Imagining the Past, Remembering the Future - (Black Lives in the Diaspora: Past / Present / Future) by Isis Barra Costa

About the Book

Imagining the Past, Remembering the Future investigates the interlinked art, history, religion, philosophy, and cosmology of oral traditions across the Afro-Brazilian diaspora, arguing that these varied cultural expressions together constitute distinctive forms of knowledge.

Book Synopsis

Over the centuries, from the transatlantic slave trade to voluntary mass migrations through the digital era, African cultural practices have taken root and transformed in the Americas. Even though Afro-Brazilians make up a large share of the global Black diaspora, and Brazilian culture in turn has been deeply shaped by African influences, their particular contributions remain overlooked.

Imagining the Past, Remembering the Future investigates the interlinked art, history, religion, philosophy, and cosmology of oral traditions across the Afro-Brazilian diaspora, arguing that these varied cultural expressions together constitute distinctive forms of knowledge. Through case studies of sacred and secular performances, Isis Barra Costa shows how Afro-Brazilian concepts and practices preserve and renew an ever-changing diasporic philosophy. Ranging across parades of Black royal courts, Carnaval performing groups, oracular literature, "spirit-dictated" novels, and many other forms, she illuminates the survival and transformation of African cosmologies, epistemologies, and poetics in the Americas. Foregrounding oral narratives, Barra Costa sheds light on the nonhegemonic protagonists and canons of the Black Atlantic: the spaces and beings, kingdoms and heroes, philosophers and historians that orient Afro-Brazilian memory and imagination. By tracing forms of knowledge across the global African diaspora, this deeply interdisciplinary book reveals the transformative potential of Afro-Brazilian philosophical paradigms.

Review Quotes

Imagining the Past, Remembering the Future weaves insights from multiple disciplines to illuminate the African cultural foundations of the Americas, especially Brazil. Beautiful and necessary, it calls for slow, attentive reading--guiding us toward the subtle dimensions of Afro-diasporic knowledge embedded in the textures of everyday sound, image, and gesture.--Zeca Ligiéro, artist and dean of the Center for Letters and Arts, Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro

About the Author

Isis Barra Costa is assistant professor of contemporary Brazilian cultural and literary studies at the Ohio State University.