“Quando tu dança, tu existe”: masculinidades pretas e(m) movimento

Abstract

This work is the result of reflections by three black researchers, of different tones, genders and origins, after joint participation in academic events. In these, the focus of the questions and considerations about presentations made by black men of research about themselves were unquestionable curiosities related to their methodologies and references, including suggestions of white female references as essential for the work.  The expectation for a sexist masculinity, of the culture of whiteness, in black men, and the demanded reparation from a white perspective in more than one academic moment of the three motivated and justifies the production of this. Based on a case study of a black man who dances, researches and narrates his story, it demonstrates how this same masculinity is questioned when a black body decides to dedicate itself to dancing and exist from corporeality considered subordinate. Thus, in the first part of the work, we made a brief analysis of the construction of hegemonic masculinity through the “man with H”, demonstrating how the corporeality of the “true male” is elaborated throughout different moments of life. Furthermore, we analyze how this perspective animalizes and inferiorizes black men, emptying them of themselves and filling them with a narrative constructed by whiteness. The femininities present in black men since their origins in Afrika and the persistent homage to ancestry in those who maintain them despite colonialities in the readings and interpretations of the black body were highlighted. Finally, elements of the language in confronting black men who dance are considered similar to the moments that generated the research, that is, supposedly subtle questions to black men who, no matter what they do, will have their masculinity associated with issues of white masculinity, thus suffering colonial violence in its academically updated form.