Asli Berktay

This article explores the representations of Black Brazilians in telenovelas where the ideology of racial democracy remains evident through the act of "seeing to make disappear"-a complicated process of mutual exclusion and incorporation. Rather than a microcosm per se, telenovelas form integral parts of the contemporary Brazilian cosmology, primary tenets of a "worldview" which Brazilians have of their "imagined community. " The precepts of modernity and racial democracy are key to the construction of this "televisual cosmology. " I also place representations of Blackness within historical discussions on Brazilian slavery, as it is impossible to speak about race and race relations in the Atlantic world without going back to the historical roots of its respective slave societies. The invisibility and relegation of Black individuals to flat characters, their stereotypical representations, and the mechanisms of "completion" and "distancing" remain central to the telenovelas of the last decades of the twentieth century.

English-language abstract: Building on the insights of scholars of the history of emotions, this article analyzes three testaments to explore the complex relationships between freed African women and their former mistresses in nineteenth-century Salvador da Bahia. Profound connections seem to have occurred between freed African women and their mistresses, within the constant search for community building that dominated African lives in slave societies throughout the Atlantic world. Freedom was a central determinant of the complex relationships between freed African women and their former mistresses, through never being a given or a right, but rather a gift and a privilege, with its accompanying requisites of gratitude and deference. Libertas’ testaments demonstrate complex emotional dynamics based on the moral obligations of reciprocity and the norms of social deference, as well as a profound need to assert one’s honor while facing death and the afterlife. They also reveal a wide range of human relationships, from obligations and gratitude to actual affection or love. The social and cultural expectations of slavery are further mediated by gendered understandings of what the ties between women should be in a slave society, where slavery and patriarchy fed off and enhanced one another as closely connected forms of domination.

In 2018, Senegalese hip hop celebrated its thirtieth anniversary as one of Africa's most vibrant hip hop scenes. Senegalese rap has asserted itself not only as an expedient form of urban art, but also as a socially, politically, and culturally powerful instrument of both persuasion and mobilization for the masses. From its privileged beginnings in Dakar's posh nightclubs and Catholic high schools, the genre soon asserted itself as quite distinct from hip hop in other parts of the world, and its popularity increasingly grew to wide segments of the Senegalese public. From the mid-1990s, the underprivileged segments of the society (especially those from the poor peripheral neighbourhoods of Dakar) became progressively vocal, using hip hop as an instrument to give voice to the economic and political predicaments of the people, particularly the youth. The production of the music became increasingly local, and its primary language the Senegalese lingua franca Wolof. What has given Senegalese rap both its personality and power, while enabling it to keep an international aura, has been its political engagement: from early on, Senegalese hip hop has been strongly penetrated by politics and the denunciation of the living conditions of the population, of political abuse and social inequality. This article examines 'hip hop galsen' over three decades, detailing its development as a successful genre grounded in local realities that gives voice to the concerns and predicaments of the Senegalese public. It concludes through an examination of recent changes, as evidenced in new musical influences, the several important female voices that can now be heard within a historically male-dominated genre, and the greater support and acceptance hip hop has recently enjoyed, equipping the current generation of Senegalese rappers with the promise of bringing it to the international stage.

Abstract The image of Senegal as an exception to the general absolutist trend of Francophone African politics is largely connected to President Léopold Sédar Senghor. He believed that his synthesis of politics and culture, able to bridge the French, African and Black components of his identity, could also be extended to building his country. In this effort, Senghor applied the ideologies of Negritude and African Socialism to bridge the many social gaps in Senegalese society. This article seeks to move beyond Negritude and African Socialism by considering them as much proper to the Senegalese context as utopian ideologies based on egalitarianism and global cooperation. An analysis of these ideologies, which replaced socioeconomic realities by a broad rubric of ‘African culture’, provides an in‐depth understanding of this initial post‐independence period in African history and of the social divides that shaped it.

This article adds to existing discussions on slave religions by offering the analysis of four post-mortem testaments left behind by formerly enslaved African women in nineteenth-century Salvador da Bahia to elucidate the different roles that faith and religiosity played within their lives, communities, and understandings of self. After contextualizing these primary sources within the relevant historiography on African and African descendant religiosity in Atlantic slave societies, it focuses on the centrality of baptisms, strong pleas for forgiveness, elaborate funerary arrangements, irmandade membership, and lives spent within the precepts of Roman Catholicism present in the testaments. It also considers the realities of enslavement and the Atlantic slave trade as important factors that shaped the considerations of freed Africans when faced with the imminence of death. In a world where life was fleeting, death became a major site for community formation, for the assertion of princi...

