Letters about pesquisar-ebó: opacity and care practices in academia

Abstract

This article, organized from letters, seeks to present what it calls pesquisar-ebó, a way of doing research woven from ancestral knowledge and black authors. The term ebó, originating from the Yoruba language, means offering, sacrifice and exchange, and is offered in contexts of exchanges with divinities or entities, such as orixás, Exus and pombagiras, and can be carried out in different segments within traditions of African origins, such as Umbanda, Candomblé and Batuque. Pesquisa-ebó is done in the shadow of ancestry and the knowledge of the terreiro, which, with Édouard Glissant, we call opacity. In the context of ebó research, opacity is sustained as an affirmation of relationships (theoretical and existential) that do not wish to be made in the light of transparency and adjacent concepts such as clarity, certainty and objectivity. Ebó research, against the colonized idea of methodology, is a coexistence to experiment other paths, positioning research as a possibility of producing non-hegemonic knowledge, of combating epistemicide and, above all, of a practice of care.