“Interculturality” and Portuguese Legacies in Contemporary World

A meaningful encounter between cultures takes place only in an ‘intercultural’ space which resides in the self-reflexive dimension of all cultural encounters. North of the south and south of the north, an empire with a ‘colonial economy’, a country that was both the ‘source of migrations’ and the ‘destiny of immigrations’, Portugal and Portuguese identity has always been very difficult to define. Being the origin of an empire whose evaluation is still polemic, the Portuguese have been seen in very different ways by their European contemporaries and as well as their colonial ‘subjects’. The present study is an attempt to understand Portugal and its encounters with the 20th century India, Brazil and Macao as represented through various tools of Visual Culture as sources of historical understanding. The work elaborates four different aspects of Portuguese legacy and ‘interculturality’ as case studies of the problem.