CULTURA E MITOLOGIA YORUBÁ EM SALA DE AULA

Abstract

The aim of this work is, as an introduction, to emphasise how the knowledge of yoruba culture and mythology may introduce alternative epistemological paths to the state of violence perpetrated against people of African descent who have been living under the systemic structure of racism. Based on literature concerning African traditional thought and also the discussions carried out in class during a course entitled “Introduction to Yoruba Mythology and Culture”, we propose to highlight some cultural, cosmological, philosophical and social aspects in the Yoruba culture and mythology. This article also intends to reflect on how a socially racialized structure privileges epistemicide as a device of control and racial hierarchisation. For this reason, this text aims to single out the transgressive and insurgent potential of black-African knowledge [found within white’s cultural epistemological standards], once this would be a place of humanity restitution, and consequently of black self-valuation. Thus, this reflection emphasises the need to know oneself and to appropriate civilizing cultural values in an effective struggle against racism.