Paper Short Abstract:

This presentation analyzes the characteristics of Gonzalez’s anthropology, especially regarding the concept of Amefricanidade. Her work reflected on the impact of the Euro-androcentric tradition and the potential horizons that open up when we decenter from that tradition.

Paper Abstract:

Lélia Gonzalez (1935-1994) is known as an activist of Movimento Negro and as a Black Brazilian feminist for her early contribution to the analysis of the articulation of racism, sexism and class oppression in Brazilian history and society, and her concept of Amefricanidade. Today she is considered one of the most important figures of decolonial feminism in Abya Yala. Many Brazilian Black researchers (Ratts, Pons Cardoso, Lima and Rios) have contributed to recover her work in the last 15 years. Although Gonzalez presented herself as anthropologist, and she taught anthropology at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica, less attention has been paid to her figure as anthropologist. Gonzalez reflected on what it meant to be a Black working-class woman in an all-White university. In this presentation I’m interested in analyzing the characteristics of Gonzalez’s anthropology, especially regarding the concept of Amefricanidade. Re-reading her texts, we can observe how Gonzalez anticipated some of the contemporary debates not only in Brazilian anthropology, but also in world anthropology. She problematized the position of the object of study forced to be “regarded and talked” by the subject who is producing “scientific” knowledge. She is an example of how analysis emerging from political struggles and from the interconnections between social movements and educational institutions challenge hierarchical and colonial knowledge production. Her position outside the “dominant anthropology” can contribute to understand the “set of differentiating interventions of what counts as ‘anthropology’ and who an ‘anthropologist is’” (Restrepo and Escobar 2005: 102).