Not to Forget: Memory, Power and the Malê Archive in Amado’s Narrative

Abstract

This article discusses the relations between power, memory, and the archive that surround the Malês revolt, a historical event narrated in Bahia de Todos os Santos: Guia de Ruas e Mistérios (Bahia de Todos os Santos: A Guide to the Streets and Mysteries) by the writer Jorge Amado (1977). It seeks to share reflections, tensions, and intentions that the contact with post-structuralist and decolonial studies can trigger before history, as a movement of insubmission able to potentiate a critique of official thought and the elected narratives. The Malê resistance and endeavor to protect their identity is a power expressed in Amado’s book, which denounces the physical, linguistic, religious, social, and historical violence experienced by the dehumanization of Black bodies and the erasure of the national history of these popular figures who had participation in struggles for freedom and were silenced in the nation’s official narratives. The work developed also aims to understand how the Brazilian novelist approaches these structures forged in the relations of power and control of history and memory used as mechanisms to erase the identities of ethnic minorities on Brazilian soil. The development of this study relied on the theoretical concepts of Derrida (1995/2001), Deleuze (1969/2009), Foucault (1969/2008), Mignolo (2003), Grosfoguel (1996), Quijano (2005), and Reis (1986).