Why
is the work of black intellectuals ignored in Brazilian universities? Halls of
higher learning are yet another example of whitewashing
Criado em 13/05/2015 13h56
Por Mariana Tokarnia - Repórter da Agência Brasil Edição:Lílian Beraldo
From top left, clockwise, Clóvis Moura, Abdias
Nascimento, Lélia Gonzalez and Beatriz Nascimento
Note from BW of
Brazil: This should
actually come as no surprise. As we have consistently documented here on this
blog, Afro-Brazilians have been made almost completely invisible in numerous
areas of Brazilian society. With the forces of white supremacy completely
dominating important genres of the nation such as media,politics, and literature, among
countless other areas, it would only make sense that black Brazilians were also
excluded from bibliographies and topics of discussion in halls of higher
learning.
Considering
the fact that African-Brazilians have only in the past decade been able to
enter Brazilian universities in substantial numbers it
would only be logical that a whole other battle would be the demand of having
access to works by black scholars, both Brazilian and classics from the African
Diaspora. As Portuguese is still not considered a language of international
importance in the same manner as English, Spanish, French or German, the task
is even more daunting when there is a need to explore the works of important
black professors and researchers who wrote and had their works translated into
these languages.
I can attest
to the profound influence that works by internationally recognized black
scholars and activists such as Frantz Fanon and Malcolm X have had on the lives
of Afro-Brazilians. Some black Brazilians, with even a limited understanding of
English, manage to get through these important works and other times they
manage to get their hands on an old, out-of-print copy of these works that had
been translated into Portuguese. I remember a few years back the buzz in the
community when a brand new version of Frantz Fanon’s classic Black Skin, White Masks was
re-issued in Portuguese under the title Pele Negra, Máscaras Brancas.
Also popular
in Afro-Brazilian intellectual circles a few years back and still today is the
Portuguese version of the UNESCO’s General History of Africa. The release
of such works represents only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the necessity
of filling the gap of black intellectual production not just at the university
level, but general education. A void that was supposed to be filled with the implementation of Federal Law 10.639/2003 back in
2003. With such invisibility on so many levels of society, is it any wonder why
such a large percentage of African descendants don’t recognize
themselves as black? If one is invisible in
history, invisible in the media but
over-represented in the slums and jails, how would
this affect one’s perception of self? Again, Brazil must pat itself on the
back: its particular brand of racism is perhaps the successful in the world!
Black
intellectuals are outside of the bibliography, experts criticize
Abdias Nascimento, Clóvis
Moura, Lélia Gonzalez, Beatriz Nascimento, Jurema
Werneckand Sueli
Carneiro are just a few names of the long list of black
Brazilian intellectuals. It is not uncommon, however, that a student leaves
higher education without knowing and without having read any of these thinkers.
For researchers, in academia and general education there is a lack of
wider knowledge of the black intelligentsia, not only Brazilian. It is
also necessary to have access to translated works of black thinkers.
‘O Negro Revoltado’ by Abdias do Nascimento, ‘Lugar
de Negro’ by Lélia Gonzalez and Carlos Hasenbalg, the documentary ‘Ôrí’,
written, created and narrated by Beatriz Nascimento with direction by Raquel
Gerber, ‘Rebeliões da Senzala’ by Clóvis Moura
The search for african leadership was what motivated the research of History professor Carlos Machado.
In the book Ciência, Tecnologia e
Inovação Africana e Afrodescendente (Science, Technology and Innovation of African and Afrodescendant, see in http://www.bookess.com/read/19840-ciencia-tecnologia-e-inovacao-africana-e-afrodescendente/, he compiled some stories and
legacies of black researchers for humanity. He explains that these people are
responsible for inventions that are part of our daily lives. “But Eurocentrism
hid or deleted this history as if it didn’t exist and then this information, a
portion of it, remain as if it were a European legacy,” he said.
‘Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação Africana e
Afrodescendente’ by Carlos Machado
According to him, mathematics originated in Africa, as well as astronomy
and the university. “For years I had heard that the first universities in the
world had been built in Europe, such as the University of Bologna in the 11th
century, but there are reports of universities, study centers in Africa since
the 30th century BC,” he says. “We have several African influences in our daily
lives, metallurgy, sealing, philosophy, engineering, architecture, urbanism,
the black presence is beyond music and culture, the black presence is in many
fields and it needs to be redeemed beyond the 21st century.”
The research, however, was not easy. Machado tells us that in 1995, when
he sought african researchers, “black scientist appeared as a work of science
fiction and not as something real.” According to him, the erasure of black
leadership dates from the process of slavery, which began from the 15th century
and was intended to dehumanize
‘Terms of Inclusion Black
Intellectuals in Twentieth-Century Brazil’ – Paulina L. Alberto
whoever was enslaved. “You not only dominated with weapons. You
dominated by means of culture and religion. So you had to totally destroy this
man. So, he had to fully embrace European culture as if it were the only thing
possible. And African culture was seen as a barbaric thing, low, wild.”
The difficulty he encountered in the 90s persists today. According to
the lawyer and post-doctorate from the University of Texas Ana Luiza Flauzina
this is a challenge that the Brazilian university places for black researchers.
“Our issues are viewed with much suspicion,” she says. “Overall, we don’t
translate texts of black people from Africa and the Diaspora. The university
has not fulfilled this role of also prioritizing the translation of texts, only
reissuing European classics. We have little access, in the Portuguese language
, to some fundamental classics and I’m not just speaking only of black people,
but Indians, from the east. We have so little circulating in global terms, that
we end up losing the possibility of exchange,” she says.
With a Master’s in Law Marcos Queiroz studies the impact of the Haitian
revolution in constitutional processes in Brazil and Colombia in Independence.
“[The black authors] are often times not in literature, depending on how you do
the course, one can never read a black author,” he says. “The academy excludes
us from the spaces of the theoretical foundation of research.”
“It’s not just being within the university, we want that knowledge
change, that we know black authors, that we we read about black authors and not
only blacks researching what the university has always researched,” he says. “I
think the university reflects one of the darkest aspects of racism. It deletes
our trajectories and our knowledge,” says Queiroz.
Sources: Agência
Brasil: http://www.ebc.com.br/educacao/2015/05/intelectuais-negros-estao-fora-da-bibliografia-criticam-especialistas
and Black Women of Brazil: https://blackwomenofbrazil.co/2015/05/16/why-is-the-work-of-black-intellectuals-ignored-in-brazilian-universities/
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