Cultural identity… is a matter of “becoming” as well as “being.” It belongs to the future as much as to the past. It is not something which already exists, transcending place, time, history and culture. Cultural identities come from somewhere, have histories. But, like everything which is historical, they undergo constant transformation. Far from being grounded in a mere “recovery” of the past, which is waiting to be found, and which, when found, will secure our sense of ourselves into eternity, identities are the names we give to different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past. - Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora”
For better or worse, we have come to a time when previously delineated boundaries often feel artificial, where lines drawn seem to connect things more than they divide them. Attribute it to globalization, increased individualism because of capitalism, the raceless, genderless world that the internet offers, or whatever cause we like , the fact remains that, for many, life and identity exceed the perimeters of easy classification, categorization, or compartmentalization. In a world where gender boundaries and binaries are gradually dissipating, articulating the experiences of women 's and men ’s experiences at the intersections of race, gender, class, and sexuality- usually understood and codified through a cultural lens- is exceedingly difficult. Moving across cultures, however, enables (and disables) a variety of options available to women and men from their specific location. The goal of my dissertation project is to scrutinize the range of choices in the construction of intersectional identity offered to women across the panorama of the African Diaspora, explored and expressed through the crafting, production, and reception of multimedia performances in the United States, South America, and Africa.
* My project entails the making, perform ance, ing and reception of three 3 multimedia performances (combining theater, dance, music, text, and film) that explore identity , set in the current day, in three 3 locations - Michigan in the United States, Val é do Cap ã o in Brazil, and Bissau in Guinea Bissau, West Africa - Michigan in The United States, Brazil, and West Africa - ranging from the turn of the last century to the current day. These multimedia performances have the goal of will articulating concepts of community and individual identity as responses to and dialogues with national identities. The plays y will be created in communities, in a language common to the region (English for the US, Portuguese for Brazil , and French/Portuguese for West Africa) , and will be performed in their respective regions , with casts comprised of people from that region , , I hope before a variety of audiences comprised of various people existing atthat the echo the myriad intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality and nationality within their nation al location. I plan to offer a n artistically politically engaged and intellectually rigorous examination articulation of questions of identity , gender and transcendence for woman of the African diaspora , filtered through a feminist lens .that endeavors to explore Ultimately, by crafting the performances, their preparation and their reception into a documentary, I hope to engage and critique feasible means of understanding and expressing gender , sexual and ethnic identity , and which that will facilitate new and unexplored possibilties possibilities for what it means to be a woman of African descent a woman in th is e new millenium millennium.
Epistemology
I have, for most of my graduate career, struggled against linear narrative, binary thinking, choosing instead to perform multiplicity and mestizaje (defined in Maria Lugones’ “Purity, Impurity and Separation” as “If something or someone is neither/nor, but kind of both, not quite either, if something is in the middle of either/or, if it is ambiguous, given the available classification of things, if it is mestiza, if it threatens by its very ambiguity the orderliness of the system, of a schematized reality, if given its ambiguity in the univocal ordering of things it is anomalous, deviant…” (Signs 1994, 459) in my academic venues. Performance, by its very nature, points to several multiplicities at once.
