Imagem, raça e humilhação no espelho negro da nação: cultura visual, política e "pensamento negro" brasileiro durante a ditadura militar^*

Abstract

This article analyzes the relationship between visual culture, "racialization," and new political sensitivities in Brazil in the mid-1970s and early 1980s from the perspective of image and representation of Blacks in the Brazilian cinema. By examining the debate about Brazilian movies among those we call representatives of a "Black thought" in Brazil, we observed some characteristics of change and update of the notion of race in Brazil, within a rising reflective tradition that questioned the views of the Brazilian intelligentsia on Black culture. This Black thought is presented through a set of articles published in the press, where the rhetoric of the image of Blacks was equated to a rhetoric of racial humiliation. The denunciation of the humiliation of Blacks in the image produced by Whites allowed the establishment of a new racial identity in Brazil.

Brazilian cinema; racial identity; Xica da Silva; Tenda dos Milagres; visual culture; political culture; Black intellectuals.