By ANA CAROLINA ASSUMPÇÃO and ANA LUIZA BIAZETO
Antes de ser um tema acadêmico, o feminismo negro é uma causa, é uma luta, e é uma forma de insurgência contra toda a opressão que as mulheres negras sofrem na sociedade.
[Before being an academic topic, Black feminism is a cause, it is a struggle, and it is a form of insurgency against all of the oppression that Black women suffer in society.]
— Sueli Carneiro
BEING A GRADUATE STUDENT is not easy, especially in a prestigious program such as the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. In spring 2023, the authors, along with fellow Brazilian students, were talking about the challenges with Dr. Christen Smith, our adviser, and she said, “I have a gift for you.” The gift was Dr. Sueli Carneiro, who would come to LLILAS as Tinker Visiting Professor in the fall of 2023. The news surprised and amazed us.
For decades, Sueli Carneiro has been on the frontlines of deep political transformations in Brazil as one of the most important intellectuals and Black feminists in the world. Her activism encompasses both theory and action. Her work, disseminated in studies and publications, combines philosophical and theoretical writing with powerful political messages in support of the rights of women and the Black population.
We offer this article as a testament to Carneiro’s contributions to articulating and elevating Black feminism, to making the essential and holistic connection between that which is intellectual and that which is activist. As I, Ana Carolina, had the opportunity to tell her, she has been in my bibliography for more than a decade, even before I came to graduate school. We are longtime students of hers.
“The expectations were high,” recalls LLILAS PhD candidate Denise Braz. “We were about to learn about Black feminism in the making by one of the main protagonists of the movement in Brazil. We were eager to learn, and to validate the thoughts and theories we have been articulating in our research.”
A Lifetime of Activism
A Doctor of Education and Philosophy from the University of São Paulo, Sueli Carneiro is recognized internationally for her decades of activism. She was honored with the Liberté-Egalité-Fraternité award from the French government in 1998 and the Kalman Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) in 2021. The latter recognized her “vast academic production focused on race and gender relations in Brazilian society as well as her outstanding commitment to the field of educational policies.” The awards acknowledge Carneiro’s activism on the one hand and academic contributions on the other, symbolizing her linking of the two, although she claims she was an activist before becoming an intellectual.
Carneiro understood the impacts of racism and sexism on women’s lives from a young age, and this connected her to other women who were also thinking and acting to improve the lives of women, especially Black women. While working with the Brazilian government in 1985 to promote women’s rights, she co-authored Mulher Negra: Política governamental e a mulher (Black Women: Governmental Politics and Women), the first publication in Brazil to present quantitative evidence of inequalities and disparities between Black and white women. Journalist Bianca Santana writes that the book, co-authored with Thereza Santos and Albertina Gordo de Oliveira, “inaugurated the area of race and gender studies and guided the racial debate on feminism, both in Brazil and Latin America.” During the same period, Carneiro worked with Movimento de Mulheres do Brasil (Brazilian Women’s Movement), which drafted propositions later incorporated into Brazil’s new constitution, promulgated in 1988. Eighty percent of their suggestions were included in the constitution.
Beyond these contributions, the Brazilian Women’s Movement played a vital role in political decision-making, influencing public policies on gender equality and combating discrimination against women. The movement’s advocacy, for example, led to domestic violence being designated a crime, as opposed to a private matter. In response, the government established police agencies known as Delegacias Especializadas de Atendimento à Mulher (DEAMs, or Police Stations Specialized in Women’s Services).
Carneiro’s work with the women’s movement, and her proximity with Brazil’s Black movement, led her to co-found Geledés Instituto da Mulher Negra (Geledés Institute of the Black Woman) in 1988. Located in the city of São Paulo, Geledés is one of the most important organizations dealing with racial justice in Brazil. One of its pioneering programs, SOS Racismo (SOS Racism), offers legal assistance to victims of racial discrimination. This initiative led the Brazilian judiciary to categorize racism as a human rights violation. Since its launch, Geledés has been at the vanguard of Brazil’s Black feminist movement. Yet its importance extends well beyond Brazil’s borders, as exemplified by the group’s participation in the 2001 United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Intolerance in Durban, South Africa.
