“Literatura afro-brasileira” ou apenas “literatura”? Problematizando a presença de adjetivos
“Afro-Brazilian Literature” or Just “Literature”? Problematizing the Presence of Adjectives

Summary/Abstract: The terms “periphery”, “marginal” and “black”, words linked to the imaginary of segregation and prejudice, undergo a reversal of stigma, causing abusive terms to grasp positive affirmations. Strategic subjection to terms has a character of subjectivation, the composition of collective identities. Adjectives mark a collective positively by following the word literature to represent the writing of writers from our urban periphery and black Brazilian writers, from the periphery or not. Penna (2015) agrees that there is no homogeneity in the names or experiences they describe, what there are differences. An example is the various nomenclatures given by the critics for the writings of black authorship. There are many records of nomenclatures and some diverge by details or ideological stances, however, they only add to the discussion about black authorship. They are nomenclatures as “Afro-Brazilian literature”, defended by Eduardo de Assis Duarte (2011), Florentina de Souza and Maria Nazaré Lima (2006) and Luiza Lobo (2007, p. 331); “Black-Brazilian literature” proposed by Cuti (2010), “black literature” used by Octávio Ianni (2011) and Zilá Bernd (1988). Without disregarding this diversity, but considering its importance for the debate of the literature of black authorship, I will present the view of some writers on the reasons that led them to adopt an adjective to identify their literary productions. The intention is not to discuss the most appropriate term - although I have chosen in this work to call the literature produced by Afro-Brazilian black writers - but to show why some writers chose to use some of these adjectives rather than just the substantive literature or the expression Brazilian literature, and the need of these writers to authenticate themselves or affiliate their productions to one of these adjectives.

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