Mapeamentos das expressividades de mulheres negras na formação social brasileira: a obra Quarto de Despejo como representação do “matriarcado da miséria”

Abstract

The silencing of black women in Brazilian society is a poignant reality and serves the capitalist system, which uses it as one of the strategic ways to curb expressive manifestations of autonomy of collectives, whose social places they occupy are of dissidence. This dissertation is the result of scientific research carried out in the Postgraduate Program in Social Work at the Universidade Federal da Bahia (PPGSS/UFBA). The general objective was to investigate the expressiveness of black Brazilian women in the face of oppression caused by racism, sexism, classism and homophobia, and the counter-hegemonic manifestations of resistance to the living conditions imposed by the capitalist system. The following specific objectives arise from this: 1) brief historical overview of the living and working conditions of black working class women, considering the processes of oppression caused by racial and gender violence with effects on expressiveness; 2) conceptualize “expressiviness” based on the experience of black women in light of the concept of emancipation from the Mourean perspective; and, 3) analysis of the novel Quarto de Despejo, written by Carolina Maria de Jesus, highlighting the socio-historical formation of Brazil and which elements described by the author were the focus of the collective struggle of black women and activists later on. The theoretical and methodological basis of the research is the articulated debate between: racism; sexism; expressiveness of black women; racial literacy and its counterpoint, the concept of emancipation from the Clóvis Moura’s perspective. The proposed debate discussed the concept of expressiveness according to the biases of black feminism and demonstrated the relevance of the expression of these feminists in thinking about Brazil. This was a qualitative research that focused on an exploratory and bibliographical investigation, whose object is the expressiveness of black women in the social relations of race, class and gender in Brazil in light of social formation. The research concluded that the expression of black women who, with a counter-hegemonic thought, produce analyses about the reality in which they live and express them, can lead to reflexion, denunciation and emancipatory processes of a collective nature.