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The Press of Exile(s)

La presse d’exil(s)

Imprensa de exílio(s)

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Published on Friday, March 22, 2024

Abstract

Centré sur la question coloniale dans la presse d’exil, le congrès vise à discuter la liminalité des expériences d’occupation, de dissidence, de clandestinité et de bannissement dans leur rapport à l’expatriation politique, tant en raison des similitudes de leur impact psychologique que des circulations qu'elles tendent à favoriser. L’objectif est d’encourager les études qui explorent les idées, les images et les débats autour du colonialisme et des réalités coloniales mobilisées par les périodiques d’exil, tant dans leur diversité que mettant en exergue les convergences et les divergences.

Announcement

Argument

As a contribution to the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the 25th of April and the democracy associated with it, the Centro de Documentação 25 de Abril of the Universidade de Coimbra hosts the International Congress The Press of Exile(s) on October 10 and 11, 2024, as part of the initiatives of the International Group for Studies of the Colonial Periodical Press of the Portuguese Empire (IGSCP-PE). This initiative is also supported by other partners of this network and organizations that welcomed the idea, starting from CHAM – Centro de Humanidades of NOVA-FCSH, the Fundação Mário Soares e Maria Barroso, the Laboratoire d'Etudes Romanes (LER) of the Université de Paris 8 Vincennes Saint-Denis, the Biblioteca Nacional de Angola, the Arquivo de História Social of the ICS-Universidade de Lisboa, and the group ECOS-Exílios, contrariar o silêncio of CRIA- Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia. 

The anti-colonial press and the press of the exile, in an attempt to understand both their political role and their intellectual impact, as well as the networks they reflected and mobilized, have deserved increasing multidisciplinary attention, especially with regard to the 20th century. Concerning those networks, it is worth mentioning the research that has been carried out on the transnational and transimperial confluences of exiled people and other migrants (such as students, writers, artists) towards metropolises marked by democratizing and avant-garde effervescence, such as London, Paris or Berlin after World War I, as well as their connection to the proliferation of newspapers, magazines, bulletins, pamphlets that fed (inter)nationalist militancy and linked debates and struggles. 

Although both can be found in the same periodical, anticolonial press and exile press do not overlap as categories. The colonial question was one of the reasons for exile and the creation of periodicals in these contexts. The anticolonial press flourished under conditions of both legality and clandestinity inside and outside the empires of origin. They are, however, gathered by a close link between the places of publication and the political conditions for the exercise of the freedom of expression and of militancy. In other words, if the exile press denounces the lack of political freedom, the anti-colonial press emerges in different political conditions that determine its profile and places of publication, including places of exile. Regarding the idea and experience of exile, as well as its expression in the press, it is worth discussing the liminality of the experiences of occupation, dissent, clandestinity, and exile in relation to political expatriation. This is due as much to the similarity of their psychological impact as to the transitions that they tended to promote. 

The end of the Second World War, with the inevitable fall of the European colonial empires, gave rise to the hope of reaffirming the democratic order and the right of peoples to self-determination. The following decades witnessed the spread of anti-colonial struggles and solidarities, in an international environment marked by the politics of blocs, to which the Non- Aligned Movement, following Bandung, opposed the idea of liberation from colonialism and the predetermination of the options of the so-called "Third World". In this geopolitical framework, the countries of the "Western" bloc were expected to adopt the values of liberal democracy and capitalism and, sooner or later, to recognize the principle of self-determination in political practice. 

In a countercurrent tolerated by the Allies due to the circumstances of the Cold War, the Portuguese and Spanish dictatorships survived despite growing internal opposition. The former, in particular, refused to discuss decolonization. Against all evidence, Salazarism promoted the thesis that Portugal, guided by Catholic values and by the historically dominant principle of assimilation, had created the unique situation of a pluricontinental nation and state, a unity that none of the people involved wanted to undo. From the point of view of the Portuguese state, the colonial problem did not exist, and the movements that claimed it were positioning themselves against the will of the peoples, therefore any insurgencies could be described as terrorist. The radicalization of militancy, a consequence of the consciousness that had developed since the end of the Second World War, was justified by the long survival of the Portuguese dictatorship and its refusal to recognize the colonial problem. As for the case of Goa, the militancy of Goans who were in the anti-colonial camp intensified and a diplomatic conflict between Portugal and India began, which was far from resolved by the Indian troops' annexation of Goa in December 1961, rather, it dragged until 1974. It was also in 1961 that the war fronts in the African colonies were opened up by several uprisings. At the same time, the waves of exile that had been driven by the repressive policies of the dictatorship since 1926 intensified. These exiles, whether they were primarily against the dictatorship, for the end of colonialism, or a combination of both, shared the ideas of freedom and liberation. 

