Brazilian Black Feminism in Rural and Urban Spaces

Abstract

Brazilian Black feminism has changed and grown more influential and diverse in the past two decades. One of the major challenges is to understand what these changes mean for women’s agency in the different contexts in which they emerge, both rural and urban. To examine the transformations of Black feminism in Brazil, this article investigates three generations of activists over the periods of re-democratization, democratic expansion and crisis of democracy, bringing focus to Black women in the quilombola movement, young Black feminists on the Internet and intersectional feminism. The article analyses traditional and new activist networks that claim multiple identities for themselves, as well as public status as collective action strategies to seize traditional spaces for political activism, grounding themselves in feminism and anti-racism against the multiple forms of oppression in urban and rural spaces.