“Elas que se bancam”: uma contextualização radical da mulher negra no pagodão

Abstract

This dissertation proposes a radical contextualization of black women in pagodão from the author's own experience, located in Salvador, from a perspective that articulates cultural studies and Black feminisms. The initial hypothesis is that different temporalities and identitarian and affective engagements (GOMES; ANTUNES, 2019) are articulated with/by/through racialized and gendered bodies in Brazil, and pagodão appears as a place of struggle, conformation and intersection of these engagements. We take radical contextualization (GROSBERG, 2010) as a theoretical-methodological approach that seeks the possibilities of social transformation through the articulation, disarticulation and rearticulation of contexts. We assume affective engagements as “organized in and through discursive and cultural practices, mobilizing political engagements” (FARIAS, 2021). Investigating pagodão and its articulations with identity engagements (of race, gender and sexuality) from the perspective of Black feminisms (COLLINS, 2019; hooks, 2019; NASCIMENTO, 2021; LORDE, 2020; DAVIS, 2016; GONZALEZ, 2020), we will see how it is mobilized by a confrontation with Western, white and colonial expectations of respectability and morality, and, at the same time, it can reiterate cisheteronormative behaviours and the hypersexualization of Black women. We propose an analysis based on the figure of the mucama, introduced by Lélia Gonzalez (2020), which is spun into two other notions: the maid and the mulata, which, in contemporary times, reconfigured in figures such as the piriguete and the businesswoman, allow us to see affective struggles around ideas such as success, empowerment, visibility and sexual freedom. Thus, in order to radically contextualize Black women in pagodão, based on the researcher's own experience in Salvador and analysing elements from different temporalities that pagodão articulates – as proposed by Raymond Williams (1979) – and the affects that engage and are mobilized by A Dama and other female artists who are summoned in the exercise of articulation, we have connected a wide range of materials: music and lyrics; demographic data; music videos; interviews; comments, posts, memes, videos and other online publications made by audience members; recordings of live shows; archives of websites dedicated to the genre; among other materials. In this way, we investigate the relationships between Black feminisms, identity struggles, history, economics, politics and culture in contemporary times, articulated around pagodão in Bahia, in order to think about the possibilities of being a Black woman in Salvador, and how to understand and rearticulate them as better possibilities for life – full and free.