Reimagining Resistance: Intimate Pedagogies and the Black Movement 1964-1985

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 7:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Fugitive Pedagogies and Black Educational Methodologies

Abstract

This paper presents an interdisciplinary history of how AfroBrazilians utilized intimate, informal and, nonformal educational spaces to foster communal reflection, historical consciousness, social critique during Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964-1985). By juxtaposing the oral histories collected during Brazil’s centennial celebration of the abolition of slavery, I identify intersections of resistance strategies among the AfroBrazilian working class, elites, illiterate populations, those deemed “intellectuals” by society, men, and women. This paper illustrates how younger generations of AfroBrazilian organizers innovated new pedagogical strategies built upon earlier forms of learning, rooted in intimacy, love, and resistance, while responding to Brazil’s state-sanctioned violence. The objective of this qualitative archival study is to uplift voices that often go untold in Brazil’s intellectual history and histories of resistance.

Author

• Jasmine Norma Watson, Pennsylvania State University