This paper begins with some observations on photographs taken in Lisbon on April 25, 1974, and in the days that followed, to explain how many of these images continue to engage the viewer nearly 50 years later. These images carry a meaning that points beyond the mere recorded event and suggest a complex succession or spectrum of feelings and experiences associated with the captured moment. Based on an analysis of two portraits of Captain Salgueiro Maia taken by photographer Alfredo Cunha on April 25, 1974, I discuss how these photographs have continued to circulate over the years, sometimes appearing in quite unexpected places and spaces; thus, through processes of remediation and intermediation, they may reveal some important aspects of the transition of memories of April 25, 1974, from a time/space of collective memory to that of cultural memory.
This study takes a comparative look at the representations of women in the work of American photographer Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) and Portuguese journalist Maria Lamas (1893-1983). Set in different contexts, the Great Depression and the New Deal, on the one hand, and the Estado Novo on the other, it is assumed that both revealed a similar sensitivity regarding the place of women in society. By photographing women specifically, and directly or indirectly implying labor in the representations, not only is the possibility of transformation of the social order suggested, but we also witness a recognition of the female body in its experiences and interactions with the environment, and associated with specific subjectivities. Based on an analysis of both documentary and neorealist aesthetics in tandem with current theories of visual culture, the study invites a reading of bodies as social texts that register both established and potential power relations, offering counter-visualities of the conditions of women in the era in which they were published.
This article advances a critical reflection on the murals produced in Lisbon as part of the commemorations marking the fiftieth anniversary of the 25 April Revolution, with particular emphasis on the initiative “5 Décadas, 5 Artistas, 5 Murais” and the reinterpretation of the Salgueiro Maia mural at the School of Social and Human Sciences, NOVA University of Lisbon. It argues that these interventions function as urban palimpsests, layering memories of the Revolution with colonial silences and forms of symbolic resistance. Although embedded within processes of institutionalisation and the commodification of public space, they nonetheless reveal tensions between celebration and critique, particularly in the articulation – or omission – of April’s anticolonial dimension. By intersecting art, memory and politics, the article interrogates the ways in which the city reinscribes, or silences, marginalised subjects and narratives, thereby foregrounding the ambivalence of mural art as a gesture that is at once aesthetic and political.
This paper proposes an inquiry into the Cabinet of Curiosities: An interpretation inaugurated at the Science Museum of the University of Coimbra in May 2022. Given the colonial and imperial context in which these exhibition rooms first appeared, this essay seeks to analyze how this installation has been discursively presented, advertised and curated by exploring the strategies of representation that frame the objects within. The recycling of a colonial paradigm of thought that emerges consequently deems it imperative to examine how Portugal’s hegemonic narrativization of its colonial past continues to endorse an adherence to and perpetuation of several modes of coloniality in a twenty-first century context. Ultimately, this essay seeks to argue for the need to foster an anti-colonial and anti-imperial consciousness in academic and scientific spaces of knowledge.
This article analyses two Portuguese films that inscribe sexuality and desire in the context of the revolution’s political aspirations: A cama (1975) by Sinde Filipe and Dina e Django (1981) by Solveig Nordlund. It draws on the theoretical and conceptual framework of the gendered gaze (male gaze and female gaze) to investigate the extent to which the post-revolution visual cultures articulate and problematize ruptures, continuities, and contradictions in the situation of women throughout the period of the revolution. It argues that A cama celebrates a male utopia in which sexual liberation and political liberation are closely intertwined, and women emerge as objects of male desire. In contrast, Dina e Django gives centrality to female subjectivities, highlighting the continuities between the pre- and post-revolution in terms of the persistence of sexism, violence in intimate relationships, and the sexual objectification of women.
Although public participation in health policies has been a right since the creation of the Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS), it faces many challenges. The notion of unreason, which is socially attributed to people experiencing severe mental distress, often limits the scope of knowledge of these mental health service users, thus excluding them from decision-making processes. This article aims to discuss community participation among mental health service users based on their own experiences, using a participatory methodology. The results indicate significant challenges to their participation, such as the need for greater autonomy, the issue of overcoming notions of incapacity associated with severe mental distress, and the organization of participation spaces tailored to their needs. In this sense, including the perspectives of service users in the construction of participation spaces is essential.
This article aims to present reflections on the importance of recognizing the profile of users of mental health services to strengthen emancipatory care and enable full citizenship. To this end, we analyze the historical struggle for mental health care in Brazil, marked by eugenic policies in contrast to care proposals that recognize the subject as a citizen with rights. Subsequently, we point out the need to identify the impacts of social markers of difference in access to mental health, given how Brazil is marked by certain social inequalities. We emphasize that the present article is the result of research in progress entitled Psychosocial Census of Users of Mental Health Services in Rio de Janeiro State, conducted by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the Health Department of Rio de Janeiro State.
This work aims to explore the poetic expressions of three Portuguese authors – Ângelo de Lima, Florbela Espanca, and Adília Lopes – within the context of madness and psychiatric treatment. Rather than categorizing them solely as “mad”, the focus is on redefining their poetics as a response to psychic suffering and psychiatric interventions, towards the formation of a Mad/Disability canon in Lusophone literature. Considering verbal arts and therapeutic activities in the history of psychiatry, this paper deals with both the confessional and confrontational repertories used to give voice to one’s experience, particularly, in poetic writing. By advocating for Mad/Disability Poetry as a platform for both writers and psychiatric patients, it is argued that their works offer insights into the experience of madness and provide stylistic devices for questioning reality and promoting social emancipation.
