audio featuring António Lopes Ribeiro’s voice-over narration. Whereas Ribeiro praises the work of Portuguese artists and workers who created a “true synthesis of Portuguese, past and present, and lovingly erected that prodigious monument [of our virtues and our achievements] which was the Portuguese World Exhibition” (Fantasia Lusitana: 00:29:24–00:28:37), Saint-Exupéry perceives the exposition of Portugal’s great heritage and happiness as an illusion meant to conceal the fragility of the country: “‘See’, thus said Lisbon, ‘how happy and tranquil and bright I am . . . [. . .] How dare you see me as a target when I’ve taken such care not to hide! When I am so vulnerable’” (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:29:40–00:30:00). As stated by Daniel Ribas (2014, 276), the literary quotes in German and French generally establish a contradictory relationship with the

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propagandistic discourse about happiness in the country. Indeed, António Lopes Ribeiro’s worship of Salazar – “the true architect of a modern, both new and eternal, Portugal” (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:30:30–00:30:35) (Figure 23) – and his comment about the “bloodless war” in Europe (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:30:36) end up being contested by Saint-Exupéry’s observation that Portugal, “devoid of an army”, simply “ignored the appetite of the monster refusing to believe the signs” (Fanatasia Lusitana, 00:32:19–00:34:48). An essential aspect of the remediation of footage covering the double centenary is that it alludes to what has been excluded from the ‘Lusitanian fantasy’, to something that remains outside the frame. Through the montage of the sequences preceding and following Exposição do Mundo Português, but also through the selection of footage from António Lopes Ribeiro’s film, Canijo addresses the construction of national identity and memory and links the propagandistic discourses and images of Portugal’s ‘eternal past and present’ with a disquieting invisibility not only of the refugees, but also of the war and the ‘real’ life of the people in the ‘metropole’ and the colonies. In addition to the juxtaposed audio layer with quotes of writers in transit, the positioning and arrangement of footage and other material is crucial here. The footage from the Exposição do Mundo Português is preceded by an interview in French from the Jornal Português (edition nº 1) in which Valentin Mandelstamm, introduced as an important figure in Hollywood, compliments Portugal for its extraordinary conditions for cinema: its climate, its folklore, its light, but

Figure 23: Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010.

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particularly its calmness and peacefulness. Mandelstamm’s praise for Portuguese cinema is then followed by sequences from O Pátio das Cantigas. While his last words about peace and tranquility in Portugal still resonate, the visual layer already features excerpts of Pátio das Cantigas’ much-debated depiction of a brawl in a typical popular neighbourhood in Lisbon (Figure 24). Following its “parodic mise-en-abyme of the war, filled with everything from German Flank guns, to air bombings, [. . .] and care for the wounded” (I. Gil 2017, 513), this scene ultimately culminates when the character played by actor Vasco Santana guides a group of children inside a garage for protection. While the children enter a carriage with the inscription “Salazar” on its top, Santana proclaims: “Rest assured you will be perfectly safe here” (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:28:25) (Figure 25). Through this arrangement and selection of scenes Fantasia Lusitana ridicules not only the orchestration of Mendelstamm’s assessment of the great conditions for Portuguese cinema in the official newsreel, but also the famous Portuguese comedy with its representation of life in Lisbon and particularly of Salazar as paternal saviour of children escaping the ‘war’. In fact, Fantasia Lusitana generally seems to aim at creating a certain discomfort in contemporary spectators regarding not only the idealised image of the traditional neighbourhoods in the city or the humble agricultural life of Portuguese peasants in the ‘metropole’ (Figure 26), but also the representation of the missionary activity and the population from the colonies. António Lopes Ribeiro’s documentary is presented as a manifestation of what Cunha terms “the

Figure 24: Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010.

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Figure 25: Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010.

Figure 26: Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010.

voice of the sole truth” (1994, 99 [translation mine]):246 “The Portuguese distinctiveness, the brilliancy of its history and the projection of its future which came

246 In Portuguese this reads: “a voz da única verdade”.

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to be associated to a gaze that confirmed what one did not discuss” (Cunha 1994, 99 [translation mine]).247 The remediated sequences of Lopes Ribeiro’s documentary seem to synthesise an idealised binary schematisation of Portuguese people: “[O]n the one hand the perpetuity of the national soul that the people preserve and, on the other, the vision of the empire that actualises the grandiosity of the Portuguese past” (Cunha 1994, 100 [translation mine]).248 Lopes Ribeiro proudly comments the images of the people from the ‘metropole’ and the colonies displayed at the exposition in Lisbon: women and men in their traditional clothing, dancing Folklore and picking water from a well in reproductions of Portuguese villages; the “Sisters of Charity continu[ing] their most humane of missions in full view” (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:33:26–00:33:29); Fula and Mandingo people from Guinea dancing their “animated batuques” (Figure 27); and a family from TimorLeste “descending from their lake house” (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:34:03–00:34:05). In essence, the remediated footage from Lopes Ribeiro’s documentary seems to exclude the living conditions in Portugal and its colonies, evoking instead the

Figure 27: Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010.

247 In Portuguese this reads: “A especificidade portuguesa, o brilho da sua história e a projeção do seu futuro [que se] tornavam presas de um olhar que confirmava o que não se discutia” 248 In Portuguese this reads: “por um lado a perenidade da alma nacional que o povo preserva e por outro a visão do Império que atualiza a grandiosidade do passado português”.

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sensation of portraying what Eduardo Lourenço describes as “Disneylandia” [Disneyland]: an imagined country “without scandals, suicides or real problems” (2017, 33–34 [translation mine]).249 Building his mnemonic and archival critique exclusively on the montage and recycling of archival material, Canijo does not provide a straightforward counter-narrative or a clearly formed counter-image of the national ‘character’ or identity. The Portuguese newsreels and documentaries are instead arranged in order to foreground their ‘unrealistic’ portrayal of the country and its population. Reminding the spectator, for example, that “the new Portugal educates the mass of its people but little [and] 70% are illiterate” (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:41: 54–00:42:00), the contrasting material further corroborates this staging of the official discourse as pure ‘fantasy’ depleted of all aspects of vernacular culture and history that could potentially disrupt the essentialist idea of the Portuguese nation and community. Through the use of remediation Fantasia Lusitana thus creates a referential web that simultaneously retraces and deconstructs the propagandistic image of the Portuguese nation supported by the Estado Novo. Instead of promoting a linear narrative or unequivocal image of the war time period in Lisbon, the documentary aims to expose different layers of ‘reality’ that existed in Lisbon and Portugal in the 1930s and 1940s. The propagandistic ‘Lusitanian fantasy’ promoted by the regime is therefore confronted with contrasting visions and impressions which expose the appropriation of national memory and the Portuguese population by the Estado Novo. However, Canijo’s aesthetic and ideological stand-off from the official cinematographic productions of the 1930s and 1940s not only rests on the deconstruction of Portuguese identity and memory, but actually also criticises the way official productions produce a ‘single truth’ merely to be consumed by the spectator. Fantasia Lusitana transcribes the archival material to deconstruct the use of national memory during the Estado Novo and to expose the official orchestration of Portuguese history and identity as a means to ideologically bind the population to the regime. What Fantasia Lusitana ‘reveals’ is that “the regime’s portrait of the Portuguese nation showed the Portuguese people as a universal race historically destined for imperial greatness, [while] it also relegated most of the citizens of this empire to the secondary role of mere observer” (Sapega 2008, 47). The remediated archival material conveys an image of Portuguese propaganda that excluded ‘realistic’ portrayals of the country and vernacular culture from hegemonic identity and thereby prevented the emergence of a public sphere in which the organisation of the Portuguese society and its

249 In Portuguese this reads: “sem escândalos, nem suicídios, nem verdadeiros problemas”.

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power structures could be discussed and possibly contested. Fantasia Lusitana’s remediation of archival material thus draws attention to the artificiality of the homocultural and homolingual national memory and archive orchestrated by the regime. Rather than leading to authentic remembrance, it creates a fiction that actively suppresses differences and the perspective of the foreigerns present in the country to produce a univocal image of the past and present.

5.3 Necessary absences of the ‘Lusitanian fantasy’: a translational perspective on the thresholds of national memory In its essence Fantasia Lusitana is not a film about refugees. While the whole project originated in a proposal by producer João Trabalho to make a film about famous personalities who passed through Lisbon in the period of World War II, Canijo was uninterested in making a conventional documentary about illustrious transients right from the beginning. Instead, he suggested exploring the traces of these foreigners in contemporary Portugal as well as the relationship between Salazar’s Estado Novo, the refugees and the war in Europe (cf. Câmara 2010). However, as he eventually realised that he was unable to find any “material that documented this relationship” (Câmara 2010, n.p. [translation mine]),250 Canijo decided to abandon the focus on the history of Lisbon as a transit station altogether and proceeded instead to address precisely this archival absence: the invisibility of both, the global conflict and the people forced to seek (temporary) asylum in Portugal. The first appearance of the refugees only takes place after almost 20 minutes of the documentary. This sequence is composed by a visual layer consisting of remediated silent footage shot at the Spanish-Portuguese border in 1940251 and an audio layer featuring excerpts of Alfred Döblin’s Schicksalsreise (Figure 28). The rare footage of refugees at the border in Vilar Formoso shows lines of cars waiting, the train station, a police officer walking through town interacting with mostly smiling foreigners in suits and elegant dresses (Figure 29). But it also

250 In Portuguese this reads: “material que documentasse essa relação”. 251 According to the information available at the Portuguese cinema archive the footage probably dates from 1940 (cf. http://www.cinemateca.pt/Cinemateca-Digital/Ficha.aspx?obraid= 15254&type=Video).

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Figure 28: Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010.

