Escrevivência corporal: Dance and bodies as resistance, struggle and collective memory - A study of artistic practices in a Brazilian favela.

Keywords: Black Women, Favela, Global South, Art
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

My work is about an artistic project with women in a favela in Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro. From this approach, we have a creation that begins with the life stories of these women as the main inspiration for our artistic creation and contribution to the plurality of being a woman. Conceição Evaristo, a black Brazilian writer, created a methodological concept called "Escrevivência." Which is a portmanteau of escrita (writing) and vivência (life experience) in Portuguese. They attest that her life and subjectivity contaminate the writing of a black woman. As a methodological contribution, Evaristo locates this practice in a foundational figure: the nanny (in Portuguese, we call mãe preta; black mother), A fundamental figure of the diasporic popular imagination. The enslaved black woman was forced to care for, educate and tell stories in the bed for the children of her "owners," who were "owners" of her as well. Upon recovering this image, Evaristo calls on black women to show their stories and that such stories now no longer need to be to "cradle these little master's house" but to "wake them up from their unjust slumbers."
I took the liberty of thinking about this writing of the body, which arises from our daily movements that, when crossed by gender, class, and race markers, are contained at all times by colonial, racist, and sexist. These stories can contribute to the end of the epistemicide that erases black women from the global south from the intellectual production of knowledge.