The Negation and Reassertion of Black Geographies in Brazil

Abstract

Under the project of modernity the figure of the Black has been continually denied a geography of its own.  This assumed inability for Black space to exist establishes the Black as the anti-human par excellence in the West.  Indeed, the supposed non-being of the Black comprises the foundation of the Western project, as this a-spatial figure is the referent for all other forms of potential being.  Despite the perpetual insistence of this Black a-spatiality and non-being by the West, Blacks have recurrently sought to create geographies and ways of existing unique to the Western, modern project.  This paper takes the case of Brazil and demonstrates how Brazil, in its endeavor to establish itself as a modern nation, sought to erase Black spaces through various practices and discourses. Blacks, on the other hand, sought to break with this Slave existence and create various spaces of their own, a practice which continues into the present day.  By interrogating the dehumanization of the Black and examining Black articulations of space and notions of spatiality, this paper demonstrates how Black geographies seek to create new ways of being in the world.