2011-2012 Colloquium Series


Paula Mota Santos (Department of Behavior and Political Science, Universidade Fernando Pessoa, Porto Portugal & CAPP, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Portugal), will present "Portugal Dos Pequenitos Theme Park::Reflections on the Power of the Experimentation of an Imagined Place"

Friday, January 27, 4:00 PM
Room 101, 2251 College Avenue
Archeological Research Facility
University of California, Berkeley

Synopsis:
Officialy opened in 1940, Portugal dos Pequenitos is a theme park in which the whole of Portugal is represented through the miniature size of each Province's (and of each colonial possession) vernacular architecture. Its opening was an event part of the nation-wide celebrations of the emergence of the Portuguese Nation-State and of the Restauration of Portuguese National sovereignty. This is a theme park that it is well set within the ideological principles of the Portuguese political system of the time, the Estado Novo right wing dictatorship.

Portugal dos Pequenitos is the most visited tourist attraction in Coimbra, a city with a particular role within Portuguese history (it is the seat of the oldest Portuguese university) and consequently offering to its visitors numerous heritage-based points of interest. Thus the question arising is: how is it that a space built within very clear and defined ideological principles (ideological principles in presumed to be already past) constitutes itself in the present as such a strong tourist attraction?

The talk will co-relate issues of space (place) and identity (identifcation) and will do so by drawing from lines of thought developed in relation to themed spaces - both cities (eg, Las Vegas) and amusement parks (eg Disneyland) - and in relation to spaces made to be places of exhibition of the world (the World Exhibitions or International Fairs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries). Portugal dos Pequenitos will be addressed through its value as a place of representation and of performance. Thus the presentation will analyze the space-based rhetoric mechanisms deployed by the theme park, mechanisms here seen as central to this space's performance, and thus to its popularity with Coimbra's visitors. Because rhetoric is the art of the use of form to persuade of the idea, the paper will use the metaphor of the micographia and of the gigantic in order to present a reflection on the ways of experientiation made possible by the place's technologies of space and the senses and meaning produced by it, to then link those to the popularity of the place, i.e., to its apparently enduring ability of alluring a variety of visitors.

This event is being co-sponsored with the Portuguese Studies Program, UC Berkeley.