Aquilombamento no ambiente digital: Performances antirracistas na internet

Abstract

This thesis investigates anti-racist performances conveyed by anti-racist content creators on the digital platform Instagram. Using cultural performances as a methodological lens, specifically based on the notion of performance developed by Richard Bauman (1975; 2014), which defines it as verbal communication marked by communicative responsibility, I adopt a multi-referenced methodology. From an Afro-referenced perspective, this methodology mobilizes digital ethnography procedures to follow and investigate the reference group composed of the profiles @afroliterato, @azanjeri, and @papodepreta on Instagram. In this sense, I employ a performative writing style that articulates epistolary writing and the conduction of research in the form of a procession as a strategy for producing alternative knowledge. The study seeks to understand how these subjects construct, through their performances displayed in the digital space, possibilities for repositioning and dismantling historically crystallized dominant discourses within an environment marked by contradictions. The objective of this thesis is to identify the possibility of "aquilombamento" (collective Black resistance and community building) in the digital realm, based on the circulation of debates and anti-racist narratives, and thus understand the trajectory and life history of the interlocutors in relation to the construction of their digital performances. The analysis engages with theoretical contributions from the field of cultural performances, especially the works of Bauman (1975; 2014), Martins (2022), Schechner (2006), and Taylor (2013; 2023), as well as Afro-referenced theories: Asante (2009), Dias (2019), Dias et al. (2022), Fanon (1968; 2020; 2021), Gonzalez (2020), Kilomba (2021), Nascimento (2022), among others. Furthermore, it mobilizes discussions on surveillance capitalism based on Zuboff (2020) and on algorithmic racism based on the contributions of Faustino and Lippold (2023), Noble (2021), and Silva (2019). The results show that, although the anti-racist performances conveyed by the analyzed profiles do not structurally destabilize racist discourses circulating on digital platforms, these performances promote the display of narratives from their own perspectives within these spaces. In doing so, they construct epistemologies, pedagogies, and forms of communal support.