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From Black History to Diasporan History: Brazilian Abolition in Afro-Atlantic Context
Abstract
Cet article examine la construction et l'utilisation d'une structure diasporique pour analyser l'histoire afro-atlantique pendant l'ère suivant l'abolition de l'esclavage. Il résume les résultats des recherches de l'auteur portant sur les cinquante premières années suivant la fin de l'esclavage au Brésil (1888-1938). L'utilisation d'une base diasporique a permis de clarifier des schémas autrement obscurcis par les approches monographiques traditionnelles comparables à d'autres communautés afro-atlantiques. This article examines the construction and use of a diasporan framework for analyzing Afro-Atlantic history during the postabolition era. It summarizes the findings of the author's research on the first fifty years after the end of slavery in Brazil (1888-1938). The use of a diasporan framework illuminates patterns, otherwise obscured by traditional monographic approaches, that can be compared with other Afro-Atlantic communities.
... The African academic diaspora is but a small part of the historic experiences of African-born people migrating, willingly or not, to other geographical spaces. Several scholars have provided conceptual insights into the complex nature of the African diaspora (Baubock and Faist 2010;Butler 2000;Dufoix 2008;Falola 2001;Nesbitt 2002;Turner and Kleist 2013;Zeleza 2004Zeleza , 2005. ...
... These groups may maintain lateral ties with both the homeland and the host land, in a circular exchange of continuous mobility, without necessarily envisaging a return . Butler (2000) succinctly summarises these notions of diaspora. According to him, in any conceptualisation of diaspora, five dimensions should be considered: reasons for and conditions of dispersal; relationship with homeland; relationship with host lands; interrelationship within diasporic groups; and comparative study of different diasporas. ...
Contents Editorial Elísio S. Macamo........................................................................v Introduction: Reclaiming the African Diaspora to Support African Higher Education Patrício V. Langa & Samuel Fongwa.............................................................vii African Diaspora and the Search for Academic Freedom Safe Havens: Outline of a Research Agenda Nelson Casimiro Zavale & Patrício V. Langa..............................................................1 Modelling an African Research University: Notes towards an Interdisciplinary, Cross-Cultural and Anticipative Curriculum Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga.........................................................25 African Diaspora and its Multiple Academic Affiliations: Curtailing Brain Drain in African Higher Education through Translocal Academic Engagement Patrício V. Langa.......................................................................51 Navigating the Uncertain Path of Research Partnerships: The Role of ICT John Kwame Boateng & Raymond Asare Tutu.....................................................77 Moving Beyond Poststructural Paralysis: Articulating an Ethic of Diaspora Collaboration Nelson Masanche Nkhoma..........................................................95 Diaspora Collaboration and Knowledge Production in Africa: Reflections on Caveats and Opportunities Samuel Fongwa................................................................115 Advancing Collaboration between African Diaspora and Africa-based Scholars: Extracts of Interviews with Selected African Diaspora Scholars Patrício V. Langa, Patrick Swanzy & Pedro Uetela........................................135
... The African academic diaspora is but a small part of the historic experiences of African-born people migrating, willingly or not, to other geographical spaces. Several scholars have provided conceptual insights into the complex nature of the African diaspora (Baubock and Faist 2010;Butler 2000;Dufoix 2008;Faist 2010;Falola 2001;Nesbitt 2002;Turner and Kleist 2013;Zeleza 2004Zeleza , 2005. ...
... These groups may maintain lateral ties with both the homeland and the host land, in a circular exchange of continuous mobility, without necessarily envisaging a return (Faist 2010). Butler (2000) succinctly summarises these notions of diaspora. According to him, in any conceptualisation of diaspora, five dimensions should be considered: reasons for and conditions of dispersal; relationship with homeland; relationship with host lands; interrelationship within diasporic groups; and comparative study of different diasporas. ...
