Abstract

The works of Lídia Jorge are key for an understanding of the relationship between psychoanalysis and Portuguese literature. This essay looks at three recent novels by Lídia Jorge, focusing on how the narratives deploy psychoanalytical concepts in order to engage ethically and politically with Portugal's relation to its imperial past and its present postcolonial condition. The protagonists are viewed as damaged individuals in parallel to their society. The focus on Oedipal transferences that informs much of the earlier of the three novels subsides gradually as the latest novel engages more radically with the mirror stage and a representation of the Real as a form of spectacle in a betrayal of post-revolutionary dreams for a better society.