Fragmented Bodies

the representation of race and the body african women in Colonial Notebooks (1935-1941)

Abstract

This work aims to analyze the images and texts concerning the representation of African women’s race and female bodies in the Portuguese newspaper colonial notebooks, during the Salazar period “Estado Novo” (the New State). And how the discursive construction of the body is closely related to the power operations and strategies implemented in the interest of the Portuguese colonialist project. The historical research arouses not just curiosity, but also the need to deeply explore the reported analysis on the basis of the contact between Portugal and Africa in the magazine. Within this context, there are the contributions of Foucault (2014), Villen (2013), Certeau (2008). The human body has a main role in shaping an individual's social identity. It is through the body that the subject is in touch with the world and he gets affected by it. When occupying a place in the social space, the individual understands the world, because since his genesis he was exposed to its influences. In this sense, he is subordinate and shaped by the material and cultural conditions of existence. When the body is placed in the social space, it is subject to a socialization process, which product is the individualization of itself, the singularity of the “self”, since it is forged in and by the social relations. Therefore, it is important to understand the role assumed by the newspaper in being the interlocutor of a speech at the moment of the analysis.