José Saramago, patrimônio e memória

um legado de rebeldia e irreverência

Abstract

This article aims to reflect on the relation between literature, memory representations and dismonument, highlighting an exercise of literary criticism and irreverence towards the monumental and monumentalized representations. For this purpose, it draws on the imposing and monumental pieces of the Portuguese mnemonic and historical discourse and on the works Memorial do Convento e Viagem a Portugal, by José Saramago, who hosts, in equal measure and value, the monumental tradition and the denied, minimized and forgotten histories. It will be emphasized the political and ideological heritage of the emblematic 1940s, in which identity, memory and monument combine to underlie a grandiloquent discourse of nation, history and nationality, with notorious political and cultural events in order to preserve, honor and perpetuate the Portuguese past. In response to this legacy, especially from the last two decades of the century XX, the Portuguese contemporaneous literature, represented by Saramago, suspends the authority of the official mnemonic registers, facing the power of the discourse promoter of totality, monumentality and power.