Saberes de resistência, identidades e pertencimentos no sul do Brasil: modos de ser e viver nas narrativas de quilombolas da Comunidade de Palmas (Bagé, RS)

Abstract

This thesis sought to understand how the quilombola identity is built and what the quilombola community of Palmas teaches us in narratives about its constitution. According to information recorded in the socio, historical and anthropological report, the community is made up of black descendants of slaves in the region, and it is constructed throughout its own history by movements of resistance for dignity and survival and, today, by the struggle for the guarantee of the possession of rights and lands. From the participants' narratives, I tried to understand what knowledge was built in the community's trajectory, the identities that emerged and the belonging of the quilombola residents. In order to scientifically compose this research, I decided to take a qualitative approach (CHIZOTTI, 2006) and the perspective of undisciplined Applied Linguistics (MOITA LOPES, 1998, 2006; CAVALCANTI, 1986, 2006). As for the methodological procedures for data generation, I made use of narrative inquiry, following the orientations for producing tridimensional narratives in the perspective of Clandinin and Connelly (2015), Toledo, Soligo and Simas (2014), and Jovchelovitch and Bauer (2015). I also made use of documental data in order to expand participants’ narratives. To understand the context of the constitution of quilombola communities in the country, I relied on Moura (2001), Munanga (2001) and Maestri (2001); for the concept of identity, cultural identity and diaspora, in Hall (2003, 2005); Munanga (1994, 2005, 2006) and Gomes (2006); to deal with the concept of community, in Bauman (2001, 2003); and globalization, in Santos (2010). The results show that quilombola identity is under construction within territorial conflicts and disputes. Narratives about the process of constitution of the quilombola identity constitute a knowledge of resistance, which comes from the need for self-recognition and self-definition, because the act of recognizing and determining oneself a quilombola as well as community organization are relevant knowledge for the resistance positioning. Belonging, in its turn, is related to the choice for not abdicating the relationships that characterize identification with this social and cultural context. Upon learning about and retelling the struggle, the research participants constitute knowledge that promote knowledge about themselves, which in this research we call resistance knowledge. In narrating their trajectories of struggle for the land, the participants recognize themselves as quilombolas, which strengthens the community bond.