A Blueprint to Freedom: Beatriz Nascimento’s Radical Thought | Christen A. Smith
Beatriz Nascimento was arguably one of the most influential Black radical thinkers of the 20th century. An historian by training, she was a cultural critic, a public intellectual and a cultural geographer who spoke vehemently against the myth of Brazil’s racial democracy and theorized the Black Brazilian condition from the perspective of the Black Atlantic. She theorized the historical, actual, symbolic and metaphysical relationship between Africa (in all of its layered complexity) and Black Brazilian cultural space—from Black dance parties (baile Black), to candomblé houses, samba schools and most significantly, quilombos. In this presentation I examine Beatriz Nascimento’s intellectual contributions, situating them as part of the Black radical tradition. Specifically, I focus on quilombo as a radical concept of Black freedom and marronage that is both adjacent to and in tension with the concept of fugitively as we know it.
Part of the Brazilian Studies Lunchtime Series
Speakers
Christen A. Smith is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and African American Studies at Yale University. Her work examines Black women’s intellectual contributions from the global South, as well as the racial and gender politics of state violence in Brazil. She is the author of the book, Afro-Paradise: Blackness, Violence and Performance in Brazil (University of Illinois Press, 2016), co-author of the book The Dialectic is in the Sea: The Black Radical Thought of Beatriz Nascimento (Princeton University Press, 2023) and co-editor of Black Feminist Constellations: Black Women in Dialogue and Translation (University of Texas Press, 2023).
- Societal Resilience
- Dignity