Decolonizing the Northeast: Brazilian Subalterns, Non-European Heritages, and Radical Geography in Pernambuco

Abstract

This paper addresses histories and geographies of the Northeast of Brazil in the works of radical Pernambuco geographer Manuel Correia de Andrade and his main intellectual inspirations, such as Euclides da Cunha and Josué de Castro. Drawing upon current literature on subaltern spaces, critical race studies and the Modernity-Coloniality-Decoloniality project, I especially consider de Andrade's works that address popular revolts by marginalised and racialised groups in Brazilian history, including the plurisecular saga of Black slaves' quilombos and their role in the abolition of slavery, as well as the formation of Brazilian territories. My main argument is that the marginalised groups analysed in these works, similar to more studied cases such as Haiti's revolutionaries, provided examples of subaltern agency and resistance by taking their freedom by themselves, through direct action, without waiting for legitimation from their European counterparts. Subaltern spaces, intended as spaces of resistance, are key to understanding these movements. The fact that members of the radical circuits of Brazilian and Pernambucan geography in the second half of the twentieth century showed awareness of what today is called the coloniality of power and colonial difference accounts for the effectiveness of studying linguistically and culturally different geographical traditions to decolonise (Western and English-speaking) academia. F. Ferretti, 2019 "Decolonising the Northeast: subalterns, non-European heritages and radical geography in Pernambuco", Annals of the American Association of Geographers [early view]

Spatial Histories of Radical Geography: North America and Beyond

“…Slater was in Tanzania in the 1970s, too, and Blaut's master's work was in Trinidad and his doctoral research was conducted in 1950s Malaya and Singapore. Both were pioneers in the radical geographical readings of the history and trajectory of the Global South, drawing on an array of influences and writers (Ferretti 2019a).…”

History and philosophy of geography I: Decolonising the discipline, diversifying archives and historicising radicalism

“…Therefore, the need for rediscovering voices from the South is increasingly recognised. In 2019, new works have been published about critical and radical Brazilian geographers, such as Josué de Castro, Manuel Correia de Andrade and Milton Santos, who were exiled or persecuted under the military dictatorship which ruled their country between 1964 and 1985 (Davies, 2019a(Davies, , 2019bFerretti, 2019bFerretti, , 2019c. This process parallels Brazilian scholarship which is rediscovering critical and radical tendencies in disciplinary histories, although focusing on the development of these tendencies in Brazilian universities rather than in exile networks (Lencioni, 2019).…”

A Coffin for Malthusianism: Josué De Castro’s Subaltern Geopolitics

“…F. Ferretti, 2019 "A coffin for Malthusianism: Josué de Castro's subaltern geopolitics", Geopolitics early view: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10. 1080/14650045.2019.1583213 As scholars in the field well know, in the aftermath of the Second World War geopolitics was a wretched term, while critical and 'leftist' uses of this definition were internationally established only from the 1990s (Flint and Mamadouh 2015).…”

“…According to Julien Mercille, the first draws on tendencies towards 'deeper engagements with politics and activism' (Mercille 2013, 129). The second, for Joanne Sharp, addresses 'subaltern imaginaries that offer F. Ferretti, 2019 "A coffin for Malthusianism: Josué de Castro's subaltern geopolitics", Geopolitics early view: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10. 1080/14650045.2019.1583213 creative alternatives to the dominant (critical) geopolitical scripts.…”

“…For instance, a key contribution by Rachel Pain on the 'emotional geographies' draws upon Paulo Freire's notion of conscientização, that is 'the development of critical consciousness from within' (Pain 2009, 480) to address a complex agenda of emotional geopolitics going beyond unidirectional accounts of violence and fear and understanding agendas of 'resistance, agency and action' (Pain 2009, 475). Brazilian educator Paulo Freire was born in Recife, where he was acquainted with local geographers' networks and was likewise an exile of the military dictatorship (Ferretti 2019). Another feature of de Castro's work pioneering later contributions was the emphasis that he placed on corporeal realities of hunger and the associated feelings and sufferings.…”