Elaborating Our Affections: the aquilombamento among Black Women

During my master’s research, the concept that possibly shape the whole complexity of affectivities was what made be awake up all nights taking time to formulate it in a opposite direction of what we've known about it, meaning being aware that western love is/was no longer so palatable within the everyday experiences of Black women in the diaspora, since the accumulation of oppression regarding gender, race-ethnicity, class, and territory—often runs counter the potential of emotions and feelings.

Consequently, the hegemonic historiography tends to interpret the processes of Black people’s social aggregation and interaction through the lens of slavement, Blackness is being collectively forged through the quilombos as once proposed by Beatriz Nascimento. Besides, places where our ancestors used to escape from colonialism brutality and violent system to forest lands in order to rebuild an African dynasty based on their own complex culture, these are alternative political-social forms of organization in the Brazilian slavery context, founded on values distinct from the dominant culture. They enable Black people to affirm themselves as autonomous beings, resulting in articulations where Quilimbo organization serves as a rooted conception that trigger deep relations in the African diaspora.

Now, you are wondering what the word Aquilobamento means. Definitionally this is derivation noun formed from the word Quilombo and we use a lot in Afro-Brazilian community to relive the power of our connection when the oppression is no longer at the forefront of our discussion which allows us to grow spiritually and having efficient strategies among us. Although, Aquilombamento is not fully understandable in English, you have to have in mind there is a meaningful ancestral concept linked to this word in the afro Brazilian diaspora once this shows the strengthen of our bonds beyond the blood. The Quilombo's societies brought us a sense of community, able to gather different kinds of African groups, mostly Bantu from the Congo and Yoruba from the West Africa.

If love is a verb, as bell hooks taught us, aquilombar (to form quilombo-like bonds) means valuing the socio-affective arrangements created within the Afro-Brazilian diaspora. In these arrangements, the performativity of the Black body is shaped by epistemological knowledge based on experimentations and affections. This is also the sense of extended families or where the  network guide people to make internal and collective decisions and reach achievements, shaping other forms of agency their own subjectivity, in which vital force will be elaborated under recreated a strong network of affections.

The key idea here is to be able to see affections as a thermometer that constantly measure the temperature of life. I seek to discuss the impact and effect of each perception, sensation and emotion that might help us to organize our subjective, valuing experience that we've faced as black people. Our bodies are capable of catalyzing hope, fear, love, hatred, joy, sadness, excitement, sorrow, pleasure, healing, etc., showing the state of presence and vivacity which proves how terrify we are about the alertness of colonialism . Although we create paralelo worlds regardless that scenario.

We expand this “networks of affections” as plural o purpose, directing us toward an African way of thinking shaped by affective experiences that are not limited to the individual. If we are affected, there is someone who affects us. Thus, the relational perspective of the surrounding community is crucial. At the crossroads of affections, anger and love are no longer a part once they strengthen the individual and collective growth as a group.

This dialectic between subjectivity and collective body becomes a way of rethinking how we look at ourselves as Black people—leaving from the shadow of the white ego ideal in intimate relationships, as well as in our relations with others. Hence, the so-called contradictions emerge as part of Black history itself. In Bantu societies, affections are not merely emotional states, but energies of circulation and fruition that potentiate existence.

Ambivalence is natural in relationships, where it is possible to coexist many layers of affections whether flowing through excitement or tears or both. This translates into the strengthening of bonds where the person can be fully themself, walking away from cisgender and white subjective frameworks.

The relational perspective between muntu (person), nature, and life—and the meanings that permeate collective experience (bantu)—rests on the awareness of one’s identity and history, drawing upon vital force from one’s state of nature to produce meaning for life.

This notion of affections is highly sophisticated, valuing both the individual in their inner dimensions while also in their surroundings. As Henrique Antunes Cunha Junior taught us once, the prefix NTU—recognized as the principle of existence itself—refers to the quality, nature, or state of one’s inner force or energy. Similarly, Mogobe Ramose describes it as a verbal noun that presupposes transformation and movement.

