Afro-Paradise

Blackness, Violence, and Performance in Brazil

Christen A Smith

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780252081446
  9780252039935
• eBook ISBN:
  9780252098093
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: Social Sciences

Tourists exult in Bahia, Brazil, as a tropical paradise infused with the black population's one-of-a-kind vitality. But the alluring images of smiling black faces and dancing black bodies masks an ugly reality of anti-black authoritarian violence.

Christen A. Smith argues that the dialectic of glorified representations of black bodies and subsequent state repression reinforces Brazil's racially hierarchal society. Interpreting the violence as both institutional and performative, Smith follows a grassroots movement and social protest theater troupe in their campaigns against racial violence. As Smith reveals, economies of black pain and suffering form the backdrop for the staged, scripted, and choreographed afro-paradise that dazzles visitors. The work of grassroots organizers exposes this relationship, exploding illusions and asking unwelcome questions about the impact of state violence performed against the still-marginalized mass of Afro-Brazilians.

Based on years of field work, Afro-Paradise is a passionate account of a long-overlooked struggle for life and dignity in contemporary Brazil.

Index

Abu Ghraib prison (Iraq), 127, 129

Ackerman, Spencer, 128–29

activist research, 26–27, 207–12

Adan, Adailton Souza, 144

affirmative-action era, 5–6, 10, 72

Afghanistan, 18, 22, 33, 126, 128–29, 134, 180

African diaspora, 17, 18, 21–22, 27, 53, 81, 108–9, 112, 201

Afro-blocos, as challenge to carnival in Bahia, 67–68, 70

Afro-nationalism, 5–10; illusion of racial inclusion, 101–2; internal tensions of, 94; and negro permitido, 6, 95–96, 101; racial democracy versus, 6–7; rituals of racial tolerance, 5–6; social welfare programs (Bolsa Família), 6, 95–96

Afro-paradise: African diaspora and, 17, 18, 21–22; Bahia as, 1–3, 5, 12, 34, 41–70; Bahiatursa (Bahia tourist agency) images of, 1–2, 3; black body in pain as anchor for, 64–66; blackness and conditions under, 157; Culture Shock and (see Culture Shock); as disavowal of blackness, 181–82; nature of, 3; necropolitics and bare life in, 19–21, 112; palimpsest nature of, 62–63, 125–26; paradox of, 3, 5, 23–24, 29, 41–50, 65–66, 175–76; Pelourinho as symbolic representation of, 61–62; performativity/performance and, 22–30; police violence in, 2–3, 5, 12, 41–50; witnessing in, 25

Agamben, Giorgio, 49–50

Alberto, Luiz, 83, 84, 147

Alexander, M. Jacqui, 62

Algeria, 182–83

Alston, Phillip, 151–52, 184–85

Älvaro, Cléber (Bronka), Nova Brasilia massacre (2007), 117, 119–20, 124, 145–52, 158, 159, 181, 188

Amado, Jorge, 52–53, 57–59, 61

Anderson, Benedict, 6–7, 112

Andreia. See Santos, Andreia Beatriz dos Angel-Ajani, Asale, 205–6

antiblack genocide: defining genocide, 87; global movement against, 9; grassroots black-action campaigns, 7–10, 17–19, 83–84, 146–52; (Inter)National March Against the Genocide of Black People (2014), 9; March Against the Genocide of Black People (2013, Salvador), 8–9, 26; React or Di...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Interlude I: Culture Shock
• Interlude II: “The Berlin Wall”
• Interlude III: “Terrorism”
• Interlude IV: “The Police Raid”
• Interlude V: Reprise
• Appendix: Methodology and Timing
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index