ABSTRACT
This introductory chapter presents the theoretical and conceptual analysis on which this book is grounded. It also presents the central argument of Remembering the Liberation Struggles in Cape Verde: that the liberation struggle, through its uses, symbols and meanings, is configured as a “mnemonic device” that interacts with the (re)production of national imaginaries and with the definition of the challenges that Cape Verdean society had to and will face. By “mnemonic device”, we mean the constellation of representations that radiate from a particular historical past and the way in which the device lends itself to appropriations and disputes that transform it into a decisive – and fluctuating – political agent. The book is structured around four intertwined axes: the memorialization of the struggle in the immediate post-independence political order; the transition to a multiparty system and the contested legacies of anticolonialism; the construction of the “combatant” between recognition and invisibility; and finally, the public mobilization of Amílcar Cabral and the mnemonic battles for history. These central analytical points are translated into four chapters as outlined in the introduction.
