Resumo:
This dissertation proposes a radical contextualization of black women in pagodão from the
author's own experience, located in Salvador, from a perspective that articulates cultural
studies and Black feminisms. The initial hypothesis is that different temporalities and
identitarian and affective engagements (GOMES; ANTUNES, 2019) are articulated
with/by/through racialized and gendered bodies in Brazil, and pagodão appears as a place of
struggle, conformation and intersection of these engagements. We take radical
contextualization (GROSBERG, 2010) as a theoretical-methodological approach that seeks
the possibilities of social transformation through the articulation, disarticulation and
rearticulation of contexts. We assume affective engagements as “organized in and through
discursive and cultural practices, mobilizing political engagements” (FARIAS, 2021).
Investigating pagodão and its articulations with identity engagements (of race, gender and
sexuality) from the perspective of Black feminisms (COLLINS, 2019; hooks, 2019;
NASCIMENTO, 2021; LORDE, 2020; DAVIS, 2016; GONZALEZ, 2020), we will see how
it is mobilized by a confrontation with Western, white and colonial expectations of
respectability and morality, and, at the same time, it can reiterate cisheteronormative
behaviours and the hypersexualization of Black women. We propose an analysis based on the
figure of the mucama, introduced by Lélia Gonzalez (2020), which is spun into two other
notions: the maid and the mulata, which, in contemporary times, reconfigured in figures such
as the piriguete and the businesswoman, allow us to see affective struggles around ideas such
as success, empowerment, visibility and sexual freedom. Thus, in order to radically
contextualize Black women in pagodão, based on the researcher's own experience in Salvador
and analysing elements from different temporalities that pagodão articulates – as proposed by
Raymond Williams (1979) – and the affects that engage and are mobilized by A Dama and
other female artists who are summoned in the exercise of articulation, we have connected a
wide range of materials: music and lyrics; demographic data; music videos; interviews;
comments, posts, memes, videos and other online publications made by audience members;
recordings of live shows; archives of websites dedicated to the genre; among other materials.
In this way, we investigate the relationships between Black feminisms, identity struggles,
history, economics, politics and culture in contemporary times, articulated around pagodão in
Bahia, in order to think about the possibilities of being a Black woman in Salvador, and how
to understand and rearticulate them as better possibilities for life – full and free.
