O que você vê? : lentes de raça e de gênero nas descrições de fotografias de pessoas negras

Abstract

The main objective of this dissertation was to investigate the convergences and divergences, intra and extra racial group, in the way white and Black people attribute meaning to photographic images in which there are different representations of Black people, in order to verify how racial belonging affects their production of meanings in communicative processes. From this, the hypothesis was postulated that racial classification processes influence, in different ways, people's perception, depending on which group they belong to. This statement was based on the understanding of racism as a founding element of Brazilian society. The concepts of standpoint, lugar de escuta and oppositional gaze were taken as the basis for discussing communicative practices in situations of power inequality. The polysemic dimension of photographic images and some strategies for fixing meanings were also addressed, in order to show how these images have been used, historically, to crystallize certain ways of seeing and giving meaning to marginalized groups. Data collection was performed using an online questionnaire applied to undergraduate students at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. In it, people were asked to describe nine photographs, thus creating the material analyzed in this text. In order to deal with the issues raised by the bibliographic review, nine photographs were used, produced by three artists, who represent, for the most part, Black people, in different situations – some reaffirm stereotypical practices while others contest them. The focus of this work was to analyze how these strategies of reaffirmation or contestation were perceived by the audience. After reading, cataloging and critically analyzing the data, it was possible to glimpse racial and gender biases that cross the ways people see and mean photographic representations of black people.