Refusing the Nation, Theorizing Black Belonging - Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean, pt. 2

Session Submission Type: Panel

Description for Program

National narratives of race mixture such as mestizaje, mesitçagem, creolization, and racial democracy have ruled the sociopolitical imaginary of Latin American and Caribbean societies since the 1920s and 30s. With pressures from Black and Indigenous social movements and scholars, many Latin American and Caribbean nation-states in the past two decades have at least acknowledged the material effects of Black and Indigenous erasure brought on by the myth that race mixture has created racial democracies in the region. Yet, the cultural impact of these myths continues in representations of blackness and indigeneity in popular culture, the rights of Black and Indigenous women, and the political ideals of a singular national identity. This panel will discuss how Black people in Latin America and the Caribbean theorize ethno-racial and gender difference against these national myths and their repercussions in citizenship and popular culture. Black and Indigenous feminists, in particular, have long sought to forge a sense of belonging against the violence of these narratives through collective joy and solidarity. Building discursive spaces that exceed national borders and identities, they work toward a diasporic and transnational relationality attuned to the complexities of race, gender, and class. As the second part of a two-panel series featuring members of the Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean working group, this panel will explore this relationality through examples that include Beninese-French singer Angélique Kidjo's 2019 tribute album that recites the music of Afro-Cuban singer Celia Cruz, Black and Indigenous refusals of Mexico's ethno-racial policies around blood and genetics, the renegotiation by Black baianas de acarajé of Brazil's beauty standards, and redress of gender violence amidst Belize's postcolonial state formation. This panel will illustrate how recitation, refusal, renegotiation, and redress become modes for Black study, joy, and solidarity, in particular through a Black and women of color feminist lens.

Sub Unit

• ASWAD

Chair

• Genesis Lara, University of California, Irvine

Individual Presentations

• Angélique Kidjo's Celia: Tribute Album as Black Diasporic Study - John Mundell, Washington University in St. Louis

• In the Blood: Black/Indigenous Refusals Against Mestizo Logics of Power - Ashley Agbasoga

• Beyond the Mulatta: Baianas as Theorists of Defiant Black Beauty - Vanessa Castaneda, Davidson College

• Bearing Witness: Gender Violence and the Emergence of the Belizean Nation-State - Nicole Ramsey, University of Texas at Austin

Discussant

• Jamie Andreson, Simmons University