Black Female Bodies in Writing-Experience/Escrevivência and Interrogations to the University

Abstract

The encounter between a black woman university researcher and a black woman living on the streets during a research process provokes a reversal on the focus of our academic work: it questions our bodies, territories, and research and writing politics. This reversal states how political-bodies necessarily produce political-knowledge. In this theoretical essay, the questions that emerge from this encounter are addressed as we bring the epistemological, ethical, and political tools that have allowed us to sustain embodied research. We particularly address corporeality, writing-experience/escrevivência, and intersectionality as responses to the universalizing, classist, racist, and sexist structure of the university. Throughout the presented reflections, the question persists: in the transition between the street and the university, what are the violences that bring our bodies closer and/or distance them? This question interrogates our practices, bodies, and knowledge, betting on the intellectualism of black women who, even when facing violence, produce knowledge about themselves, the university and the world.