This course examines Portugal’s semi-peripheral condition in the world-system and its impact on various modes of allegorizing the nation in the 20th and 21st centuries. During the semester students will reflect on the mutable and ambiguous nature of national identity before and after the April Revolution of 1974 with a view to understanding how the mediation processes of the colonial past have influenced the project of Lusophony as well as Portugal’s current geopolitical and cultural position in the world. At the end of the semester students are expected to:

• to understand the concept of identity and its impact on the symbolic representation of the nation;
• to identify some of the key moments of paradigmatic transition in the history of Portugal;
• to understand the semi-peripheral position of Portugal in the world-system along the centuries;
• to examine some of the myths that support diverse modes of allegorizing Portugal as a nation;
• to reflect on the role of the empire in the configuration of the imagined community of the nation;
• to discuss the exceptionality of Portuguese colonialism and its impact on the identity construction of Portuguese people;
• to reflect on the New State in its ideological, pedagogical and performative dimensions;
• to understand the factors that led to the April 1974 Revolution;
• to discuss the reconfiguration of Portuguese identity in the democratic era;
• to reflect on the cultural and political implications of the project of Lusophony.