O argumento Tempo Brasileiro

Running Away with Language: Inventing Wor(l)ds in the Work of Lélia Gonzalez in 1980s Brazil

“…The term surfaces in 'A categoria político-social de Amefricanidade', an essay written in Portuguese and published in Revista Tempo Brasileiro (1988a), a prestigious Brazilian quarterly review, aimed at an academic and literary audience (many of its contributors are [mostly white] poets, novelists and essayists), and set up in the early 1960s to discover 'uma perspectiva ou um ponto de vista autenticamente brasileiro' [an authentically Brazilian perspective or point of view]. 43 Although written in a traditionally academic style, the essay addresses the old questions of Brazilian authenticity and of Latin-American specificity from a 'new' angle, by arguing that Portugal/Europe ought to be discarded as a point of reference in favour of an African paradigm: Brazil is part of 'uma América Africana cuja Latinidade, por inexistente, teve trocado o t pelo d para, aí sim, ter o seu nome assumido com todas as letras: Améfrica Ladina' [an African America whose Latinism was not strong enough to avoid the replacement of the t by the d, leading the continent to finally assume its name with all the letters: Ladin Amefrica]. 44 To Gonzalez, then, the methodological value of the term lies in its ability to rescue the 'unidade específica' [specific unity] of an ethno-geographical region inspired and influenced by African models and languages, and created by blacks in America.…”