Can the subaltern remember? — an analysis of Fernanda do Vale’s memories

Abstract

This article proposes a reflection on memory, archives and social representations of black women in Portugal, having as reference to the book A Preta Fernanda: Recordações d’uma colonial [Preta (Black) Fernanda: Recollections of a colonial], a fictional autobiography portraying a black woman living in Lisbon, at the end of the nineteenth century, beginnings of the twentieth century, using Homi Bhabha’s concept of mimicry and ambivalence, and the reading of the two dimensions of representations – Vertretung and Darstellung – conducted by the postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak.