Yalorixás and the production of Life

The historical limits of what counts as work

Abstract

This article critically analyzes the historical production of what is recognized as work in Brazil, taking the categories of coloniality, race, and gender as its analytical framework. Grounded in authors from decolonial and countercolonial thought, the social history of work, and critical labor studies, the study demonstrates how the centrality of waged labor has historically been constituted as a colonial dispositif that renders Black and female rationalities of life production and maintenance invisible. Based on qualitative research grounded in oral history and conducted with Yalorixás from Candomblé terreiros in the Federal District, the study highlights the terreiro as a historical system for organizing community life, whose formation is linked to processes of racial exclusion from the world of work in post-abolition Brazil. Becoming a Yalorixá is understood as an ontological and political process that reinscribes work within the realm of existence rather than that of the commodity. The study concludes that the know-how of Yalorixás challenges the colonial-capitalist grammar of work and points to the need for a critical reconfiguration of the analytical categories of the social history of work in Brazil.