Narrative in the construction of Black Body Memory

Abstract

The practices, corporealities, and the struggle for land rights in the urban quilombos of Porto Alegre/RS have Black women as central figures. In this context, this article reflects on the struggles led by Black women, who, connected through an aquilombamento network, emerge in these territories through acts of resistance. These actions challenge the hegemonic model of urban production, structured around skin color and the valorization of private land. Drawing from experiences with the Quilombo dos Flores in Porto Alegre, we seek to reflect on how these practices affirm a quilombola mode of urban space production that confronts this pattern. For this, we adopt narrative as a theoretical-methodological approach, to incorporate the language of orality, expressed through body and voice, as a theory of struggle for these women. Throughout this process, we observe that the struggle of the urban quilombo is grounded in the right to ancestral land, but also in the practice of collective care, led by Black women. These women act as bonds of strength that sustain a resistance network, mobilized against institutional racism at the same time as they promote community-based articulations in the neighborhood, breaking with the perception of the urban quilombo as an isolated territory. They transcend the limits imposed by the racist urban model as a network of freedom and resistance, sustained and interconnected by their leadership.