The lusophony in the blogosphere: from the “imagined community” to the “imaginative community”

Abstract

Departing from the observation that the blogosphere is nowadays a powerful communication space between Lusophone citizens - users of Portuguese language constitute the fifth largest language community on the Internet (Macedo , Martins & Macedo , 2010) - this paper presents some findings of a study that sought to examine the contents of fifteen blogs, Brazilian Mozambican and Portuguese, in relation to representations of the Lusophony. The results show that many aspects of the Portuguese colonial empire long history, from its achievements to its vicissitudes, are reminded, communicated and discussed in order to justify points of view, whether favorable or unfavorable, about the meaning of a Lusophone community. Regarding it as a kind of imperial extension, both its advocates (usually nostalgic Portuguese on their supposedly glorious historical past), as its detractors (mostly Africans and Brazilians who preserve the memory of a past of domination), tend to produce simplified representations that result in tensions and misunderstandings. Consequently, there is confusion between the nowadays geocultural community of Lusophony and its own past. This confusion is connected with the crossing of the independent present of those who speak, think and feel in Portuguese with the colonial past, which led them to the meeting of their cultures. In fact, on the blogosphere, lusophony is emphasized, on one hand, as a Portuguese colonial empire heritage and, one the other hand, as an unequivocal proof of its radical disappearance. It is concluded that such a diversity of representations can turn this “imagined community” into a “imaginative community.” .