Afterlives in Motion: Changing Representations of Enslaved Women in Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival

Brazil’s central role in the transatlantic slave trade and its enduring racialized inequalities contrast sharply with the country’s limited public memorialization of slavery. This article examines Rio de Janeiro’s samba schools as cultural and creative industries that produce and contest narratives of enslavement in the absence of sustained state-led remembrance. Methodologically, it brings Trouillot’s concept of historical silences into dialogue with Hartman’s critical fabulation and Twine’s racial–visual literacy to develop a sociological approach to visual cultural production as history-making . Focusing on two formerly enslaved women from 18th-century Minas Gerais, the article compares carnival fabulations produced 60 years apart. It shows how shifting racial and gendered imaginaries shape the retrospective significance of slavery: while Chica da Silva’s narrative aligned with myths of racial democracy and sexualized racism, Rosa Maria’s depiction reflects contemporary critical perspectives. Persistent racialized inequalities in cultural production reveal the afterlives of slavery across Brazil’s artistic and academic landscapes.