Affections for a good life: subjectivities, art and theories of black sapatonas*

Affection, pleasure and desire correspond to a theoretical triad that has been extensively explored in recent years, in the field of human studies, especially in the arts, studies of gender and sexuality, and languages. And, therefore, we can mistakenly feel that there is a certain exhaustion on such issues. However, building a dossier that invites us to elaborate knowledge that crosses the body through multiple dimensions that construct counter-colonial subjectivities (Antônio Bispo, 2023), based on the uses of affections, pleasure, and desires produced and reenacted collectively by black dyke people is essential for the contemporary construction of knowledge which brings, among other issues, ways of operating life in ruptures with the colonial trappings.
It was Tanya Saunders (2017) who created the term black dyke epistemology and brought us a certain perspective on how, making up ideas diametrically opposed to the model that was chosen as “human”, black dykes, whether cis, trans or non-binary, forge for themselves, and for the world around them, other possibilities of coexisting in difference in the collective. Therefore, their ways of living life, their moves, their subterfuges, their escape lines and their use of affections fundamentally contribute to a livable life.
“The erotic is the drive of life”, said Audre Lorde (2019). Through her poetic theory or her theoretical poems, she taught us that the erotic is a fundamental affection in the survival and socialization of and among black dykes, as it, being the liveliness, helps us to build possible paths of Good Living, despite of the strength of colonial affections. Just like the erotic, Audre Lorde (2019) elaborated in a sophisticated way an understanding of affection and anger as a powerful use of retaliation in the face of the colonial affective violence of racism, misogyny, lesbo/transphobia.
Erasing the historical silences surrounding the affections and pleasures of the sexual complexity of black people has been a fundamental investment, which encourages the construction of erotic subjectivities and narratives of pleasure, enabling the opening of new experiences and paths of meaning for the plural sexualities of black women. The creation of strategies, which erases colonial narratives about the pleasure and affection of black dyke people, has been a gesture that allows other paths of meaning for black corporeality, the glimpse of which triggers practices of self-management of pleasure that reconstitute affection, pleasure, and desire as vital telluric energy for Good Living. And to feel the pulse of affection you need to be barefoot, in contact with the earth and the world, which emanates strength and vital energy.
In addition to survival, Good Living, as Amerindian and Afro-Brazilian community experiences teach us for centuries, corresponds to everyday practices and gestures of being in the world moving affections, using them, in a way that produces life and desires in abundance for our communities and our ancestry. In this sense, building knowledge that is crossed by the uses of affections, as Audre Lorde (2019), Mayana Soares (2021) and Geni Núñez (2023) did; by desires, as in the terms of Deleuze and Guattari (1977), which flow like riographies, as Camila Carmo (2020) invites us to feel and elaborate; establishing the self-management of the pleasures of the bodies of black women, especially dykes, as taught by Luana Souza (qtd. in Mayana Rocha Soares, 2021), based on black corporeality, gender non-conforming and sexual dissidents, is to build possible and inevitable paths to Good Living.
We are therefore interested in textual and artistic productions (articles, essays or artistic texts), as well as performances and artistic productions that place affection, pleasure and desire as an investigative magnifying glass and as a creative power of the productions of black dyke people. In view of this, we propose that this dossier go barefoot for dialogue and theoretical constructions through articles, interviews, essays and artistic productions that raise the following questions: how to use affections to build Good Living? How are we self-managing our pleasure? What desires are at the game of our lives?

In this sense, we search for bodies of text that dialogue with the following axes:
• Black lesbian feminisms;
• Black dyke transfeminisms;
• Black dyke artistic-theoretical languages;
• Affection theory;
• Colonial affections;
• Sexual practices of black dykes and their affections, based on various artistic languages;
• Counter-colonial expressions of building Good Living.

Organization:
Ma. Camila Carmo, professor, writer, researcher and doctoral candidate in the postgraduate program in Literature and Culture (UFBA);
Dr. Fátima Lima, anthropologist and professor at the postgraduate program in Applied Linguistics (UFRJ);
Ma. Luana Souza, researcher of corporeality and sexual practices among black women and doctoral student (UNICAMP);
Dr. Mayana Soares, researcher of affections and Brazilian Literature and professor at the Federal University of Western Bahia (UFOB).

Timeline:
Submission deadline: December 31, 2024 (10 PM)
Publication estimate: until June 2025

References:

ANTÔNIO BISPO. A terra dá, a terra quer. São Paulo: Piseagrama, 2023.

AUDRE LORDE. Irmã Outsider. Tradução Stephanie Borges. São Paulo: Autêntica, 2019.

CAMILA CARMO. Riografias e reexistências negras: a poesia de Lívia Natália. 74f. Dissertação (Mestrado). Programa de pós-graduação em Literatura e Cultura.Universidade Federal da Bahia. Salvador, 2020. Orientação: Prof. Dr. Arivaldo Sacramento de Souza.

GENI NÚÑEZ. Descolonizando afetos: experimentações sobre outras formas de amar. São Paulo: Planeta do Brasil, 2023.

GILLES DELEUZE; FÉLIX GUATTARI. Kafka: por uma literatura menor. Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1977.

MAYANA ROCHA SOARES. Nós: afetos e literatura. 223f. Tese (Doutorado). Programa de pós-graduação em Literatura e Cultura. Universidade Federal da Bahia. Salvador, 2021. Orientação: Profa. Dra. Denise Carrascosa.

TANYA SAUNDERS. Epistemologia negra sapatão. Revista Periodicus, v. 7, n. 1, maio/out. 2017, p. 102-116.

*The term “sapatonas”, as well as its variations such as “sapatão”, “sapata”, among others, has been a field of dispute in the context of translation, especially Afro-diasporic translation, given its linguistic power to confer identity and subjectivity a aspects of a some subalternized community in Brazil. Therefore, we decided to maintain the term “sapatona” in the portuguese language, with its destabilizing force against gender disobedience and sexual dissent.