Symbol: Anan Ntontan, by Adinkra
To speak of the African Diaspora in the Americas, will use the metaphor of Ananse, the spider was able to weave a great web and get the treasure chest of stories from the hands of Kwame and allow us to have stories. Ananse, the goddess, accompanied their children around the world. The myth of Ananse originating culture of the peoples Fanthi-Ashanti region of Benin, West Africa, spread and renewed and renewed in various parts of the Americas. Ananse, their webs and their stories accompanied their children in african-diaspora. The Africans who crossed into the Americas, on condition of slaves were deprived of everything, including their humanity by being transformed into commodities, “objectified. ” In them, the printed code of the colonizer of Europe and took possession of them, as its owner, Sir.
However, Africans who crossed the oceans were not alone. They took their deities, worldviews, otherness – linguistic, artistic, ethnic, religious, and different forms of social organization and modes of symbolization of the real. Among the deities who accompanied them came Ananse. As we know, african-diaspora in the Americas follows the process of European colonialism and, in particular the transatlantic slave trade and slavery system.
However, once installed on any of the continents for more than traditions were dammed or annihilated by the hegemonic culture, the descendants of Africans were starting a process of creation, invention and re-creation of cultural memory to preserve the minimum bond identity, cooperation and solidarity. In this network of interactions, the multiple African cultures that spread across the world, preserved the African traits visible marks. Brands that have had fundamental importance for these Africans and their descendants carry out their personal and collective reconstruction.
Among the numerous brands of Africanism, I highlight in this brief communication the role of the body as brand identity. In this the process of mergers and reinterpretation, the body of Africans and their descendants always had great importance, both to be denied as stated. If you want to assert your blackness, the body is present, reaffirming. If you want to deny, this same body that you try to subvert and make you closer to the standard white.
Therefore, from the standpoint of putting the body with this significance, the bodies of Africans of the african diaspora always have to be read in terms of performance, specially in the field of ritual performance, with everything that brings the ritual of Memory clippings brought by Africans. The black body carries the story of many people. In the body of each one of us, wherever we are, there are many stories written on it, which can be both a history of denial, as a story of struggle and resistance, which lies on a great responsibility because it is not only our individual history we are building.
Frantz Fanon notes that when reflecting on his body realized that it contained a body schema, itself, also contained a racial historical scheme. However, the preparation of this scheme borrows everything the other, the white, had built for him, “a thousand details, anecdotes, stories .[…] legends, stories, history and, specially, the historicity “. Fanon states that unfolds with the body affected, when appointed by a white child:
“mom, a black man, I’m afraid! Fear! Fear! Began to be afraid of me. “At that time, Fanon realizes that his body is no longer just your body. It was the “body schema, reached at various points. ” Your body in three persons. It was while in charge of your body, for your race and your ancestors. “I existed in threefold occupied much space”
The body, therefore, in view of Frantz Fanon pointed out, it should be understood as a tool carrier of significant structures and structures of meaning and their gesture-sign should be read in accordance with the social context in which it sets up. Put in another way, the very structure of signifiers of meaning and structure of the black body, awarded the white.
Anthropology has been able to show that the body is affected by religion, family group, social class, and ultimately all stakeholders affected by social and cultural. This is how the body is being shaped by everything that surrounds him in its vicinity. Society projects on it the face of his own spirit, because as Glusberg Jorge says:
“body is a matter shaped by the external world, the social and cultural patterns, and not the source, the origin of its behavior. ” The body is not only released in contextual space, it interacts, interfering and being interfered by the context. That’s how it is constituted as a body. From this standpoint, the body is social and individual. A kind of compound that lives in a dynamic equilibrium between these two forces. And it is exactly because the body is individual and social, he is able to express, metaphorically, structural principles of collective life.
Regarding ‘performance, whatever the field of study, her, performance can not disengage from its origin as a center that has the full body interaction between the self, the individual with the collective, the social. Rather, in the context of performance, individual and social body, metaphorically expresses the structural principles of collective life. The body has memory, has mysteries. At the same time as bare copper. Through the body the being can be seen, evaluated, judged.
