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Moving Bodies and Memories of African Slavery in South America

Project description

Impacts of African-originated slavery on today’s South America

The ERC-funded MOVING project aims to develop an ethnographic and multi-disciplinary methodology to study the bodily traces of African-originated slavery in post-slavery and diasporic contexts. The project focuses on people’s bodies, postures and moves, and the individual and social transformative potential of the movement of emotions and memories through that of bodies. The project will explore how people with African heritage, who may not identify as 'Afro-descendants', can reclaim their history and transform their relationship to it through body-based and artistic practices. It will research Brazil, Chile, and Colombia, combining classic academic and ethnographic research, experimental and arts-based creative practices, and action-oriented research involving social participation of citizen scientists and the broader society.

Objective

The MOVING project is aimed at developing an ethnographic and multi-disciplinary methodology to study the bodily traces of Africa-originated slavery enduring in post-slavery and diasporic contexts. The project is rooted in an anthropology of the memories of slavery that the PI has been conducting mainly in Colombia for the past fifteen years, and in her previous work on bodies, senses, emotions and nationalism in India. As importantly, the PI is a certified practitioner of a conscious, embodied movement methodology which she has been integrating into her academic practice, as field researcher and in teaching and supervision.
Taking research into new theoretical and methodological directions, the project focuses on peoples bodies and moves, and the individual and social transformative potential of the movement of emotions and memories through that of bodies. The project seeks to explore conditions of possibility for people who do not necessarily self-identify as Afro-descendants, despite their African heritage, to reclaim their history and transform their relation to it through body-based and artistic practices. The project also investigates whether the chronology of events pertaining to the abolition of slavery may account for significant differences in the ways the latters legacy has been acknowledged, or not.
MOVING will adopt a comparative focus on three countries, i.e. Brazil, Chile and Colombia, while pioneering a methodology combining three types of research: classic academic documenting the legacy and contemporary memories and experiences of Africa-originated slavery, and the renewal of Africa-related modes of reconnecting with this African legacy through everyday bodily ways; experimental and arts-based creative, with scholars of body-based practices, somatic practitioners and artists; and action-oriented involving social participation of citizen scientists and wider society.

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Host institution

CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS
Net EU contribution
€ 2 499 958,00
Address
RUE MICHEL ANGE 3
75794 Paris
France

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Region
Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Hauts-de-Seine
Activity type
Research Organisations
Links
Total cost
€ 2 499 958,00

Beneficiaries (1)