This book aims to explore the multiple ways in which Portuguese colonialism in former “Portuguese Asia” has been imagined. It focuses primarily on how Estado Novo (1933–1974), the longest-running European dictatorship, “imagined” these territories and peoples. Images played a pivotal role in the exercise of colonial power, propagating established ideas and portraying a colonial reality entirely from a Western perspective. Scarce existing studies rarely acknowledge the need to differentiate between the specificities glossed over by Luso-tropicalist (and Luso-orientalists) discourse. Despite their propagandistic nature and their impact on the socio-cultural memories and narrative identities of the former Portuguese territories in Asia, visual representations of colonialism have largely remained unquestioned. By analysing the impact of such representations in cinema, photography and literature, among other media, the book aims to distinguish between the circumstances of “Portuguese India”, Macau and Timor while also considering anti-(post)colonial ruptures and persistences.

About the Editor

Maria do Carmo Piçarra is the vice-coordinator of Instituto de Comunicação da NOVA (ICNOVA), Universidade Nova de Lisboa, an assistant professor at Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa (UAL), and a film curator. Her academic interests include (post)colonial filmic representations, film propaganda and censorship, women in decolonization and militant uses of the image. 

Book Details

Title: Luso-Orientalism(s)―On Imagined Projections And Ruins: Visual Representations Of Former “Portuguese Asia”

Editor: Maria do Carmo Piçarra

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan 

Publication Date: January 3, 2026

Language: English

Hardcover: 373 pp

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