This article examines assumptions concerning the extent to which being in exile influences academics’ possibilities to exercise academic freedom, particularly when articulating views on African political and social issues that might be inconvenient to the established political authorities. Two main questions are addressed. First, do African academics need to be in diaspora to exercise their academic freedom, including freedom of expression and free speech, particularly beyond the walls of the university and its consecrated freedom of teaching and research? Second, do factors such as disciplinary background, country of origin, reasons for migrating from Africa and period of living in exile influence the propensity of academics in diaspora to publicly express their views on political and social issues in their home countries? The article begins by conceptualising the African diaspora, African academic diaspora, academic freedom and ‘extramural’ academic freedom.
... Recent research shows that the understanding of blackness as a meaningful category of social stratification is mainly shaped by the categories through which the black population has been excluded from the mainstream society. For instance, according to Butler (2000), blackness as a racial category became a rallying category through which Afro-Brazilians in the São Paulo area asserted their identity simply because blackness was the category used to exclude them from society. However, among Afro-Brazilians around the Salvatore, Bahia area, where most of the population maintained significant elements of African culture, both exclusion and identity assertions took the form of cultural categories. ...
... However, among Afro-Brazilians around the Salvatore, Bahia area, where most of the population maintained significant elements of African culture, both exclusion and identity assertions took the form of cultural categories. This situation creates a reality discontinuity between the adherents of the taken-for-granted universal blackness and how it is defined in the rest of the world (Butler 2000;Gordon and Anderson 1999). Writing about her Brazilian field experience, Butler (2000: 132), had this to say about the difference between her (North American) racial worldview and that of South American blacks: 'What I realized was that my construction of blackness based on my United States perspective was not necessarily shared around the Afro-Atlantic Diaspora'. ...
Early writers on migrants in North America such as Bryce-Laporte (19727.
Bryce-Laporte , R. 1972. ‘Black immigrants: the experience of invisibility and inequality’. Journal of Black Studies, 3(1): 29–56. View all references) lamented the lack of research on black immigrants, referring to them as invisible immigrants. Since then, both the volume of research on foreign-born blacks as well as their share of the overall black population in North America have risen dramatically. This increase signals that the black population in North America is a diverse group increasingly identifying themselves more by culture and/or nationality than by skin colour. Using qualitative research methods, this project focuses on the disjuncture between how one set of black immigrants—Somalis—understand blackness in their homelands and how it is defined in North America. The findings reveal the problematics of racial categories and confirm the situational nature of racial identities. The results of this study are not substantially confined to African immigrants alone, but carry both theoretical and conceptual significance for the development, maintenance and consequences of racial formations in North America.
... However, among Afro-Brazilians around the Salvatore, Bahia area, where most of the population maintained significant elements of African culture, both exclusion and identity assertions took the form of cultural categories. This situation creates a reality discontinuity between the adherents of the taken-for-granted universal blackness and how it is defined in the rest of the world (Butler 2000; Gordon and Anderson 1999). ...
... Writing about her Brazilian field experience, Butler (2000: 132), had this to say about the difference between her (North American) racial worldview and that of South American blacks: 'What I realized was that my construction of blackness based on my United States perspective was not necessarily shared around the Afro-Atlantic Diaspora'. And Gordon, referring to his fieldwork experiences among Nicaraguan blacks, writes: A young black, politically active, male intellectual, a product of the vexed racial politics of the United States . . . ...
Typescript. Thesis (Ph.D.)--Wayne State University, 1998. Includes bibliographical references (p. 216-226). Photocopy.
... Gran parte de los estudios hechos por intelectuales estadunidenses sobre la cuestión racial en Brasil ha tendido a no considerar el poder de agencia social que existe en la identidad mestiza, imputando a los afro-brasileños aquello que ellos denominan "una ausencia de consciencia racial" (Hanchard, 1994) e incurriendo en el error de leer los procesos raciales brasileños a partir de categorías analíticas acuñadas para el contexto norte-americano (Segato, 1998:132-133;Butller, 2000:132). Asumir la posibilidad de la agencia en el mestizaje 27 es muy importante para comprender el poder de integración social promovido por las agrupaciones de capoeira a partir de la modernización de la práctica -proceso que analizaremos en seguida -y también para comprender cómo los movimientos sociales rea- lizados a partir de elementos culturales afro-brasileños han tenido importantes consecuencias políticas, pese a que no se enunciasen a sí mismos como "movi- mientos políticos" (Butler, 2000). Esos movimientos culturales, al ponerse jus- to en el espacio de mediación permitido por la ideología de democracia racial e identidad mestiza, pudieron negociar posiciones y realizar luchas (Fontaine, 1980:112) que no podrían haberse enunciado en el plano político: ...
