Ethnographies of the Brau: body, masculinity and race in the reafricanization in Salvador

• Main Authors: Osmundo Pinho, Rita de Souza Ávila
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina 2006-01-01
• Series: Revista Estudos Feministas
• Subjects: masculinidade; raça; Salvador-BA; corpo
• Online Access: http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0104-026X2006000100001&lng=en&tlng=en

In this article, the author aims to explore the developments in the process known as "cultural and political reafricanization in Salvador," embodied in the transitory crystallization of a specific social figure known as the brau. This refers to an inflection of masculinity informed by the racial and gender tensions in Salvador, as well as a local re-appropriation of cultural themes in the African diaspora. The Braus were (are) Negro youths, in the periphery, who re-invent a Negro visualness/bodiliness from re-readings of the North American soul 'culture' and are at the same time stigmatized by the middle class as violent, of "bad taste" and hyper-sexualized, that is, excessively 'Negro' and excessively 'masculinized,' in a hyperbolization, which, in a sense, contradicts the stigmatization.