Guerreira Tactics: Women Warriors’ Sonic Practices of Refusal in Capoeira Angola

What is it about?

This article considers how female practitioners of capoeira Angola in the “backlands” of Bahia, Brazil struggle against gendered domination in capoeira while maintaining fierce dedication to their capoeira practice and solidarity with male group members. Capoeira Angola is an Afro-Brazilian music-movement expression celebrated as a practice of Black resistance. However, while the form valorizes Blackness, it remains a space that privileges heteronormative masculinity, where most leaders and advanced players are men. As a result, capoeira’s valorization of Blackness does not necessarily extend to Black women, who remain severely underrepresented in groups across Brazil. I argue that the women in the group choose and define their own terms and modes of action to mobilize against gendered forms of domination. I describe the “guerreira tactics” (women warriors’ tactics) they use to claim the power of both their silence and their sounding to confront sexism in their community.

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Photo by Daniel Cabanas on Unsplash

Photo by Daniel Cabanas on Unsplash

Why is it important?

I believe the article makes several significant contributions. For one, it weaves together cultural critique and ethnography, balancing the demands of each in order to navigate the tensions that sometimes arise when critical theory pushes against the ways actors conceive of their world. For instance, many women in the group critiqued feminism as an elitist movement that failed to address Black women’s concerns. Thus, while Black feminist theory drives my arguments, I do not claim the women as feminists, but rather use their own terms: for instance, “guerreira” describes both Black women activists and female capoeira players in Brazil.

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