A revista Afro-Ásia é uma publicação semestral do Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientais e da Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas da Universidade Federal da Bahia, dedicada, sobretudo, a temas afro-brasileiros, africanos e asiáticos. Essa publicação dedica-se à divulgação de estudos relativos às populações africanas, asiáticas e seus descendentes no Brasil e alhures. A revista preenche destacado espaço na vida cultural brasileira, pois ainda é um dos poucos periódicos nacionais inteiramente dedicados a temas afro-brasileiros e africanos. Visa promover a reflexão e o debate acadêmico sobre temas relacionados com a história da escravidão, as relações raciais e os complexos processos de construção identitária. Assim como produzir referências significativas para uma ação sócio-política progressista, orientada para o combate às desigualdades étnico-raciais na sociedade.

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The Globethics library contains articles of Afro-Ásia as of vol. 1(1965) to current.

Recent Submissions

  • The Ethic of Love in Umbanda's Pretos-Velhos

    Rezende, Lívia Lima (UFBA, 2023-02-03)
    This study examines interviews conducted with mediums in Umbanda terreiros in São João del-Rei and Montevideo during rituals in which they declared themselves to have incorporated spirits of pretos-velhos. This research is based on oral history methodology and was undertaken between 2017 and 2021. We found that the reports collected maintained a common structure despite the enormous physical distance between the terreiros in the study, starting with narratives of pain and suffering, followed by speeches of resistance, and, finally, concluding with a presentation of values and advice suggestive of the experience of captivity. The statements made by mediums during the two final moments of the interviews (in which they stated having channeled such entities) approximate the concept of non-violent resistance present in the activism of great leaders such as Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We also found that the collective memories currently developed in these temples and many of the values and courses of action of the pretos-velhos are extremely resonant with some aspects of the discourse of the contemporary anti-racist movement, echoing statements made by bell hooks, Emicida, and Paulina Chiziane, for example.
  • The East through Camões’ Eyes: A Truth that Befits

    Nepomuceno, Luís André (UFBA, 2023-02-03)
    Commentators of Camões have observed that, in seeking out historical material of his poem The Lusiads, the poet clung to a supposed “truth” gleaned from chronicles and in oral traditions. The portraits of Africa and Asia that he conceived are the result of his yearning for historical truth. This article proposes a contrary view, namely, that Camões recorded a convenient truth, favorable tothe interests of the nobility of the house of Avis, in composing a heroic portrait ofVasco da Gama’s mission, while omitting its inhuman practices. Having been in close contact with the oppression and enslavement of African peoples, the poet adjusted the image of Africa and Asia to that of the antagonist, portraying its peoples as unlearned and as enemies of the faith. This historical erasure of  history masks a desire for domination over people who in later centuries were colonized and enslaved.
  • Black Atlantic Glimmerings: Toussaint and the Haitian Revolution

    Couceiro, Luiz Alberto (UFBA, 2023-02-03)
    Review of: HAZAREESINGH, Sudhir. O maior revolucionário das américas: a vida épica de Toussaint Louverture. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2020. 583 p.
  • Political Subjects at Center Stage

    Silva, Maciel Henrique (UFBA, 2023-02-03)
    Review of: SOUZA, Felipe Azevedo e. Nas ruas: abolicionismo, republicanismo e movimento operário no Recife. Salvador: EDUFBA, 2021. 260 p.
  • Where Are the Blacks? Whitening Policies as Seen by Black Women in Argentina

    Barreto, Marina Leão de A. (UFBA, 2023-02-03)
    Review of: EDWARDS, Erika. Hiding in Plain Sight: Black Women, the Law, and the Making of aWhite Argentine Republic. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2020. 168 p.
  • Black Social Clubs and Balls Break Exclusion in the First Republic

    Oliveira, Fernanda (UFBA, 2023-02-03)
    Review of: PEREIRA, Leonardo Affonso de Miranda. A cidade que dança: clubes e bailes negros no Rio de Janeiros (1881-1933). Campinas: Editora da Unicamp; Rio de Janeiro: EdUERJ, 2020. 360 p.
  • The Accursed Mythology of Everyday Racism

    Rodrigues, Núbia Bento (UFBA, 2023-02-03)
    Review of: SILVEIRA, Renato da. A mitologia maldita: estereótipos políticos e raciais na gênese da indústria cultural. Salvador: Edufba, 2021. 436 p. il.
  • The "Vaste Machine" of the Atlantic: The Yatch Rolha on the Fluminense Coast (1850)

    Pereira, Walter Luiz Carneiro de Mattos (UFBA, 2023-02-03)
    This paper explores the seizure of the slave ship Rolha in the port of Macaé, in northern Rio de Janeiro province, based on the process initiated by the Auditoria Geral de Marinha. Theincident sheds light on the complex sequence of events involved in the operation of a slave ship during the illegal period of the slave trade, especially with regard to the Africans in its hold. The documentation also provides information about, the port, the points of departure and arrival, the city, the multiple persons involved and the infrastructure for receiving the ship, as well as those involved in repression, crimes and penalties, with the Africans caught between improbable freedom and disputes over property. In sum, the incident provides a window into the workings of the Atlantic machine and its clandestine codes of activity.
  • Socialist Encounters and Alternative Projects of Globalization During the Cold War

    Pereira, Matheus Serva (UFBA, 2023-02-03)
    Review of: BURTON, Eric; DIETRICH, Anne; HARISCH, Immanuel R.; e SCHENCK, Marcia C. (eds.). Navigating Socialist Encounters: Moorings and (Dis)Entanglements between Africa and East Germany during the Cold War. Berlim e Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021. 399 p.
  • Dilemmas Between Biography and Music