This article adds to existing discussions on slave religions by offering the analysis of four post-mortem testaments left behind by formerly enslaved African women in nineteenth-century Salvador da Bahia to elucidate the different roles that faith and religiosity played within their lives, communities, and understandings of self. After contextualizing these primary sources within the relevant historiography on African and African descendant religiosity in Atlantic slave societies, it focuses on the centrality of baptisms, strong pleas for forgiveness, elaborate funerary arrangements,
irmandade membership, and lives spent within the precepts of Roman Catholicism present in the testaments. It also considers the realities of enslavement and the Atlantic slave trade as important factors that shaped the considerations of freed Africans when faced with the imminence of death. In a world where life was fleeting, death became a major site for community formation, for the assertion of principles, and for exercising agency. The proximity of death and the realities of Atlantic slave
societies shaped libertos’ considerations of justice and honor, as well as the final rites they required for their dignified passage to the afterworld. This article concludes that Africans in the diaspora constantly managed, negotiated, and enlarged the small spaces for self-determination, and for the
preservation and recreation of identities and communities, with which they were left, while they also carved out other parallel spaces for themselves. Among these, Roman Catholic-derived religious communities and affiliations, and the continuation and creative adaptation of African religious practices, were of essential importance to the identities and community formations of libertos.

This study examines the distinct approaches to the Byzantine legacy in Turkish historiography offered by three leading Turkish historians: Fuat Koprulu, Omer Lutfi Barkan and Halil Inalcik, protagonists of three distinct eras of republican/nationalist Turkish historiography, as well as the most significant (in their historical scholarship and in their creation of master narratives) historians of the nation-state. An analysis of their contributions to the subject of the Byzantine legacy works to highlight the ways in which our defensive nationalist historiography has been imagined, as well as the role of our geographical and cultural ancestor within that imagination. This book analyzes the recognitions of this legacy--as well as the lack thereof--, while seeking to situate the different attitudes towards Byzantium within their real and ideological contexts. While all three historians remain prisoners of the nation-state, unable to free themselves from the narrow boundaries of its nat...

This dissertation analyzes the wills left behind by African-born ex-slaves in nineteenth-century Salvador in order to shed light on the lives that they led in the Bahian capital upon their arrival as slaves from Africa, and upon the re-acquisition of their freedom through the alforria system. The material assets and the slave ownership of libertos are studied in depth, as well as their religiosity, and the larger world and networks within which they operated in their Brazilian lives, with a specific eye towards African agency and processes of community formation. The qualitative and in-depth study of post-mortem testaments and inventories as meaningful texts in their own right provides the opportunity to decipher the individual voices of freed Africans, as well as to acquire insight into their Bahian worlds. The relationships, affective ties, and kinship networks of libertos, as well as their efforts to exercise agency and deliberation over their own lives, and the lives of others to whom they were connected, also become evident in the process. The testaments also make it possible to acquire a deeper understanding of African cosmologies in Brazil, through the ways in which libertos understood the passage from the worldly life to the afterlife, the meanings they gave to death, to funerals and other last rites. Understandings of justice, legality, and honor also come to the forefront, while the complex context of nineteenth century Bahia (and Brazil in general) constitutes the constant backdrop against which all these discussions acquire meaning. Understanding the lives, belief systems, and connections of African libertos also has important repercussions for understanding the experiences of Africans and their descendants in slave societies all over the Atlantic World. Insights deriving from the in-depth analysis of libertos’ wills have important implications for furthering our knowledge with regards to the Atlantic slave trade, slave ownership, and enslavement, as well as processes of identity and community formation, retention, adaptation, and resistance in the African Diaspora as a whole.

Third Text, Volume 24, Issue 2, 2010 Special Issue: Beyond Negritude: Senghor's Vision for Africa The image of Senegal as an exception to the general absolutist trend of Francophone African politics is largely connected to President Léopold Sédar Senghor. He believed that his synthesis of politics and culture, able to bridge the French, African and Black components of his identity, could also be extended to building his country. In this effort, Senghor applied the ideologies of Negritude and African Socialism to bridge the many social gaps in Senegalese society. This article seeks to move beyond Negritude and African Socialism by considering them as much proper to the Senegalese context as utopian ideologies based on egalitarianism and global cooperation. An analysis of these ideologies, which replaced socioeconomic realities by a broad rubric of ‘African culture’, provides an in‐depth understanding of this initial post‐independence period in African history and of the social divides that shaped it.

