Performing Transformation in the Community University of the Rivers (Part 2)

In this two-part article, I seek to present our emerging Community Universityof the Rivers through the languages of storytelling (poetry, song, image andtheatre) to bring to life the context and pedagogy of Transformance in action, inthe Afro-Indigenous community of Cabelo Seco (Portuguese: Dry Hair), foundingcommunity of Marabá city, Pará, in the Brazilian Amazon. I use this strategy toensure that you meet and might identify with my collaborators in our CommunityUniversity of the Rivers, as living subjects. By privileging human narration, I donot mean to privilege action over reflction, as our dramatic performances andour actors are highly analytical. I am simply embedding theoretical concepts andanalyses in our lived experience, valuing oratory, in the search for an aestheticsof transformation. This polyphonic, narrative-based (and less-logocentric)methodology is how all our projects develop, and might be more familiar topractitioners-theoreticians in the ‘global south.’