Enegrecer para esclarecer: a contribuição do pensamento negro africano e afrodiaspóricos à ciência da religião

Abstract

This dissertation investigates how African and Afro-diasporic Black thought can contribute to a more plural, inclusive, diverse, and racially engaged Science of Religion. Grounded in the personal experience of the author as a Black woman, religious studies scholar, and researcher, it proposes a critical reflection on the epistemic and institutional absence of Black presence in the field, taking the process of Black identity formation (the becoming-Black) as both a starting point and an analytical category. Methodologically, this is a critical literature review that draws from phenomenology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, ethnic and racial studies, law, sociology, and other fields. The research is informed by key thinkers such as Frantz Fanon, Grada Kilomba, Achille Mbembe, Dennis de Oliveira, Silvio Almeida, Sueli Carneiro, Djamila Ribeiro, bell hooks, among others. The thesis unfolds through six main axes: (1) the constitution of the Black subject and the process of Black identity formation; (2) the Black body as a target of racial and psychic projections of whiteness; (3) the links between race, capitalism, and modernity; (4) structural racism as a logic of exclusion; (5) the silencing of Black knowledge and the emergence of epistemic insurgency; and (6) the relations between necropolitics, religion, and secularism in Brazil. The study argues that the Science of Religion cannot continue to overlook the centrality of race in both its human network and its object of inquiry. On the contrary, it is urgent to recognize racism as a technology of power and a marker of absence, advocating for a reorientation of the field through the lens of Black, African, and Afro-diasporic epistemologies. The dissertation concludes that a Science of Religion that aspires to be ethical, critical, and socially engaged must incorporate the study of race and ethnicity as a formative and political commitment to justice and human rights.