Reggaeir@ Sou Eu: Race, Nation and the Politics of Identity in Roots Reggae Culture in São Luis do Maranhão, Brazil
Abstract
This dissertation examines the performative space of roots reggae music and dance performancescape in São Luis do Maranhão, Brazil. It examines the ways in which Caribbean sounds are employed by Afro-Maranhese to create performative spaces that contest representations of blackness in Brazil. In this examination, I address how Afro-Maranheses engage in the process of transformation by appropriating Caribbean Sounds in the performative spaces of blackness. The dissertation also examines the ways in which these performative spaces, as spaces of struggle are objects of legal forms of surveillance, discipline and punishments that are targeted by the policia militar (military police) because they critically challenge the state’s representations of blackness. I make two pronounced contentions to support all of my arguments in this study. Firstly, I posit that musical and dance practices are essential to the understanding of the production of Afro-Brasilidade Space—what I have termed as the dialogic performative space that represents the series of repeated responsive performances that Afro-Brazilians engage in, in the challenge of the state’s simultaneous celebration of black culture and routine violence against black bodies. Borrowing Brah’s (1996) construct of diaspora space and Dirlik’s (1996) notion of “ancestralidade” (ancestrality), I define Afro-Brasilidade Space as the articulated and expressive space of contestation where representations of blackness are challenged. It is also the conceptual space that allows Afro-Brazilians to produce their versions of Afrodiasporic subjectivities, which I define as the ways in which Afro-Brazilians, like other people of African descent in the African diaspora engage in similar enunciations of contestation to combat their own experiences of racialized subjectivity. Additionally, I couple Afro-Brasilidade Space with the term reggaeir@ bodies to show how enunciations of musical practices interconnect with the discursive construction of racialized bodies in Brazil under affirmative action policies. I employ this analytical framework to highlight the performative space of roots reggae music and culture in the critical practice of blackness, and how these are inscribed in and contest the pedagogical discourse of nation and citizenship organized around racial democracy as part of the broader Afrodiasporic performance-scape. Secondly, I argue that the study of an Afrodiasporic musical practices such as reggaeir@ismo requires an examining of different forms that agency can take, particularly agency in response to state violence against the black body. I argue that the embodied practices of reggaeir@ismo in the performative of roots reggae are counter-discursive and counter-hegemonic, and this explains why these spaces are heavily policed. I fundamentally focus my arguments on the assertions that Brazilian affirmative action, as a documentary practice is not fundamentally corrective. I also argue that racial democracy as a discourse of hybridity persist to obscure very real forms of racial oppression and inequalities even with the institution of affirmation action policies. Afro-Brazilians have been discursively included in the space of citizenship through the denial of their blackness.
Subject Area
Cultural anthropology|Dance|Music|Latin American Studies
Recommended Citation
Yawson, Gloria Angebelle, "Reggaeir@ Sou Eu: Race, Nation and the Politics of Identity in Roots Reggae Culture in São Luis do Maranhão, Brazil" (2019). ProQuest ETD Collection for FIU. AAI30245934.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/dissertations/AAI30245934