This project embodies and articulates the concept of multiplicity in relationship to identity as defined in Michael R. Hames-García’s articulate inclusion in the collection Reclaiming Identity: Realist Theory and the Predicament of Postmodernism which he co-edited with Paula M.L. Moya. In his essay, “’Who Are Our Own People’ Challenges for a Theory of Social Identity,” Hames-García explains that:
“Memberships in various social groups combine with and mutually constitute one another. Membership in one group (e.g., “femaleness” means something different in the context of some simultaneous group memberships (e.g., “blackness”) than in others (e.g., “motherhood”). The totality of these relations in their mutual constitution comprises the self. One important consequence of this fact is that one cannot understand a self as the sum of so many discrete parts, that is, femaleness + blackness + motherhood. The whole self is constituted by the mutual interaction and relation of its parts to one another. Politically salient aspects of the self, such as race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and class, link and imbricate themselves in fundamental ways. These various categories of social identity do not, therefore, comprise essentially separate “axes” that occasionally “intersect.” They do not simply intersect, but blend, constantly and differently… They expand one another and mutually constitute each other’s meanings. (103)”
I am interested in examining these intersecting group memberships across the African Diaspora, hoping to identify some of the more salient commonalities and differences of experience of Black womanhood, and perhaps to express something else of identity, something that comes from not only looking at the parts, but also examining the whole. Hames-García writes, “Separate and fragmented become ways of seeing others and oneself that facilitate domination and exploitation.(120)” Multiplicity is difficult to understand when dissecting an object or subject, and extricating it from the myriad other forces that mediate and constitute its given expression, but realism, as defined in the essays in this collection, “seeks to make increasingly fuller contexts cohere within increasingly more accurate explanations ( Hames-García, 119).” As Hames- García says, “Unfortunately, this multiplicity of the self becomes obscured through the logic of domination to which the self becomes subjected… What does it mean to be understood exclusively in terms of one’s race, gender, or sexuality? It means that one is understood in terms of the most dominant construction of that that identity (104).” He argues that, “through interpretation and theory mediation of the world, one can more or less accurately grasp the complexity of the social processes and multiple conditioning that make up the ‘truth’ of experience.(109)”
Both Hames- García and I turn to epistemological alternatives in an attempt to answer his question, “How can a critical epistemological realism account for such complexities and contradictions and also explain (and facilitate) the expansion of solidarity and group interests in a way that can help to overcome restriction and separation?(105)” Realism, in Hames-García’s opinion, “retains both essentialism’s objective of affirming the political salience of identity and poststructuralism’s objective of viewing group membership as socially conditioned. (119)”
Performance as Subject
* I chose performance as the “text” that this work will explicate for many reasons. Firstly, because it enables myriad forms of communication to function at the same time.
* In this academic line of work, knowing privileges the yang, which Gloria Karpinski defines in Barefoot on Holy Ground as “specificity, knowledge, hierarchy, dominance, and possession, extremes that led to separations from each other and the earth. This [is] but an outer dramatization of the collective inner drama, a drama that is neither male or female but human” ( 2001 , p. 43). But k nowing on a more integrated level necessarily includes the yin- the intuitive, the corporeal, yielding, receiving. Using multimedia performance as a scholastic medium enables me to bring my substantial artistic talents to bear on my scholarship, and to privilege and invite access to yin knowledge- the communal process of producing these performances, the corporeal and embodying act of performance, and the reception of these performances as an open dialogue between me and people of other countries and cultures of the African Diaspora . As (in no particular order) an African-American/ Caribbean-American/ Black/ American/ (upper?) middle class/ hetero(?)sexual/ woman/ feminist, raised in New York (Harlem)/ (mis?)educated at predominately white institutions/ scholar/ singer/ writer/ dancer/ artist, as someone who has traveled extensively abroad (Western Europe, Latin America, Asia, the Caribbean) but has seen probably less than half of these "united" states in America, as a person who has ties to Protestantism, Baptism, and Buddhism, coupled with a dislike and mistrust of organized religion, as a speaker of English, Black English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, my location at the intersection and on the outside of many different discourses, genres, cultures, world views and approaches to understanding has created a unique vantage point from which to examine identity across the African Diaspora.
Background
* I have studied extensively the many regions of the African Diaspora- Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean , and the United States- both in college at Amherst College and in graduate study at the University of Michigan. My knowledge of the literature, film, theory, theater, music, dance, and religions has served me well in my previous research and travel, and I am certain that it will continue to be an excellent foundation for this project. My preliminary dissertation research has entailed traveling to Guinea Bissau (with a grant from the Center for African & African-American Studies) , Cuba (with grants from Office of Multi-Cultural Initiatives and The Center for the Education of Women) and Brazil (with grants from the Program in Comparative Literature and Rackh a m) , as well as investigating issues of race in community at an ecovillage and intentional community in Western Massachusetts (with a fellowship from Rackham) . I have made valuable contacts in Bissau and in Valé do Capão that will enable the successful completion of my project.
