Mulher, corpo e sexualidade: uma reflexão a partir da oficina de afrofunk

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the Afrofunk workshop as a space for the production of new meanings for the body and dance, articulating issues of race, gender, and sexuality. Funk, historically marginalized and subjected to moralizing discourses, is analyzed through the lived experiences within the workshop, observing how dancing bodies construct their own narratives, often in opposition to hegemonic and colonial interpretations. By considering the dancers and workshop participants as meaning-makers, this study seeks to understand how funk performance can function as a tool for re-signifying the body and the spaces it occupies. The research adopts an autoethnographic approach and participant observation as its primary methods, recognizing that the researcher’s body is also implicated in this field. Ethnography not only documents the workshop and its developments but also immerses itself in the experience, exploring how dance, musicality, and the interactions among participants shape a space of resistance and identity affirmation. Thus, bodily performances are analyzed through theoretical frameworks that engage with decolonial studies and the anthropology of the body and performance. The findings indicate that the Afrofunk workshop not only reaffirms funk as a peripheral cultural practice but also operates as a space for reclaiming bodies that have historically been controlled by racist and sexist discourses. In this sense, Afrofunk is more than just a space for technical dance learning; it is a site for the construction of subjectivities and the decolonization of the body, where funk becomes a tool for political and aesthetic agency. Finally, this research contributes to discussions on body, culture, and power by highlighting how popular cultural practices can challenge social hierarchies and produce new forms of existence.