Figure 29: Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010.

contains images of poorly dressed groups of men and women, and Portuguese villagers distributing coffee to the newly arrived (Figure 30). While Alfred Döblin is introduced by a short subtitle about the German author, including the date when he transited through Portugal, the images of the refugees are neither commented nor contextualised, but merely combined with Döblin’s text in German. Although

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Figure 30: Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010.

it seems quite obvious that this footage was not part of any official newsreel or documentary, the spectators are actually left in the dark about its origins and content. Fantasia Lusitana does not explain where and when these images where taken, nor does it provide any information about the refugees that it shows. In fact, Fantasia Lusitana evokes the multifaceted experiences of the foreigners residing temporarily in the country without truly developing the subject of transit through Portugal in depth. In addition to the quotes in the audio layer, the film includes a variety of images ranging from rich exiles spending their fortune at the casino in Estoril to the poor masses in Lisbon arriving without money, visa or even identification. Fantasia Lusitana’s visual layer includes photos of visa applications and footage of refugees in cafés, at the post office or boarding ships in Lisbon’s harbour, but also images of the rich exiles at the beaches and casino of the Costa do Sol. The quotes by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Erika Mann and Alfred Döblin depict both, the rich European elites spending their fortune in Estoril and the stranded masses of rather destitute refugees filling the cafés and streets in Lisbon. This material is, however, neither put into context nor explained. Fantasia Lusitana does not explore neither the conditions nor the reasons for the massive influx of foreigners in neutral Portugal in summer 1940. Even the stories of the authors quoted in the film are not developed. While the excerpts are read aloud in their native languages, not only do the authors remain invisible throughout the documentary, but their stories of flight and

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transit are also absent. Fantasia Lusitana does not incorporate any visual material directly related to them – neither footage nor any other archival items such as travelling tickets or hotel bills, for instance. The sole information introduced in the film regarding the intellectuals quoted is given by short subtitles indicating, as already mentioned above, the name and some biographical references as well as the date of transit. However, neither the individual fate nor the conditions of their transit are developed in depth. On the contrary, details about their situation, the reasons for their flight, and the circumstances of their temporary asylum in Portugal are excluded from the quotations. In “In Lissabon gestrandet” [Stranded in Lisbon] (1995) – which in truth is the German translation of the manuscript written in English entitled “Waiting for the Lifeboat” (n.d.)252 – Erika Mann, for instance, mentions explicitly her privileged situation, travelling from London to the United States with valid papers and ship tickets in hand. The rearranged excerpts figuring in Fantasia Lusitana not only omit her legal situation, reasons for transit through Portugal and experiences of rather personal nature (acquaintances and friends she encounters by chance in Lisbon), but also appropriate her text in order to foreground a particular image of Portugal’s capital as “the meeting point and the waiting room of all those who are running from Hitler” (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:22:50–00:22:55). The quotes by Erika Mann draw a desperate, desolate image of the “refugee camp in Lisbon” (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:23:58). Fear prevails in this city filled with thousands of refugees, most of whom do not have any money or even identification and can do nothing but wait “[f]or the salvation ship that will take them away, somewhere, just away from the enemy who chased them” (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:23:37–00:23:43). However, while “In Lissabon gestrandet” certainly depicts the situation of the refugees in Lisbon as shockingly hopeless – characterised by an angst-inducing impotence to fight or influence one’s own fate in any other manner –, Canijo’s selection is by no means neutral. In essence, it constricts Mann’s text to precisely this image and thereby even obscures and distorts the source text. Although the sequences about refugees generally appear to be reproduced unadulterated, the appropriation of the filmic, photographic, and textual material is actually quite invasive. The order of the footage and textual fragments is altered and adapted according to the means of the film. In the case of the first quote from Alfred Döblin’s Schicksalsreise, for instance, Fantasia Lusitana

252 “In Lissabon gestrandet” [literally “Stranded in Lisbon”] was first published in a collection by Claudia Schoppmann in 1991 (quoted here in a reprint from 1995). For more information on the unpublished English manuscript see note 1 on page 1 of this book.

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includes excerpts of the chapter “Portugal” which deals with the journey and arrival at the Portuguese frontier and Lisbon. While the author describes the “dreamlike, imaginary”, “not only real character” of his travel experience (Döblin 2014, 274 [translation mine]),253 the footage from the border town Vilar Formoso is substituted by footage showing Lisbon during the Saint Anthony festivities with people dancing in the crowded streets. Then the images switch to photographs of refugees at the train station and the soup kitchen in Lisbon. Again, the archival material is neither contextualised nor explained, but actually appropriated in order to emphasise what the quote of Döblin’s text depicts: the shocking contrast between war driven Europe with its darkened cities in France, and the illuminated streets, noises and light-heartedness of Lisbon (Figure 31): A dull obstinacy, yes an abysmal seriousness, a sorrow stood there behind my urge to travel. [. . .] A defeat, a major defeat took over me. [. . .] It was two in the morning. We rode into the city, travelled through brightly lit streets full of happy people. Lisbon welcomed us with light, music and laughter. But dance music blared in the streets for hours. The trams rang their bells and screeched, the cars honked their horn merrily, people sang. That’s what we heard in bed. What a world! What a world! Unbelievable! We will never forget the jolt it gave us. Not far from here, the grand nation of France agonized, its cities engulfed in the shadows of war, the northern part of the country overrun by its conquerors. People were suffering and hungry [; they] were waiting to see what conditions the victors would dictate. People suffered and were annihilated. Millions of men were kept in prison, millions were frightened, thousands were killed and here the lights were burning brightly. People were enjoying peacetime. We couldn’t enjoy it. We could only think of what we had left behind. We drove with noise through the bright, infernal bright (so it seemed to us) city. (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:19:41–00:21:45)

This rather invasive form of appropriation is not exclusive to this example, but actually characterises how Fantasia Lusitana incorporates the source texts by Döblin, Mann, and Saint-Exupéry. The excerpts included in the film are not only a selection of sentences or paragraphs. Fantasia Lusitana rather rearranges fragments without respecting the order or logical structure of the original texts. Usually, this intervention is, however, not immediately evident, as the quotes are read as one continuous unity. The appropriation of Erika Mann’s “In Lissabon gestrandet” is again a very illustrative example. In total, the documentary incorporates four quotes from the text, all of which contain descriptions of the precarious situation and daily life of the refugees in Lisbon. All of these quotes are moreover combined with footage of Lisbon’s streets filled with pedestrians and cars, footage of refugees in a hotel, a café or at a counter and several

253 In German the passage reads: “traumhaften, imaginären Charakter; ich meine mehr: einen nicht nur realen Charakter”.

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Figure 31: Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010.

photographs of visa applications, refugees waiting in line, sitting at the harbour or eating in a soup kitchen. The last quote opens with a remark of astonishment about the apparent tranquility, peace and the illuminated streets at night, which is again contrasted to the darkened cities in war driven Europe, namely London. The quote of Erika Mann’s text in Fantasia Lusitana then proceeds, claiming that despite the apparent peace people in Lisbon were not happy [. . .] [b]ecause there’s something worse than the catastrophe itself and it is the fear of the threatening catastrophe that you are helpless delivered to. To know your enemy, to fear and abominate him, knowing he is very close, and not being able to fight back, is much worse than the fight itself. [. . .] I had to go to the police department for foreigners because of my leave permission. It seemed as if there was a never-ending queue. It spread out along more than four or five house blocks and followed at last a winding street and its two bends. Those standing at the beginning had sure already waited for many hours and those standing at the end couldn’t really hope to be attended to that day. Most of them hardly knew how they had arrived here and why they had to run away. But all these persons, the Belgians, the Danish, the Norwegian men, women and children had been surprised by the enemy in their home countries as by an earthquake or a flood. Suddenly everything was destroyed and gone, suddenly they had lost their home country and were pursued and driven away and suddenly they were here and waited. It is very strange. I was seized by fear in the presence of this endless and helpless misfortune. (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:44:22–00:46:48)

What appears to be merely an uncompromised repetition of Mann’s text is in fact constituted by a selection of different passages, which were reorganised in

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order to produce a coherent whole. The film not only collages passages which appear at different points of Mann’s text – the first part of the quotation, for instance, appears on pages 178 and 179 and therefore several pages after the last passages included in the quote, which are to be found on pages 171 to 173 (cf. E. Mann 1995). The excerpt seems moreover to be constituted in its entirety by Erika Mann’s own observations about the refugees, while in truth it partially reproduces a conversation with a Spanish republican trying to obtain a visa permit for an unspecified South American state. Erika Mann meets this man while waiting at the police department for foreigners. She knows him from summer 1938 in Valencia and thus addresses him, asking him what he is doing in Lisbon. After explaining his situation, it is actually he who states that most people in Lisbon had been surprised by their enemy and did not even know how they had arrived at Portugal or why they had to flee. What is remarkable here is not only what is omitted, i.e. who is speaking and in what context, but the conspicuous indifference regarding the source text. In fact, it seems that Canijo is not interested at all in Erika Mann’s description of her transit through Lisbon. Fantasia Lusitana excludes not only all details about Mann’s stay in the city, but also all her encounters with refugees and their individual stories: Juan, the Spanish Civil War veteran; Toni, a poet and old friend from Munich, who, although not politically involved, emigrated from Germany and later helped her brother to escape in order to avoid military service; a Dutch girl in a café, who, in contrast to the vast majority, was lucky to have a visa for the United States, but was still unable to get a ticket for the passage overseas. Instead of telling the stories of the war refugees, Fantasia Lusitana refuses to provide an affiliative, identificatory approximation to them. The foreigners remain invisible and excluded: they are external voices in foreign languages matched with uncanny images of unidentified refugees, which provide impressions of Lisbon during the war rather than any profound insights about the condition of being a refugee or exile. The manipulative mode of appropriation does moreover not only characterise the quotations included in the audio layer, but also the visual layer combined with them. Whereas the remediated footage from the official cinema productions contains contextualising information about its origin or is so well known that the spectator is probably able to identify it (as in the case of the sequences from O Pátio das Cantigas, for example), the archival material combined with Mann’s quotations and, to a lesser degree, also the visual layer juxtaposed to Alfred Döblin’s text, does not provide any information regarding either its origin or its purpose. On the contrary, Fantasia Lusitana’s montage even obscures the origin of the remediated footage by intersecting short sequences of very different origins –

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in part belonging to a silent Portuguese documentary from 1942254 and in part to different outtakes of “Portugal – Europe’s Crossroads”, Vol. 10 episode 2 of March of Time from October 1943.255 In fact, in the case of the refugees the visual and audio layers generally have no referential link, but are rather combined without archival or historical ‘accuracy’ in order to serve Fantasia Lusitana’s montage of contrasting visions. While the audio layer, for instance, figures a quote by Erika Mann in which she describes her visit to a small coffee house in Lisbon, the visual layer is composed of remediated footage of an outtake of the episode of March of Time. Although the combination with Mann’s text suggests otherwise, this footage does actually not depict Lisbon’s crowded streets and cafés, but refugees in Caldas da Rainha, one of the residências fixas that the Estado Novo established in the 1940s (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:40:04–00:41:53) (Figure 32). The same holds true for the footage showing refugees in a hotel lounge (Figure 33). As they are combined with Mann’s quote describing the difficulties of finding a room in Lisbon, these images from Caldas da Rainha seem to ‘show’ refugees in Lisbon and not in this residência fixa (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:37:36–00:38:43). The documentary thus appropriates the images as a support for an audio layer that has no straight referential link to them. While the mismatch between visual and audio layers certainly proves a certain indifference regarding archival accuracy, it also illustrates the essential secondary role of the refugees within Fantasia Lusitana. Rather than interested in ‘documenting’, ‘telling’ or ‘showing’ the history of transit and asylum in Portugal, the documentary appropriates the archival traces of the refugee presence within its montage of contrasting visions. Elaborating neither on their fate nor their treatment by the Estado Novo regime, the inclusion of the quotes and images of transients aims rather at disrupting the ideological orchestration supported by the official footage and thereby supports the need of a critical reading of national identity and memory proposed by the documentary. This disruptive potential is moreover emphasised through the linguistic difference of these quotes. By adding the quotes in French and German Fantasia Lusitana stresses not only that these are the perspectives of foreign transients staying only for a

254 The preserved images of the documentary are available online at http://www.cinemateca. pt/Cinemateca-Digital/Ficha.aspx?obraid=2530&type=Video. 255 These outtakes are available online at https://collections.ushmm.org/search?f[orig_title_facet] []=Portugal-Europe%27s%20Crossroads. Part of them were also integrated into the documentary Portugal de Salazar (1943), which is not preserved in its entirety. The existing footage is available online at http://www.cinemateca.pt/Cinemateca-Digital/Ficha.aspx?obraid= 1913&type=Video.

