Crossings: migration and symbolic violence in the narratives of black literatures

Abstract

This article aims to show, by the literature, how the black people from the African diaspora in the Americas move, searching for surviving and security guarantees against the violence they go through in the everyday life, from the violence by the State, the social and market violence, to the symbolic violence, which is Pierre Bourdieu’s central sociological concept. From the slave trade up-to the contemporaneity, the migration stamps the history of the black people. Some results of the research show that the history of the black people in the Americas is a history of ongoing migration, causing unfathomable effects in their identities and social constructions, which groove the affective memory, and become one more social marker of violence and inequality. The methodology applied is the comparative-descriptive one, using the technique of document analysis. As subject of the analysis, it was chosen four novels, by authors of four different countries.