POWER RELATIONS AND GENDER ISSUES IN THE AFRICAN CONTINENT: A CASE STUDY/RELACOES DE PODER E QUESTOES DE GENERO NO CONTINENTE AFRICANO: UM ESTUDO DE CASO

• Published in: Revista Ártemis (João Pessoa) Vol. 32; no. 1; p. 217
• Main Authors: Feital, Renata, Aguilar, Nubia
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Portuguese
• Published: Universidade Federal da Paraiba. Facultad de ciencias sociales y humanidades 01-07-2021
• Subjects: Makeba, Miriam
• ISSN: 1807-8214

Colonialism was a movement that affected the African continent in different ways. The political, economic and ideological spheres were orchestrated to meet the colonial project, which involved people guided by different interests. From this contact, multiple relationships emerged, involving the colonizers and the colonized. Through the formation of power's hierarchies, there was the discursive meshes creation that founded stereotypes fundamentally operated to define, especially in a pejorative way, who the African people were. In this context, find representations of limited female figures, reduced to the colonial vision. There were several cases in which women were portrayed and objectified, serving the society of the spectacle. In this work, spaces for debates on these themes will be visited, sharing the perspective that colonialism also needs to be analyzed with gender relations theories. Concomitantly, we offer a reading on the militant atuation of Miriam Makeba, who was prominent in performing an art that confronted, in many ways, colonial narratives, which reduced representaion of women and men Africans. The movement carried out by Miriam Makeba is an alternative for analyzing the agencies of African subjects in the face of different situations of oppression that emerged in colonial realities, while we highlighted the importance of representation for the narrative creations and the structuring of power spaces. Keywords: Colonialism. Stereotypes. Gender. Narrative. Representations. Miriam Makeba. O colonialismo foi um movimento que atingiu de diversas maneiras o continente africano. As esferas politicas, economicas e ideologicas foram orquestradas para atender o projeto colonial, que envolveu pessoas guiadas por distintos interesses. Desse contato, surgiram relacoes multiplas entre colonizadores e colonizados. Ao estabelecer hierarquias de poder, ocorreu a criacao de malhas discursivas que fundamentaram estereotipos operados para definir, sobretudo de modo pejorativo, quem eram os sujeitos africanos. A conjuntura expressa representacoes de mulheres de maneira limitada e reduzida a visao colonial. Varios foram os casos em que mulheres foram retratadas de formas objetificadas, buscando atender a sociedade do espetaculo. Neste artigo serao visitados espacos de debates sobre estes temas, partilhando da perspectiva que o colonialismo precisa tambem ser analisado com teorias que abordam as relacoes de genero. Concomitante, oferecemos uma leitura sobre a atuacao militante de Miriam Makeba que foi proeminente em realizar uma arte que confrontou, de muitas maneiras, as narrativas coloniais, que representaram africanas e africanos. O movimento realizado por Miriam Makeba, sera lido como parte das agencias realizadas por sujeitos africanos diante das distintas situacoes de opressao que emergiram do contato colonial, a tempo que destacaremos a importancia da representacao para a criacao de narrativas e a estruturacao de espacos de poder. Palavras-chave: Colonialismo. Estereotipos. Genero. Narrativa. Representacao. Miriam Makeba.