Racial Malleability and the Sensory Regime of Politically Conscious Brazilian Hip Hop

Abstract

Resumo Ao examinar as práticas corporais de jovens pobres do sexo masculino afiliados ao hip hop politicamente consciente no Brasil na virada do Século XXI, esse artigo revisa os conhecimentos atuais sobre a “flexibilidade racial” no Brasil. Primeiro, discuto uma variedade de exemplos globais e históricos que mostram como o corpo é percebido como racialmente flexível, incluindo teorias eugênicas do Século XX e estudos dos contextos coloniais, nos quais as populações brancas e de cor foram submetidas a regimes sensoriais que potencialmente tiveram o poder de alterar sua aparência física. Logo, sugiro que os rappers brasileiros demonstram flexibilidade racial à medida que eles alteram a estética dos seus corpos, seus padrões de consumo e práticas linguísticas. Em uma era de alto intercâmbio comercial com os Estados Unidos e influência cultural norte americana jovens brasileiros pobres do sexo masculino utilizam da construção de conexões (contestadas) com os Estados Unidos e com a modernidade global para mudar sua aparência racial em uma escala onde a branquitude e a falta de branquitude se encontram em posições relativas entre si.

“It smells like a thousand angels marching”: The Salvific Sensorium in Rio de Janeiro’s Western Subúrbios

“…This shows that these subúrbio ‐making projects still operate today (Vargas , ), akin to what Roth‐Gordon (, 297) terms the “soft eugenics” that linger and discipline bodies in Rio. Alexander Edmonds's (, 161) ethnographic work on plastic surgery in Rio examines the ways that skin lighteners, hair straighteners, and cosmetic surgery offer an “alleviation of African traits,” as though blackness constituted a kind of public health crisis: a sickness of space and the individual.…”

“…Monica's experience, and the preparation she gave to her appearance, were typical of historical and enduring ideas about labor, morality, and fears of contamination tied to good and bad smells in Rio de Janeiro. Building on the work of Ann Stoler, Jennifer Roth‐Gordon (, 298) has examined how Brazilian racialized identities are made via a “sensory regime associated with whitening” (see also Jacobs ). In Brazil, notions of smell and race often work together in implicit and explicit ways.…”

“…In Brazil, notions of smell and race often work together in implicit and explicit ways. Indeed, Patricia de Santana Pinho (, 108) describes how the requirement to regulate “ o cheiro negro ” — which Roth‐Gordon (, 298) translates as “black smell” — is an essential aspect of managing blackness in order to demonstrate “proper bodily discipline” (Roth‐Gordon , 298).…”

“…Historically, and still today, the larger society understands these communities as racially inferior. The people who live there are described as immoral and unclean in both character and body (DaMatta , ; Goldstein ; Fischer , ; Veloso ; Perry ; Roth‐Gordon ; Alves ; McCann ; Araújo ; Smith ).…”

Favela Studies: Disrupting Higher Education and Research on Brazil's Urban Periphery

“…Intersecting these categorizations, the earliest anthropologically allusions to Brazil's racial periphery, such as Gilberto Freyre's Casa Grande e Senzala (1933), often attempted to show the formation of a racial democracy where domestic space and other intimacies were permeable phenomena that encouraged miscegenation. Recent scholars have critiqued these early historiographies for revising the brutality of colonial rule and allowing plausible deniability for current racial injustices (Bastos 2003; Goldstein 2003; Roth‐Gordon 2013; Skidmore 1972; Twine 1998). By writing against a more polite form of racialization, Brazilianists interrogate the formative ideological practices found at a brutal cusp of inclusion, exclusion, and resistance (see Guimarães 2017).…”