{"id":35299,"date":"2014-01-05T01:22:17","date_gmt":"2014-01-05T01:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=35299"},"modified":"2014-01-05T01:22:17","modified_gmt":"2014-01-05T01:22:17","slug":"imagining-brazil-seduction-samba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=35299","title":{"rendered":"Imagining Brazil: Seduction, Samba"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagining Brazil: Seduction, Samba<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Canadian Woman Studies \/ Les Caheiers de la Femme<\/a>
\nVolume 20, Number 2<\/a> (2000)
\npages 48-56<\/p>\n

Natasha Pravaz<\/a><\/strong>, Associate Professor
\nWilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada<\/em><\/p>\n

En utilisant des paroles de chants rythm\u00e9s sur la samba et d\u2018autre mat\u00e9riel ethnographique, l\u2018auteure detecte la presence du mul\u00e2tre et de propos racistes dans la construction du nationalisme br\u00e9zilien et discute sur l\u2018\u00e9vidente ambivalence dans le discours ethnique local entre le d\u00e9sir et la rejection envers ce personage.<\/em><\/p>\n

Using the words of songs and rhythmic samba on other ethnographic material, the author detects the presence the mulatto and racism in the construction of Brazilian nationalism and discusses the obvious ambivalence in the local ethnic discourse between desire and rejection to this personage.<\/em><\/p>\n

A polysemic<\/a> category, mulata<\/em><\/a> in the Brazilian context can refer to “a woman of mixed racial descent,” but it also connotes voluptuosity<\/a>, sensuality, and ability for dancing the samba<\/a>. In its restricted sense, however, it names an occupation. That is, only women who engage in dancing the samba in a commodified spectacle and receive some form of remuneration for it can be called mulatas<\/em>. Under this specific signification, the concept of the mulata<\/em> can be contrasted to that of the passita<\/em>, a solo dancer in the Carnival<\/a> parades who performs, not for money, but out of love for samba and for her Samba School<\/a> of choice. However, regardless of the subtleties of this and other distinctions, mulata<\/em> and passista<\/em> are perhaps merely privileged signifiers in a larger paradigmatic chain associating multiple cultural terms such as cabrocha, morena, criouh, brasileira, nega, pretinha, baiana<\/em>, to name just a few. These multiple signifiers denoting “black woman” in Brazil may be seen as lexicological crystallisations of what has been described by Marvin Harris<\/a> as a fluid “system of racial classification.” In Brazil, “race talk” has a dermal character, where slight gradations in skin colour are constructed as distinctions begging specific denomination. Depending on the context of utterance, most of the above mentioned racialized and gendered terms carry with them a certain fetishistic quality. In Brazil, the mulata<\/em> is commonly portrayed as a woman always ready to deploy her tricks of sorcery and bewitching, embodying sensuality, voluptuosity, and dexterity in dancing the samba. She has become a figure of desire in the Brazilian imaginary. It is due to this semantic proliferation that I have decided to use the Brazilian lexicon, rather than to reduce its meaning by making reference to a “mulatto woman.”<\/p>\n

Using a series of samba lyrics as my ethnographic material,\u00a0I will address the figuration of the mulata<\/em> as the embodiment of sensuality in the Brazilian imaginary; explore the use of racialized tropes and the figure of the mulata<\/em> in the constitution of Brazilian discourses of national identity; and briefly discuss the conspicuous ambivalence between desire and abjection toward the mulata<\/em> in local discourses of race…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imagining Brazil: Seduction, Samba Canadian Woman Studies \/ Les Caheiers de la Femme Volume 20, Number 2 (2000) pages 48-56 Natasha Pravaz, Associate Professor Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada En utilisant des paroles de chants rythm\u00e9s sur la samba et d\u2018autre mat\u00e9riel ethnographique, l\u2018auteure detecte la presence du mul\u00e2tre et de propos racistes dans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,83,21,8,25],"tags":[16655,16656,1392,6724],"class_list":["post-35299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-brazil","category-latincarib","category-media-archive","category-women","tag-canadian-woman-studies","tag-les-caheiers-de-la-femme","tag-music","tag-natasha-pravaz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}