Renato Noguera, an Afro-Brazilian scholar of African philosophies, explains that for Bantu peoples, healing is tied to the desire to see the community well. Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu (“a person is a person through other people”), meaning that self-recognition and the ability to enjoy the full range of human potential strengthen not only the individual (muntu), but, consequently, the community. The foundation of this principle rests on three dimensions: the ancestors, the living, and those yet to be born.

In Brazil , the Roda de Samba (samba circle) helps us to be rooted in our blackness which is crucial for the sake of our mental health and the sense of belonging. That surrounding us of powerful symbols able to transmit knowledge in completely sensorial and practical order, conveyed not through words but through a performative body so-called by Leda Maria Martins oralitura. This recalls Audre Lorde’s teachings on the uses of the erotic, which she defines as an intrinsic source of power stemming from our deepest knowledge: love at all levels of understanding.

This erotic force, vital to women, elevates, sensitizes, and strengthens them. It pulses as their creative energy, transcending the physical-sexual aspect and connecting them to emotional, intellectual, and psychic strengths. It is precisely this capacity to feel in all dimensions that resists the destructive force of a racist, patriarchal, and anti-erotic society. In this way, the samba circle becomes political and let people feel the mutual empowerment among everyone involved, whether, the singers, the performers or the audience.

The samba circle is directly related to physical presence, in which the body serves as the channel for knowledge transmission. This creates a circular flow of African-based ritualizations, where the integration between body and history occur match like a dance, as Tássio Ferreira sustains.

We must observe all of the dimensions of the samba circle: the aesthetic, the symbolic, and the semiotic in the sense of comprehend how samba teaches about memory, belonging, and affections in order to understand how networks of affection are woven among Black people in general making a special room for women in the universe of samba. The closeness with the audience shows how the samba environment creates a ritualistic atmosphere that nurtures warmth and belonging, directly tied to African ancestry. As with other forms of popular culture, samba produces a fusion between those at the center of the circle and those surrounding it, shaping into a spiral and interactive space.

As taught by Conceição Evaristo, Ana Maria Gonçalves, and Eliana Alves Cruz in works such as Um defeito de cor (2006), Becos da memória (2017), and Água de Barrela (2018), imagination is a powerful tool for resetting historical characters absent from official history. Historiographical metafiction (Silva & Santhiago, 2024) is a narrative literary mechanism designed to fill the gaps of silenced, marginalized, or erased histories, employing imagination, speculation, and critical revision of historical facts.

We notice that the samba circle offers us imagetic and creative tools for envisioning possible imaginaries of liberation and alternative existences in the diaspora. If colonialism marginalized many of the bodies present in this context —pushing them to the margins—once they are in the circle, these people are mobilize to embody another experience valuing both body and orality sharing great vibrations among them, while building individuality and also fostering collective well-being keep the African legacies remain in the Afro-Brazilian context.

The circulation of this vital force nourishes everyone present in the samba, generating a collective catharsis where the experience and intentionality of each person contribute to the collective as whole. The rhythm of the drum and other instruments, the orality, the gestures and performances—all provoke the release of emotions in the moment of the batucada (sounds of drums).

In African culture, standing in a circle is a powerful form of recognition, as people can look around and see each of the participants, which definitely creates networks and helps sustain the flow of black knowledge through oral, bodily, and instrumental poetics that value the transmission of knowledge beyond grammar, but also of affections.

Placing the black body itself in research mindful us to the power of the circular movement that is capable to maintain itself safe when the space is also comfortable to women where they can feel embrace enough to just freely circulate. This calls upon the notion of the spiral. In this sense, the circle becomes a metaphor for life where the circle can be recognized as a place for sustaining feelings and emotions and accomplish collective achievements, bringing a sense of extended family and community that expands from within outward.

Reverence for the elders, decentralization, instrumentality, sharing—affections, sensations, and emotionalities—make the samba circle a living space of self-elaboration and belonging for these women. It attracts an audience that begins to embrace these values, thus joining this powerful community.