* It might be helpful to readers not familiar with Bissau and Valé do Capão to be supplied with a brief sketch of my preliminary research :
* Guinea Bissau is a small country on the west coast of Africa, located beneath Senegal and above Guinea. It was once the kingdom of Gabú, which was part of the larger Mali empire. Guinea Bissau, like Angola, and the Cape Verde, was colonized by the Portuguese in the 15th century, who thereafter established trading posts and exported slaves from this territory. The slave trade declined in the 19th century, and Bissau grew to become a major commercial center. Their war for independence began in 1961 and ended in 1973, led by Amilcar Cabral and the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC). Their official independence was granted by Portugal in 1974. The country was led by Luis Cabral until a coup in 1980, at which point Joao Bernardo Vieira assumed control and maintained his position, mainly because PAIGC was the ruling and only official party. The 1990s saw Guinea Bissau attempt to establish a multi party system, culminating in a civil war.
* In 1961, 99% of the population was illiterate. In 2000, 80% of the people were still illiterate , and now, in 2003, there is a 42.4% illiteracy rate . 41.9% of the current population is under 15. There are at least 13 major [ethnic] groups with distinct languages, customs, religious beliefs, and forms of social organization. Portuguese is the official language, but is reserved mainly for business and governmental interactions. I found that, because of contact with French-speaking neighboring countries, French was spoken quite prevalently in Bissau, whether fluently or in some rudimentary form.
* I was received in Bissau in 2000 by a community of artists/actors working with renowned Guinean filmmaker Flora Gomes on his most recent film, Nha Fala. They we re all amateur actors with limited education. Many of them saw their work with Flora as the next level of their education. Amelia da Silva, an actress, said "It's a school for the arts... We learn a lot." Rehearsing gives them the opportunity to discuss and disseminate information and ideas. One of the actors, Uka Star, explained further, "You need a strong foundation for creating art. There isn't a university here. What one learns at high school, one forgets, or one never uses it and one's studies stop after high school. What we learn here gives us an idea of how to navigate art. One feels more at ease with culture and art and society. With Flora, we receive a preparation for discussing with anyone."
* I spent my time in Bissau interviewing Flora and his cast, working alongside them as they prepared for the film, navigating Bissau, and taking photos. Our interviews explored at length such themes as the role(s) that gender play in Bissau, courting, romance, sexuality, polygamy, (post)colonialism, and African and Diaspora culture(s). We also discussed the importance of film and artistic expression in Guinea Bissau, issues of being an artist or actor in a country of extreme poverty, questions of audience (in a country with no movie theaters), and the possibilit i es that film offers both them as individuals and their relatively anonymous country. I spent my days learning the songs and dances that the cast worked on, and facilitated workshops on poetry and Negritude, among other themes. Through this work, I became acquainted with cultural concepts of community, and caught a glimpse of the aesthetics of performance art and the reception of art within the culture. I have maintained my affiliation with Flora over the years and plan to undertake my project using former members of his cast and under his guidance.
Although I will be p roducing a performance with seasoned actors, many of them might be illiterate or live in conditions of extreme poverty typical of the country, which ranked 10th “least livable” country by the 2003 Human Development Report of the United Nations . Poverty and il literacy evoke interesting questions about the creation of art and about the power of words. I do not view these as hindrances, but rather part of the process of creating in a different cultural location. How will the definition of “art” itself change as culture, technology, identity and art’s role within a culture change? In terms of the theme of the multimedia play I will be interested in creating for performance in Guinea Bissau, I was particularly attracted to the way in which the people of Bissau were quite certain that homosexuality “does not exist” in their country. Thus, I plan to explore performance that deals - in part- with homosexuality, as well as themes of struggling for liberation and the paradoxical fight for peace. The performance in Guinea Bissau will examine sexuality and race as it relates to Africa. I hope that this will be interesting in two ways- by showing how African’s relate to their own sexuality and by examining the resistance to homosexuality that is so common in Africa.
*
* The Portuguese first landed in Brazil in 1500, arriving in the region known today as Bahia (the Portuguese word for "bay"). Colonization of the territory began in the coastal region, where sugarcane and tobacco were grown for export and other crops were raised for consumption. Gold discovered in the region attracted more settlers. For centuries, fertile soil and the toil of African slaves and their descendants made the region a place of opulence . It maintained closer ties to Europe, Africa, and India than the rest of Brazil, with ships arriving from ports scattered throughout the vast Portuguese empire.
