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Papers by Celina de Sá
The Afro-Paradox: Diasporic Chauvinism and Cultural Expertise in Afro-Brazilian Capoeira
Diaspora, May 1, 2024
Increasingly, Brazilian experts of capoeira-an Afro-Brazilian combat game-travel to African citie... more Increasingly, Brazilian experts of capoeira-an Afro-Brazilian combat game-travel to African cities for an imagined return to the sites of capoeira's origins, as well as to train African students. Focusing on a cultural festival in Abidjan, I analyze capoeira cultural exchange events across West Africa through the anthropological lenses of expertise and racial analysis. These exchanges feature displays of Brazilian nationalism embodied by West African capoeira students, while they also reveal West Africans' creative endeavors, such as constructing new capoeira songs in African languages. I demonstrate how the diasporic position to protect "Afro" cultural forms ironically gives way to policing creative work by continental Africans, capoeira's most recent recruits in the contemporary moment. I examine the racial hierarchies that proliferate within Black performance worlds through my concept of diasporic chauvinism to argue that diasporic returns can marginalize Africans and their innovations.
Playing with Origins: Racial Self‐Making and Embodying History in Togolese Capoeira
Transforming Anthropology
This article discusses how contemporary expressive cultural projects in Lomé, Togo, highlight pra... more This article discusses how contemporary expressive cultural projects in Lomé, Togo, highlight practices of racial self‐making emerging from urban African contexts through a martial art developed by enslaved Afro‐Brazilians in colonial Brazil. This specific case analyzes Nukunu, the country's first capoeira group, and their ideological constructions of self, people, and historical time. Through capoeira—as a practice that I suggest makes interventions into these three spheres—Togolese martial artists creatively leverage the historical ties across the Black Atlantic as ideological and embodied resources for facing the particular challenges of twenty‐first‐century neocolonial structures. By analyzing Nukunu's views on their own racial subjectivity as an extended history of racial oppression, as well as a reenactment of the Ewe ethnic group's origin story, I argue that Togolese martial artists radically reframe notions of self, peoplehood, and historical time through enactin...
Diaspora: The Journal of Transnational Studies, 2024
Increasingly, Brazilian experts of capoeira-an Afro-Brazilian combat game-travel to African citie... more Increasingly, Brazilian experts of capoeira-an Afro-Brazilian combat game-travel to African cities for an imagined return to the sites of capoeira's origins, as well as to train African students. Focusing on a cultural festival in Abidjan, I analyze capoeira cultural exchange events across West Africa through the anthropological lenses of expertise and racial analysis. These exchanges feature displays of Brazilian nationalism embodied by West African capoeira students, while they also reveal West Africans' creative endeavors, such as constructing new capoeira songs in African languages. I demonstrate how the diasporic position to protect "Afro" cultural forms ironically gives way to policing creative work by continental Africans, capoeira's most recent recruits in the contemporary moment. I examine the racial hierarchies that proliferate within Black performance worlds through my concept of diasporic chauvinism to argue that diasporic returns can marginalize Africans and their innovations.
This article discusses how contemporary expressive cultural projects in Lom e, Togo, highlight pr... more This article discusses how contemporary expressive cultural projects in Lom e, Togo, highlight practices of racial self-making emerging from urban African contexts through a martial art developed by enslaved Afro-Brazilians in colonial Brazil. This specific case analyzes Nukunu, the country's first capoeira group, and their ideological constructions of self, people, and historical time. Through capoeira-as a practice that I suggest makes interventions into these three spheres-Togolese martial artists creatively leverage the historical ties across the Black Atlantic as ideological and embodied resources for facing the particular challenges of twenty-first-century neocolonial structures. By analyzing Nukunu's views on their own racial subjectivity as an extended history of racial oppression, as well as a reenactment of the Ewe ethnic group's origin story, I argue that Togolese martial artists radically reframe notions of self, peoplehood, and historical time through enacting and performing racialized diasporic forms.
