Narratives and Afro-Muslim conflict in Brazil: culture and struggle for desires and powers

Abstract

This article, by excavating narratives, suggests the reading of lifestyles and beliefs shared in the difference. By shedding light in the idea of culture as a signifying practice, the review of accounts given by an Iraqi leader of a trip to Brazil (1865) calls into question narratives about a cultural-political dispute sparked off by Afro-Muslims in Bahia in 1835. Considering a movement fraught with intermingled cultures and processes of inventing the other, the review highlights a plot of relationships and uses of power and knowledge. The reflection suggests to media and culture researchers that narratives, in its distinct forms, might be understood as constitutive of a political/esthetical process of producing of identities.