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Figure 32: Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010.

Figure 33: Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010.

very short period of time in the country, but also how they remain excluded from official archive and memory. Through their linguistic difference, the perspectives on Portugal delivered in French and German are set in contrast to the official narrative voices in Portuguese.

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In essence, Fantasia Lusitana therefore uses the ‘external voices’ to challenge the official discourse by providing counter-images to the ‘Lusitanian fantasy’, but at the same time also acknowledges the invisibility of the refugees within the public sphere and official archival film material. The images of refugees and the quotes by Mann, Döblin and Saint-Exupéry shock with the complete absence of Portugal’s role as a transit station for war refugees in the official documentaries and newsreels remediated in Fantasia Lusitana. While the refugees are completely absent from the first part of the documentary which consists primarily of marches of the Mocidades Portuguesa, military parades, commemorations of different sorts and Salazar’s speeches, the official productions remediated in the second part of Fantasia Lusitana relate to the cultural sphere, depicting mostly visits of famous foreign stars and cultural events. This total absence of any reference to the refugees shocks with the quotes by Döblin, Mann and Saint-Exupéry as well as the footage showing the refugees. In fact, Fantasia Lusitana’s montage even foregrounds this contrast. Directly after Döblin’s and Mann’s first quotes, for instance, there are several sequences from the Jornal Português focusing on the visits of “vedetas” [film stars] and other “visitantes ilustres” [illustrious visitors]. These newsreel sequences are followed by scenes from the film O Pátio das Cantigas, Lopes Ribeiro’s documentary about the Exposição do Mundo Português and images of wealthy refugees enjoying themselves at the beach and casino in Estoril. While Mann and Döblin depict a human catastrophe, the official productions draw an image of happiness and peace from which the sudden influx of thousands of foreigners fleeing the war raging in Europe is simply absent, except for the parody in the above discussed scene of Pátio das Cantigas. However, the essential point here is not only who remains excluded from the official cinematographic productions, but also who is included instead. Lisbon and Portugal are praised as transit station and holiday destination for famous European and American stars: Danielle Darrieux chose Portugal, “an oasis of peace in a world at war”, as destination for her honeymoon (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:25:54) (Figure 34); “the great actor Louis Jouvet” passed through Lisbon during his trip to South America (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:26:24); “the famous film actor Robert Montgomery” stayed in Lisbon while travelling to London (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:26:38); and the three “stars” Simone Simon, Jan Kiepura and his wife, “the famous Martha Eggert”, visited Portugal’s capital on their way to the United States (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:26:58–00:27:10) (Figure 35). The remediated footage figuring these smiling celebrities boarding or exiting ships and receiving a “truly magnificent welcome” (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:25:37) by “friends” and fans in Portugal, finally culminates in the interview with Valentin Mandelstamm praising the climate, light and calm in Portugal. Through the inclusion of this

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official footage of foreigners Fantasia Lusitana supports a specific image of an official external view of Portugal: famous visitors and their supposed enchantment with the country are used for purposes of propaganda. Integrated within the illusionary image of the country, their visits are arranged to consolidate the ‘Lusitanian fantasy’ of Portugal as an oasis of peace, harmony and happiness.

Figure 34: Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010.

Figure 35: Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010.

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Through the montage of contrasting visions, Fantasia Lusitana thus develops a disenchantment with the imagined external views designed by the propaganda machine of the Estado Novo. While the documentary actually reproduces the invisibility of the refugees and their fates, it nevertheless resists the temptation of appropriating them for some self-centred narrative about Portuguese glories, hospitality or ‘character’. The transiting writers quoted in Fantasia Lusitana contradict the all too smooth, always positive visions that the official newsreel projects on the famous foreigners visiting the country: Erika Mann conveys a desperate helplessness; Antoine de Saint-Exupéry refers to a sadness concealed by an illusionary display of happiness and peace; and Alfred Döblin insists on describing Lisbon as “a modern, large-scale factory for the production of noise” where “young, old, men and women, civilians and soldiers [spit].” (Fantasia Lusitana, 00:42:17–00:43:22). In these quotes there are no warm welcomes, no delight about the weather and peace in Portugal. The oasis of peace and happiness during World War II remains a distant dream. Instead, the transients depict a complex, contradictory city where refugees waiting for their passage in constant fear coexisted in a separate sphere from a dominantly poor and deprived Portuguese population. The refugee presence in the form of (silent) footage and quotes from (invisible) transients is thus an essential part of Fantasia Lusitana’s archival intervention. Through the montage of contrasting visions, the refugees become a central element in the deconstruction of cultural politics during the Estado Novo and its lasting influence on Portuguese identity and memory. The incorporation of alternative material should, therefore, not be understood as a gesture of transferring knowledge about Lisbon as transit station from “storage memory” to “functional memory” (A. Assmann 2010a) in an identity-forming mnemonic narrative about the Portuguese national community. On the contrary, Fantasia Lusitana’s archival transcription aims at a deconstruction of Portuguese national memory, conceiving of it not as an unchangeable outcome of the past, but rather as an illusionary construction and a means of uniformisation and control: a fantasy designed to obscure the complex, multifaceted realities existing in the country and to assure social and political immobilisation. In part Fantasia Lusitana’s archival transcription thus develops a narrative about a specifically Portuguese national identity in which the refugee presence is used to stage a contrast between the ‘myths’ supported by the regime and a ‘reality’ that “was not beautiful at all” (Câmara 2010, n.p. [translation mine]).256 Echoing not only Eduardo Lourenço’s notion of an “official fiction” (2017, 33), but also José Gil’s (2012) idea of the legacy of Salazarism in contemporary

256 In Portuguese this reads: “não era nada bonita”.

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Portugal, Fantasia Lusitana proposes a reading of hegemonic Portuguese identity as particularly ‘unrealistic’. In similarity to Lourenço and Gil, Fantasia Lusitana supports the idea of a compensatory gesture. The illusory images of the Portuguese past and present designed by the official propaganda are thus presented as a means to conceal the precarious and fragile ‘realities’ of the country.257 The historical narrative and the essentialist notion of the Portuguese character or Portugalidade [Portugueseness] at its core are portrayed as an illusion, a fantasy that obscures the social and political conditions in a profoundly poor and uneducated country. In the already mentioned interview about Fantasia Lusitana published in the Portuguese newspaper Público, Canijo explicitly highlights the correspondence between his own thought and “the things that José Gil writes about Portugal” (Câmara 2010, n.p. [translation mine]).258 José Gil (2012) situates his widely discussed analysis of contemporary Portugal within the social and political mechanisms of power and control prevailing in the country. According to Gil, these mechanisms have favoured “passive subjectivities” unable to “inscribe” themselves, i.e. to take political or any other significant action outside the familial sphere. Within Gil’s conceptual framework, illiteracy and irresponsible, even childish, behaviour is described as a legacy of Salazarism and its system of a latent “fear to exist”. Indeed, Gil argues that Salazar succeeded in transforming non-inscription – the suppression of individual and collective desire and expression – into an omnipresent trauma that continues to inform “Portuguese mentality” today (2012, 121–124). As a consequence, Gil conceives of the Portuguese as um povo [a people] that, instead of responsibility for the social or individual life, seeks small, compensatory pleasures and is content to live in accordance with the norms. While in this interview Canijo does not expand on Gil’s arguments, he nonetheless situates his own work against its background to substantiate his critique of the profound uncultivatedness prevailing in Portugal. As Daniel Ribas notes, paradoxically, Canijo actually tends to reinforce “a certain, almost univocal, identitarian discourse” (2011, 91 [translation mine]).259 In fact, Ribas identifies not only an obsession with “what it is to be Portuguese” (2011, 81 [translation mine])260 but also a kind of essentialisation of national identity in Canijo’s

257 For a critical discussion of Eduardo Lourenço’s and José Gil’s analysis of Portuguese identity see, for instance, S. Lopes (2010). 258 In Portuguese this reads: “as coisas que o José Gil escreve sobre Portugal”. 259 In Portuguese this reads: “reforça um determinado discurso identitirário [sic] quase unívoco”. 260 In Portuguese this reads: “do que é ser português”.

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fictional work, as well as the discourses and public appearances of the filmmaker in general. Like Gil (and Lourenço), Canijo links an uncritical passivity to the ideological overestimation of a supposedly “true Portuguese spirit” (Câmara 2010, n.p. [translation mine]). The point is precisely to highlight how a generalised “ignorância arrogante” [arrogant ignorance] is paired with an unrealistic overestimation of what is to be considered typically Portuguese: There is one thing I understood when I made the film: the myth of the glorious History of Portugal is entrenched in Portuguese culture. We are convinced that we have a glorious History. This becomes evident when you see the Portuguese World Exhibition: precisely these myths continue to be the myths of kids in secondary school. And it wasn’t like this at all [. . .]. I particularly like the sentence by Fernando Pessoa that I learned when I was fifteen years old: the problem with Portugal is the excess of civilisation of the uncivilised. At its heart, the sentence is equivalent to the sentence by José Gil: worse than the absence of form is the arrogance of elevating oneself to form.261 (Câmara 2010, n.p. [translation mine])

With Fantasia Lusitana Canijo actually aims to disrupt the persistent passive acceptance of the ‘myths’ created during the Estado Novo. As he points out, his silence and refusal to explain the remediated material should work as a wakeup call confronting the spectator with the illusionary character of the narrative about the glorious Portuguese past: Fantasia Lusitana “had this function: take it, understand it as you like. And it deliberately has no explanation. [. . .] The silence is more eloquent” (Câmara 2010, n.p. [translation mine]).262 Interestingly, it is precisely through the use of silence that Fantasia Lusitana thus avoids the pitfall of producing counter-images that risk falling back to a kind of essentialism that also stands at the core of the totalising, unrealistic idea of Portuguese identity or ‘Portugalidade’ supported by the Estado Novo. While Canijo explains his decision to dispense with voice-over narration with a somehow essentialist notion of the Portuguese audience, Fantasia Lusitana lacks any counter-definition of Portuguese identity. Instead, the documentary exposes the selective, illusionary character of the image of the Nation suggested

261 In Portuguese this reads: “Há uma coisa que percebi ao fazer o filme: o mito da gloriosa História de Portugal está enraizado na cultura portuguesa. Estamos convencidos de que temos uma História gloriosa. Isso percebe-se ao ver a Exposição do Mundo Português: continuam a ser esses os mitos dos miúdos do liceu. E não foi nada disso [. . .]. Gosto muito da frase do Fernando Pessoa que aprendi quando tinha 15 anos: o mal em Portugal é o excesso de civilização dos incivilizados. No fundo, é igual à frase do José Gil: pior do que a ausência de forma é a arrogância de se tornar forma”. 262 In Portuguese this reads: “teve essa função: tomem lá, entendam como quiserem. E de propósito não tem explicação. [. . .] O silêncio é mais eloquente”.