Thus, performances affirm identities and stories, made by doubly behaviors exercised. That is, are actions that people can train to play and that, too, can repeat and rehearse. This would be the concept of restored behavior.
The fact that the performances of the enslaved Africans having been built in bits, pieces of restored behavior, will cause each one is unique, in that these behaviors can be recombined in infinite variations and in different contexts. By that I mean that “Africa” that reaches the American continent is not a homogeneous whole, but a piece of that continent marked by heterogeneity of cultures and ethnicities.
From the perspective of the black body, we have to go to the search key symbolic interpretation, we are on the verge of losing the semantics of what can be a sophisticated communication system. We are at a crossroads. Exu to show us the path. Otherwise, we run the serious risk of losing not only significant, but the continuous reproduction of a social memory repressed. The freedom of moving bodies. The dance, music, parts of a singularity of African origin, disowned by the weight of Western culture.
Remaining fragments of this speech, we can just find the key. Paul Gilroy, is already warning: The Politics of Black Diaspora always involved in dance, performance and presentation of the body as a tool of expression. This happened because blacks were left out of the sphere based on the word. For this reason, broke the barrier with the discourse of the body. Were able, with the body, creating a significant new dimension that fuses aesthetics and ethics, represented in the ritual performance. In this vein, the libertarian movement and aggressive Exu, will “open the way”, forging pass, “opening wings. ” The African body in motion. The heirs of Ananse, the goddess Aranã in action.
In the process of diaspora those men and women who crossed the ocean, helpless, saw severed the ties of strains that aggregated as ethnic groups and not to succumb had to develop different strategies for survival. They are men and women who, despite all the obstacles that were imposed, maintained strength and intelligence enough to know, understand and adapt to the lands that they were strangers.
And, thus, did not count on other resources, but their bodies, their hands, their skills with which they were able to create and improvise. However, these men and women said, especially with his vivid memories from Africa .. And why not say, these Africans in this attempt to recover itself, had the valuable assistance of Ananse. The African Diaspora aided by the power of this deity will be endowed with consciousness of unity and solidarity.
I say, therefore, that the use of body and culture as tools of resistance exercise important role in the process of constructing the identities of Africans in a position of inferiority. What I want is that the African body and the body of his descendants, for better or for worse, always come to the scene, put themselves and expose themselves, becomes a text in the speech that sets and announces. In short, a body that speaks. In other words, this body that is stigmatized by racism, is the mark of discrimination, exposed to punishment and forced labor and all forms of exploitation. On the other hand, this same body will become an instrument of affirmation of identities in the struggle with the oppressors in a process of awareness, and also this same body that could be an object of revulsion, a process of self-denial. Speaking of the binomial, self-assertion and self-denial, I’m referring to bodily grammars constructed from the inter-relation with others, in circumstances of stress.
The body that is claimed to be the body that attacks the body dominant standard in all aspects, from the aesthetic field, to the political field itself. It is a body capable of subverting the dominant standards body. In turn, the body that denies itself is the body that seeks to express themselves through body language that subsumed the body tries to approach the dominant standard. In particular, I mention in the first case, the Rastafarians and the Black is Beautiful, and the second, perhaps the most extreme known by all, is the pop star Michael Jackson. Here, I remember the outburst of Frantz Fanon.
Thus, each of the yarns / fabrics actions by Ananse founded a resistance network capable of not only the survival of African slaves and later their descendants, but, beyond simple survival, stripped of everything, an enhanced survival created by a cultural repository in the Americas. In this perspective, that Ananse is present in several places in the Americas, uniting and bringing together the threads / actions, building networks of solidarity that will strengthen the main character of this action, so that it can reach your goals. Therefore, the stories of black people in the Americas fall into narratives that include migrations and crossings, where the experience of the sacred in a particular way, it constitutes an index of cultural resistance and survival of ethnic, political and social.
Translated by Marcos Imbrizi, journalist and teacher. Email: mimbrizi@hotmail.com