Kindezi The Kongo Art Of Babysitting

[Sadie]

ThroughAfrican and Afro-diasporic references, it is proposed a reflexive exercise on Black children and their performances. Based on studies about Bantu-Kongo cosmology, an approach to Bakongo childhood is sought to provide an understanding of the performances of black Brazilian childhood, relating them to the preservation of African civilizational values. It is concluded, considering ancestral heritage and a cosmological notion of circular time, that Brazilian Black children, through performance, are able to bring together past and present, ancestral and living, renewing memory and keeping the values of Afro-Brazilian civilization alive.

Por meio de referenciais africanos e afrodiaspricos, prope-se o exerccio de pensar as crianas negras e suas performances. A partir de estudos sobre a cosmologia bantu-kongo, busca-se uma aproximao com a infncia bakongo para dar a compreender as performances da infncia negra brasileira, relacionando-as com a preservao de valores civilizatrios africanos. Conclui-se, luz do conceito ancestralidade e da noo cosmolgica de tempo circular, que as crianas negras brasileiras, por intermdio da performance, so capazes de unir passado e presente, ancestral e vivo, reeditando memrias e mantendo vivos valores civilizatrios afro-brasileiros.

In this text, we seek to discuss black children as performing children, basing our discussion on the notion of Kindezi, presented in the work of Fu-Kiau and Lukondo-Wamba (2000)FU-KIAU, Kimbwandende Kia Bunseki; LUKONDO-WAMBA, A. M. Kindezi: The Kongo Art of Babysitting. c 1988. Baltimore: Inprint Editions, 2000., to problematize the performative experimentation of black children as the presentification of African civilizing values and, also, as an important contribution to think about Education and the fight against racism.

We consider that thinking about the bakongo childhood (of the Kongo people) is relevant for all Brazilian researchers who seek to understand childhood: the Bantu peoples are part of a significant contingent of enslaved humans brought by force to Brazil and, more than we know, their traditions were part of the construction of our culture and nationality. Accordingly, we cannot think of Brazilian childhood without thinking of the contributions of African cultures, in this case specifically the bantu-kongo (bakongo) cosmology.

As pointed out by Nei Lopes (2021)LOPES, Nei. Bantos, mals e identidade negra. 4. ed. Belo Horizonte: Autntica, 2021., we need to understand the extent to which our understanding of African contributions to what we are today, as a nation, has been greatly curtailed, having in consideration that

We present a brief contextualization about the solar time that moves the bantu-kongo thought systems, so that we can converge in the meanings of person/human being/muntu: understanding what the human means within the bakongo culture enables us to think about childhood within a field of meanings that are different from those in which we are commonly situated in Western culture, associated with the invention of childhood as a social construct connected to the processes of bourgeoisie ascension and school invention, as Aris (1981)ARIS, Phillipe. Histria social da criana e da famlia. 2. ed. So Paulo: TLC, 1981. points out, or even to the propositions of Childhood Sociology, presented by Sarmento and Gouvea (2008)SARMENTO, Manuel Jacinto; GOUVEA, Maria Cristina Soares de (Org.). Estudos da Infncia: educao e prticas sociais. Petrpolis: Vozes, 2008. and Sarmento and Vasconcelos (2007)SARMENTO, Manuel Jacinto; VASCONCELOS, Vera Maria Ramos de (Org.) Infncia (in)visvel. Araraquara: Junqueira & Marin Editores, 2007.. It also enables us to understand the efforts to value childhood and understand other modes of being and learning from it.

As the human being is immersed in these cosmological practices, we can narrow our perspective to think about children in the light of this solar dynamics. According to the peoples of Kongo, every child born gives body and physical form to a new living Sun. As realized vital force (Lopes, 2005LOPES, Nei. Kitbu: o livro do saber e do esprito negro-africanos. So Paulo: Senac, 2005.), the child-muntu begins their cycle in this world, the physical world, from the moment of birth, which is the dawn of a life, the moment of coming to light, as illustrated by Fu-Kiau and Lukondo-Wamba (2000)FU-KIAU, Kimbwandende Kia Bunseki; LUKONDO-WAMBA, A. M. Kindezi: The Kongo Art of Babysitting. c 1988. Baltimore: Inprint Editions, 2000. in Kindezi: The Kongo art of babysitting (Figure 2):