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by the official newsreels, documentaries and Portuguese comedies. Although emphasising the poverty and social problems prevailing in Portugal, the montage of contrasting visions remains multifaceted and plurivocal. Rather than proposing one single truth, the documentary focuses on how the essentialist image of national identity conveyed by the official productions suppressed not only the presence of World War II refugees but, in fact, also the diversity existing in the mainland and the colonies. Fantasia Lusitana thus draws attention to the gaps and omissions of the official archive and insinuates that, as Tiago Baptista (2010) emphasises, o povo [the people], members of the lower and working classes as well as marginalised and oppressed minorities, and even the urban population, have been absent from most of the cinema produced in Portugal. The refusal to explain and to provide a homogeneous, unambiguous countermemory is thus essential not only for the understanding of the ‘didactic line’, but also for the ethical aspect of the film and its relation to the ‘refugee other’. While Fantasia Lusitana develops a powerful narrative about propaganda during the Estado Novo, neither the refugees, nor the Portuguese or Lisbon as a zone of transit are depicted in essentialist counter-images or counter-narratives. Instead, Fantasia Lusitana dismantles the propagandistic discourse and points at its echoes in contemporary Portugal precisely by rejecting a homogeneous image of the country and its population. Denying an unambiguous meaning of past and present, Canijo puts the spectator out of his/her comfort zone where an easily understandable verbal narrative explains and ‘reveals’ how the film should be interpreted. In lack not only of an explanation, but also of either a self-centred mnemonic narrative about Portuguese identity or an easy, comforting identification with the refugees, Fantasia Lusitana asks for an independent reading. The discomforting silence thus manifests a particular form of address that demands the spectator to take responsibility and thereby opens a space for an on-going (re)negotiation of the visual, mnemonic and social fields. In Fantasia Lusitana the memory of the refugees and the archival absences associated with them are thus linked to a critical reflection about the realms of national memory that exceeds a critique of the essentialist national identity cultivated during the Estado Novo. The documentary not only challenges the myths supported by Salazarist propaganda, but actually draws attention to the discursive mechanisms that lie at the core of national identity and memory. Fantasia Lusitana’s ‘didactic line’ and ethical approach to the refugees could thus be described as a form of heterocultural address: rejecting a univocal version of the past, the documentary not only deconstructs the illusion of homogeneity at the core of the hegemonic idea of Portuguese identity, but also invites the spectator to actively participate in the negotiation not only of the meaning of the documentary, but also of the past. Through this particular form of

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addressing the spectator, Fantasia Lusitana thus opens a space for a reflection about how the past continues to be implicated in the present and how memory is involved in shaping the contours of communities. Despite some apparent parallels with Daniel Blaufuks’s work, Canijo therefore develops a quite different approach to the memory of the refugees that implies the refugee presence in a reconceptualisation of mnemonic practices and a critique of national memory. While Blaufuks’s work manifests an archival impulse that produces a heterocultural web of intrinsically fragile meaning, Fantasia Lusitana reworks the thresholds of homocultural national memory. National memory thus emerges not as an authentic outcome of a naturally bounded community, but rather as the product of a process of homogenisation in which borders are institutionalised by actively suppressing internal difference and the refugee presence in the country. Through the refusal of a univocal counterimage or counter-narrative, the documentary nonetheless resists the temptation of appropriating the refugees for a self-centred narrative about Portuguese identity. Fantasia Lusitana’s approach to the memory of the refugees is however not characterised by an affiliative look that favours identification with the history of the masses fleeing Nazi persecution and war. Instead, it proposes a challenging reflection about the realms of (national) memory that confronts essentialising discourses and homogenising notions of national identity by insisting on an autonomous critical reading of the remediated archival material and the documentary itself – even if this presupposes a certain maturity and cinematographic literacy of the spectator. In essence, Fantasia Lusitana thus implies the refugee presence in a reconceptualisation of mnemonic practices and a critique of national memory pointing at the necessary absences of any essentialising notion of collective memory. Relying on remediation to develop a critique of the politics of representation during the Estado Novo, the documentary integrates archival media to deconstruct national memory and its master narratives. By addressing necessary gaps, fissures and absences, Fantasia Lusitana refuses to produce a univocal image of Lisbon during World War II. Instead, the film reworks networks of cultural signification and invites spectators to engage in a critical reflection about the contrasting material presented to them. By combining the discursive analysis of Salazarist propaganda and its lasting impact on Portuguese memory with a particular form of addressing the spectator, the film proposes an approach to memory that could aptly be described as heterocultural: rather than a self-contained repository of an ultimately folk-bound community, memory is conceived of as a process in which the meaning and implications of the past continue to be negotiated in the present.

6 Conclusion: heterocultural archives of implication of the refugee presence in Portugal between 1933 and 1945 This study has sought to combine the analysis of contemporary artistic negotiations of the refugee presence in Portugal between 1933 and 1945 with a theoretical reflection about the cultural dimensions of memory. Memory studies have been making continuous efforts to shift the focus beyond the framework of selfcontained national, ethnic, religious or cultural communities. This study has aimed at contributing to this endeavour by proposing a translational perspective on how contemporary artistic media in Portugal address the country’s role as transit and asylum station before and during World War II. This translational perspective is characterised by a particular theoretical and analytical approach to remembrance, in which memory is conceived of as a heterocultural process of constant transcription, remediation and reappropriation and not limited to its potential to reinforce a particular identity or self-image of a group. The main purpose of this study was therefore not to deliver an exhaustive inventory of media addressing the World War II period in Portugal and the representations of refugees within them. Instead, it pursued an ‘archive of implication’ by focusing on how three widely circulated artistic media mobilise the memory of the refugee presence and in this process reinforce or challenge dominant notions of communality. Through the discussion of Daniel Blaufuks’s inter-art project Sob Céus Estranhos, Domingos Amaral’s novel Enquanto Salazar Dormia, and João Canijo’s archival documentary Fantasia Lusitana it was possible to examine present-day mnemonic practices and discourses in Portugal in their plurality and heterogeneity. The analysis of the works illustrated not only how these artistic media draw on different archives and mobilise different heterocultural networks of signification, but also how they give expression to different subject positions and suggest different ways of coming to terms with the past in the present. One of the central premises of this study was the recognition that migratory phenomena challenge some of the most influential assumptions about cultural and collective memory. Indeed, the foundational theorisations of memory studies in the 1980s usually not only assumed a stability of place, but also focused on contexts in which memory correlates with belonging and identity. However, in the context of migration, neither stability of place nor memory’s tie to identity can be taken for granted, and belonging may be multiple, uncertain or even renounced. As a consequence, I have proposed a reconsideration of memory’s https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110733440-006

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link to group identity that focuses on the notion of mediality. Particularly in the case of Pierre Nora’s conceptualisation of memory that presumes an opposition between lieux de mémoire and milieux de mémoire, it has become apparent that the idea that memory simply emerges out of groups and binds them together not only privileges but actually naturalises certain forms of communality – particularly the nation-state – to the detriment of others. Even in Jan and Aleida Assmann’s sophisticated theoretical framework, the insistence on binding memory to the identity and self-image of groups is actually associated to a particular understanding of media as ‘carriers’ or ‘material supports’ of memory. Drawing on Vittoria Borsò (2001, 2011) and Ludwig Jäger (2011), I have argued that rather than as external repositories that merely store memory, media should be conceived of as actively involved in the production of meaningful remembrance. Indeed, the process of mnemonic signification is thought to be bound to mediality and the materiality of sign systems. Accordingly, rather than transmitting a ‘historical a priori’ to be retrieved and interpreted, linguistic and non-linguistic media constitute memory and are therefore framed as part of an ongoing translational process of constant transcriptions. This also has important implications for the notion of the archive, as it is not understood as a passive storage (cf. A. Assmann 2010a), but, in similarity to Derrida’s (1998) theorisation of the archive, as containing ‘scriptures’, which only become accessible within transcriptive processes of quoting and referencing. In contrast to most approaches to transcultural or transnational memory, my perspective does therefore not focus on transfer or travel of memories between groups, but rather on the role of complex networks of signification and the internal heterogeneity and indeterminacy of cultures, languages and memories. Culture and memory are explicitly not understood as closed, discrete spheres, but as the outcome of translational processes and consequently as blended, impure and interrelated fabrics. The idea of a translational perspective thus explicitly refers to a notion of cultural encounter not as exceptional mobility, but as constitutive to any culture and memory. Indeed, remembrance is conceptualised as unfolding in networks of signification that transcend the borders of any supposedly discrete language, territory or culture. However, this does not mean that this perspective denies the existence of borders or the role of power relations within the transmission of the past. Rather, by drawing on Sakai (2012), borders are understood to be the outcome of processes of bordering. Accordingly, memory is not conceived as the outcome of distinct, homogeneous national, cultural or ethnic communities although it is frequently mobilised to reinforce ideas about homogeneous groups with a common origin and shared collective identity. Also, it does not mean that the nation-state has lost its hold on mnemonic institutions as well as dominant mnemonic narratives and images. Far from that, it rather suggests a

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de-naturalisation of cultural memory in terms of a specific memory of a group by shifting the focus to continuous translational processes of transcription, remediation and appropriation on which we rely when we ‘make the past present’. However, the translational perspective defended throughout this study does not only aim at examining the role of heterocultural networks of signification, but also suggests a reconsideration of memory’s ethical dimension and its link to communality. Rather than conceiving of memory as a means to foster common values, solidarity and a sense of belonging within established mnemonic communities, I have drawn on Michael Rothberg’s notion of “implication” to be able to address the multiple modes of relationality associated with remembering collective pasts. In essence, the notion of implication suggests a responsibility to investigate the complex legacies of our histories and to critically engage not only what happened in the past, but also how we deal with it in the present. The idea of a heterocultural ‘archive of implication’ of the refugee presence in Portugal therefore proposes to look at how artistic media negotiate different subject positions and thereby may (re)produce hegemonic power structures or take critical stands. Rather than presupposing any normative outcome in the form of empathy or forms of solidarity with the ‘refugee other’, I have emphasised that the aim of this approach is to look at how artistic media implicate the memory of the refugee presence in reinforcing or challenging established forms of communality. The analytical chapters began with Daniel Blaufuks’s inter-art project Sob Céus Estranhos. Part of my methodological approach to the negotiations of the refugee presence in Portugal in contemporary artistic media has been a threefold analysis of all works which begins by discussing the aesthetic strategies, proceeds to draw attention to the role of the referential framework and translational processes of remediation and reappropriation, and finally leads to the negotiation of the refugee presence and its role in conceiving communality. The analysis of Blaufuks’s work therefore opened with a subchapter focusing on how the artist foregrounds the mediality and materiality of his necessarily mediated approach to the past. Drawing on Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory, I have argued that Sob Céus Estranhos is based on ‘after-images’ that consciously foreground not only the material condition of the visual artefacts that the artist re-photographed or re-filmed, but also his subjective appropriation within his (post)mnemonic narrative. While the visual artefacts play an essential role as supports for his mnemonic project, the artist nonetheless challenges their reliability in documenting and representing the past. Even if the archival material is integrated into a coherent narrative, Sob Céus Estranhos draws attention to the imaginative processes involved in remembering and a lack of isomorphism between the seeable and the sayable. Consequently, Blaufuks’s (post)memory emerges through an interplay of images and words in a web of cautiously selected