El presente artículo analiza el proceso de nacionalización del género cultural afro-brasileño conocido como capoeira. Enfocaremos nuestro análisis a partir de los aspectos sociales, económicos y políticos resultantes del establecimiento de una sociedad patriarcal y esclavista en Brasil. Describiremos cómo las relaciones entre �negros� y �blancos� generaron estructuras de larga duración que afectarían no solamente el proceso de constitución del Estado nacional brasileño, sino también los usos de los espacios públicos en las grandes urbes como Río de Janeiro y Salvador, originando imaginarios que perdurarían incluso después de la independencia (durante la monarquía, la primera república y la dictadura varguista). Abordaremos además, como las manifestaciones culturales centradas en performances corporales adquirieron un signifi cado político en la sociedad brasileña, lo que incluye también los sentidos y usos históricos de la mano de obra africana. Finalmente, discutiremos cómo la llegada al poder de Getúlio Vargas (1930) inauguró un proyecto de identidad nacional mestiza que transformó la manera como la nación entiende las herencias culturales africanas, generando el �paradigma étnico nacional�, y un espacio de mediación social donde prácticas antes perseguidas, como la capoeira, fueron re-signifi cadas convirtiéndose en íconos de la recién inventada �cultura popular brasileña�.
... http://www.nyamnjoh.com Notes 1 Kim D. Butler (2000) refers to this as the "Gramsci problem". Since some of this theory is inappropriate, she argues that there is a need for the development of an indigenous theory 2. Pierre Bourdieu (1984) sees student protests in France as predicated on this thesis. ...
Cameroonians saw a positive correlation between the enactment of the Liberty Laws in the early 1990s, the increase in the number of tertiary institutions, and the contribution of its universities to worldwide intellectual endeavors. Nevertheless, as the history of the University of Buea shows, the university space, instead of becoming free, became instead a space of domination. Universities discourage critical scholarship and collaboration, harass politically suspect instructors, and put barriers in the way of professional advancement. For most faculty members, energy in the university space has become focused on survival, with many individuals more concerned with promoting their upward mobility than with the production of knowledge. One particularly unfortunate result is the continued marginalization or silencing of the African voice on the global stage. Résumé: Les Camerounais ont remarqué une corrélation positive entre la promulgation des lois sur la liberté ou Liberty Laws au début des années 1990, l'accroissement du nombre d'institutions du secteur tertiaire, et la contribution de ses universités à l'entreprise intellectuelle dans le monde entier. Néanmoins, comme le montre l'histoire de l'université de Buea, l'espace universitaire, loin de se libérer, devint plutôt un espace de domination. Les universités y découragent les études et les collaborations d'ordre critique, harcèlent les enseignants politiquement suspects, et mettent des barrières sur le chemin de l'avancement professionnel. Pour la plupart des professeurs d'université, l'énergie de l'espace universitaire s'est maintenant concentrée sur la survie, un grand nombre de personnes étant plus préoccupé de la promotion de leur ascension sociale que de la production du savoir. Un résultat particulièrement malheureux de ce phénomène est la marginalisation continue ou la réduction au silence des voix africaines sur l'échelle globale.
... She offers a simple but useful schema for diasporan study divided into five dimensions: "(1) reasons for, and conditions of, the dispersal; (2) relationship with homeland; (3) relationship with hostlands; (4) interrelationships within diasporan groups; (5) comparative study of different diasporas." 14 For Darlene Clark Hine, Black diaspora studies need to have three features: a transatlantic framework, an interdisciplinary methodology, and a comparative perspective. 15 I would agree with the last two and revise the first, arguing that African diaspora studies need to have a global framework. ...
