Cartographic Erasure: Critical Toponymy, Africanisms, and Female Names in Brazilian Quilombola Territories
This presentation examines toponymic trends in Brazilian Quilombola communities, focusing on female place names (anthropotoponyms) and the presence versus the erasure of africanisms. Drawing from critical toponymy, sociolinguistics, and digital humanities, the study analyzes how traditional naming practices and matripotency operate as acts of symbolic resistance to counteract official cartographic invisibility and preserve cultural memory.
This study investigates naming trends and the linguistic landscape across Afro-Brazilian Quilombola territories. Analyzing patterns from over 2,800 communities, the research highlights two core dimensions: the visibility of women through female anthropotoponyms as markers of matripotency and ancestry, and the tension between the preservation of africanisms and the systemic processes of their linguistic and cartographic erasure by colonial bureaucracies.
Methodologically, the research integrates relational database architecture and spatial mapping tools to demonstrate how traditional place names serve as decolonial ideological signs, challenging historical invisibility and affirming ancestral identity across the Brazilian landscape.
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Nágila Sana
Nágila Kelli Prado Sana ist Promovierende der Linguistik an der Universidade do Estado de Mato...