Beatriz Nascimento (1942–1995) was a poet, historian, artist, and political leader in Brazil’s Black movement, an innovative and creative thinker whose work offers a radical reimagining of gender, space, politics, and spirituality around the Atlantic and across the Black diaspora. Her powerful voice still resonates today, reflecting a deep commitment to political organizing, revisionist historiography, and the lived experience of Black women. The Dialectic Is in the Sea is the first English-language collection of writings by this vitally important figure in the global tradition of Black radical thought.
The Dialectic Is in the Sea traces the development of Nascimento’s thought across the decades of her activism and writing, covering topics such as the Black woman, race and Brazilian society, Black freedom, and Black aesthetics and spirituality. Incisive introductory and analytical essays provide key insights into the political and historical context of Nascimento’s work. This engaging collection includes an essay by Bethânia Gomes, Nascimento’s only daughter, who shares illuminating and uniquely personal insights into her mother’s life and career.
Christen A. Smith is associate professor of anthropology and African and African diaspora studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Afro-Paradise: Blackness, Violence, and Performance in Brazil and the coeditor of Black Feminist Constellations: Dialogue and Translation across the Americas. Bethânia N. F. Gomes is the daughter of Beatriz Nascimento. She is a former principal dancer with the Dance Theatre of Harlem and is a dance teacher and choreographer at African American dance institutions. She is the founder of the Beatriz Nascimento Foundation, which promotes Afro-Brazilian arts and education. Archie Davies is lecturer in geography and fellow of the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at Queen Mary University of London. His books include A World without Hunger: Josué de Castro and the History of Geography.
"Groundbreaking. . . . Radical and influential, Nascimento’s work is available here for the first time in English."—Karla J. Strand, Ms. Magazine
"The Dialectic Is in the Sea makes [Beatriz Nascimento’s] groundbreaking public scholarship available in English for the first time. . . . beautiful autobiographical essays. . . . the depth and urgency of her writings provide an invaluable blueprint for raising Brazil’s political consciousness."—Ela Bittencourt, Hyperallergic
“Beatriz Nascimento’s groundbreaking activist scholarship exemplifies the theories and praxes of Black liberation in Brazil. The Dialectic Is in the Sea helps us reflect on the Black condition from a local and global perspective. Due to linguistic barriers, many writers of African descent remain inaccessible to Anglophone readers. This timely translation of Nascimento’s writings is a moving tribute and a major intervention in discourses on race, class, gender, labor, sexuality, and trauma. Her outstanding transdisciplinary contribution to the Black radical tradition expands our understanding of Black humanity while also wrestling with the discontinuities and the continuities inherent to the historical becoming of the Black Atlantic.”—Nathalie Etoke, author of Black Existential Freedom
“A beautiful and necessary collection. The Dialectic Is in the Sea offers an exciting and deeply important opportunity to bring the work of a significant Black Brazilian intellectual and activist to an English-speaking audience.”—Alissa Trotz, editor of The Point Is to Change the World: Selected Writings of Andaiye
“True translation breaks with the imagined geographies of Global North and South and demands a more implicated geography where what is read is understood as always being beyond the nation-state and its forms of enclosure. What is at stake in these writings is the future, and Nascimento is an exacting guide who maps the Black radical commitments to place and the undoing of the carceral conditions of repressive infrastructures. The gift of The Dialectic Is in the Sea should not be underestimated in its ability to dismantle dialectical thinking and instead demand a rich, more rigorous poetic of existence that remembers the oceanic trial of Black experience as a living inheritance.”—Kathryn Yusoff, author of A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None
“Scholars of the Black radical tradition have been waiting for this book. The Dialectic Is in the Sea introduces us to the writings of one of the most important figures in Black Brazilian history, contributing substantively to Black feminist thought, critical theories of race, and the conceptualization of diaspora. Nascimento reminds us that the story of the Black Atlantic is about loss, struggle, imagination, and revolution. She encourages us to grapple with the long history of Black liberation evident in the visions and practices of maroon societies across the Americas. This book is crucial for reading across languages and valuing the myriad contributions of African diasporic scholars.”—Keisha-Khan Y. Perry, author of Black Women against the Land Grab: The Fight for Racial Justice in Brazil