... In this context it was used to highlight migrants' contributions to social and economic development in Ghana and other parts of Africa (Mohan 2006;Koser 2003: 6-7). 1) Th e point that diff erent empirical forms of diasporas exist and should be studied in a comparative analytical framework has been frequently made in academic literature on diasporas (i.e. Butler 2000;Byfi eld 2000;Cohen 1997;Koser 2003;Schramm 2008). Nevertheless, I found that Brubaker most clearly distinguishes between analytical concepts and empirical objects of study. ...
This article explores diasporic discourses and practices among Ghanaian migrants in Germany. Instead of presuming that 'diaspora' is a stringent theoretical concept or refers to a bounded group in a sociological sense, it is argued that it provides migrants with a grammar of practice that allows for the situational and contextual construction of different types of 'diasporas'. Empirically, three social sites of construction are identified. Firstly, the Ghanaian nation-state and the reconfiguration of Ghanaian nationalism play an important role for promoting diasporic discourses. Secondly, the discourse of development and 'charity rituals' of ethnic and 'hometown' associations are of particular relevance for the proliferation of Ghanaian 'diasporas'. Thirdly, Ghanaian chieftaincies are involved in diasporic activities. The article is based on data collected in thirteen months of multi-sited ethnography conducted in Germany and Ghana between 2001 and 2003 and the analysis of video tapes, newspaper articles and web pages.
French
Cet article explore les discours diasporiques et les pratiques trouvées parmi les migrants ghanéens en Allemagne. Plutôt que de présumer que la « diaspora » est un concept théorique strict ou fait référence à un groupe délimité dans un sens sociologique, il est soutenu qu'il fournit une grammaire de pratiques qui permet la construction situationnelle et contextuelle de différents types de « diasporas ». Empiriquement, trois lieux de construction sociale sont identifiés. Premièrement l'Etat-nation ghanéen et la reconfiguration du nationalisme ghanéen jour un rôle important pour promouvoir des discours diasporiques. Deuxièmement, le discours du développement et des « rituels de charité » des associations ethniques et des « villes natales » a une pertinence particulière pour la prolifération des « diasporas » ghanéennes. Troisièmement, les chefferies des tribus ghanéennes sont impliquées dans les activités de la diaspora. Empiriquement, cet article se base sur treize mois d'ethnographie, conduite en Allemagne et au Ghana entre 2001 et 2003, et sur l'analyse de bandes-vidéos, d'articles de journaux et de sites web.
Este artigo tem como objetivo analisar a trajetória e as contribuições do escritor e pedagogo mineiro Ironides Rodrigues aos movimentos negros da diáspora e ao pensamento social brasileiro. Em particular, por sua incorporação da negritude francófona e de certo pensamento pan-africanista em sua luta e reflexão sobre a realidade étnico-racial do negro brasileiro. Para isso, serão examinados escritos diversos (memórias, ensaios, textos analíticos) de sua autoria, que, por não terem sido publicados anteriormente, ainda não foram alvo de pesquisas acadêmicas. A tese deste artigo é que o cerne de sua contribuição prática e teórica à luta negra mundial é sua compreensão da questão negra como direito de autoafirmação, que se consolidou a partir de sua práxis no Teatro Experimental do Negro, nas décadas de 1940-1950.
Desenvolve-se uma reflexão histórico-antropológica sobre a relação entre a nacionalização do samba, a institucionalização dos Grêmios Recreativos Escolas de Samba, e a constituição política da identidade nacional mestiça na Era Vargas (1930-1945). Conceituamos o samba como “prática heterotópica”, argumentando que, em sua nacionalização, as agremiações de sambistas cariocas operaram como agentes ressignificadores do conflito racial brasileiro, dotando a mestiçagem do projeto identitário varguista de um caráter dialético.