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and arranged after-images and texts. Rather than sustaining the referential claim of the incorporated visual media as evidence corroborating the narrative’s authenticity, Blaufuks’s ‘imagetexts’ expose the alterity of memory: the impossibility of ever recovering the past in its totality, outside of the unstable translational web of remediated and transcribed media. In Sob Céus Estranhos, the conscious remediation of previously existing media and the references and connotations created through this reappropriation play a crucial role. In the second subchapter I have thus claimed that Sob Céus Estranhos reveals an “archival impulse” (Foster 2004) and is not merely composed of archival material, but creates a (post)memorial archive sui generis. I have emphasised how Blaufuks’s project seems to be driven by a will to connect and to create a complex web of references that draws on and transcends the contours of particular mnemonic discourses, traditions and communities. In this process, the artist reworks not only the complex networks of cultural signification that have informed his own subject position, but also the mechanisms of public and private archival practices. I have highlighted that, on the one hand, the remediation of archival material and the creation of a dense referential web inscribes Blaufuks in a generation of descendants of survivors of the Holocaust and Nazi violence. However, on the other hand, I have illustrated how Blaufuks uses this referential web to develop a specific archival critique that examines the structuring principles of private as well as public memory and the way knowledge about the past is transmitted, organised and interpreted. In this context, Blaufuks draws attention to the role of family photography as an organising element of both familial relations in general and the story of Blaufuks’s own family in particular, but also to gaps in official Portuguese memory and absences in the accounts of writers who transited through Lisbon. Indeed, Sob Céus Estranhos not only challenges any simplistic idea about Portugal as safe haven for refugees by documenting rejected visas and difficulties experienced by the foreigners, but also conveys a sense of a profound disencounter between the Portuguese population and those seeking refuge in the country. Moreover, I have underlined that by not merely remediating different artefacts but also alluding to their different uses in family albums, archives or newspapers, Blaufuks foregrounds how these materials simultaneously enable, shape and limit our access to the past. In sum, I have claimed that in Sob Céus Estranhos, remembering takes place within a ‘labyrinth’ of images and texts and is presented as an open-ended translational process of constant re-signification, re-imagination, and re-narration which is nevertheless bound to the structuring principles of the media surrounding us. In the end, it is through processes of transmission and use of these media that the past

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is implicated in the present and Blaufuks’s own life is entangled in the experience of his grandparents. Finally, I have argued that Sob Céus Estranhos is characterised by an affiliative relationship to the refugee experience in Portugal and a reflection about the ‘condition of exile’. My analysis has shown that Sob Céus Estranhos takes an explicitly subjective perspective on the past, which explores the ethical implications of remembering the violent and traumatic experience of flight and persecution from the perspective of a grandson. Exile is conceived as something that is simultaneously bound to specific historical circumstances and refers to a sense of estrangement that exceeds the particular traumatic experience of the refugees. Therefore, exile is also understood as a disruptive force with potentially creative and even liberating outcomes. Moreover, I have defended that the title of the inter-art project refers not only to these two aspects or meanings of exile, but also to a premediated literary and discursive sphere in Portugal. As a consequence, I have suggested a connective reading of Daniel Blaufuks’s work with the homonymous novel by Ilse Losa. Although the appropriation of the title is the sole explicit reference to the famous author and her novel, a connective reading has nevertheless revealed some similarities in their multilayered approximation to what it means to ‘live under strange skies’. The analysis has shown that in both works exile connotes the realisation that the normalcy of belonging and living an ordinary life can never be fully recovered after one has been reduced to a human being stripped of any legal and social protection. This means that exile implies an awareness of difference and a loss of the naturalness not only of belonging, but also of home, language, memory and culture. Interestingly, this loss of familiarity and an unchallenged perception of the world is associated with the creative force of exile and the materiality of language and memory. While Losa’s novel works mainly with elements of a linguistic foreignisation, in Blaufuks’s Sob Céus Estranhos the artist disrupts the naturalness of remembrance by presenting it as the outcome of an endless process of translations and constructs a sense of home that is bound to an exilic position resulting from a multilayered web of references. Blaufuks’s approach to the remnants of the refugee presence has been described as a reflection not only about the materiality of memory and the role of imaginative and partly fictional processes, but also about an ethics of (post)memory. This ethics of (post)memory is characterised by an identificatory subject position in which the artist becomes exiled himself. However, far from any simplistic identification or appropriation of the traumatic experiences in the past, I have argued that Blaufuks’s exilic position emerges out of a creative and disruptive untranslatability, i.e. an awareness of the usually invisible materiality of media and memories that exposes an intrinsic indeterminacy of cultures,

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languages, and communities. In Sob Céus Estranhos memory therefore fails to produce a clear-cut identity and instead sustains a complex subject position in which past and present are deeply entwined in each other. I have therefore suggested reading Sob Céus Estranhos not only as an attempt of working through the entangled legacies of a past that the artist did not experience himself, but also as a reflection about complex networks of signification in the present. Throughout my analysis, I have stressed that in Sob Céus Estranhos the artist also becomes an archivist, who follows a compulsive need to make sense of the past despite his awareness of never being able to complete this task. As a consequence, I have described the ethics of (post)memory and the exilic position in Sob Céus Estranhos as heterocultural: as an attempt to frame memory as a translational process of referencing and quoting, which is not confined within essentialising notions of cultures, identities and belonging but instead requires an ongoing investment in seeking to understand how the past continues to shape our present, and to inform forms of communality and belonging. Sob Céus Estranhos has thus been read as an example of implicating the memory of the refugee presence in a conscious critical reflection about the workings of memory and how it informs and challenges our sense of belonging and home. The second analytical chapter dealt with a considerably different work. Domingos Amaral’s novel Enquanto Salazar Dormia is a highly successful historical espionage novel that favours an entertaining narrative over critical reflection or debate. First published in 2006, the novel can be seen as an example of a process of mnemonic popularisation of the topic of the World War II period in Portugal and the appeal of Lisbon as a neutral centre for espionage and principal escape route out of war-driven Europe. The analysis of the work began with a subchapter about how the novel weaves the image of Lisbon as safe haven and open city for spies in the story of a Luso-British protagonist who comes to work for the British intelligence services. The close reading emphasised that Enquanto Salazar Dormia combines an entertaining narrative about masculine adventures and love conquests with an apparently authentic portrayal of Lisbon and Portugal’s role during the war. Set in two timelines the novel is presented as an autobiographical account of the protagonist Jack Gil, who in the 1990s revisits Lisbon and remembers his adventures as secret agent in the 1940s. Throughout the subchapter, I have argued that Enquanto Salazar Dormia conveys the illusion of an immediate impression and experience of the atmosphere of the Portuguese capital in the 1940s, inviting the reader to let him/herself immerse uncritically not only into the adventures of the autodiegetic narrator but also into the image of the World War II period and the role of Portugal as an officially neutral transit station. Although Enquanto Salazar Dormia lacks any critical debate about translational processes of (re)appropriation, remediation or transcription, the uncritical

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immersion into an image of the past is nevertheless supported by a multifaceted heterocultural referential web. The analysis of this referential network was the object of the second subchapter. Here I have argued that the novel appropriates canonical mnemonic images and narratives and introduces a considerable number of historical places, figures and dates that can also be found in most historical accounts of the period. Accordingly, Amaral’s novel recycles an image of Lisbon as a contradictory safe haven, a sad yet peaceful cosmopolitan transit station in which the sudden arrival of foreigners shakes up the modest conformism promoted by the Estado Novo regime. However, throughout my analysis I have foregrounded that although containing some critical aspects about the regime, the novel actually sustains a conservative, even trivialising perspective of the Estado Novo. The introduction of historical places, figures and dates actually serves to authenticate a nostalgic version of the past, which not only relativises the violence of the regime by accentuating the differences between Salazarism, on the one hand, and Fascism and Nazism, on the other, but also depicts a glorious national past, in which Lisbon was the true global centre of transit and espionage. My analysis has illustrated how Enquanto Salazar Dormia relies on the remediation of the film Casablanca as well as the appropriation of elements of espionage fiction to convey Lisbon’s particular charm and importance during the war period and inscribe itself into a global popular culture. Yet, rather than developing any serious intertextual dialogue, the novel promotes an escapist yearning. By combining historical references with elements from popular culture, Enquanto Salazar Dormia delivers a selection of familiar and comforting topoi that “everybody yearns to see again” (Eco 2002, 200). In sum, my reading of Enquanto Salazar Dormia has thus highlighted how the novel relies on a complex heterocultural web of references, ranging from dominant mnemonic images and narratives in Portugal to elements of global popular culture, to convey an idea of a glorious national past at the centre of world affairs without developing any profound reflection about national identity. Instead of contributing to any serious cultural or literary debate, the novel uses such topoi as if they were just an inexpensive means of entertainment. The discussion of Amaral’s novel then continued by focusing on how the novel negotiates the refugee presence in Portugal. Since the novel narrates the events from the perspective of the narrator Jack Gil, a view of the refugees is decidedly not the focus of Enquanto Salazar Dormia. Instead, they are weaved into the imaginary of the contradictory transit station driven by espionage and desperation. As a consequence, the reader encounters refugees during Jack Gil’s forays into Lisbon’s and Costa do Sol’s exclusive nightlife and prestigious establishments. This setting privileges the appearance of wealthy and outstanding foreigners, and reduces the masses of rather destitute and non-famous refugees as well as the humble Portuguese population to mere details of the atmosphere.

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Throughout my analysis I have therefore highlighted how Amaral’s novel focuses on exceptionally beautiful women and important men involved in politics, intrigues or espionage rather than developing the topic of flight and transit as such. On the one hand, I have argued that Enquanto Salazar Dormia recycles the glamorous image of Casablanca’s protagonists and invites the reader to identify with individuals fighting Nazism and deplore the activities of unmoral German agents on Portuguese ground. On the other hand, I have emphasised not only that the novel uses the presence of members of the European cultural, political and economic elites to picture Lisbon and Costa do Sol in glorious tones, but also that it creates a space of imprecision in which the borders between refugees, rich exile elite, secret agents and members of foreign diplomatic corps tend to blur. In essence, Enquanto Salazar Dormia frames the refugee presence as a spectacle, in which particularly the female refugees are reduced to objects of male gaze and desire and, as such, associated with a change in Lisbon’s cityscape. My analysis has therefore emphasised that Amaral’s novel draws on a web of heterocultural references, recycling the dominant imaginary of the Lisbon area during World War II in Portugal as well as topoi and media from global popular culture. It favours an uncritical immersion into its depiction of the past and promotes a conservative, relativising image of the Estado Novo regime. Far from developing a serious debate about Portugal’s role as transit station and open country for spies and diplomats, it proffers an enjoyable narrative in which refugees in Portugal are reduced to a sideline of Lisbon’s glorious past at the heart of world affairs. As a consequence, Enquanto Salazar Dormia does not undertake any genuine attempt at understanding what exile and transit meant, nor does it invite any sort of empathetic relationship with the refugees. In effect, Amaral’s novel illustrates how smoothly the memory of the refugee presence can be weaved into an essentially nostalgic narrative about a ‘glorious moment of the national past’ which favours rather than challenges in any way hegemonic forms of communality. The last analytical chapter finally proceeded with the discussion of João Canijo’s documentary Fantasia Lusitana. The documentary incorporates found footage from Portuguese as well as international archives and was publicised as a film working with a contrast between testimonies of famous refugees who transited through Lisbon and the official, propagandistic images about Portugal propagated by the Estado Novo regime. Again, the first subchapter focused on the aesthetic approach of the film. Accordingly, here I have sought to characterise the experimental practice of remediating and editing the archival film material, as well as the role of the narration and audio layers of the film. I have argued that Canijo’s documentary works with a montage of contrasting visions,

