Lídia Jorge's A costa dos murmúrios (1988) has been primarily theorized as a subversion of historical discourse. Similar to a number of Jorge's examinations of social changes emerging as the Estado Novo declined, the novel juxtaposes two competing versions of the past, in this case a fictional representation of the colonial wars and a woman's testimonial account twenty years later. This article reconsiders the novel's status as historical deconstruction, arguing that its oral and visual

more »

... es instead correspond to the methodology of cultural historiography that emerged during the 1970s and 1980s. Expanding Helena Kaufman's reading of the testimonial as "deliterarization," I analyze how a slippage of critical terminology over time has equated historical fiction with narrative history. After examining the competing agendas of cultural history and literary postmodernism, I demonstrate how reconceiving Jorge's historical "annulment" as a productive revision of fiction provides a model of complementary history facilitating interdisciplinary engagement.