Politics in the Portuguese Futurist Texts

Pinto dos Santos, Mariana

http://hdl.handle.net/10362/185866

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Pinto dos Santos, Mariana

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This essay analyses Portuguese futurist manifestos, and other texts produced by the Portuguese Futurism protagonists, highlighting the primitivist tropes they use, namely the idea of a “return to origin,” and associating those tropes with the specificity of the Portuguese political situation during the first Republican period (1910-1918), focusing specially on the context of the Portuguese participation in the First World War.The essay discusses firstly the problematic concept of ‘primitivism’ and how nevertheless it can be paradoxically useful to study Futurism. Manifestos, pamphlets and poems by Raul Leal, António Ferro, Álvaro de Campos and Almada Negreiros are analysed considering the concept of “origin” they entrail and by considering their “context and performativity” (Foster), that is, their historicity and scope of impact. Consequently, their primitivist tropes are proved to be tied to Portuguese politics, specifically its imperialism which was in danger of collapsing since the nineteenth century and in particular in the context of the First World War, and the consequent contradictory positions regarding the stance either destructive or encomiastic of civilisation, either pro-war or against the war. Finally, this essay emphasises that the interpretation of the Portuguese futurist manifestos must acknowledge the parody of their Italian counterparts and elaborates, on the one hand, on the primitivist trope of childhood, seen as the matrix of fun and mockery and, on the other, the revolutionary power that humour entails.