Silvia Correia (Porto): War writings, fragments of self and memory beyond the front. Correspondence from Portuguese soldiers, 1914-1918.

June 18, 4pm 
IG 1.414, Campus Westend

In this presentation, I aim to argue that war letters written by Portuguese soldiers challenged the idea that the Great War would signify a break in cultural language, instead fostering a comforting return to the emotional community and self-identity that existed prior to the conflict. These testimonial objects reveal an effort to maintain a universe of cultural codes from before the war, enabling these men to resist the brutalizing effects of the conflict. By studying the letters as war writings, I seek to integrate these testimonies into the war narrative, which has long been overlooked in Portuguese historiography and cultural memory. My focus is not on the veracity of their contents, but on analyzing how self-censorship and silence are mediated by the expectations of an epistolary pact. Additionally, I examine how the letters became a fundamental survival strategy for these men, who, by leaving a faint trace of their experiences, inscribe themselves into the object as a persistent identity. Transcending the manichean logic of the war of nations, and based on structures of sociability desirably untouched by the catastrophe—emotional and mnemonic communities—these letters definitively reorganize the geographies and temporalities of total war.

Sílvia Correia is Professor at the University of Porto. She specializes in contemporary Portuguese and European history, 20th century conflicts and their cultural impact from a comparative and transnational perspective, and is interested in debates on history and memory, as well as critical postcolonial theories of violence. Previously, she was a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (2013-2022) and received her Ph.D. from NOVA University Lisbon (2011). She was a Fulbright Research Fellow and a Postdoctoral researcher at Brown University (2011-2012) and Directeurs d’Études Associés at the Fondation Maison Science de l’Homme (2020).