Black Lives Ontology in Audiovisual Essay

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1982-8160.v19i1p79-101

Keywords:

Arthur Jafa, diaspora, civil rights, film essay, ontology, blackness

Abstract

The essay discusses the concept of Arthur Jafa’s blackness ontology in his film essay Dreams are Colder than Death in a dialogical perspective with different American scholars. Taking the context of the Afro-Atlantic diasporas as its object of study, the essay assumes the emergence of transatlantic civilization as the central fact of the blackness ontology. Submitted to the critical metalanguage approach, the selected reports were analyzed as the live documents of the Jafa’s idea of blackness ontology. In conclusion, the essay infers that the difficulty in recognizing the insertion of death in life is the obstacle to accepting the existence of black lives and loving them, sharing common civil rights.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

  • Irene de Araujo Machado, Universidade de São Paulo. Escola de Comunicações e Artes

     Docente em Ciências da Comunicação (Escola de Comunicações e Artes, ECA-USP).

References

Anyanwu, O; Johnes, A.; Jörg, C.; Mader, A. & Jafa, A. (2013). Dreams are colder than death. TNEG.

Bakhtin, M. M. (2013). Problemas da poética de Dostoiévski. Forense Universitária.

Benjamin, W. (2009). Passagens. Editora UFMG; Imprensa Oficial do Estado de São Paulo.

Bento, C. (2022). O pacto da branquitude. Companhia das Letras, 2022.

Douglass, F. (2021). Narrativa da vida de Frederick Douglas. Companhia das Letras.

Fanon, F. (2008). Pele negra, máscaras brancas. Editora da EDUFBA.

Ferreira, L. F. (2006). “Negritude”, “Negridade”, “Negrícia”: História e sentidos de três conceitos viajantes. Via Atlântica, 7(1), 163–184. https://doi.org/10.11606/va.v0i9.50048

Harris, C. I. (1993). Whiteness as Property. Harvard Law Review, 108(8), 1707–1793. https://harvardlawreview.org/print/no-volume/whiteness-as-property/

Lotman, Y. M. (1990). Universe of the mind: A semiotic theory of culture. Indiana University Press.

Lotman, Y. M. (1998). Sobre el metalenguaje de las descripciones tipológicas de la cultura: La Semiosfera: Semiótica de la cultura, del texto, de la conducta y del espacio. Cátedra.

Martín-Barbero, J. (2003). Dos meios às mediações: comunicação, cultura e hegemonia. Editora da UFRJ.

Martins, L. M. (2021). Afrografias da memória: O reinado do Rosário no Jatobá. Perspectiva.

Maturana, U. (2001). Cognição, ciência e vida cotidiana. Editora UFMG.

Mbembe, A. (2018). Necropolítica: Biopoder, soberania, estado de exceção, política da morte. N-1.

Mbembe, A. (2022a). Brutalisme. La Découverte.

Mbembe, A. (2022b). Brutalismo. Paidós.

Mora, J. F. (1993). Dicionário de filosofia. Martins Fontes.

Moten, F. (2008). The case of Blackness. Criticism, 50(2), 177–218. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23128740

Nwankwo, I. K. (2015). Black Cosmopolitanism: Racial consciousness and transnational identity in the Nineteenth-Century Americas. Journal of Transnational American Studies, 6(1), 3–10. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vkcv5

Raengo, A. (2016). Introduction. Liquid Blackness: Black Ontology and the love of Blackness, 3(6), 8–31.

Ratz, A. (2006). Eu sou Atlântica: Sobre a trajetória de vida de Beatriz Nascimento. Instituto Kuanza; Imprensa Oficial do Estado.

Sharpe, C. (2023). No vestígio: Negridade e existência. Ubu.

Simas, L. A., & Lopes, N. (2020). Filosofias africanas. Civilização Brasileira.

Sobchak, V. (2010). Living a ‘phantom limb’: On the phenomenology of bodily integrity. Body & Society, 16(3), 51–56. https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034X10373407

Sodré, M. (2023a) A ruptura paradigmática da comunicação. MATRIZes, 17(3), 19–27. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1982-8160.v17i3p19-27

Sodré, M. (2023b). O fascismo da cor: Uma radiografia do racismo nacional. Vozes.

Sodré, M. (2019). O terreiro e a cidade: A forma social negro-brasileira. Mauad X.

Spillers, H. J. (2021). Bebê da mamãe, talvez do papai: Uma gramática estadunidense. In C. Barzach, S. Z. Paterniani, & A. Arias (Eds.), Pensamento negro radical: antologia de ensaios (pp. 29–70). Crocodilo; N-1.

Spillers, H. J. (2003). Black, White, and in color: Essays on American literature and culture. University of Chicago Press.

Vieira, J. A. (2008). Ontologia sistêmica e complexidade. Expressão Científica.

Volosinov, V. M. (1973). Quasi-direct discourse in French, German, and Russian: Marxism and the philosophy of language. Harvard University Press.

von Uexküll, J. (2001). The new concept of Umwelt: A link between science and the humanities. Semiotica, 2001(134), 111–123. https://doi.org/10.1515/semi.2001.018

Warren, C. (2018). Black Care. Liquid Blackness, 3(6), 36–49. https://liquidblackness.com/liquid-blackness-journal-issue-6

Wilderson III, F. (2021). Afropessimismo. Todavia.

Downloads

Published

2025-06-17

Issue

v. 19 n. 1 (2025)

Section

Dossier

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish in this journal agree to the following terms:

    1. Authors retain the copyright and grant the journal the right to first publication, with the work simultaneously licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) which allows sharing of the work with acknowledgment of authorship and initial publication in this journal for non-commercial purposes.

    2. Authors are authorized to assume additional contracts separately, for non-exclusive distribution of the version of the work published in this journal (eg, publishing in institutional repository or as a book chapter), with acknowledgment of authorship and initial publication in this journal.

How to Cite

Machado, I. de A. (2025). Black Lives Ontology in Audiovisual Essay . MATRIZes, 19(1), 79-101. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1982-8160.v19i1p79-101

Funding data