“BUSCAR EM LONGES TERRAS O QUE EM CASA NOS FALTA”: REFLECTIONS ON THE STRANGER IN THE THOUGHT OF EDUARDO LOURENÇO

Abstract

On the occasion of the centenary of Eduardo Lourenço’s birth, and in order to pay tribute to his thought as a source of understanding of the challenges facing European societies today, we propose to explore the notion of the ‘foreigner’, focusing on the figure of the Portuguese emigrant analysed by Lourenço in his work O Labirinto da Saudade. More specifically, we will look at the tendency of the Portuguese collective imagination, as presented in the chapter entitled “A emigração como mito e os mitos da emigração”, to mythologise the phenomenon of emigration. For Portugal, this tendency represents not only a basis for the creation of certain collective fantasies, but also a means of accepting the country’s European condition — in line with a process of decolonisation that began in the 1970s. We will also highlight the fact that France was (and still is) a country of reference for the Portuguese, home to one of the most significant Portuguese communities. We will look at the ways in which young Franco-Portuguese and their parents integrate into the French environment. To deepen Lourenço’s thinking and weave a comparative approach, we will turn to Julia Kristeva’s Étrangers à nous-mêmes, in which the Bulgarian naturalized French philosopher reflects on the way(s) European civilization looks at foreigners.