Who wants to be erased? Social representations of world history and decolonisation of thought

Abstract

The representations of world history conveyed by the media and disseminated in global encyclopaedias are perhaps some of the clearest examples of how much still needs to be done to decolonise knowledge. Thus, it is urgent to give voice to different narratives about world history, so as to reveal the versions of people and groups who have been systematically “erased” from History during the colonial period and still often remain invisible in the dominant narratives in the so-called post-colonial period. In this article, we comparatively analyse the results of a survey conducted among young people in Mozambique and Portugal. In both countries, we investigated the social representations of world history. The common trends and the divergences in the representations of world history, particularly with regard to the colonial period, are discussed taking into account the role of national identities in structuring collective memories.