Representação do (não-)excecionalismo lusotropicalista: A viagem ao mundo colonial de Maria da Graça Freire

Abstract

This article aims to inquire about the representation of the lusotropicalist exceptionalism of the “Portuguese way of being in the world”, based on Gilberto Freyre’s theory of lusotropi-calism, according to the interpretation of the Portuguese writer Maria da Graça Freire (1918–1993), in particular in the works A primeira viagem (1953) and A terra foi-lhe negada (1958), where there is dubious opposition to the “exception” advocated by the lusotropicalist rhetoric of the policies of the Portuguese colonial empire. On the one hand, an opposition to Lusotropicalism is confirmed, that is, the ‘innate’ aptitude of the Portuguese man to adapt to the tropics, in human, social and physical terms, cultivating a ‘harmonious’ miscegenation between the dif-ferent races; on the other hand, there is ‘a colonial-fascist mix’, in a mildly politicised discourse integrated into the colonial ideology of the regime of the Estado Novo.