* Brazil was the last country in the Western hemisphere to abolish slavery. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, around ten million Africans were transported to Brazil as slaves – ten times as many as were shipped to the United States. T he death rate in Brazil was so significant, however, that in 1860 Brazil's black population was half the size of that in the USA. Slavery was always contested: slaves fled from the cities and plantations to form refugee communities called quilombos. It was not until the nineteenth century that Brazilian slavery was seriously challenged. The slave trade was finally abolished in 1854, but for some time slavery itself remained legal. Slavery was the dominant issue in Brazilian politics for some twenty years. Full emancipation came through the "Golden Law" of May 13, 1888.
Bahia is a region rich in culture and art. The African traditions in music and dance remain alive in Bahia in full vigor, and they are the underpinnings of most popular expressions. The b irthplace of many of Brazil’s cultural and artistic treasures, C apoiera, A xé, Forró, Pagode, Afro-Brazilian dance, and Baterias, Bahia is also home to many festivals and Brazil’s second largest carnival.
* I also did preliminary research in the Valé do Capão , located in breathtaking Chapada Diamantina National Park, in the State of Bahia, some six hours west of the Coast. I was received at two of the three intentional communities in the small town, Lothlorien and Rodas do Arco Iris. I spent most of my time at Rodas do Arco Iris, which defines itself as an alternative community of artist s and artisan s. It is a community of fifteen members, many children, and a changing cast of visitors. Garden work and lunch are communal activities, and workshops and performances are frequently offered in the salon or in the town square . It was not uncommon for music or art to erupt spontaneously at informal gatherings as well.
* My research entailed interacting with members of this artistic community as well as artists and artisans from the town, learning about the culture unique to this area, participating in the workshops and performances, and gathering information about the role of art and personal expression in the culture. I conducted both formal and informal interviews , which were quite insightful, but the part of my work that proved most significant was examining the subject matter of the art produced, the characteristics that it possessed, and the way it was received and/or valued by others . I plan to work with many of the visual artists, singers, musicians, martial artists, and dancers that I befriended at Rodas do Arco Iris and in the surrounding town. Some of the themes of the multimedia play I will write for performance in Bahia will explore gender as a cultural construct based on how “ work ” is defined and divided , and the joys and challenges of being an artist in Bahia . I also plan to affiliate with the Ministry of Culture in Salvador, Bahia.
This entire project entails and relies on the sharing of experience, resources, and ideas. Both Bissau and Valé do Capão have no university. I hope to provide a critical and artistic experience that will enhance and create vehicles for expression and communication for me, the cast and crew, and the audiences for our ultimate performances. I will craft a documentary out of the footage upon my return, with the intention of defending my dissertation by December of 2005.
Ultimately, I hope that this work will help reveal the role of art in these different Diasporic cultures, and its relationship to identity.
Methodology
Our whole consciousness, expressed through the body, emotions and mind is in constant process with our many environments- the immediate one, the remembered ones, and the ones we fantasize” - Gloria Karpinski, Barefoot on Holy Ground
* My dissertation project entails the writing, perform ance, ing and reception of three 3 multimedia plays (combining theater, dance, music, text, and film) that describe raced/ gendered/ sexual/ classed encounters , and will articulate concepts of community and individual identity as responses to and dialogues with national identities.
* The written play functions as a thematic structure for the performance. It also serves as a conversation piece mean t to begin and frame a dialogue , first with the cast and then with the audience. The writing stages of some of the intriguing issues that arise in the lived practic e of “being,” existing among and within the many discourses on race , gender, class, sexuality .
* The music and dance will reflect both my knowledge of and experience with African-American, Afro-Brazilian, and African music and dance, and my own unique style of singing, songwriting, and choreography. Video , written text and still photography will be incorporated into the performances as well, if possible within the constraints of the location (for example, it might be more difficult to include video in Guinea Bissau ).