El presente artículo analiza las formulaciones teóricas sobre etnogénesis vinculándolas a poblaciones afro-descendientes en Latinoamérica. Empezamos recuperando características históricas del tráfico negrero y su influencia en la conformación de jerarquías raciales en países colonizados. Debatimos categorías teóricas como diáspora africana, etnicidad y etnogénesis, comprendiéndolas en el marco de la estructuración de los Estados-Nación. Finalmente, revisamos algunos estudios de casos sobre procesos de etnogénesis afro-descendiente en cuatro países de América Latina.
This article considers what African Studies needs to look like in order for it to retain its disciplinary relevance for the next generation and in the larger context of the Black Lives movement globally. It asks questions about where we have come from in terms of race consciousness in our discipline and why this issue matters today. It begins by tracing the development of African Studies’ epistemic journey, and follows this with an examination of the recent Black student movements in South Africa and the U.S. It concludes by suggesting where we should be going.
The travel journals of scholars, writers, and activists who have conducted research in Africa and its diasporas could fill a library. Researchers, even with the best of intentions, by definition invade people’s lives and spaces. When they check into a hotel, ride a people mover (local bus), go to a market, or sit in someone’s home, they get observed and marked by local communities. These markers run the spectrum from diasporic kin, to Western other, to woman-out-of- place. These experiences are often not part of the intended research, so they get stored away as interesting stories from the field. By casting aside these experiences with blackness and gender in the field, scholars run the risk of marginalizing the very people they intend to write about. Black Subjects in Africa and Its Diasporas shifts the terrain of research in Africa and the black diasporas from fact-finding expeditions to more dialogic exchanges that shape intellectual conversations and contributions. It advocates that scholars recast the core of their study from objects to subjects. Yet, the idea of subject takes a dialectical turn in this volume. It places two subjects—researcher and host—at the center of the analysis. On the one hand, the concept of subject or subjectivity means everything and nothing at the same time.
Guyanese of African descent celebrate a pre-wedding ritual called kweh-kweh. On the eve of a wedding ceremony, friends of the bride and groom, called their nation, come together to provide matrimonial instruction to the soon-to-be married couple and comment on their respective nations through singing, dancing, proverbial speech, and other ritual performances. Since 2005 African Guyanese in New York City have been celebrating a reenactment of the "traditional" (wedding-based) kweh-kweh at an event called Come to My Kwe-Kwe, held on the Friday before Labor Day. In this essay, I examine the ways that African-Guyanese-Americans, a diaspora's diaspora, draw on music at Come to My Kwe-Kwe to negotiate ethnic identities. I specifically explore the ways that Come to My Kwe-Kwe music enables members of the African Guyanese community to transcend their imagined community and gel as a new and tangible nation.
The aim of this work is to recover and narrate the historical processes regarding the Afro-descendent presence in Arica, a city of Northern Chilean territory. Beyond the intention to build a historical narrative that covers the whole phenomenon, the paper is oriented to highlight aspects of the Afro-Arican history that could help to understand the movements for ethnic recognition that these collectives are articulating nowadays. We start contextualizing the African slavetrade to Latin America, describing the general characteristics of this phenomenon in the region. Afterwards, we will contextualize the presence of black slaves in the Viceroyalty of Peru, to which Arica used to belong. Finally, we will conclude debating some aspects about the Afro-Descendent movements nowadays in the city, specifying their petition for the recognition of an Afro-Chilean ethnicity.
This study reports the emerging patterns of migration and settlement of Kenyans into the Chicago metropolitan area. Like most African immigrant communities in North America, economic downturn, political instability, and socio-economic polarization in African countries necessitated an appreciable quantum of emigration of Kenyans following the attainment of Africa's political independence in the 1960s. Most of the findings on housing characteristics, education, employment, patterns of family life, socio-cultural interaction, challenges encountered by new immigrants, and related phenomena evince parallels with other studies on African immigrants in North America.
