Irradiation of multiple and polysemic knowledge: a conversation with Leda Maria Martins

Abstract

Poet, essayist, playwright and professor Leda Maria Martins has been paving unique paths in the arts since the mid-1980s. In the following dialogue, the thinker addresses aspects of her biography – intertwined with poetry and research in popular cultures, theater, performance, literature and visual arts –, places she has visited and the influences that were important for the construction of her work. She comments on the paradox of the late repercussion of her thesis, A cena em sombras, defended in 1991 at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), published in 1995 and only about 30 years later recognized as paradigmatic in the studies of black arts, edited in 2023 in the wake of the emergence of other books and tributes to the intellectual who exudes restlessness in her writings, talks, songs and dances.