The Unconscious Formations of Latin America: The Discursive turn of Lélia Gonzalez

Abstract

Lélia Gonzalez was an intellectual and political activist of black feminism at the crossroads of her time. She maintained a constant dialog with different critical traditions, producing a diagnosis of the problem of racial, sexual, social and economic violence in Brazil. Articulated with the political struggles of different peripheral countries, she mobilized the concept of “Améfrica Ladina” as a way of insisting on the historically shared experience of the repression of ladino-amefrican ancestry and its effects on the peoples of the continent. Today her writings are being revisited in line with a movement of historical reparation that seeks to revisit intellectuals excluded from the traditional canon of “interpreters of Brazil”. The richness of her work demands updating and a closer look at the relevance of her formulations. The aim of this article is to provide some insight into the discursive and epistemological turn produced by Lélia Gonzalez, highlighting her interdisciplinary and multifaceted nature. The aim is to defend the importance of her political and intellectual legacy for reinterpreting the crossroads that cross the historical-cultural and unconscious formation of “Améfrica Ladina”, opening up paths for the struggles to abolish the different forms of violence that  makeup our sociability, such as sexism and racism.