Comer o outro: dinâmicas do mercado editorial de autoria negra dentro e fora de Salvador

Abstract

The publication of works by Black authors has always been associated with a discourse of absence in Brazilian Literature, deepening the processes of epistemicide and epistemic plundering of the Black editorial and literary archive. Based on this, we analyze the configuration of the Black authorship publishing market in Salvador and the national and international contexts in which it is embedded. To this end, we characterize the dynamics and nuances of literary and editorial interactions in the mainstream publishing industry, emphasizing critical-conceptual operators such as commodification, identity and Black cultural memory. Constructed through a literature review, catalog mapping, listing of best-selling national works and the analysis of interviews with agents in the publishing market of Salvador through institutional websites, this study also points out the ways in which a work by a Black author can be commodified, that is, emptied, assimilated, and/or incorporated to meet market criteria, highlighting the aesthetic, economic, and political tensions resulting from this logic, in which critical reception and Black literary agents are immersed. Finally, the editorial initiatives mapped affirm the existence of editorial and literary projects by Black authors, while also inscribing Black memory in literature, demonstrating how such editorial initiatives serve as the very center of political and aesthetic creation of the archive.