This paper aims to analyze the meanings attributed to female hysteria associated with the character Kate Dibiasky in the 2021 film Don’t look up. Offering possible materiality to engage more fully an emancipatory debate on mental health, the film offers a critique of power relations and gender stereotypes, especially in a context of scientific denialism. Using Narratology as a theoretical-methodological guide, the research seeks to point out the critical nuances that reinforce the profile of female hysteria through a satirical plot set in an ‘end of the world’ scenario. Although the film is not built on a debate aimed at mental health, an analysis of the film points to the existence of a dissident narrative about hysteria, becoming an invitation to rethink hegemonic psychiatric models in addition to broadening therapeutic validity.
This article offers a provisional mapping of some of the affective impacts of the Anthropocene, a geological epoch proposed to illustrate the couplings of human agency and planetary phenomena. The article stems from two research projects: a PhD project which carried out an ontological analysis of Vipassana and Zen meditative practices in France, Portugal and the United Kingdom and a research project on the ontologies of the Anthropocene in Portugal, including semistructured interviews with members of the Transition Network. The paper explores three case studies which constitute heterogenous expressions of the varieties of anthropocenic experience: the suffering caused by the environmental and climate collapse; neoliberal environmentalism; and the ramifications of environmentalism and spirituality, supported by meditative phenomenologies.
This article seeks to address the forms and possibilities of response and care in the daily lives of followers of Candomblé suffering mental distress, considering factors in their connection to ways of knowing themselves and the world. To this end, unstructured interviews were aligned with participant observation. The corpus analysis was based on ethical categories linked to the deinstitutionalization process and the material derived from this analysis was read based on the cartoethnographic matrix of lines of thought. Based on this, it was possible to perceive that the interlocutors experienced care relationships both from the place of the caregiver and the person being cared, sometimes hybridizing these positions. Furthermore, acting in the world as a caregiver – which was made possible by immersion in Candomblé – proved to be linked to a whole process of re-understanding and intersubjective transformation, which outlines new possibilities of experiencing and being in the world.
The article addresses risk management in an institution in Slovenia that provides long-term residential care in the field of mental health. It briefly describes the country-specific context of institutional care, especially in secure units, as places where coercive measures are permitted. The article includes an analysis of an action research project embedded in the process of deinstitutionalisation. Firstly, it demonstrates that three types of placement act as the primary risk management strategy in the institution. Secondly, it shows that neither the general risk management strategies nor the risk assessment method used are centred on the individual, but rather serve to ensure the safety of the unit. The article suggests that the secure unit and its practices are repressive and violate human rights. The transformation of secure units must be a primary goal of deinstitutionalisation.
This paper traces the challenges of writing about an emotional othering of disabled people – between abjection and fetishization. These challenges can firstly be characterized as conceptual challenges. To date, theory-building in Disability Studies about emotional reactions to disability has mainly relied on disabled scholars’ ruminations on an emotional foundation for the discriminatory behaviour they experience. Further challenges arise within the ethical realm. When writing about an emotional othering, one risks reproducing the underlying violence. To navigate these challenges, I locate emotional reactions to disability in a social imaginary, which I further characterize as dis/ableist in the structural sense. After all, alleged reactions to disability reveal less about disabled people (as subjects or a collective) than about the respective socio-cultural context in which these reactions are acquired.
This article aims to explore the experiences narrated in the life story of an intersex person who socially transitioned gender, delving into the theme of dissidence in its most significant dimensions. In methodological terms, a qualitative study was carried out, in which her the life story was collected through unstructured interviews, and the thematic analysis of the corpus was carried out phenomenologically. The autobiographical narrative opened the way to understanding not only how family, school, work, medical and social contexts impacted life experiences when they occurred but also how they reverberate into the present, constraining behaviors and at the same time driving dissidence and the exercise of narrating her own experience.
As the title of this article states, my intent is to question the universality of the concept of humanity based on the conception of monstrosity, which is very much akin to that of animality. Contrary to how humanity is presented, the latter does not constitute universality, but rather universalization, perpetuating the dehumanization of bodies that do not mirror the ideals of modernity. The figure of the monster is attributed to these bodies, which legitimizes the humanity of the colonial Self. Categories such as the Animal and Otherness emerge to designate these Others, opposed to the Self. Thus, the aim of this research is to reflect upon the limits of the human, with the figure of the chimera –- a symbiosis of dragon, mammals and reptile – as a representation of this monstrosity that is so dangerous for humanity.
This paper explores the evolving concepts of ‘woman’ and ‘lesbian’ in contemporary discourse, emphasizing fluidity influenced by spatial, temporal, and power dynamics. Critiquing rigid identity politics, it advocates for a broader, inclusive perspective on lesbianism, challenging Western-centric views. Affirming lesbian identities, incorporating the fluidity of gender and sexual identities, is recognized as revolutionary, disrupting gender norms, and dismantling patriarchal structures. Lesbian erasure, rooted in societal expectations and patriarchy, is also experienced in LGBTIQ spaces with biases in the representation of different sexual orientations and gender identities. This paper calls for intersectional approaches, recognizing diverse voices, and active efforts to challenge and dismantle lesbian erasure for a more inclusive society.
The article aims to contextualise the criminalisation and legal persecution of sexual dissidence within the Iberian dictatorships, reflecting on the similarities and differences between Spain and Portugal with respect to legal repression. Through historiographical analysis, the article examines how these measures were implemented during much of the 20th century, highlighting the analysis parallels and differences between legislative codes and their transformation into repressive practices in both countries directed at gender and sexuality. The paper does not propose a quantitative conclusion about repression but instead offers an appreciation of the Peninsula as a spatial unit where an Iberian transnational perspective on the history of sexual and gender dissidence can be articulated.
