Worlding Quilombo

There are nearly 2000 ‘remnant quilombos’ in Brazil, tracing direct roots to communities of escaped enslaved people. Sites of ecological and social diversity, quilombos are threatened with dispossession, violence, and economic deprivation; fewer than 10% have been granted the land title guaranteed by the Brazilian constitution. Analysis of quilombo as an idea and practice of freedom is the most important strand of Brazilian Black thought, but remains poorly understood in English. This project uses translation and documentary film to bring quilombo to the world, and interpret quilombo as a worldly inhabitation. Quilombo as an idea, quilombos as places, quilombo communities as socio-ecological formations, and quilombo intellectuals as thinkers offer tools for analysing Brazilian and transatlantic systems of race, racism, and freedom. Through inserting quilombo into anglophone academic debates the project will offer new insights on the social, ecological and territorial dimensions of what Gilmore calls ‘freedom as a place’.

Principal Investigator: Dr Archie Davies, Queen Mary University of London