* I will be filming all of the audit i ons, rehearsals , discussions, performances, and post-performance question/answer sessions as well as “behind the scenes” glimps es into the lives and lifestyles of the participants - all of which will supply qualitative data regarding identity construction . As a woman of this African Diaspora traveling through it, I will also interject my own thoughts, perceptions, songs, and stories along the journey. I plan to use at least two digital cameras on tripods in this process (I currently own one. I will either buy, rent, or borrow another for the project). The digital format will enable easier editing of the final documentary.
* The rehearsals will be run with a “ critical consciousness” similar to that described in Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Pertinent characteristic s of Fre i re’s model are open dialogue between me and group members , which allows both parties to question, reflect, participate, and create meaning , and helps balance power structures in the group ; the formation of a community in which all members of the group work together in order to achieve goals; learning to understand the realities of the people within the group and speak ing to them in language that all understand , thereby making words relevant to the lives of the people . I will incorporate my teaching skills to lead and guide the group gently but purposefully . I am also currently becoming certified in multicultural classroom facilitation , from which I am gaining useful skills such as facilitating multicultural dialogue, encouraging full participation, and promoting mutual understanding.
* Pertinent to my methodology is the goal of the final product. I hope to explain my specific position and the concepts that it incites to a predominantly white audience/ academy/ society with an awareness of and inclusion of non-white readers in the framing of my scholarly performance, without privileging that white audience and writing exclusively to and for them.
* " How do we create an oppositional wo rldview, a consciousness, an identity, a standpoint that exists not only as that struggle which also opposes dehumanization but as a that movement which enables creative, expansive self-actualization? Opposition is not enough. In that vacant space after on e has resisted there is still the necessity to become- to make oneself anew . "
- bell hooks, "The Politics of Radical Black Subjectivity"
My work builds on and responds to the scholarship of Anthony Appiah, and scholar/performers like E. Patrick Johnson, by striving to create new ways of being and knowing “blackness” in both local and global contexts. In my work I am interested in privileging the voice of those living now, living within an identity and striving, through performance, to articulate that experience. One way in which it does that is by not making whiteness central to its discussion. It is a discussion, instead, among blacknesses,” and among “womanhoods.” Similarly, Africa and the African Diaspora be the emphasized presence around which this project orients itself. This does not mean that “Europe,” “America,” and “Whiteness” will be erased, but that they will be referred to from within an African (or African-derivative) perspective (constructed from within and outside of European/American/White languages and cultures). The complexity and inextricability of one from the other makes this shifting of lens appropriate and useful.
My work shifts “lenses” as well from within this African paradigm. Acknowledging the intersections of race/class/gender/sexuality/religion/culture/etc. that have become prevalent in feminist scholarship and methodology, my work also strives to shift focus as it moves across the Diaspora, in the hopes of more fully elucidating the “whole,” intersectionality itself as lived and expressed. I do this by shifting the focus of the work to a few select lenses, while maintaining an awareness of the myriad intersections. My US performance, “Black Ascent on Social Ladders,” dealt mainly with the conflation of race and class in US literary and social culture. My Brazil performance will focus on cultural definitions of “work” and its relationship to gender construction across a racial spectrum. My Guinea Bissau play will deal with homosexuality and freedom. My hope is that this practice will move our gaze around this complex web of intersections, much in the way that new and advanced camera angles and techniques can: circumnavigating, looking out from the inside, splitting the screen to elucidate relationship, panning out to give perspective.
The difficulty in writing a prospectus for this work is that I cannot say explicitly what my findings will be. I plan to craft a documentary at the end of the process that
In this academic line of work, knowing privileges the yang, “specificity, knowledge, hierarchy, dominance, and possession, extremes that led to separations from each other and the earth. This [is] but an outer dramatization of the collective inner drama, a drama that is neither male or female but human” (barefoot on holy ground, 43). But knowing on a more integrated level includes the yin- the intuitive, the corporeal, yielding, receiving. Using multi-media performance as a scholastic medium enables me both to bring my substantial artistic talents to bear on my scholarship, but also to privilege and invite access to yin knowledge . My focus will be on the communal process of producing these performances, and on the reception of these performances in their respective countries.
I plan to perform in various venues within a country or region, so as to glean myriad responses to the work.