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which successively disrupts the ‘Lusitanian fantasy’ supported by the incorporated archival newsreels and documentaries but also draws attention to the role of its own montage and editorial intervention. Moreover, I have defended that by deciding not to include a narrator, Canijo refuses to use the archival material as support for a verbal narrative. Instead of presenting a univocal counter-image and counter-narrative to the propagandistic imaginary and discourse of the regime, the spectator is invited to develop an autonomous reading not only of the remediated material, but also of the documentary itself. The manipulative appropriation of the archival material and the absence of a verbal voice-over narration have thus been interpreted as a ‘didactic line’ in which the spectator may become an active participant in the negotiation of the meaning of the film rather than a mere target of the cinematographic apparatus. In the second subchapter about Fantasia Lusitana I have argued that the documentary uses remediation to develop an archival intervention and a critique of the politics of representation of the Estado Novo and its remnants in present-day Portugal. Rather than seeking to represent the ‘historical event’, the documentary transcribes archival material critically to emphasise the role of cultural politics and especially cinema in supporting the ‘Lusitanian fantasy’. In other words, through its montage Fantasia Lusitana creates a narrative that challenges hegemonic national memory and archival practices and enters into dialogue with the history of cinema in Portugal during the first decades of the regime. My analysis has shown that the work of António Lopes Ribeiro is particularly important in this context as he was involved in most of the remediated productions, namely the official newsreels Jornal Português, the documentary A Exposição do Mundo Português and the comedy O Pátio das Cantigas. I have highlighted that particularly footage from the official newsreel Jornal Português is used to characterise the propaganda machine and character of the regime in the 1930s and 1940s. Although they appear to have been arranged in a chronological order, my analysis revealed not only that Fantasia Lusitana does not respect the sequence of the editions, but also that the montage is generally quite intrusive. Material from different years and episodes is collaged as if belonging to the same footage and sequences from one and the same edition are separated when this serves the logic of the documentary. Canijo’s film emphasises the fascistic visuality and totalitarian imaginary of Estado Novo’s visual regime and alludes to the absences in the propagandistic image of Portugal. I have argued that Fantasia Lusitana portrays the propagandistic imaginary as an illusion that had little to do with the life and the population in the metropolis and colonies. My analysis has shown that the documentary creates a referential web that retraces and deconstructs hegemonic identity and memory during the Estado Novo. The remediated footage is characterised as promoting a ‘single truth’ that omits

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‘realistic’ representations of the population and vernacular culture to obscure the organisation and power structures of Portuguese society and prevent their eventual contestation. My discussion of João Canijo’s film then shifted the focus towards the negotiation of the refugee presence. Strictly speaking Fantasia Lusitana is not a film about the role of Lisbon as transit station. Instead, it addresses archival absences and the invisibility of the foreigners seeking (temporary) asylum in Portugal as well as the global conflict in official productions of the Estado Novo regime. I have argued that Canijo’s documentary alludes to the multifaceted experiences of those forced to transit through Portugal without developing the topic in detail. In addition to the quotes by Erika Mann, Alfred Döblin and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the film includes some footage showing refugees as well as photographs. Audio and visual layers mention different aspects of asylum in Portugal, including visa applications, masses of foreigners in Lisbon, lack of accommodation, but equally the luxurious environment of the Costa do Sol. Moreover, my analysis has shown that the archival material about the refugees is neither contextualised nor explained, and in fact appropriated and adapted quite intrusively. The authors of the quotations are not only invisible, but their personal experiences and references to the fate of other refugees are actually omitted. Indeed, archival accuracy does not seem to be the main concern of the documentary. The literary excerpts appear to be unadulterated, but are actually arranged without respecting the order of the source texts. And visual and audio layers frequently do not have any referential link, but are arranged according to Fantasia Lusitana’s montage of contrasting visions even if they thereby sometimes suggest a misleading contextualisation of the archival material. Accordingly, I have emphasised that the aim of the inclusion of images and quotations by transients is not to document exile and asylum in Portugal, but to disrupt the ideological orchestration conveyed by the official footage and audio recordings. Fantasia Lusitana is interested in the disruptive potential of the material documenting the refugee presence. Moreover, I have argued that by letting the quotations be read aloud in French and German, they are framed as foreign. The documentary signals not only that they are perspectives by transients who only stayed for a short period of time in the country, but also that these impressions and testimonies were omitted from the official national archives and memory. My analysis of Canijo’s documentary has thus pointed out that the refugee presence in form of (silent) footage and photographs as well as quotations by (invisible) transients is an essential part of Fantasia Lusitana’s archival intervention. The traces of the refugees are mobilised within the deconstruction of national memory that aims to show how this memory is not a necessary outcome of the past, but rather an illusionary construction, which aims to promote

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uniformity and control of the population. I have defended that the film in part echoes Eduardo Lourenço’s idea of an “official fiction” (2017, 33) as well as José Gil’s (2012) influential reflections about the legacy of Salazarism in present-day Portugal by suggesting an understanding of hegemonic Portuguese identity as specifically ‘unrealistic’. Accordingly, the documentary presents the historical narrative and the essentialist notion of the Portuguese character as an illusionary compensatory gesture, which ultimately aims at concealing the political, economic and social precariousness of the country. I have foregrounded that the absence of a narrator generates a silence through which Fantasia Lusitana avoids the pitfall of producing any clear counter-image to this propagandistic construction of Portuguese identity. Rather than contrasting the fantasy with any other essentialist ‘reality’, Canijo’s documentary remains multifaceted and plurivocal. Instead of suggesting a different yet nonetheless single truth, Fantasia Lusitana draws attention to the gaps and omissions of the official archive and discourse. As a consequence, I have argued that the refusal to explain and to deliver an unambiguous and homogenous counter-memory should also be understood as an ethical relationship with the spectator and the film’s relationship with the ‘refugee other’. In fact, I have suggested that the discomforting absence of a voice-over narration should be understood as a specific form of address. Fantasia Lusitana asks for a self-responsible spectator who is actively involved in the ongoing (re)negotiation of the visual, mnemonic and social fields. In this sense, I have described Canijo’s documentary as proposing a heterocultural address based on a particular from of mnemonic activism: the memory of the refugees and archival omissions are associated with a critical reflection about the realms of national memory, which ultimately exceeds the particular context of Estado Novo’s propaganda. As it refuses to provide an unambiguous version of the past, it holds the potential to open a space for debate about how the past is implicated in the present and how memory influences the contours of communities. In this study I have suggested the pursuit of an ‘archive of implication’ of artistic negotiations of the refugee presence in Portugal in the 1930s and 1940s, which was based on what I have termed a translational perspective on memory. The study of Daniel Blaufuks’s Sob Céus Estranhos, Domingos Amaral’s Enquanto Salazar Dormia and João Canijo’s Fantasia Lusitana has not only drawn attention to the importance of heterocultural networks of signification, but also to how the refugee presence is implicated in quite distinct ways of making the past present. It became apparent that Sob Céus Estranhos, Enquanto Salazar Dormia, and Fantasia Lusitana mobilise different pre-existing media and media representations, which pertain to different archives and different memory traditions. Daniel Blaufuks’s inter-art project enters into dialogue with postmemorial

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artists and develops a sophisticated reflection about processes of transmission and mediality in the context of the remembrance and legacy of the Holocaust. In this context, it examines particularly the role of photography as well as the workings and intersections of private and public archives and memories. Although Sob Céus Estranhos deals with national remembrance as well, it explicitly inscribes itself in a translational mnemonic field that transcends territorial, linguistic and cultural borders. In contrast, Enquanto Salalzar Dormia recycles the dominant imaginary of Lisbon during World War II uncritically and combines it with references from global popular culture to produce an unspecific, nostalgic yearning for a moment of global national importance. In Amaral’s novel there are no quotations by exile writers, no images showing refugees or rejected visa applications, but stereotyped commonplaces about the refugees and the Lisbon area during World War II as well as a protagonist that resembles a blending of James Bond with Rick Blane. Finally, Fantasia Lusitana is another example of a critical mode of incorporating archival material. However, despite some similarities to Blaufuks’s work, this found footage film focuses on official newsreels and documentaries while private archives and the medium of photography remain untouched by the intervention. Moreover, it is not only the referential framework that distinguishes these approaches to the refugee presence in Portugal. Daniel Blaufuks’s work is actually the only one focusing on the topic of exile and transit in Portugal. The artist has a personal and subjective approach and, although he explicitly criticises national memory by countering the idea of Portugal as a guardian angel for the refugees, his main concern is to try to make sense of the violent past from the perspective of an individual. Coming to terms with the past and becoming an exiled is associated with a contemplative, self-reflexive process. Sob Céus Estranhos develops a particular subject position and examines the impact of the public on the private, of persecution and flight on the individual refugees and their descendants. The inter-art project invites the viewer to participate in this ongoing quest to make sense of the past and to think about how every single one of us is implicated in these (hi)stories of exile. Enquanto Salazar Dormia is characterised by a contradictory relationship with the refugee presence in Portugal. While the refugees are an essential ingredient of the atmosphere of the novel, they remain alarmingly invisible as individuals as well as a specific group. Individual fates and also the role of different legal statuses are disregarded in favour of an entertaining narrative, in which the term refugee tends to designate indistinctively the foreigners present in Lisbon and its surroundings. With its focus on the economic and cultural elite, non-famous fugitives are reduced to a background detail of the gloriously pictured safe haven filled with desperation and intrigue. Ultimately, the reader is

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invited to let him/herself immerse into a masculine adventure set within a historical moment of national importance. The refugee presence is integrated within a nostalgic narrative about Lisbon as cosmopolitan centre of world affairs where beautiful foreign women mingle with millionaires, diplomats, spies and men from the political opposition. In Fantasia Lusitana the refugee presence is mobilised in a critique of national memory. Like in Amaral’s novel, the main topic of Canijo’s documentary is not Portugal’s role as country of exile and transit station during World War II. However, in contrast to Enquanto Salazar Dormia, Fantasia Lusitana challenges national mnemonic practices and discourses and particularly the visual regime of the Estado Novo. Whereas Sob Céus Estranhos is characterised by an affiliative look and an archival impulse which creates a heterocultural web of intrinsically fragile meaning, Fantasia Lusitana examines the workings of homocultural national memory and essentialising notions of national identity. Fantasia Lusitana’s critique of the politics of representation is led by a didactic line, a desire for the spectator to develop an autonomous reading and critical literacy of the archival footage that is absent in Sob Céus Estranhos. Even if both works can be described as developing notions of remembrance that challenge established forms of communality, their subject positions and their way of implicating the refugee presence in the present are nevertheless quite different. This study has shown not only different ways of artistic media implicating the refugee presence in Portugal between 1933 and 1945 in the present, but also that the translational perspective on memory operates on two interrelated, yet different analytical levels. On the one hand, it refers to the heterocultural networks of signification that each work mobilises, and, on the other hand, to how it implicates remembrance in forms of communality. The three works that I have analysed in this study remediate and transcribe pre-existing media and media representations which transcend cultural, linguistic, territorial and often even medial borders. All the artistic negotiations of the refugee presence that I have examined are based on translational processes of remediating, incorporating, transcribing, referencing and quoting. However, this does not mean that they all challenge established forms of communality or essentialising notions of memory and identity. On the contrary, in the case of Enquanto Salazar Dormia the appropriation of topoi from global popular culture plays an essential role, but the novel certainly does not challenge in any way either national memory or hegemonic forms of communality. Yet, with Sob Céus Estranhos and Fantasia Lusitana I have also examined two examples of how artistic practices may open memory to an ongoing debate and a (re)negotiation of the meaning of the past and its impact on present forms of communality as well as modes of belonging and exclusion.

