Epistolary Essay for Macala

memory, theory, affectivity and the right to self-determination

Abstract

This epistolary essay addresses the ancestral figure of Macala, a Black woman photographed by Marc Ferrez in the nineteenth century and renamed by the writer Luciany Aparecida. By writing her a letter, the authors build a dialogue with Black feminist theorists such as Saidiya Hartman, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins and Conceição Evaristo. The text starts from Macala's image to reflect on the colonial continuities that cross Black bodies in diaspora, addressing themes such as erasure, resistance, counter-hegemonic epistemologies, the memory of the seas, and insubmission in the face of necropolitics. Assuming the format of the letter as a literary and theoretical device, the essay weaves memory, theory and affectivity, in a writing that honours the legacies of Black women and claims the right to (self) appointment. Macala's clenched fist, a symbol of resistance, becomes the central metaphor of the narrative, invoking the urgency of maintaining the ancestral fire, the voice, and the dignity denied. By elaborating a spiral narrative – heir to oral traditions and the performance of curvilinear time – the letter proposes a critical reinterpretation of colonial archives, a denunciation of epistemic violence and a radical affirmation of Black life.