My preliminary research thus far has entailed traveling to Guinea Bissau and Bahia, Brazil, as well as investigating issues of race in community at an ecovillage in Western Massachusetts.
Guinea Bissau, West Africa:
Guinea Bissau is a small country on the west coast of Africa, located beneath Senegal and above Guinea. Guinea Bissau, like Angola, and the Cape Verde, had been colonized by the Portuguese in the 15th century, shortly thereafter establishing trading posts and exporting slaves from this territory. Their war for independence began in 1961 and ended in 1973, led by Amilcar Cabral and the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC). Their official independence was granted by Portugal in 1974. The country was led by Luis Cabral until a coup in 1980, at which point Joao Bernardo Vieira assumed control and maintained his position, mainly because the PAIGC was the ruling and only official party. The 1990's saw Guinea Bissau attempt to establish a multi party system, culminating in a civil war.
In 1961, 99% of the population was illiterate. In 2000, 80% of the people are still illiterate. 52% of the current population is young, under 15. One of few sources of information I had prior to going to Bissau indicated that there are "at least 13 major [ethnic] groups with distinct languages, customs, religious beliefs, and forms of social organization” (CulturGram, 1995). The language used in daily interaction is Kriolu, a creole based on Portuguese and various African languages. Portuguese is the official language, but is reserved mainly for business and governmental interactions. I found that French was spoken quite prevalently in Bissau, whether fluently or in some rudimentary form. . French is also spoken because of contact with French-speaking neighboring countries.
In Bissau, Guinea Bissau, I was received by a community of artists/actors working with renowned filmmaker Flora Gomes on his most recent film, Nha Fala. They are all amateur actors with limited education. Many of them see their work with Flora as the next level of their education. Amelia da Silva, an actress, said "It's a school for the arts. We learn to sing, dance. We learn a lot." Rehearsing gives them the opportunity to discuss and disseminate information and ideas. One of the actors, Uka Star, explained further, "You need a strong foundation for creating art. There isn't a university here. What one learns at high school, one forgets, or one never uses it and one's studies stop after high school. What we learn here gives us an idea of how to navigate art. One feels more at ease with culture and art and society. With Flora, we receive a preparation for discussing with anyone."
I spent my time in Bissau interviewing Flora and his cast, working alongside them as they prepared for the film, navigating Bissau, and taking photos. Our interviews explored at length such themes as the role(s) that gender play in Bissau, courting, romance, sexuality, polygamy, (post)colonialism, and African and Diasporic culture(s). We also discussed the importance of film and artistic expression in Guinea Bissau, issues of being an artist or actor in a country of extreme poverty, questions of audience (in a country with no movie theaters), and the possibilites that film offers both them as individuals and their relatively anonymous country. I spent my days learning the songs and dances that the cast worked on, and facilitated workshops on poetry and Negritude, among other themes. Through this work, I became acquainted with cultural concepts of community, as well as a glimpse into the aesthetics of performance art and the reception of art within the culture.
I was particularly attracted to the way in which the people of Bissau were quite certain that homosexuality “does not exist” in their country. I am intrigued with the idea of mounting a play in Africa that deals with homosexuality in some fashion. I plan to research some contemporary African plays, performances, music and visual arts and their reception in their native countries in order to create a presentation with some awareness of the national aesthetics within the genre.
Bahia , Brazil:
When the Portuguese first arrived in Brazil, April 22 nd 1500, they landed on the soil today known as Bahia . In Portuguese (Brazil's Official Language) the word "bay" is translated "baia". The colonization of the territory began in the Recôncavo - that is in the coastal region - where sugarcane and tobacco were grown for export and other crops raised for the settlers' food . In the semiarid interior, cattle raising was considerably stimulated in the 18 th century, when t he discovery of gold and gems in the Diamantina Upland attracted more settlers. For centuries, the region's rich, dark soil, and the sweat and toil of African slaves and their descendants, made the region a place of opulent wealth. It had closer ties to Europe, Africa and India than the rest of Brazil. Ships arrived from ports scattered throughout the vast Portuguese empire, putting aboard the Recôncavo's sugar and tobacco and disembarking slaves, merchandise and gold. Saveiros, small sailboats characteristic of the region, plied the rivers carrying goods from the plantations to the docks and markets.