Izzo, Justin. Experiments with empire: anthropology and fiction in the French Atlantic. x, 282 pp., illus., bibliogr. Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 2019. £20.99 (paper)
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Aug 8, 2022
The Afro-Paradox: Diasporic Chauvinism and Cultural Expertise in Afro-Brazilian Capoeira
Diaspora, May 1, 2024
Increasingly, Brazilian experts of capoeira-an Afro-Brazilian combat game-travel to African citie... more Increasingly, Brazilian experts of capoeira-an Afro-Brazilian combat game-travel to African cities for an imagined return to the sites of capoeira's origins, as well as to train African students. Focusing on a cultural festival in Abidjan, I analyze capoeira cultural exchange events across West Africa through the anthropological lenses of expertise and racial analysis. These exchanges feature displays of Brazilian nationalism embodied by West African capoeira students, while they also reveal West Africans' creative endeavors, such as constructing new capoeira songs in African languages. I demonstrate how the diasporic position to protect "Afro" cultural forms ironically gives way to policing creative work by continental Africans, capoeira's most recent recruits in the contemporary moment. I examine the racial hierarchies that proliferate within Black performance worlds through my concept of diasporic chauvinism to argue that diasporic returns can marginalize Africans and their innovations.
Playing with Origins: Racial Self‐Making and Embodying History in Togolese Capoeira
Transforming Anthropology
This article discusses how contemporary expressive cultural projects in Lomé, Togo, highlight pra... more This article discusses how contemporary expressive cultural projects in Lomé, Togo, highlight practices of racial self‐making emerging from urban African contexts through a martial art developed by enslaved Afro‐Brazilians in colonial Brazil. This specific case analyzes Nukunu, the country's first capoeira group, and their ideological constructions of self, people, and historical time. Through capoeira—as a practice that I suggest makes interventions into these three spheres—Togolese martial artists creatively leverage the historical ties across the Black Atlantic as ideological and embodied resources for facing the particular challenges of twenty‐first‐century neocolonial structures. By analyzing Nukunu's views on their own racial subjectivity as an extended history of racial oppression, as well as a reenactment of the Ewe ethnic group's origin story, I argue that Togolese martial artists radically reframe notions of self, peoplehood, and historical time through enactin...
Diaspora: The Journal of Transnational Studies, 2024
Increasingly, Brazilian experts of capoeira-an Afro-Brazilian combat game-travel to African citie... more Increasingly, Brazilian experts of capoeira-an Afro-Brazilian combat game-travel to African cities for an imagined return to the sites of capoeira's origins, as well as to train African students. Focusing on a cultural festival in Abidjan, I analyze capoeira cultural exchange events across West Africa through the anthropological lenses of expertise and racial analysis. These exchanges feature displays of Brazilian nationalism embodied by West African capoeira students, while they also reveal West Africans' creative endeavors, such as constructing new capoeira songs in African languages. I demonstrate how the diasporic position to protect "Afro" cultural forms ironically gives way to policing creative work by continental Africans, capoeira's most recent recruits in the contemporary moment. I examine the racial hierarchies that proliferate within Black performance worlds through my concept of diasporic chauvinism to argue that diasporic returns can marginalize Africans and their innovations.
This article discusses how contemporary expressive cultural projects in Lom e, Togo, highlight pr... more This article discusses how contemporary expressive cultural projects in Lom e, Togo, highlight practices of racial self-making emerging from urban African contexts through a martial art developed by enslaved Afro-Brazilians in colonial Brazil. This specific case analyzes Nukunu, the country's first capoeira group, and their ideological constructions of self, people, and historical time. Through capoeira-as a practice that I suggest makes interventions into these three spheres-Togolese martial artists creatively leverage the historical ties across the Black Atlantic as ideological and embodied resources for facing the particular challenges of twenty-first-century neocolonial structures. By analyzing Nukunu's views on their own racial subjectivity as an extended history of racial oppression, as well as a reenactment of the Ewe ethnic group's origin story, I argue that Togolese martial artists radically reframe notions of self, peoplehood, and historical time through enacting and performing racialized diasporic forms.
Izzo, Justin. Experiments with empire: anthropology and fiction in the French Atlantic. x, 282 pp., illus., bibliogr. Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 2019. £20.99 (paper)
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Aug 8, 2022
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Papers by Celina de Sá