Exu is not Satan – the dialogics of memory and resistance among Afro-Brazilians

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 2000s Brazil, an unprecedented number of Brazilian afrodescendentes (Afro-Descendants) have been mobilizing to secure rights and resources for the Brazilian black population. From carnival parading in ‘cultural’ groups to electoral campaigning, from consciousness-raising education to antiracist community outreach, black activists have been aggressively taking a critical stance toward the discursive fabric of Brazilian race relations and national identity. Placing examples of their discursive struggles over Afro-Brazilian history and culture under the lens of intertextual and heteroglossic relations, I illustrate black activists’ efforts to dispute what they see as misconceptions about black people and blackness that have found their way into the dominant narrative conceptions of Brazilian society. In doing so, I argue, they are accomplishing something of broader social significance: They are revising not only the history and collective memory of race relations in Brazil but blackness itself.