Hair and Subjectivity of Black Women Deprived of Freedom

Abstract

This research aimed to analyze how the denial of black beauty, in the context of racial relations, is a structural part of the racism that dehumanizes its victims. In addition, it seeks to understand Afro hair, a symbol of blackness, as a power of the black population. This is a qualitative research that used the following methodological procedures: participant observation, everyday conversations, semi-structured interviews and psychosocial intervention with black women in the context of deprivation of liberty. The analysis of the data produced was carried out in light of the theoretical methodological production of Foucault and black intellectuals. The results show that racist discourse is naturalized and perpetuated in our daily lives. In this sense, racism is not a particularity of the Brazilian prison system, but it intensifies and perpetuates the historical experiences of social and political exclusion based on the social markers of gender, race and class, which tend to confine black women to the lower rung of the system of domination/exploitation. However, group interventions demonstrate the potential to change the subjectivity of black women and transform society. This work is justified by the fact that, historically, the black body has been the main target of the racist social construction process in several countries and, especially, in Brazil.