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The translational perspective that I have developed throughout this study has sought to reconceptualise the notion of cultural encounter within mnemonic artistic media by addressing an internal heteroculturality which is particularly pertinent in contexts of migration. In the case of the refugee presence in Lisbon between 1933 and 1945, memory involves not only people with different nationalities, cultural and religious affiliations and linguistic backgrounds; it also draws on archival material in several languages and archives localised in different countries. In all media analysed in this study, making the past present consequently involves a translational process of remediating archival material that transcends national, cultural and linguistic borders, which, as I have claimed, cannot be satisfactorily understood in terms of transfer between mnemonic communities or cultures. Blaufuks’s subject position is not the outcome of memories that cross borders, but of being enmeshed in a referential web that transcends them. Enquanto Salazar Dormia does not transfer Hollywood representations to Portuguese memory, but appropriates an imaginary of Lisbon and Portugal during World War II that is simply not understandable without a number of topoi from global culture. And Fantasia Lusitana makes an artificiality of national memory visible where borders are not a natural pre-given, but actually a means to suppress and exclude differences and the perspective of foreigners in order to promote an imagined homocultural national past. By refusing to conceive of memory as the property of particular mnemonic communities and outcome of bounded cultural unities, a translational perspective moreover draws attention to mnemonic practices that do not produce or reinforce clear-cut identities and group belonging. Rethinking memory from the perspective of translation has therefore, in my opinion, this particular strength: That the concept of translation invites to conceive of the cultural encounter in a different way and thereby may help to move the discussion about the role of memory in the negotiation of belonging and communality beyond essentialistic identitarian claims or visions of cosmopolitan universalism. Remembering World War II refugees in present-day Portugal is an ongoing process. Artistic media dealing with the World War II period in Portugal and the refugee presence between 1933 and 1945 have not ceased to appear since I have started writing this book. Indeed, the topic does not seem to have lost its appeal to a wider audience. It remains to be seen how the contours of mnemonic discourses may change in the future. An important aspect for eventual future research might be not only the ongoing popularisation of the topic of Lisbon during World War II, but also the influence of an increasing institutionalisation in the form of museums and other initiatives such as the museum and memorial at the Spanish-Portuguese border in Vilar Formoso, for instance. But there is

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also plenty of other material for further investigation, which for some reason or other could not be integrated in this study. Additional research about the refugee presence in literature and cinema during the Estado Novo dictatorship and the image of Portugal in German exile literature, a gender-oriented approach to the memory of the refugee presence or a study of the role of photography in the context of the refugees are some examples. Some individual works deserve closer consideration, a comparative analysis in different countries could also provide interesting insights and a study of the representations of the refugees in magazines such as Mundo Gráfico or Sinal is to my knowledge still missing. Even the diachronic development and the specific historical contexts of the memory of the refugees in the 1980s and 1990s are still underexplored topics to which this study, due to its theoretical and methodological scope, could not provide any profound insights. Moreover, the memory of the role of Portugal as country of exile and transit station before and during World War II is part of a wider discursive field. Migration has not yet received the deserved attention within culture and memory studies. In this sense, further research could focus on different histories of flight and exile and how the presence of refugees is remembered and discussed at different moments. Also, the role of notions of hospitality and, in the particular Portuguese context, its relationship and entanglement in the Lusotropicalist ideological apparatus are areas that offer plenty of opportunity for further research and debate. The concept of translation could provide new insights for rethinking cultural encounters and their conceptualisation in artistic and other official and unofficial discourses. In this sense, this study is hopefully just the beginning. Rethinking memory from the perspective of translation offers several theoretical and methodological applications within memory and culture studies, but might also provide new impulses for cultural and artistic projects as well as academic and non-academic debates about mobility, migration and the situatedness of humans, languages and cultures. How memory influences contemporary communities; the way we define the borders of groups and cultures; who we perceive as ‘other’; what forms of solidarity and responsibility we develop – all these are indeed important questions also outside the academia. Memory studies are at a moment of reorientation. The national, cultural, and identity-bound framework that has informed most of the work within memory studies seems to no longer be able to always provide satisfactory answers. This study has therefore sought to suggest a theoretical and methodological approach which is not limited to recognising the role of globalisation processes and the increasing speed of the mobility of people and information. Instead, it proposes to conceive of culture as the outcome of translations, as heterocultural formations that are part of asymmetric

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power relations. Further research certainly needs to be conducted on specific historical contexts, the role of power asymmetries and the usefulness of a translational perspective in studies that are not based on the analysis of artistic media. As I am writing these lines, it has unfortunately to be noted that essentialist notions of the relationship between memory, culture, language and national or ethnic communities seem not only to continue to inform many contemporary debates about culture, mobility, and migration, but appear to experience a moment of revitalisation. Culture and memory studies have a particular responsibility to resist essentialist reductionism and to give visibility to the multifaceted approaches to memory by artists, cultural institutions and other organisations. There is plenty of material for scholars from memory studies, culture studies and other disciplines, but also for activists and artists to widen these debates and to shed light on the role of translation in every cultural formation. I have the modest hope that this study may offer some inspiration in this direction.

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Young, James E. At Memory’s Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2000. Zryd, Michael. “Found Footage Film as Discursive Metahistory: Craig Baldwin’s Tribulation 99.” The Moving Image 3.2 (2003): 40–61. zur Mühlen, Patrick von. Fluchtweg Spanien-Portugal: Die deutsche Emigration und der Exodus aus Europa 1933–1945. Bonn: Dietz, 1992. zur Mühlen, Patrick von. Caminhos de Fuga Espanha-Portugal: A Emigração e o Êxodo para fora da Europa de 1933 a 1945. Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra, 2012. zur Mühlen, Patrick von. “Lisbon – an Intermediate Station for German and Austrian Refugees Crossing Portugal and Going Overseas, 1940–1944”, Instituto de Ciências Sociais – History Seminar, Lisbon, Unpublished Lecture, 2015.

Filmography A Exposição do Mundo Português. Dir António Lopes. SPAC, 1941. Aniki-Bobó. Dir. Manoel de Oliveira. Portugal: Lisboa Filme, 1942. A Revolução de Maio. Dir António Lopes. SPN – Secretariado da Propaganda Nacional, 1937. Aristides de Sousa Mendes: O Cônsul Injustiçado. Dir. Diana Olga. Teresa Olga e Fátima Cavaco, 1992. Camões. Dir. José Júlio Marques Leitão de Barros. SPAC, 1946. Casablanca. Dir. Michael Curtiz. Warner Bros, 1942. Debaixo do Céu. Dir. Nicholas Oulman. Ukbar Filmes, 2017. Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010. Farewell, Herr Schwarz. Dir. Yael Reuveny. Kino Lorber, 2014. Feitiço do Império. Dir António Lopes. Agência Geral das Colónias/Missão Cinegráfica de África, 1940. Forbidden Passage. Dir Fred Zinnemann. MGM, 1941. International Lady. Dir. Tim Whealan. United Artists, 1941. Journey for Margaret. Dir. W.S. Van Dyke. MGM, 1942. Jornal Português. Newsreel series. Dir António Lopes. SPAC, 1938–1951. Mocidade Vitoriosa. Dir. Secção de Cinema do SPN. SPN, 1939. One Night in Lisbon. Dir. Edward H. Griffith. Paramount Pictures, 1941. O Pátio das Cantigas. Dir. Francisco Ribeiro Ribeirinho. SPAC, 1942. Porto de Abrigo. Dir. Adolfo Coelho. Lisboa Filme, 1940. Shoah. Dir. Claude Lanzmann. Les Filmes Aleph, 1985. Sob Céus Estranhos – Under Strange Skies. Dir. Daniel Blaufuks. LX Filmes, 2002. Storm over Lisbon. Dir. George Sherman. Republic Pictures, 1944. The Conspirators. Dir. Jean Negulesco. Warner Bros, 1944. The Flat. Dir Arnon Goldfinger. Ruth Diskin Films, Sundance Selects, Edition Salzgeber, 2011. The Hairy Ape. Dir. Alfred Santell. United Artists, 1944. The House on 92nd Street. Dir. Henry Hathaway, Henry. 20th Century-Fox, 1945. The Lady Has Plans. Dir. Sidney Lanfield. Paramount Pictures, 1942. Voice in the Wind. Arthur Ripley. USA: United Artists, 1944.

List of Illustrations Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6 Figure 7 Figure 8 Figure 9 Figure 10 Figure 11 Figure 12 Figure 13 Figure 14 Figure 15 Figure 16 Figure 17 Figure 18 Figure 19 Figure 20 Figure 21 Figure 22

Sob Céus Estranhos – Under Strange Skies. Dir. Daniel Blaufuks. LX Filmes, 2002; courtesy of the artist 65 Daniel Blaufuks, Sob Céus Estranhos: Uma História de Exílio, Lisbon: Tinta da China, 2007; courtesy of the artist 68 Daniel Blaufuks, Sob Céus Estranhos: Uma História de Exílio, Lisbon: Tinta da China, 2007; courtesy of the artist 71 Daniel Blaufuks, Sob Céus Estranhos: Uma História de Exílio, Lisbon: Tinta da China, 2007; courtesy of the artist 71 Daniel Blaufuks, Sob Céus Estranhos: Uma História de Exílio, Lisbon: Tinta da China, 2007; courtesy of the artist 72 Daniel Blaufuks, Sob Céus Estranhos: Uma História de Exílio, Lisbon: Tinta da China, 2007; courtesy of the artist 80 Daniel Blaufuks, Sob Céus Estranhos: Uma História de Exílio, Lisbon: Tinta da China, 2007; courtesy of the artist 81 Sob Céus Estranhos – Under Strange Skies. Dir. Daniel Blaufuks. LX Filmes, 2002; courtesy of the artist 82 Daniel Blaufuks, Sob Céus Estranhos: Uma História de Exílio, Lisbon: Tinta da China, 2007; courtesy of the artist 85 Daniel Blaufuks, Sob Céus Estranhos: Uma História de Exílio, Lisbon: Tinta da China, 2007; courtesy of the artist 86 Sob Céus Estranhos – Under Strange Skies. Dir. Daniel Blaufuks. LX Filmes, 2002; courtesy of the artist 102 Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010 146 Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010 151 Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010 151 Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010 152 Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010 153 Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010 154 Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010 155 Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010 155 Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010 165 Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010 165 Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010 169

