Dissonances, Circularities, Assimilations

The Colonial Conquest of Mentalities

Abstract

The essay analyzes how the colonial experience in Portuguese-speaking countries established a “living heritage” based on the control and management of the imaginary. It presents colonialism not only as a political and administrative enterprise but as a method of conquering souls aimed at ensuring the permanence of relations of dominance through the imposition of European values. The method consists of a literary analysis of the novel The Last Will and Testament of Senhor Napumoceno (1989), by Germano Almeida, examining the protagonist as a type of “European-style assimilated” person. The conclusion demonstrates that the assimilation of the colonial system produces a subject marked by epistemic dissonances, inhabiting the thresholds of abyssal cleavages between local tradition and imposed modernity. The study reveals that this incomplete assimilation ensures the continuity of structural asymmetries and silencings in post-colonial spaces.