Mama Africa: Reinventing Blackness in Bahia by Patricia de Santana Pinho (review)

In Mama Africa, Patricia Pinho examines the contemporary reinvention of Africa in Brazil by groups of Afro-Bahian cultural activists, principally the carnival groups known as blocos afro. Pinho focuses on activists' production of what she calls "the myth of Mama Africa": a vision that imagines Africa as a nurturing point of origin uniting all people of African descent, and which posits Africanness as a shared "essence" inscribed on black bodies and carried deep in their souls. Weaving together interviews, participant observation, media analysis, historical context, and cultural theory, Pinho critically assesses the benefits and, above all, the costs of this cultural politics. From page one, Pinho makes her position clear: while "reinventions of Africanness have been tremendously important for black communities in the diaspora and have frequently spurred black resistance, [. . .] they have simultaneously helped corroborate pre-established notions of blackness." [1]

Pinho analyzes how members and leaders of Ilê Aiyê—often considered the most "African" of the blocos afro—construct and use the "myth of Mama Africa," and to what political ends. The different building blocks of the myth form the subjects of Pinho's chapters. In "Bahia in the Black Atlantic," she explores the ideas about diaspora that have shaped black identities in Bahia—and Bahia's public image of blackness—since colonial times. She demonstrates how the blocos afro have created an idealized vision of Africa to inform their cultural politics (focusing on Africa's great ancient civilizations, its vibrant culture, or its independence movements), while profiling Bahia as a place in the global "map of Africanness" where African culture remains relatively "pure" and unadulterated. Pinho argues that this vision, meant as a liberatory and utopian response to longstanding negative stereotypes, nonetheless creates a frozen view of Africanness and African origins that relies on the very same sorts of essentialisms that underpin racialist thinking.

Pinho sharpens this critique in subsequent chapters. In "Africa on the Body," she explores the ways in which Ilê Aiyê members use hairstyles, clothing, jewelry, or pride in dark skin to create a distinct and oppositional black identity that is visibly inscribed on the body. In "Africa in the Soul," Pinho shows how activists claim as their own certain cultural characteristics conceived as uniquely "African" (such as a natural predisposition for music, dance, or spirituality), positing them as innate to Afro-descendants. Pinho stresses that these political strategies emerge from a desire, among self-defined "black" Brazilians, to reclaim Africa for their racial group in a country that has long denigrated blackness and celebrated cultural mixture. Yet Pinho is deeply troubled by even this strategic use of cultural essentialism and racial pride to battle racism, arguing that such politics end up reaffirming the very notions they are trying to defeat. Pinho's critique is particularly strong in her final chapter, "Milking Mama Africa," which exposes the many ways in which activists' static portrayals of Bahian blackness dovetail with, and reinforce, the commodification of Afro-Bahianness for purposes of tourism or politics.

Pinho is clearly sympathetic to her subjects' goals, always reminding us of the liberatory intent of their actions. But her celebrations are ultimately few and muted—what comes through most strongly is Pinho's disagreement with the blocos' politics. Yet what is refreshing about Pinho's stance is that, far from being unduly pessimistic or dismissive, it comes from a position of respect for and shared engagement with the blocos' anti-racist struggles. Unlike many participants in the longstanding debates about Brazil's "racial democracy," racial ideologies, and affirmative action, Pinho makes it clear that a belief in the constructedness of "race" does not undermine or negate the very real existence of racism and of deeply felt racial identities. Nor does she dismiss Afro-Bahian activists as gullible victims (or proud imitators) of a US-style of racial politics that stresses racial polarization. She is careful always to extend full agency to the bloco members she observes, addressing them as thinking equals. Her critique [End Page...