Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Yoruba Orthography
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Negotiating Cultural Production in a Racial Democracy
- 1 Two Faces of Racial Democracy
- 2 Quilombhoje as a Cultural Collective
- 3 Beyond the Curtains: Unveiling Afro-Brazilian Women Writers
- 4 (Un)Broken Linkages
- 5 The Tropicalist Legacy of Gilberto Gil
- 6 Afro-Brazilian Carnival
- 7 Film and Fragmentation
- 8 Ancestrality and the Dynamics of Afro-Modernity
- 9 The Forerunners of Afro-Modernity
- 10 (Un)Transgressed Tradition
- 11 Ancestrality, Memory, and Citizenship
- 12 Quilombo without Frontiers
- 13 Ancestral Motherhood of Leci Brandão
- Conclusion: The Future of Afro-Brazilian Cultural Production
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora
10 - (Un)Transgressed Tradition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Yoruba Orthography
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Negotiating Cultural Production in a Racial Democracy
- 1 Two Faces of Racial Democracy
- 2 Quilombhoje as a Cultural Collective
- 3 Beyond the Curtains: Unveiling Afro-Brazilian Women Writers
- 4 (Un)Broken Linkages
- 5 The Tropicalist Legacy of Gilberto Gil
- 6 Afro-Brazilian Carnival
- 7 Film and Fragmentation
- 8 Ancestrality and the Dynamics of Afro-Modernity
- 9 The Forerunners of Afro-Modernity
- 10 (Un)Transgressed Tradition
- 11 Ancestrality, Memory, and Citizenship
- 12 Quilombo without Frontiers
- 13 Ancestral Motherhood of Leci Brandão
- Conclusion: The Future of Afro-Brazilian Cultural Production
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora
Summary
At times, I am my own suspicious police officer
I ask myself for identity papers
And after showing them
I arrest myself
And give myself a serious beating.
—Cuti, “Quebranto”The tenacity of Afro-Brazilian writers in general is unquestionable as they negotiate the stifling effects of the racial democracy mythology on their cultural production as well as on their threatened humanity. It must also be noted that the criticism of the new generation of Afro-Brazilian writers has been scanty at best, but also quite limited if not dismal when it comes to particular authors. Hence, beyond the freedom to write, there is a constraining block on critical production due to a lack of sustained critical practice and development as well as limited publishing outlets for Afro-Brazilian issues.
Shortly after the Brazilian military dictatorship ended, cultural entities experienced relief from official censorship as well as self-censorship. It was during this wave of artistic “freedom” that the four writers under consideration in this chapter launched their writing careers only to mature and become “visible” two decades later. Cuti (Luiz Silva), Arnaldo Xavier, Ronald Tutuca, and Carlos de Assumpção may not all be contemporaries by age, but their works, linked by an ideological commonality, strike a common chord of disenchantment, rebellion, and transgression with the object of affirming their existence, dignity, and humanity. As much as these writers try to escape their ancestrality through conscious experimentation with multiple forms, they actually refine and reaffirm that same tradition.
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- Information
- Afro-BraziliansCultural Production in a Racial Democracy, pp. 239 - 266Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009