Abstract
This article reports passages from our encounter with two black women: Dona Luiza and Fafá. The first, a favela resident, matriarch, mother of a man convicted of rape, grandmother of the child who would have been raped. The second, a 24-year-old girl, mother of three years old boy, actress in extreme fetish films. Departing from the idea that black lives remain in the oscillation between subjection and fugitivity, we are interested in describing how this oscillation happens at the level of the ordinary and interpreting its relationship with evocations of slavery that take place in fragments or materialize in “make believe”. The fugitivity, more than resistance, denotes ambivalent ways of being in the world, unpredictable movements for those who strive to keep life going. We discuss images and situations that can both restore subjection and conjure it.
Keywords:
slavery; subjection; fugitivity; black lives