Keynote Speakers - CONVIVIAL CULTURES | XI Lisbon Summer School for the Study of Culture - Djamila Ribeiro

MYTHS AROUND BRAZILIAN RACISM: A VIEW THROUGH THE LENS OF THE BLACK FEMINIST THEORY

Abstract

In this class, we will study how Black intellectuals opposed founding myths of Brazilian society. Our interest will be to identify how Brazilian Black feminists, such as Lélia González, Sueli Carneiro, as well as other thinkers such as Abdias do Nascimento and Kabengele Munanga dismantle in their productions the constructions of scientific racism and the subsequent theory of racial democracy, exported by Brazil to several international academic centers. Racial democracy is a belief that in this country there was a transcendence of racial conflicts, with a harmonious coexistence between whites, blacks and indigenous people. One of the classic scenes that represents what would be the imaginary of racial democracy brings white and black men sitting and partying at the table, while the Black woman, naked, cheerfully dances samba. Our concern will be to understand how González, Carneiro and other Black feminists conceive the mulata in critical perspective, in defiance of the myth of racial democracy. In the Brazilian Black feminist tradition, there are several refutations to the places imposed on this social group. We will also highlight the theoretical and critical developments about the figure of the Black Mother, so rooted in colonial history and translated into post-colonialism in the figure of the domestic servant, the position of more than 6 million women in Brazil, with a large Black majority. Based on the confrontation with myths, we will make a reflection on the historical tradition of struggle and critical production by Brazilian Black feminists.

Biography

Djamila Ribeiro has a master's degree in Political Philosophy from the Federal University of São Paulo. She is the coordinator of the Sueli Carneiro editorial Seal and the Plural Feminisms Collection, an independent editorial initiative that changed the publishing market in Brazil. She is the author of several books and is a professor in the journalism department at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP). A Columnist for Folha de S. Paulo newspaper, Djamila was Deputy Assistant of Human Rights for the city of São Paulo in 2016. She was awarded the 2019 Prince Claus Award, granted by the Kingdom of the Netherlands and considered by the BBC one of the 100 most influential women in the world, the same year.