Accordingly, we propose the exercise of thinking about children from the bakongo perspective, seeking to trace possibilities to read the remnants of this infant being that endure, as memory or stem cell, in Brazilian black childhood: that which breathes in the cracks, in between cultures, in the tradition of shared knowledge in the territories where African ancestry remains alive, through orality and other Afro-Brazilian civilizing values (Trindade, 2005TRINDADE, Azoilda Loretto da. Valores civilizatrios afro-brasileiros na educao infantil. Salto para o Futuro, Braslia, p. 30-36, 2005.; 2014TRINDADE, Azoilda Loretto da. Multiculturalismo: mil e uma faces da escola. Petrpolis: DP et alii, 2014.), songs, dances, spirituality. The Brazilian black childhood living on the streets, in games, at the crossroads, in ciranda, in jongo, in tambor de mina, in ointments, in capoeira, in the free dance of a body that kept memory. We are here observing an afrodiasporic corporeality that, as pointed out by Jlio Tavares (2020)TAVARES, Julio Cesar. Gramtica das corporeidades afrodiaspricas. Perspectivas etnogrficas. Curitiba: Appris Editora, 2020., is endowed with a grammar through which it writes its narrative and, in this writing, performs. A childhood that gives/lends the body so that this writing takes shape, happens.

In this context, an ethical commitment to the valorization of human life in its completeness is established in the process of helping the young muntu to become integrated with the community in a reciprocal dynamics with intense exchange of vital force, through which, at the same time, different relation are established in favor of a notion of shared humanity: children teach and learn from one another (and are encouraged to do so), and also do so with adults of different ages, or with old people experienced in the most varied subjects (Fu-Kiau; Lukondo-Wamba, 2000FU-KIAU, Kimbwandende Kia Bunseki; LUKONDO-WAMBA, A. M. Kindezi: The Kongo Art of Babysitting. c 1988. Baltimore: Inprint Editions, 2000.).

In this space, black and non-black children can experience something like being in the sadulu: a space that prepares children for community life. In our understanding, it is exactly here that lies the difference between white children and black children: through these educational processes experienced in the Kongo sadulu, in the Candombl of Bahia or in the Sarau of poetry from the South, that children perform; however, this performativity of black children carries the memory of civilizing values that echo and mean in a unique and singular way, through their corporealities and identities as black subjects in diaspora5 5 Here, we take into consideration the concept of diaspora in the dimension proposed by Hall (2005) in order to think about the construction of multiple black identities beyond the binary conception of identity and difference, imposed by the history of traffic. . This practical and sensitive process is essential to ensure the union between the children and the social body in which they are situated (we can resume Figure 3), according to the Bantu-Kongo cosmology, since the social codes mobilized for education establish the notion of a spiritually united community, in sharing and in movement (Fu-Kiau, 2000FU-KIAU, Kimbwandende Kia Bunseki; LUKONDO-WAMBA, A. M. Kindezi: The Kongo Art of Babysitting. c 1988. Baltimore: Inprint Editions, 2000.).

According to Paul Zumthor (2012)ZUMTHOR, Paul. Performance, recepo, leitura. So Paulo: Cosac & Naify, 2012., there are three types of performances: the complete performance, which requires a present body that leads the immediate and poetic act through all the sensory channels of the performer and of the receiver; the direct vocal performance, which occurs without the present body of the performer, received through the listening of discs or radio (as in radio plays, for example); and, finally, the purely visual performance, where the reader reconstructs the pleasure of the poetic through their emotions manifested by/in the body. Here we understand that the bakongo children and the Brazilian black children, in the condition of performing children, make use of the complete performance when, in telling their experiences/stories, they capture the other (real or imaginary): inviting them to follow them, relive, be with them in their sadulu, partaking meanings from a community perspective.

We are not denying with this the understanding that Brazilian black children are historical subjects, agents of their time and challenged by the specificities that the other identity markers (such as class, gender, religiosity, etc.) confer on their course of development, but pointing out that, far beyond school experiences, the education of these children also occurs in mostly black territories, such as samba schools, terreiros, peripheral communities of urban centers, quilombos, among others, where religiosity, corporeality, orality, ancestry are coordinated, enabling their presence to be imposed and updated in performances that provide the with the opportunity to occupy centrality, exercise protagonism, in addition to producing and sharing knowledge.

We consider that our arguments point to an important challenge: the need to perceive and embrace Brazilian black children, heirs of the African tradition, in their insurgency, in their non-submission to the dictates of the colonialism of the body and spirit, inviting us to perform with them, inside and outside schools.

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