Between the mat and the classroom: the mastery of female black belts as a form of insurgent pedagogy
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.1981-4690.2025e39239392Keywords:
Martial arts, Phenomenology, Gender, Imaginary, Philosophy of SportAbstract
This essay analyzes the experience of female black belts in jiu-jitsu, focusing on mastery as a teaching and insurgent praxis. Based on in-depth interviews with five experienced practitioners, the research uses a phenomenological approach to understand how these women signify their trajectory in a hegemonically masculinized space. The study sought to identify the tensions, resistance and pedagogical strategies built by them as they occupied positions of mastery in an environment marked by hierarchies, gender norms and silencing practices, dialoguing above all with Freire and hooks. Both jiu-jitsu and school are spaces for bodily, social and ethical training. The pedagogical practices constructed on the mat, when tensioned by women black belts, offer significant contributions to rethinking teacher training in physical education, especially with regard to the production of embodied knowledge, the construction of authority based on care and the pedagogy of the lived body. The black belt, in this context, is understood not as the end point of a technical journey, but as a symbol of resistance, reinvention and pedagogical power, suggesting other references for women new to jiu-jitsu.
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