Diaspora Without Displacement

“Celina de Sá reconfigures the African diaspora by redeploying the performative strategies of ‘Brazilian’ capoeira as a critical ethnographer and skilled participant. Focusing on capoeira in Senegal, she flips Afro-Atlantic geographies of historical origins and historic returns to decolonize what she calls ‘diasporic chauvinism.’ Throughout this bold intervention, capoeira serves less as an object of analysis than as the analytic through which misrecognized histories of Blackness emerge and are reclaimed—a radical provocation sure to generate lively debate.” - Andrew Apter, author of Oduduwa’s Chain: Locations of Culture in the Yoruba-Atlantic

“In this fascinating book, Celina de Sá shows how, through capoeira, postcolonial urban West Central African youth articulate themselves as Black subjects while also making, creating, and practicing diaspora without ever traveling to Brazil. In expanding the meaning of diaspora by centering it within an African context that challenges the necessity of displacement, this groundbreaking book will productively disrupt how scholars think of diaspora for years to come.” - Yolanda Covington-Ward, author of Gesture and Power: Religion, Nationalism, and Everyday Performance in Congo