When the Empire of Brazil was proclaimed in 1822, Bahia was still controlled by forces loyal to Portugal; but on July 2, 1823, Brazilian troops occupied Salvador, and Bahia became a province of the empire. In 1889, under the republic, Bahia became a state of the Brazilian Federation.
Brazil was not just the place where the “characteristic elements of New World tropical slave plantations were first put together”; it was also the last country in the Western hemisphere to abolish slavery. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century around ten million Africans were transported to Brazil as slaves – ten times as many as were shipped to the United States – yet the death rate in Brazil was so great that in 1860 Brazil's black population was half the size of that in the USA. Slavery was always contested: slaves fled from the cities and plantations to form refugee communities called quilombos; the largest, Palmares , in the interior of the northeastern state of Alagoas, was several thousand strong and stayed independent for almost a century.
But i t was not until the nineteenth century that slavery was seriously challenged. The initial impetus came from Britain, where the abolitionist movement became influential just when Portugal was most dependent on British capital and British naval protection. Abolition was regarded with horror by the large landowners in Brazil, and a combination of racism and fear of economic dislocation led to a determined rearguard action to preserve slavery. A complicated diplomatic waltz began between Britain and Brazil, as slavery laws were tinkered with para inglês ver – "for the English to see" – a phrase that survives in the language to this day, meaning doing something merely for show. The object was to make the British believe slavery would be abolished, while ensuring that the letter of the law kept it legal.
British abolitionists were not deceived, and f rom 1832 to 1854 the Royal Navy maintained a squadron off Brazil, intercepting and confiscating slave ships, and occasionally entering Brazilian ports to seize slavers and burn their ships – one of history's more positive examples of gunboat diplomacy . The slave trade was finally abolished in 1854 but, to the disgust of the abolitionists, slavery itself remained legal. British power had its limits and ultimately it was a passionate campaign within Brazil itself, led by the fiery lawyer Joaquim Nabuco , that finished slavery off. The growing liberal movement, increasingly republican and anti-monarchist, squared off against the landowners, with Dom Pedro hovering indecisively somewhere in between. Slavery became the dominant issue in Brazilian politics for twenty years. By the time f ull emancipation came , in the "Golden Law" of May 13, 1888 , Brazil had achieved the shameful distinction of being the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery.
T he Bahian government cut non-necessary expenses, privatised some of its companies, and paid most of its debts. With a healthy government, Bahia could sustain its development, and get international credit from Banks all over the world, thus financing its future debts. In 1992, the United Nations turned Salvador City (and some of its surrounding historical towns) into not only a Brazilian, but also a United Nations territory. The ancient areas of Salvador that had become slums, received investments of dozens of US$ millions in order to restore more than 600 old buildings, churches, museums forts etc. The tourism that was not even part of the Bahian economy, became a priority.
(From worldtravelgate.net and www.travel.yahoo.com )
I spent my time in Chapada Diamantina National Park, in the State of Bahia, some 6 hours west of the Coast. The Valé do Capão, where I was located, is home to three intentional communities: Rodas do Arco Iris, Lothlorien and Campinas. I spent my time at Lothlorien and Rodas do Arco Iris. There is a communal feel to the town itself as well, which felt syncretic with the intentional communities.
I have chosen “Dia” as the title for my dissertation project. “ Dia ” is a prefix from Greek, with the meanings “through, across, from point to point , ” as well as “in different directions, apart, at an angle,” and “completeness or thoroughness” (Costello 1992, p. 372) . These meanings all describe aspects of my project: traveling through and across geographical, cultural and linguistic boundaries, transcending distance between cultures and peoples of different locations; maintaining and enhancing both the scholarly and creative aspects of the project, which at first glance seem to point in different directions; living among and participating with people from very different locations while still advancing my professional goals ; providing a unique , unprecedented angle on scholarship for my academic community, and providing a creative and thoughtful angle on expression to my communities in Brazil and Guinea Bissau; and, finally , advancing my dissertation project with completeness and thoroughness of thought, plan, and intention.