    Moraes, José Geraldo Vinci de (UFBA, 2023-02-03)
    Review of: CHOTIL, Mazé Torquato. Maria d’Apparecida. Negroluminosa voz. Esboço biográfico. São Paulo. Editora Alameda, 2020. 180 p.
  • João Mulungu: “The Boldest, King of the Fugitive Slaves” in Sergipe del Rey

    Oliveira, Igor Fonsêca (UFBA, 2023-02-03)
    In the early 1870s, the Sergipe Police Department conducted a number of operations that specifically targeted a quilombo [maroon] community led by João Mulungu. This paper utilizes documents produced during these repressive activities in charting the trajectory of this quilombo leader in the Cotinguiba Valley wilderness. Rather than highlighting the unique aspects of his struggle, to the paper shows how his strategies for survival and maintaining his freedom were connected to the aspirations and experiences of other individuals, fugitives or not. This approach does not detract from João Mulungu’s importance as a leader, especially since he had a decisive role in actively supporting networks of solidarity among maroon communities in the region.
  • Black Women's Movement: An Interview with Lélia Gonzalez

    Rosa, Carolina Santa (UFBA, 2023-02-03)
    The interview was conducted by the Informationsgruppe Lateinamerika (IGLA) association, in Vienna, on October 1984, possibly in French. The following text is the Portuguese translation of the German translation published in the AUF magazine and implies a series of challenges posed by this condition.
  • Afropessimism and Antinegritude in the World

    Natali, Marcos (UFBA, 2023-02-03)
    Review of: WILDERSON III, Frank B. Afropessimismo. São Paulo: Todavia, 2021. 400 p.  
  • Brazilian Racism in Longue Durée

    Guimarães, Antonio Sérgio Alfredo (UFBA, 2023-02-03)
    Review of: SANTOS, Ynaê Lopes. Racismo brasileiro: uma história da formação do país. São Paulo: Todavia, 2022. 345 p.
  • Bahia, the Land of Dendê: A Complex, Transnational History of Dendê

    Castañeda, Vanessa (UFBA, 2023-02-03)
    Review of: WATKINS, Case. Palm Oil Diaspora: Afro-Brazilian Landscapes and Economies on Bahia’s Dendê Coast. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. 347 p.
  • Black Personalities: Trajectories, Visibility and Representativity

    Costa, Robson Pedrosa (UFBA, 2023-02-03)
    Review of: GOMES, Flávio dos Santos; LAURIANO, Jaime; SCHWARCZ, Lilia Moritz. Enciclopédia Negra. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2021. 687 p.
  • Alexina de Magalhães and Lavinia Raymond: Mediations In Popular Culture and Black Folklore During Two Periods

    Gomes, Angela de Castro; Abreu, Martha (UFBA, 2023-02-03)
    This study discusses how widely-disseminated interpretations of racism and black folklore can be transformed via ethnographic research, which we understand as cultural mediation. Alexina de Magalhães Pinto and Lavinia Costa Raymond were two white intellectuals, professors, and authors who, although forgotten nowadays, projected themselves in the intellectual and academic worlds of their time. They were active during two decisive moments in debates on racial issues in Brazil: from 1900 to 1920 and from 1935 to 1955. In their own (although initial and ambiguous) ways, they each confronted ideas about the disappearance of Afro-Brazilian cultural expressions, instead focusing on evidence of the ways in which the descendants of the enslaved maintained their cultural heritage.
  • The Decline and Fall of the Soga: The Political Uses of Climate and Stars in Nihon Shoki

    Metzger, Kauê Otávio (UFBA, 2023-02-03)
    Analyzing the Soga’s fall as described in the Nihon Shoki (720 CE), this article explores how the chronicle’s writer sutilized climatic, astronomical, and other natural phenomena in justifying the coup d’etat of 645 CE, relating it to the Soga’s historical trajectory, the weight of the Chinese cosmological conceptionsin Japan at that time, and the context in which the Nihon Shoki was written. The paper also examines the role of omens, comparing their incidence in the three preceding and the three succeeding reigns to the core of the rise and fall of the Soga. The paper concludes with an exegetic analysis of these episodes, seeking arguments that corroborate the hypotheses presented.
  • The Woman King: The Agodjié, Dahomey, and the Atlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans

    Araujo, Ana Lucia; Silva Jr., Carlos Francisco da (UFBA, 2023-02-03)
    Review of: The Woman King. Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood. TrisStar Pictures, 2022. 2:22h.
  • Sacred Pombagira Feminine Displays in the Morphological Crossroads of Maria Padilha

    Martins Vianna, Alexander (UFBA, 2023-02-03)
    This study addresses some cultural paths in the formation of the Ibero-Afro-Indigenous mediunic religiosity in Brazil, based on the focal study of the metamorphosis of the historical Maria de Padilla into Maria Padilha, the oldest pombagira configuration in the repertory of the umbandas of Rio de Janeiro, known since the beginning of the 20th century. Although our point of observation departs itself from configuring Maria Padilha as pombagira – in comparison with the cultural repertory and social origins of colonial calundus and witchcraft – we sought to establish a transcultural comparative contextualization plan in our studies, exploring the hypothesis that pombagira updates, in urban cultural contexts of manifestations of mediunic religiosity, some characters, forms, and functions that refer to the morphologies of sacred feminine displays catalogued in Marija Giumbutas and Miriam Dexter’s feminist comparative archeological studies on the Indo-European Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Ancient Ages.

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