Crossroads, Trenches, and Settlements: the notion of Quilombismo in the production of the Black Geographies

Abstract

This text aims to theorize the notion of quilombismo as a fundamental ideological tool for organizing Black geographies, not just as a physical territory, but a psychic, transatlantic, and ancestral one. Quilombismo is analyzed from the perspective of Beatriz Nascimento, as a Black female view of the territory whose methodologies of action impact the struggle of peripheral communities, Black social movements, and Black feminism. In this way, I analyze quilombismo as a tool for a diasporic, timeless, and psychic struggle based on three organizational triggers: the crossroads, the trenches, and the settlements. So, if the quilombo is the head of the diaspora, the Orí (head in Yoruba), quilombismo is Ayé (land in Yoruba) in contact with the Orún (spiritual space in Yoruba). In this article, I will show that crossroads, trenches, and settlements are spaces known by Black populations, and it is from this knowledge – through the gaze of Black cosmology – that I analyze body transcendence, ancestral force, memory, and the sacred.