Embodied voices: embedding contemporary Afro-Brazilian women writers

The present contribution seeks to examine the works of a selected number of contemporary Afro-Brazilian women writers and activists. From the way these voices have contributed to the advancement of the Black movement in Brazil – especially since the 1980s – particular attention will be given to the way the body figures both a central topic as well as an agent of their work. The overall assumption is that the body (both material and metaphorical) becomes a dynamic site of aesthetic, political, and environmental negotiations, and poetry and literature function as a social practice. By looking at how a new view on bodily cognition and discourse can prove decisive for the reconfiguration of political categories (identity, subjectivity, gender, and race), the assumption is that a novel notion and poiesis of the Afro-Brazilian self can be teased out from these works.