Retention, reinvention and remembering: restoring identities through enslavement in africa and under slavery in Brazil

Abstract

The article porposes a creative, and "speculative" reading of the experiences of Africans who, by their enslavement, connected África to Ámerica, and Ámerica to África, during the Atlantic slave trade. Engaging the historiography of slavery in the Americas beyond the simplistic and polarized contrast debated between supporters of "africanismos" and proponents of "crioulização". Trying to understand slavery as it was conceived by Africans themselves and their descendants and a historical process rather than an abstract "institution". Miller shows that the enslaved searched for social ties and built new communities as means of neutralizing the dispersion, violence and isolation of their enslavement. In the other words, re-established many senses of belonging and personal security. From religious confraternities and refugiee communities , to capoeira maltas congos "kings", and mutual associations, from the formative years of Brazilian society (16th to 17th centuries), on through the 18th century, and into politically independent 19th-century Brazil, this article proposes complex process of forming connections that,  according to Miller , can be ready only through a historical perspective and by understanding themes in different context and moments of the slave society and their multiple connections with Africa .