with Dr. Rafaela Cruz
When
Where
Center for Latin American Studies, Spring 2024 Charlas con Café – a weekly space to hear lectures from a wide variety of experts and discuss topics relevant to the Latin American region, Fridays from 1-2 pm (unless otherwise specified). Coffee & snacks starting at 12:30pm!
In the past 20 years, Brazil has witnessed an increasing centrality of race and racism as public concerns in media, public policies, and academia. This shift is primarily driven by a profound change in the role of social movements and community strengthening, which seek representation and reparation. This trend has incorporated the use of the term "ancestralidade" to unveil a previously obscured historical background, contributing to the definition of blackness and the understanding of what it means to be black in Brazil. Additionally, it serves as a foundation for widespread community access to belonging. Ancestralidade has become a commonplace term not only in everyday life but also in academic research. The presentation will specifically address the popularization of the concept "ancestralidade" within Brazilian academic discourse. I aim to explore how, on the one hand, the academic adoption of the term contributes to efforts of anti-racist knowledge production, and on the other hand, how it may succumb to a yearning for a pure Black and Indigenous mythical past, potentially leading to the essentialization of identities, and jeopardizing effective political action.
Dr. Rafaela Cruz is an Assistant Professor of Literature and English at the Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco, Brazil. She earned her PhD in Literary Theory from the program of Letters at the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco. She has also worked as a freelance translator and interpreter for various media outlets, international NGOs and institutions. Her research interests include Latin American decolonial thought, critical theory, geopolitics of knowledge, and history of literary forms. Her postdoctoral research, which she is conducting at the Center for Latin American Studies under the supervision of Professor Antonio José Bacelar da Silva, investigates the popularization of the concept "Ancestralidade" in thesis and dissertations published in Brazil in the last 5 years.