The primordial focus of the congress will be the colonial question in the exile press since the end of World War II. For the first time, it will bridge the gap between the struggles against dictatorship and the end of colonialism in these periodicals. The aim is to encourage studies exploring ideas, images and debates on colonialism and colonial realities within the encounters and disagreements that marked the diversity of these periodicals. This focus reopens the discussion on the concept of the colonial press, which has been proposed by the group (https://www.gieipc-ip.org/about-the-colonial-periodical-press.html), now about the press in exile. With regard to the former Portuguese Empire, as the creation of the Correio Braziliense in London shows by inaugurating Portuguese language exile press (https://expoimprensacolonial.fcsh.unl.pt/br.html), it even emphasizes that the history of the press, from the first impulses, cannot dispense with the knowledge of the periodicals of the exiles and the place that the colonial debates occupied in them. Their stories follow the fluctuations that freedom of expression and militancy have suffered under successive regimes since the absolute monarchy. At the same time, they demonstrate the structural difficulty of successive powers in accepting free discussion about the end of the empire. 

Finally, the Congress proposes a broad understanding of the periodical press, in line with the proposals of the IGSCP-PE. It shifts the focus from printing to periodicity, to the formats associated with the periodical press and to the search for readers. This means including studies of periodicals that circulated using different technologies and forms, considering the circumstances that motivated the use of these different resources as significant. In particular, periodicals, written or typed, reproduced by the same means, or by recurring to photocopies, or to stencil, with or without the use of mimeographs, sometimes including also collages of printed images or texts. 

Considering that the framework of the Congress motivates its particular focus on the discussion of Portuguese colonialism in the exile press, this call for papers especially welcomes proposals on: 

- The anti-colonial solidarities and internationalism in exile periodicals 

- The networks that these periodicals mobilized and/or that were at the origin of them, as well as their role in the communication strategies of the various groups 

- The importance of funding in the creation and survival of these periodicals 

- Interested and targeted public, public opinion, and groups 

- The relation between exile networks and clandestine networks, and their impact on the circulation and reception of this press 

- The dynamic relationship between periodicals and archive 

- The bridges established with other forms of communication such as posters, leaflets, pamphlets, books 

- How memorialism, archives and libraries/documentation centers can contribute to access, frame and deepen knowledge of the history of these periodicals, but can, at the same time, filter the access to them 

- The relationship between activism and journalism, and the influence of the editors’s profiles in the configuration of these periodicals. 

- Periodicals of exile, linked to the fight against other colonial empires. 

Submission guidelines

Proposals should include an abstract of up to 300 words and a biographical note of up to 150 words for each author. Languages of the congress: Portuguese, English, French. 

Submission deadline – June 15, 2024 

Responses – by June 25 

Email for submissions - imprensadeexilios@gmail.com 

Among other initiatives, the organization of the Congress will promote thematic roundtables. Addressing researchers and other interested parties, the partner documentation/archive centres will analyze their collections and create lists of periodicals and documentation related to the theme of the event, which will be made available on the institutional and congress websites, subject to updating until the event. 

The Organizing Committee

  • Adelaide Vieira Machado (CHAM – Centro de Humanidades, NOVA-FCSH)
  • Arnaldo Caliche (Universidade Eduardo Mondlane)
  • Cristina Clímaco (LER - Laboratoire d'Etudes Romanes, Université Paris 8)
  • Diana Afonso Luhuma (Biblioteca Nacional de Angola)
  • Douglas Mansur da Silva (Instituto de Ciências Humanas e Sociais, Universidade Federal Fluminense)
  • Filipe Guimarães da Silva (Fundação Mário Soares e Maria Barroso)
  • Inês Ponte (ICS – Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Arquivo de História Social, Universidade de Lisboa)
  • Joana Mourão Carrega Moreira (CD25A – Centro de Documentação 25 de Abril, Universidade de Coimbra)
  • Maria Cristina Vieira de Freitas (CD25A – Centro de Documentação 25 de Abril, Universidade de Coimbra)
  • Matheus Serva Pereira (ICS – Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa)
  • Noemi Alfieri (CHAM – Centro de Humanidades, NOVA-FCSH)
  • Sandra Ataíde Lobo (CHAM – Centro de Humanidades, NOVA-FCSH)
  • Sónia Ferreira (#ECOS Exílios, CRIA - Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia)

Places

  • Coimbra, Portugal

Event attendance modalities

Full on-site event


Date(s)

  • Saturday, June 15, 2024

Keywords

  • presse d'exil, exilés, anticolonialisme, colonies portugaises, mouvements de libération, opposition portugaise

Contact(s)

  • Sandra Lobo
    courriel : imprensadeexilios [at] gmail [dot] com

Reference Urls

Information source

  • Cristina Climaco
    courriel : cristina [dot] climaco [at] univ-paris8 [dot] fr

License

CC0-1.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

To cite this announcement

« The Press of Exile(s) », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Friday, March 22, 2024, https://doi.org/10.58079/w2h4

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