Third Text, Volume 24, Issue 2, 2010
Special Issue:  Beyond Negritude: Senghor's Vision for Africa

The image of Senegal as an exception to the general absolutist trend of Francophone African politics is largely connected to President Léopold Sédar Senghor. He believed that his synthesis of politics and culture, able to bridge the French, African and Black components of his identity, could also be extended to building his country. In this effort, Senghor applied the ideologies of Negritude and African Socialism to bridge the many social gaps in Senegalese society. This article seeks to move beyond Negritude and African Socialism by considering them as much proper to the Senegalese context as utopian ideologies based on egalitarianism and global cooperation. An analysis of these ideologies, which replaced socioeconomic realities by a broad rubric of ‘African culture’, provides an in‐depth understanding of this initial post‐independence period in African history and of the social divides that shaped it.

This book chapter is my contribution to, and Chapter 8 in, the book Hip Hop and Social Change in Africa: Ni Wakati, edited by Msia Kibona Clark and Mickie Mwanzia Koster (Lexington Books, 2014).

"This book examines social change in Africa through the lens of hip hop music and culture. Artists engage their African communities in a variety of ways that confront established social structures, using coded language and symbols to inform, question, and challenge. Through lyrical expression, dance, and graffiti, hip hop is used to challenge social inequality and to push for social change. The study looks across Africa and explores how hip hop is being used in different places, spaces, and moments to foster change. In this edited work, authors from a wide range of fields, including history, sociology, African and African American studies, and political science explore the transformative impact that hip hop has had on African youth, who have in turn emerged to push for social change on the continent. The powerful moment in which those that want change decide to consciously and collectively take a stand is rooted in an awareness that has much to do with time. Therefore, the book centers on African hip hop around the context of “it’s time” for change, Ni Wakati."

This dissertation analyzes the wills left behind by African-born ex-slaves in nineteenth-century Salvador in order to shed light on the lives that they led in the Bahian capital upon their arrival as slaves from Africa, and upon the re-acquisition of their freedom through the alforria system. The material assets and the slave ownership of libertos are studied in depth, as well as their religiosity, and the larger world and networks within which they operated in their Brazilian lives, with a specific eye towards African agency and processes of community formation. The qualitative and in-depth study of post-mortem testaments and inventories as meaningful texts in their own right provides the opportunity to decipher the individual voices of freed Africans, as well as to acquire insight into their Bahian worlds. The relationships, affective ties, and kinship networks of libertos, as well as their efforts to exercise agency and deliberation over their own lives, and the lives of others to whom they were connected, also become evident in the process. The testaments also make it possible to acquire a deeper understanding of African cosmologies in Brazil, through the ways in which libertos understood the passage from the worldly life to the afterlife, the meanings they gave to death, to funerals and other last rites. Understandings of justice, legality, and honor also come to the forefront, while the complex context of nineteenth century Bahia (and Brazil in general) constitutes the constant backdrop against which all these discussions acquire meaning. Understanding the lives, belief systems, and connections of African libertos also has important repercussions for understanding the experiences of Africans and their descendants in slave societies all over the Atlantic World. Insights deriving from the in-depth analysis of libertos’ wills have important implications for furthering our knowledge with regards to the Atlantic slave trade, slave ownership, and enslavement, as well as processes of identity and community formation, retention, adaptation, and resistance in the African Diaspora as a whole.

This was my MA thesis at Central European University, Budapest in 2005.
Abstract: "This study examines the distinct approaches to the Byzantine legacy in Turkish historiography offered by three leading Turkish historians: Fuat Köprülü, Ömer Lütfi Barkan and Halil Inalcik, protagonists of three distinct eras of republican/nationalist Turkish historiography, as well as the most significant (in their historical scholarship and in their creation of master narratives) historians of the nation-state. An analysis of their contributions to the subject of the Byzantine legacy works to highlight the ways in which our defensive nationalist historiography has been imagined, as well as the role of our geographical and cultural ancestor within that imagination. This book analyzes the recognitions of this legacy--as well as the lack thereof--, while seeking to situate the different attitudes towards Byzantium within their real and ideological contexts. While all three historians remain prisoners of the nation-state, unable to free themselves from the narrow boundaries of its nationalist ideologies and agendas, the "anti-nationalist liberation" remains a challenge for all Turkish and non-Turkish historians working on the Ottoman Empire or modern Turkey to respond to even today."