Coloniality and politics of forgetfulness

Abstract

The article aims at reflecting on the silencing of the Brazilian black intelligentsia. I refer to the strategies to silence black men and women whose social practice consists of what we call the politics of forgetfulness and whose mechanism is to erase from the memory of the new generations the contribution of black authors. It is in this sense that the dilemma of black intellectuality in Brazil lies in the racist heritage of the Brazilian intellectual field – a double bond – scientific and social order. In disagreement with what the Bourdean theory says, it is assumed that the accumulation of specific capital cannot justify the absence of black authors in the Brazilian intellectual field. Everything suggests that, in Brazil, what determines the position in the intellectual field goes beyond the incorporation of a specific type of capital – class, education, origin – transferred to the intellectual field of a surrounding social space: race, gender, class.