Saberes entre terreiros - religião de matriz-africana e a escola: filosofia da ancestralidade no ensino antirracista

Abstract

This dissertation-letter, developed within the Graduate Program in Philosophy (PROF-FILO) at the Federal University of Maranhão, proposes a philosophical-pedagogical experimentation on Afro-Brazilian traditional knowledge, taking the terreiro and its crossing with the school terreiro as a starting point, grounded in the philosophy of ancestry. The rhizomatic path unfolds in the symbolic and epistemological crossing between two terreiros: the Umbanda Terreiro Santa Bárbara, located in the city of Marabá, Pará State, and the terreiro of the Walkise da Silveira Vianna State School, established in the same neighborhood. Through a cartographic rhizomatic approach and a filo-poetic journey in the form of essay-letters, the concepts of ancestry, crossroads, body-territory, epistemology of crossing, and pedagogy of the xirê are articulated in order to problematize the historical exclusion of Afro-Indigenous knowledge from school curricula and to propose an Afro-referenced, anti-racist teaching of philosophy. The work is inspired by African and Afro-diasporic thinkers such as Imhotep, Wiredu, Mbiti, Marimba Ani, Achille Mbembe, Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí, Frantz Fanon, and by Brazilian intellectuals such as Eduardo David de Oliveira, Muniz Sodré, Vanda Machado, Renato Noguera, Sueli Carneiro, and Conceição Evaristo. The dissertation-letter roots philosophy in the soil of lived experience by investigating practices and cosmoperceptions of the Santa Bárbara Terreiro, evoking a living philosophy embodied in the rites, songs, and orally transmitted knowledge of religious leaders and Afro-Indigenous terreiro communities of the Amazon region of Pará. The steps of the immersion approach in the terreiros followed cartographic-rhizomatic trails and clues, carried out for a pedagogical intervention in high school through teaching-learning pathways based on the principles of circularity, corporeality, and ancestral dialogue. As an educational product, O Xirê Pedagógico: Laroyê, Eparrêi, Ogunhê was forged, a didactic-philosophical proposal for the teaching of philosophy in high school, centered on the valorization of ancestral epistemologies and on the insurgency against the epistemicide promoted by the coloniality of knowledge. The dissertation-letter constitutes itself as a gesture of resistance and re-existence, decolonizing pedagogical thought from Marabá, an Afro-rhizomatic territory. Within it, the knowledge of school and terreiro are intertwined, invoking Exu, Ogum, Iansã, Oxóssi, and the enchanted beings of Indigenous peoples as philosophical masters. In this way, pathways are reopened so that public education may reaffirm itself as a space of dignity, belonging, and affirmation of historically subalternized peoples.