April 25th and the dispute of utopias in the field of culture: re-signifying the past to project the future

Abstract

This article aims to analyze two contemporary novels – Deixei meu coração em África (2005), by Manuel Arouca, and O último ano em Luanda (2008), by Tiago Rebelo. Selected from a broader corpus of similarly styled works published since the 2000s, these novels are emblematic, within the cultural domain, of a far-right Portuguese discourse that seeks to nostalgically rehabilitate the colonial and Salazarist past. The article establishes a correlation between this cultural discourse and its counterpart in contemporary party politics, framing both as symptomatic of a broader civilizational crisis marked by competing visions of the future – an ongoing reconfiguration of utopian imaginaries. Within this framework, the Carnation Revolution of April 25th is portrayed as a historical deviation from the “true” national trajectory, reviving key ideological myths of Salazarism that call for rectification in the present in order to construct a renewed, idealized future. The analysis draws upon theorists such as Fernando Rosas, for the historical context of the Estado Novo; Silvio Renato Jorge and Edward Said, for the discussion of the enduring legacy of imperial ideology; and António Pedro Pita and Theodor Adorno, among others, to interrogate the contemporary resonance of the twentieth-century civilizational crisis.