This essay argues that despite the growing popularity of diaspora studies, our understanding of the African diaspora remains limited by both the conceptual difficulties of defining what we mean by the diaspora in general, and the African diaspora in particular, and the analytical tendency to privilege the Atlantic, or rather the Anglophone, indeed the American branch of the African diaspora. It begins by trying to explore the various conceptions of the African diaspora, foregrounded by a critique of Paul Gilroy's influential text, The Black Atlantic . This is followed by discussions of what the author considers to be the four dominant dimensions of the global African diasporas, namely, the intra-Africa, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean, and Atlantic diasporas. Finally, the essay examines the emergence of the new global African diasporas.
ABSTRACT & RÉSUMÉ & ZUSAMMENFASSUNG: The globalized Western culture of innovation, as propagated by major aid institutions, does not necessarily lead to empowerment or improvement of the well-being of the stakeholders. On the contrary, it often blocks viable indigenous innovation cultures. In African societies and African Diasporas in Latin America, cultures of innovation largely accrue from the informal, not the formal sector. Crucial for their proper understanding is a threefold structural differentiation: between the formal and informal sector, within the informal sector, according to class, gender or religion, and between different transnational social spaces. Different innovation cultures may be complementary, mutually reinforcing, or conflicting, leading in extreme cases even to a 'clash of cultures' at the local level. The repercussions of competing, even antagonistic agencies of innovative strategic groups are demonstrated, analyzing the case of the African poor in Benin and the African Diasporas of Brazil and Haiti. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RÉSUMÉ: [Cultures d'innovation des pauvres d'Afrique: Origines communs, traits conjoints, perspectives enchainés? Sur l'articulation des modernités multiples dans les sociétés africaines et les diasporas noires en Amérique latine] - La culture occidentale globalisée de l'innovation, telle que propagée par les grandes institutions d'aide, ne conduit pas nécessairement à l'autonomisation ou l'amélioration du bien-être des parties prenantes. Au contraire, souvent, elle barre le développement des cultures d'innovation indigènes viables. Dans les sociétés africaines et de la diaspora africaine en Amérique latine, les cultures d'innovation profitent largement du secteur informel au détriment du secteur formel. Crucial pour leur bonne compréhension est une différenciation structurelle triple : entre le secteur formel et informel, dans le secteur informel selon la classe, le sexe ou la religion, et entre les différents espaces sociaux transnationaux. Cultures d'innovation différentes peuvent être complémentaires, se renforçant mutuellement, ou contradictoires, conduisant dans les cas extrêmes, même à un «collision des cultures» au niveau local. Les répercussions de la concurrence, même des actions antagonistes des groupes stratégiques innovantes sont mises en évidence, en analysant le cas des pauvres d'Afrique au Bénin et les diasporas africaines du Brésil et d'Haïti. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ZUSAMMENFASSUNG: [Innovationskulturen der Armen Afrikas: gemeinsame Wurzeln, gemeinsame Merkmale, gemeinsame Perspektiven? Über die Artikulation multipler Modernen in afrikanischen Gesellschaften und schwarzen Diasporas in Lateinamerika] Die globalisierte westliche Innovationskultur, wie sie von großen Hilfseinrichtungen propagiert wird, führt nicht notwendigerweise zu einer Stärkung oder Verbesserung des Wohlergehens der Akteure. Im Gegenteil blockiert sie oft lebensfähige indigene Innovationskulturen. In afrikanischen Gesellschaften und afrikanischen Diasporas in Lateinamerika kommen Innovationskulturen weitgehend aus dem informellen, nicht aus dem formellen Sektor. Entscheidend für ihr richtiges Verständnis ist eine dreifache strukturelle Differenzierung: zwischen dem formellen und informellen Sektor, innerhalb des informellen Sektors, nach Klasse, Geschlecht und Religion und zwischen verschiedenen transnationalen sozialen Räumen. Verschiedene Innovationskulturen können einander ergänzen, sich gegenseitig verstärken oder widersprüchlich sein und im Extremfall sogar zu einem "Kampf der Kulturen" auf lokaler Ebene führen. Die Auswirkungen von konkurrierenden, sogar antagonistischen Handlungsmustern innovativer strategischer Gruppen werden analysiert am Beispiel der Armen Afrika’s in Benin und in der afrikanischen Diaspora Brasiliens und Haitis.
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