How much does the past weigh in on the present and future of Portugal? This is not a specifically Portuguese problem. It concerns every peripheral and semiperipheral country in the world system. The linear conception of time that prevails in Western Modernity, that is, the idea that history has a single direction, allows core or developed countries, which are for that reason located at the tip of the arrow of time, to define as backward all that is out of symmetry with them (Santos, “A Critique of the Lazy Reason”; Wallerstein, The Politics of the World-Economy). This is why only in core countries is the past not problematic, for it justifies and ratifies the success of the present.
Original Contents by Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies, 19/20, 399-443