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List of Illustrations

Figure 23

Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010 170 Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010 171 Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010 172 Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010 172 Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010 173 Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010 176 Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010 176 Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010 177 Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010 180 Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010 183 Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010 183 Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010 185 Fantasia Lusitana. Dir. João Canijo. Periferia Filmes and Midas Filmes, 2010 185

Figure 24 Figure 25 Figure 26 Figure 27 Figure 28 Figure 29 Figure 30 Figure 31 Figure 32 Figure 33 Figure 34 Figure 35

Index of Names Agamben, Giorgio 93 Amaral, Domingos 16, 23, 25, 107–108, 115, 117, 120–121, 124–129, 131–132, 135–136, 142–143, 191, 196–198, 201–203 Anderson, Benedict 32–33 Arendt, Hannah 13, 18, 93 Assmann, Aleida 19, 28, 33–35, 37, 55, 192 Assmann, Jan 19, 33–35, 37, 192 August, Herbert 62, 64, 92, 94, 97 August, Ursel 92, 99

Crownshaw, Richard 27, 41 Cruz, Afonso 16 Curtiz, Michael 126, 128, 133

Babo, Alexandre 10 Bachmann-Medick, Doris 19–20, 47–48 Badiou, Alain 59 Baker, Josephine 115, 133, 135 Baptista, Tiago 189 Barthes, Roland 66–67, 70, 72 Benjamin, Walter 33, 48–49, 80, 101 Bhabha, Homi 48–50 Blaufuks, Daniel 16, 21, 23–25, 62–70, 72–84, 86–94, 96–105, 107, 133, 142, 146, 190–191, 193–195, 201–202, 204 Bogart, Humphrey 127 Boltanski, Christian 77 Bolter, Jay David 42–43 Borges, Jorge Luis 37 Borsò, Vittoria 24, 37, 39, 192 Bruzzi, Stella 146–147

Eco, Umberto 128–129 Eggert, Martha 184 Eichhorn, Christoph 88 Erll, Astrid 17, 19, 21–22, 29, 42–45, 115, 159 Eschebach, Insa 35

Campbell, Ronald 111, 124, 134 Canijo, João 17, 21, 23, 25, 144–146, 148–150, 153–154, 156–159, 162–164, 167–168, 170, 174–175, 178, 181, 187–191, 198–201, 203 Cardoso Pires, José 107 Carmona, Óscar 150, 163–164 Carvalho, Sérgio Luís de 108 Chantal, Suzanne 11 Churchill, Winston 124 Coelho, Adolfo 134 Costa, Francisco 11 Crespo, Nuno 63

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Darrieux, Danielle 155, 184 De Cesari, Chiara 41 Derrida, Jacques 38, 192 Döblin, Alfred 7, 13, 87–88, 144, 146, 154, 169, 175–179, 181, 184, 186, 200 Drake, David 69 Duke of Windsor 9, 135

Ferro, António 161 Feuchtwanger, Lion 7 Foer, Jonathan Safran 77 Foster, Hal 74 Foucault, Michel 37, 39, 45–46, 73, 89 Gama, Fernão Dantes da 12 Ganz, Bruno 88 Gil, Isabel 73, 85 Gil, José 186–188, 201 Gouveia, Maria João Fialho 108 Green, Graham 130 Grossegesse, Orlando 4 Grusin, Richard 42–44 Guibernau, Monserrat 36 Gulbenkian, Nubar 115, 134–135 Halbwachs, Maurice 19, 30 Haskins, Dick 134 Heinrich, Christa 7 Herder, Johann Gottfried 29 Hirsch, Marianne 65–67, 75, 80, 83, 193 Howard, Leslie 124 Huyssen, Andreas 56

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Jäger, Ludwig 23–24, 37–39, 192 Jorge, Lídia 107 Jouvet, Louis 184 Kiepura, Jan 184 Koch, Matthias Albert 10 Koestler, Arthur 13, 87–88, 103

Perec, George 77, 103 Pessa, Fernando 153 Philby, Kim 130, 137 Piçarra, Maria do Carmo 164 Pimentel, Irene Flunser 3–4, 6–7, 9–10, 12, 15–16, 118 Quintais, Ana 77–78, 102

Landsberg, Alison 58 Lanzmann, Claude 102 Leigh, Vivien 133 Levy, Daniel 56–58 Lobo Antunes, António 107 Lochery, Neill 16 Lopes, Alexandra 101 Lopes, Rui 14 Losa, Ilse 11, 21, 25, 94–101, 104, 133, 195 Lourenço, Agostinho 123, 125 Lourenço, Eduardo 166, 174, 186–188, 201 Magno Júnio, Manuel 12 Mandelstamm, Valentin 170–171, 184 Mann, Erika 1, 13, 87–88, 103, 144, 146, 154, 169, 177–182, 184, 186, 200 Mann, Heinrich 87 Margalit, Avishai 55 Martins, Maria João 11, 118–119 Matos, Mário 4 Mendes, Aristides de Sousa 6, 15–16, 107 Milgram, Avraham 4–6, 15 Miranda, Luís 86 Montgomery, Robert 9, 184 Moura, Vasco Graça 16 Ninhos, Cláudia 3–4, 16 Nora, Pierre 19, 27, 29–33, 192 Olden, Balder 87 Olivier, Lawrence 133 Oulman, Nicholas 17 Pacheco, Cristina 120 Paethel, Karl O. 87 Patey, Christian 146 Pauli, Hertha 87 Peirce, C. S. 66

Ramalho, Margarida de Magalhães 16, 118 Redol, Alves 11, 21, 134, 141 Remarque, Erich Maria 13, 87 Ribas, Daniel 149, 169, 187 Ribeiro, António Lopes 149, 155, 158, 161–162, 168–171, 173, 184, 199 Rigney, Ann 18, 22, 41–46 Rodrigues, Ana 149, 157 Rodrigues, Áurea 163 Rothberg, Michael 19–21, 24, 28–29, 55, 59–60, 193 Sahl, Hans 7, 13, 87 Said, Edward 93, 103 Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de 13, 144, 146, 154, 168–170, 177, 179, 184, 186, 200 Sakai, Naoki 47, 50–53, 192 Salazar, António de Oliveira 4, 6, 107–108, 122–125, 129, 131, 134, 144–146, 149–150, 152, 156, 160, 163–164, 166–167, 170–171, 184, 187 Santana, Vasco 171 Saramago, José 107 Schaefer, Ansgar 2–3, 4, 6, 8, 15, 133 Schygulla, Hanna 146 Sebald, W.G. 77, 103 Simon, Simone 184 Solomon, Jon 52–53 Sontag, Susan 72–73 Spiegelman, Art 77 Spitzer, Leo 67 Sznaider, Natan 56–58 Tai, Hue-Tam Ho 29 Teixeira, Christina Heine 12 Telo, António José 9

Index of Names

Terdiman, Richard 19, 33 Trivedi, Harish 50

White, Rosie 130 Wilson, Robert 16, 108, 120

Vogler, Rüdiger 146

Yildiz, Yasemin 55, 104

Weber, Ronald 4, 8, 13, 16 Wenk, Silke 35

zur Mühlen, Patrick von 3, 15

225

Index of Terms addressee 51–52, 114, 128 addresser 51–52 archival impulse 25, 74, 190, 194, 203 archive 2, 18, 23, 25, 35–38, 63, 67, 70, 74, 77, 84–85, 88–90, 105–106, 142, 144, 154, 175, 183, 189, 191–192, 194, 198, 200–202, 204 archive of implication 21–22, 24, 60–61, 191, 193, 201 artistic media 2, 21–24, 46, 54, 61, 191, 193, 203–204, 206 authentication 49, 72, 148 bare life 93, 97, 100 bordering 47, 192 collective memory 19, 29–37, 190–191 communality 20, 23–24, 26, 36, 40, 45, 47, 55, 61, 106, 143, 191–193, 196, 198, 203–204 communicative memory 34–35 cosmopolitan memory 40, 56–57 cultural memory 17, 19, 21, 27–28, 33–38, 40–41, 43, 45–46, 54, 67, 84, 159, 193 cultural translation 48, 50 différance 38 difference 52–53, 101, 103, 195 ethical dimension of memory 21, 24, 55, 59, 193 ethics of (post)memory 92, 105, 195–196 ethics of truth 59 ethnicity 35, 51, 104 Exilliteratur 12, 18 global memory 40, 44, 56 globalisation 17, 28, 56–57, 205 heterocultural 20, 22–26, 53–54, 60–61, 74, 76, 88, 90, 105–106, 117, 142, 189–191, 193, 196–198, 201, 203, 205 heteroculturality 47, 105, 204

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heterolingual address 51–52 historical a priori 37, 192 Hollywood 12, 14, 18, 115, 125, 133, 137, 170, 204 Holocaust 55–57, 59, 74–76, 91, 102, 104, 194, 202 homolingual address 51 human rights 56–57, 59 identity 17, 19–20, 23–24, 26, 28–30, 32–35, 39–41, 45, 50, 55, 57–58, 98–99, 103–105, 130–132, 144–145, 148, 151, 154, 156–157, 159–160, 166–167, 170, 174, 182, 186–192, 196–197, 199, 201, 203 imagetext 74, 78, 84, 90, 194 Implication 21–22, 60–61, 105, 193 intended object 49 intertextual archetype 128–129 Jornal Português 8, 63, 134, 144, 151, 155, 162–164, 166, 168, 170, 184, 199 kinship 49, 56 kitsch 129 lieux de mémoire 19, 22, 29–30, 44–45, 192 materiality 24, 38, 70, 78, 101, 103–105, 192–193, 195 mediality 22–24, 30–33, 38–40, 73, 78, 90, 105, 192–193, 202 mediation 18, 22, 33, 41, 43, 65, 69, 115 memory culture 19, 21–22, 54, 105 migration 18, 24, 27–29, 56, 58, 61, 191, 204–206 milieux de mémoire 30–32, 192 mnemonic community 28, 32–33, 35–36, 46, 54, 60, 76 mnemonic popularisation 15, 107, 120, 196 mode of intention 49 multidirectional memory 40, 59–60

228

Index of Terms

networks of signification 20, 22–24, 26, 54, 60, 89, 105, 142, 191–193, 196, 201, 203 points of memory 67, 70, 77 postmemory 25, 60, 65–67, 70, 75–78, 100, 193 premediation 42–44 prosthetic memory 58 punctum 66–67 refugee experience 27, 64, 68, 94, 105, 195 remediation 13, 23, 25, 42–44, 69, 74, 115, 126, 133, 145, 157, 159–161, 168, 170, 174–175, 190–191, 193–194, 196–197, 199 Salazarism 122, 125, 186–187, 197, 201 scarcity 7, 45

signified 37–38, 49 signifier 38, 49 transcription 23–24, 72, 74, 126, 159, 186, 191–193, 196 transcriptive 23–24, 37–38, 54, 74, 192 transcultural memory 19, 40–41 translatedness 20, 22, 49 translation 19, 23, 47–53, 74, 88–89, 101, 103, 105, 204–206 translational perspective 19–20, 24, 47, 53–54, 60–61, 191–193, 201, 203–204, 206 translational process 53–54, 89, 192–194, 196, 203–204 transnational memory 40–41, 192