Contested heritage and colonialism in Portugal: a state of cognitive dissonance

Abstract

This article explores the concept of contested heritage, taking as a starting point several episodes recently presented by the Portuguese media in which heritage acted as a trigger for the public debate about Portuguese colonialism. We examine how the concepts of "contested heritage", "heritage dissonance", and "cognitive dissonance" can be defined, differentiated, and interconnected, concluding that contested heritage representing Portuguese colonialism functions as an expression of a cognitive dissonance state and, simultaneously, as a consonance-seeking process. In this regard, it is critical to emphasise how a cognitive dissonance state is active in the people involved in the contestation processes and not in the objects themselves. We argue that contested heritage should not be understood as "problems" to be "solved" but as pathways to reveal and deal with the complexity underneath: what is contested, who contests, and why they do so.