Olhar com o olho de dentro: corpo-imagem afrodiaspórico como experimento de autodefinição e autorreparação na Baixada Fluminense (RJ)

Abstract

This study forges and investigates the concept of the Afro-diasporic body-image as a symbolic, political, and aesthetic field of resistance, self-repair, and empowerment of Black consciousness in Brazilian society, with a focus on the Baixada Fluminense region. Drawing from the author’s own journey, the research weaves together theory, lived experience, and community-engaged practices, affirming an insurgent methodology rooted in the philosophy of “seeing with the inner eye” and in inter-epistemic dialogues between textualized knowledge, experiential wisdom, and imagery. The methodology proposes a spiral of knowledge construction, in which science, art, and activism intertwine. The discussion begins with an understanding of racism as an imagetic phenomenon inscribed on the black body, producing ontological hierarchies and symbolic violence. In response, the concept of the Afro-diasporic body-image emerges as a tool to comprehend and confront the marks of raciality, articulating memory, subjectivity, and ancestry. Through a sensitive curatorship of images and the community practice “Images and Bodies: Territories of Struggle and Resistance,” the thesis maps processes of self-definition and self-repair of black subjectivities, transforming pain into power and memory into horizon. The results indicate that black bodies — historically captured and wounded — now reclaim, through art and critical reflection, the radical right to exist, create, and flourish. The research shows that the Afro-diasporic body-image is not merely a site of denunciation but also a fertile ground for reexistence, in which aesthetics, politics, and healing are interwoven. It concludes that the anti-racist struggle must also unfold in the arena of the image, a space often dismissed as peripheral in the war against racism. In the end, the thesis does not close — it takes flight, sowing new crossings, encounters, and insurgencies. Inspired by the Kilombola philosophy of Nego Bispo, and understanding that every end is a new beginning, the work suggests that we continue seeding possible worlds, carried by the insurgent hope that black light will illuminate the futures we have yet to dream.