LUARC · Implacable Archives: Reviving Mário Pinto de Andrade’s Personal Archive
Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2022-09-01 → 2026-08-31
- EU contribution
- €302,451
- Participants
- 3
- Scheme
- HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-GF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Implacable Archives: Reviving Mário Pinto de Andrade’s Personal Archive
The main objective of project LUARC is to contribute to the revival and development of the personal archive of the Angolan intellectual and politician Mário Pinto de Andrade (MPA). Using the archive as a key to uncover new narratives about Angola’s recent past and to map the evolution of practices and discourses on culture and nationalism, LUARC explores the life and intellectual journey of one of the most influential African thinkers of the twentieth century through the material traces left in his archive. A cosmopolitan intellectual, MPA was also one of the founders and ideologues of the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA), the nationalist movement that emerged victorious from the 1975 war of liberation against the Portuguese colonial state and has ruled Angola ever since. His clashes with the movement's leadership, however, made him a political pariah, and he was forced to leave Angola in 1975 and spend the rest of his life in exile. Moreover, as a form of retribution, his contribution to the Angolan national project has been largely overlooked by the dominant historical narrative for decades. Project LUARC brings back to the public’s attention the figure and work of a protagonist and a deep connoisseur of Angolan culture, recovering narratives that have long been ignored. At the same time, LUARC reflects on the nature of personal archives and their potential for history writing and processes of memory building. It also invites different people to critically and creatively engage with the archive, including MPA’s family members and friends, former freedom fighters, researchers, archivists, and artists. Finally, by disseminating results and outputs across different target groups, including Angolan civil society, the project stimulates reflections that have a strong impact on the debate on Angola’s recent past.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
LUARC intends to contribute to the enhancement and revitalization of the personal archive of Angolan intellectual Mário Pinto de Andrade (MPA). In addition to working with unique documents, LUARC develops an interdisciplinary approach to the archive as a site of production of historical knowledge.Widely known for his participation in the Angolan liberation struggle, MPA is a key figure in the cultural history of Angola, and one of the most important contemporary African intellectuals. LUARC focuses on the vast and heterogeneous material that the writer collected between 1940-1990, following the life of MPA and that of Angola through the late colonial period, the anticolonial struggle, and post-independence.LUARC puts together academic institutions and non-academic organizations located in Portugal, Angola, and the US, creating international connections to animate meaningful debates on Angola’s recent past. The project uses methods and techniques of archival science and digital humanities to ensure the proper appreciation of MPA’s personal records. Treating data according to the best ethical practices, LUARC grants broad open access to the digital archive, as well as to other project results and outputs.Strongly rooted in history and postcolonial theory, LUARC situates the archive in the context of Angola’s transition from colony to independent nation, creating a framework in which personal records come to make meaning as parts of a complex collective history. In particular, records are analysed in order to trace the evolution of practices and discourses on culture and nationalism in Angola, bringing to the surface narratives that have often been neglected.At the same time, drawing from literary studies and archival art, LUARC reflects on the practice of producing and keeping records, understanding it as a performative act that intervenes in the creation of the narratives through which we come to make sense of the past.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSIDADE NOVA DE LISBOA · LisboaCoordinatorPortugal
- THE BOARD OF REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN SYSTEM · MADISON WIUnited States
- XEREM ASSOCIACAO CULTURAL · LISBOAPortugal
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/101062643
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e5013ae425&appId=PPGMS
Data: CORDIS, © European Union