In class at UT, Dr. Carneiro cited the historical importance of Durban as a milestone in the fight against global racism. “Durban provoked the construction of a new concept, Afro-descendants, which became part of the United Nations,” she explained. The Durban conference itself was in part a result of the 1995 Zumbi dos Palmares March in Brasília, which brought some 30,000 people to the streets in the Brazilian capital to protest racism. On that occasion, then-president Fernando Henrique Cardoso received the marchers, including the Geledés crew, and agreed to establish the Interministerial Working Group for the Valorization of the Black Population. Carneiro views the Zumbi march as a key unifying event in Brazil’s Black movement, one that set a more robust anti-racist agenda among Black organizations in the country.
After the protest, Geledés set up strategic alliances with Black women’s groups within and outside Brazil to work together in Durban. Black Brazilian women headed the Afro-Latin American and Caribbean alliance, which put forth public policies and other proposals in the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action.1 “It was Black Brazilian women who inscribed [our] country’s Black movement into an internationalist perspective,” Carneiro explained. In her class, Carneiro repeatedly emphasized the crucial importance of Durban for the inclusion of the fight against racism on the global agenda and for the creation of collective coping strategies such as economic empowerment.
Insurgent Knowledges and the Raciality Device
For us to become bibliography is an achievement for this new generation. 
—Sueli Carneiro
One of the goals of Black Feminist Epistemologies was to propose a focus on knowledge production from the Global South, and on saberes insurgentes, or insurgent knowledges. The readings and class discussions aimed to curate “Black feminist thought as an epistemological project” in dialogue with Carneiro’s life, and centered around Black feminist women’s intellectual production.
On the first day of class, Professor Carneiro reinforced the idea of thinking and “doing” Black feminism, which implies taking into account the contributions of Black women in history, even before the term “Black feminism” was created. In her words, the movement must “feed and revitalize an ancestral culture.” To illustrate, Carneiro devoted time in early class meetings to a retrospective of Black feminism in Brazil. Emphasizing the collective nature of this work, she shared the significant contributions of other Black women, in particular Lélia Gonzalez, a Brazilian anthropologist, philosopher, teacher, intellectual, and activist whom Carneiro views as a pioneer in the construction of Black feminism in the Americas.
Gonzalez is crucial to understanding Black women in Brazil, Latin America, and the world. She was the first to confront white feminism’s erasure of non-white women, and she taught Carneiro to think about the complexities of race, gender, and class that permeate the reality of Black women. Together with politician Benedita da Silva, Gonzalez was fundamental in formulating policies in critical areas, such as public health, that would change the lives of Black Brazilian women. Her example of leadership and use of quantitative data encouraged other groups to pursue similar agendas.
Carneiro stressed the importance of universities as strategic spaces, and how the knowledge produced by Black women must be insurgent, questioning, and subverting of traditional structures of power and knowledge. For those traditional saberes, or ways of thinking, Carneiro says, have negated the intelligence of Black people: “they deny our cognitive ability, deny our contributions to humanity—this is what I call epistemicide.”2
University students must not be “mere reproducers of the mentality that has served for our oppression. If we do not use the space of the university to overthrow this kind of knowledge that was produced about us, what is our reason for being here?”3
Professor Carneiro pointed to the urgency and challenges that the women of this new generation face, emphasizing “the need to transform the polyphony surrounding Black feminism into a public agenda that promotes effective public policies.” Such policies should aim to change the condition of Black women, both within universities and on the streets, ensuring that academic pursuits are aligned with practical realities and needs.
