The practice of capoeira: diasporic black culture in Canada

Abstract

This article draws on ethnographic research with Canadians who practise the Afro-Brazilian martial art, capoeira, to discuss, renew and perform African heritage, black circulating cultures and Canadian nationalism. I make several incursions into Paul Gilroy's theory of the Black Atlantic. First I draw attention farther north to Canada to show that diaspora cultures reference an ‘elsewhere’ as they also come to represent ‘here’; capoeira is used to engage with local Aboriginal and multiculturalism politics. I overcome the little attention that has been paid in Gilroy-influenced black cultural studies to embodiment, corporeality and the particular movements of the sporting body, which are deployed to preserve and share diaspora cultures. This examination of the micropolitics of sport reveals the past, ‘tradition’ and ‘African’ symbols and heritage (roots), along with antiphony, innovation and transnational circulation (routes) as essential elements of black expressive cultures.