Black Girls Creating Kilombo:
“Raçuda Bodies,” Racial Violence, and Ontological Ginga in Brazil
Dr. Antônia Gabriela Pereira de Araújo
Fellow, Hutchins Center for African & African American Research
Harvard University
When: Thursday May 4, 5:15PM
Where: Building 4, Room 4-237 (map)
Abstract: This talk analyzes the creation of “corporalities of struggle” among Black girls living in Brazilian favelas as processes forged under systems of exclusion, racialization, and “gender absence.” Dr. Pereira de Araujo employs the native expression “Raçuda” to present how Black girls are creating counter-narratives in the face of the tensions within racialized structures in order to highlight the pursuit of racial justice and the creation of an ontological and political project of what it means to be and become a Black woman in Brazil. The talk will utilize concepts such as body-map, Kilombo, fleshly territory, and diaspora to understand that there is a safe way to visualize Black girls’ “Raçudas corporalities” as an ontology of the “Ginga” of Black people living in the diaspora.
Bio: Antônia Gabriela Pereira de Araújo has a doctorate in Social Anthropology from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ/Museu Nacional). Her interests include racial justice, self-defense, racial stereotypes, racialization, feminization, and hypersexualization of young Black women in Brazil. She is the founder of the Black Library of Ceará, Casa Futuro. An artist, poet, and writer, Antonia Gabriela Pereira de Araújo received a full scholarship in 2020 to present her performance Erotic Autonomy at the II Black Women of the Future Workshop, organized by the Black Quantum Futurism Afro-Futurist Collective in Philadelphia.