Intersecting oppressions; intersecting struggles: Race, class and subalternity

This article offers intersectional theories of racism another way to think about Gramsci’s work; it will explore how Gramsci operationalizes the category of subaltern groups. It begins by briefly reviewing how Gramsci’s work is discussed in contemporary theoretical approaches to racism in the work of Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patricia Hill Collins, Michael Omi and Howard Winant and Stuart Hall. It will stress important similarities regarding the relationship between structural and social forces, political ideologies and consciousness. It will note how both ‘intersectionality’ and ‘articulation’ (one variant of this concept discussed by Hall) show how racism can be amplified through the overlapping or overdetermination of identities, representations and societal effects. It continues by exploring how racism was overdetermined in the Italian national context during the time that Gramsci had lived (and relates it to contemporary theoretical frameworks that organize our understandings of race, racialization and racism). The article then explores how subalternity has been theorized away from the context in which Gramsci employed the term and interpreted, instead, from the twin perspectives of absolute domination and radical autonomy. The article concludes by reading subalternity alongside of race, class and as a substantive cultural question and, in addition, a question of strategy and political organization.

Interseccionalidade e encruzilhada: exuzilhamentos

A partir de questões suscitadas pelas palestras de Maria Aparecida Moura e Bianca Santana no encontro Decolonialidade e Ciência da Informação: veredas dialógicas, o artigo faz uma comparação inicial entre três conceitos distintos, mas correlatos: interseccionalidade, encruzilhada e exuzilhada. Para isso, toma como referência principal textos de Patricia Hill Collins e Sirma Bilge, Leda Maria Martins e Cidinha da Silva, respectivamente. Nesse percurso, avalia o modo como cada conceito busca representar a complexidade e heterogeneidade de experiências marginalizadas ou rarefeitas. Considerando alguns dilemas do primeiro conceito, entende que os dois últimos podem nos sugerir um conceito não essencialista de representação. Em todo caso, o artigo marca o início de uma discussão, aberta a outros caminhos e transformações, sublinhando o diálogo como "processo vital móvel"

Transgressing the Controlling Images of African-American Women? Performing Black Womanhood in Contemporary American Television Series

Drawing from intersectionality theories and black feminist critiques of white, masculinist, and racist discourses still prevailing in the American popular culture of the twenty-first century, this article looks critically at contemporary images of African-American women in the selected television series. For at least four decades critics of American popular culture have been pointing to, on the one hand, the dominant stereotypes of African-American women (the so-called controlling images, to use the expression coined by Patricia Hill Collins) resulting from slavery, racial segregation, white racism and sexism as well as, on the other hand, to significant marginalization or invisibility of black women in mainstream film and television productions. In this context, the article analyzes two contemporary television shows casting African-American women as leading characters (e.g., Scandal, 2012-2018 and How To Get Away With Murder, 2014-2020) to see whether these narratives are novel in portraying black women’s experiences or, rather, they inscribe themselves in the assimilationist and post-racial ways of representation.

Sociological podcasting: radical hope, care and solidarity in a time of crisis

Sociological podcasting is a radical way of communicating scholarship and assisting in the kinds of knowledge production needed in a heightened period of political calamity. It is part of a vast body of scholarship, work and art produced to contest the grand narratives which have come to dominate our understandings of society. It has the potential to make more legible the interconnections that underpin our most pressing issues as a society. This article discusses its role as public sociology, looking at the work of Michael Burawoy as well as some of his critics such as John Holmwood, Avi Goldberg and Axel van den Berg. It also discusses its creativity in taking listeners beyond the (academic) written word, and its potential for resisting and countering 'presentism' (accounts of events that are unhistorical and contextfree). Sociological podcasting has the capacity to generate hope and care, and here the work of Patricia Hill Collins is seen as exemplary, as is the work of Bev Skeggs and the Solidarity and Care collective. The dialogical characteristics of sociological podcasting are strengthened by the possibility it offers of drawing on real life examples of events, people and collectives. The authors - the people who produce the Surviving Society podcast - are resistant to positioning such projects as anything other than a collective endeavour, but are also mindful that, as Black creatives, podcasters and academics, their method and praxis can be overexposed to processes of co-option, plagiarism and erasure.

Algoritmização de estereótipos raciais em bancos de imagens: a persistência dos padrões coloniais Jezebel, Mammy e Sapphire para mulheres negras

Neste trabalho, é realizado um estudo exploratório de bancos de imagens, especificamente Getty Images e Shutterstock, analisando se os processos de tagueamento desses dispositivos de busca revelam modos algorítmicos de reprodução de mentalidades coloniais a respeito de mulheres negras. Com base no conceito de “imagens de controle”, de Patricia Hill Collins, foram analisadas aqui as imagens Jezebel, Mammy e Sapphire, a partir do entendimento de que esses estereótipos sobre a subjetividade feminina negra reforçam narrativas de subordinação, exploração e animalização, a serviço da colonialidade. Embora os resultados apresentem especificidades, sobretudo em virtude da pandemia da covid-19, percebeu-se que a colonialidade algorítmica se manifesta nesses bancos, que etiquetam com mais frequência as imagens de mulheres negras a padrões coloniais de representação de sexualidade, trabalho e agressividade.

Intersectionality, Identity, and the Riddle of Class

In this essay I discuss a specific notion that has become particularly influential in framing the discussion of identity and identity politics – intersectionality. I show that the original formulation of that notion was crucially intertwined with debates on class and class politics. After shedding light on the “prehistory” of intersectionality in black feminism, I discuss the original formulations of the concept in the works of Kimberlé Crenshaw and Patricia Hill Collins. A focus on the notion of “oppression” as well as on the tensions between “irreducibility” and “simultaneity” of systems of oppression in intersectional writings leads me to examine some of the pitfalls of identity politics today. An attempt to rethink the notion of class in the light of intersectionality closes the essay.

O corpo político de Linn da Quebrada

O artigo em comento trabalhará as categorias raça, corpo, gênero e sexualidade a partir da análise do ser político da rapper e performer Linn da Quebrada, por intermédio da análise documental de entrevistas da artista associadas a trechos de suas canções. Linn é produto musical brasileiro que adentra o cenário do funk e do rapper com canções e performances que subvertem o padrão universal de comportamento social dominante no que confere ao que se espera em ser homem e ser mulher, vez que em suas letras pensa o feminino em corpos outros (corpos trans, não siliconados, afeminados, enviadados etc). Trata-se de estudo de natureza qualitativa, com análise documental exploratória e descritiva junto a pesquisa bibliográfica. Como resultado, constatou-se que a pluralidade da artista advém como instrumento político de defesa de um feminino não esperado pela maioria dos indivíduos, dando vazão por sua voz a lutas encampadas por movimentos de mulheres e pela comunidade TLGB[1]. Judith Buttler, Michael Focault e Patricia Hill Collins são autores que complementam teoricamente o que Linn transmite em seu trabalho artístico. Palavras-chaves: gênero; corpos; Linn.[1] A alteração da sigla LGBT para TLGB no texto parte de uma política de enaltecimento dos corpos travestis, transsexuais e transgêneros, sendo reiterado a terminologia por artistas pertencentes ao T da sigla, com o intuito de ampliar a visibilidade a elas nos diálogos efetivados em prol da comunidade.