Entre mulatas e moreninhas: constituição identitária e processos de autoafirmação de mulheres negras nas redes sociais

Abstract

This study aims to understand the processes of recognition and self-assertion of blackness of black women from Alagoas who use Instagram to address issues related to their identities. This social media application is designed and understood as a device for the dissemination and articulation of voices and writing that echo through the internet, reaching people and going to spaces that academic discourse cannot always reach. For this, the research will be based on subaltern and decolonial feminist theories, considering the non-hegemonic and non-universal character of feminism and geopolitically locating this research, located in the global south, in a third-world country, in the Brazilian Northeast and in the state of Alagoas. As a complemente and supplement to the theoretical framework that guides the study, decolonial theories and practices were used in order to provide fertile soil to think about how the modern/colonial project, through strategies of domination and violence, shaped and tore lives and subjectivities of black subjects, to the point of making them move away or completely deny their blackness. On the other hand, it is from the recognition and denial of coloniality that one can think of the subversion of stereotypes and prejudices related to gender and race. The specific objectives focus on the life story of these women and the experiences that they have subjected since before Instagram, as well as from it. Thus, it is intended to identify and problematize the intersection of aspects related to race, class and gender in the experiences brought, as well as to understand how the tools available on Instagram are used by them to elucidate the agenda of gender and identity. The methodology was designed from the Afro-affective Conversations, a methodological perspective designed from black authors to black women. This term was influenced by the conversation teaching tool, defended by the author bell hooks This perspective understands knowledge as a collective construction based on everyday experiences, without hierarchies, without object and subject positions. Five black cyberactivist women co-authored this project. These women are from Alagoas, over eighteen, active on social media,more precisely on Instagram, and speak openly about agendas related to black identities, intersecting the gender bias with that of race and class, among others that were identified during the study. Afro-affective Conversations were held with each of them through video calls, which had the audios recorded. After the analysis, other conversations were held, called feedback conversations, in order to show them what had been done and ask for suggestions for possible changes. The analysis was carried out from black women authors concerned with the construction of counter-hegemonic languages, such as bell hooks. The author understands a possibility of counter-hegemonic discourse analysis, a type of analysis consisting in creating a space that provides listening without dominating. This perspective is not intended to conquer the narrative as a whole, but to know and elucidate its fragments. These are understood as counter-hegemonic speeches that oppose the hegemonic-oppressive language and create possibilities of liberation for the subjugated ones.