Reimagining Europe
MEMOIRS offers a radical vision of contemporary European history, interrogating the crucial role of its multiple colonial heritages. These legacies are a common factor in the identities of individual nation states across the continent. Among the different European colonial models, MEMOIRS analyses the overseas model of Portugal, Belgium and France, as crucial for an understanding of the modern-day continent.
The innovative character of the project expresses itself in its fundamental research question: what is the impact on the continent today of transferred memories of the twilight of European colonialism?
MEMOIRS aims to map out a new cartography of European memory, by reconceptualising the colonial heritage as a part of European identity and not as something to be ignored. We assume that the memories of those affected by the end of Europe’s empires and of those whom colonialism othered are a constitutive part of Europe, which implies an epistemic shift in the way we view the continent’s history and a reversal of historical and narrative paradigms.
MEMOIRS intends to contribute to promoting a greater sense of collective responsibility toward the past and the present.