Another portion of the course centered on Carneiro’s 2003 book Dispositivo de Racialidade (The Raciality Device), based on her doctoral dissertation.4 In class and in the book, Carneiro dialogues with the philosophers Michel Foucault and Charles Mills, coining the term raciality device to explain race relations in Brazil through the lens of philosophy. According to Carneiro, the raciality device is formed by a contract that society agrees upon and uses to negate Black existence; on the other hand, this contract also produces resistance and insurgent knowledge, or saberes insurgentes. (She notes that although every white person is a beneficiary of racism, not all are signatories to the racial contract that sustains it.) Carneiro claims that the counterpoint to the raciality device must be achieved through collective work.
In the Classroom: Voices of Activism, Generosity, and Care
It is as if she came out of the pages of a book that—as Black women, activists, and academics—we always study and seek inspiration from.
— Ana Luiza Biazeto
The students in Professor Carneiro’s seminar came from diverse cultural backgrounds, their academic work spanning several departments at the university. Aidan Keys was born in the U.S. and has no blood ties to Brazil. A PhD candidate in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies (AADS), she studies Black Brazilian feminism, and Carneiro figured prominently her master’s thesis. Aidan highlighted the importance of disseminating knowledge from Black Brazilian intellectuals worldwide. “Sueli Carneiro uses a scientific method to dissect racism in Brazil. Non-Brazilian interest in Brazilian raciality often criticizes the ‘failure’ of Black Brazilians to mobilize. Clearly, when we listen to Black women’s studies, we see that this is not true.”
Thaís Rocha, a doctoral student in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, echoed the importance of referencing the work of Black women intellectuals, activists, and academics. “I learn from [other Black feminists] how to strengthen this collective struggle for the end of Black genocide, [for] recovery and reconstruction of what history has denied us, sowing paths of (re)existence and anti-racist resistance for the next generations.”
“It was a period of intense learning,” PhD student Eliane Nascimento (AADS) concluded. “Sueli’s class was the fulfillment of a dream—of seeing her in person and observing her in her fullness as a human being: a magnificent intellectual, kind, caring, dedicated, attentive, and sensitive. Her class sessions and office hours were decisive in awakening insights for my research, and also [helpful] for navigating academia and life. I am grateful for this unique opportunity of a lifetime.”
For this article’s co-authors, Carneiro’s emphasis on ancestral and collective knowledge production resonates strongly. “Professor Sueli was always provocative. What are you going to do with your knowledge? In other words, in addition to learning from the Black Brazilian feminists who came before us, knowledge calls for practical action” (Ana Carolina).
Although class discussions dealt with serious topics, such as violence and deep injustice, Carneiro managed to maintain an atmosphere of respect, cordiality, and a certain lightness. She filled the classroom with generosity, sharing the knowledge she has gained on the frontlines. If she disagreed with someone, she was firm in her opinions, but never in a derogatory way. As Ana Carolina reminds us, “the premise of using feminism as a political tool is also connected to well-being. This is because we need to be alive and healthy to continue the work.”
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In March of 2024, Sueli Carneiro was greeted with a standing ovation prior to addressing the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent. Now more than ever, we join that ovation. She deserves all of this and more. ✹
Ana Carolina Assumpção (LLILAS MA, 2021) is a journalist and a doctoral student at LLILAS. Her work focuses on race and feminist geopolitical studies, specifically community collectives and Black women’s organizations in Rio’s favelas.
Ana Luiza Biazeto is a journalist and doctoral student at LLILAS. She holds a master’s in social work (2010) from Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo. Her work focuses on race and gender in the Brazilian prison system, specifically in the families of incarcerated women in São Paulo.
Notes
- World Conference against Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance, Declaration and Programme of Action (New York: United Nations, 2002).
- Sueli Carneiro, recorded conversation with Christen Smith and Susanna Sharpe, November 9, 2024.
- Ibid. “Se a gente não usar o espaço da universidade para destituir esse tipo de saberes que foram produzidos sobre nós, pra que serve a gente estar aqui?”
- Sueli Carneiro, Dispositivo da Racialidade: A construção do outro como não ser como fundamento do ser [Raciality Device: The Construction of the Other as Non-Being Is the Foundation of Being], (Zahar, 2023).
