ESTEREÓTIPOS (POST)COLONIAIS: O RETORNO (DULCE MARIA CARDOSO) E CADERNO DE MEMÓRIAS COLONIAIS (ISABELA FIGUEIREDO)

Abstract

Starting from a reading of Dulce Maria Cardoso’s novel, O retorno (2011) and Isabela Figueiredo’s Caderno de memórias coloniais (2009), and invoking the concepts of ‘type’ and ‘stereotype’, we propose to analyse how the mode of construction of the Portuguese (ex-)colonial character implies a mode of perception, a set of social and human images, that contradicts Gilberto Freyre’s theory of luso-tropicalism. Further, this article affords the possibility of coming to a better understanding of how the play of those modes of perception, necessarily deriving from a narrator’s point of view, contribute to realisation of the concept of ‘figuration’ as proposed by Carlos Reis.