‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s’: I, a black Brazilian woman in the fight against images of control

Abstract

The concept of controlling images was coined by the black feminist theorist Patricia Hill Collins in her book Black Feminist Thought (2000) and demonstrates that these images are, in fact, ways of defining us for the sake of control and subjugation. White patriarchal capitalism engendered images that not only use us as empty vessels to be filled with the sayings of society but also constitute an effective way to annihilate our thinking and justify violence against our bodies. These images are: servants, black mothers, prostitutes, mules, angry, rude, not feminine, emotional, passionate, hypersexualised, dangerous, deviant, impure, aggressive and dependent on welfare, among others.