Abstract

DE OLIVEIRA ROCHA, Luciane. Outraged Mothering: Reflections about Black Mothers Activism and the Uses of Emotions in Activist Research. Anthropologica [online]. 2018, vol.36, n.41, pp.35-56. ISSN 0254-9212.  http://dx.doi.org/10.18800/anthropologica.201802.002.

This article explores the uses of emotion in activist research inspired by the direct action of Black mothers against racial violence in Afro Diasporic communities. The outrage they feel due to the missing body at home taken by violence, empower them to voice the aggressions that permeate their families and the black communities by direct violence, oppression and terror in their lives through the intersection of race, gender, space. Ethnographic research in collaboration with these mothers since 2010 points to the necessity of new approaches to Anthropology in order to understand the complexity of their luta [struggle]. Therefore, this article advocates for an Outraged Anthropology, an anthropology that recognizes emotions as an expression of a person or group of people’s position in an unjust structure of power; and recognizes the mechanisms in which the person/group deals with emotion as a narrative of resistance and source of collective struggle. This approach includes a Black feminist perspective as a bridge between African Diaspora Studies’ methodologies and the Anthropology of Emotions. I argue that the recognition of emotion as anthropological data in activist research, and the valorization of feelings as methodology of oppressed people can enhance analysis, writing and creates new sources of insight and political possibilities.

Keywords : black maternity; genocide; activist research; emotions; affront.

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