In “Headspin: Capoeira’s Ironic Inversions,” a chapter from her 1995 book Sambo: Resistance in Motion, Barbara Browning introduces capoeira as a “game, a fight, and a dance” influenced by African aesthetics and Brazilian history (Browning 88, Bory). Yet those three descriptors do not encompass capoeira’s full definition. For example, capoeiristas, “when asked to define [capoeira] in a word,” generally refer to it as “art” rather than as a game, fight or dance (Browning 89). It can even be classified as a martial art (87). Capoeira’s multiplicity of definitions seem to reflect confusion about its true nature. However, in contrast to capoeira’s unclear definition, Browning clearly stipulates that “one doesn’t speak of ‘dancing’ or ‘fighting’ capoeira but rather of ‘playing’” it (88). This linguistic specificity suggests that capoeira is more than an ill-defined intersection of genres. Instead, based on my understanding of Browning’s piece, I find that capoeira’s varied definitions reveal rather than confuse its primary purpose: the reconciliation of dualities. Capoeiristas physically reflect the reality that “positive and negative forces” are not necessarily opposed (108). Instead, capoeiristas’ ‘play’ and its accompanying stories, songs, conflicts and history demonstrate the “no in the yes, the big in the little, the earth in the sky, [and] the fight in the dance” (108). These opposite concepts are not distinct, but rather inherently present in each other. By focusing on the language surrounding capoeira, Browning demonstrates that capoeira’s reconciliation of opposites allows it to function simultaneously as a political statement and an expression of joy.
Browning first introduces capoeira’s dualistic nature through her discussion of its varied definitions. On one level, she asserts, defining capoeira as a dance, game, martial art, or fight represents a “preoccupation with nomenclature” she finds “misguided” (100). Historically, capoeira’s definition has served as a tool to disguise its identity or ensure its protection rather than truly describe it (101-2). Given this “foundation […] of dissimulation,” Browning implies, capoeira’s definition may not offer a means to understand it at all (100). On another level, however, the very fact that capoeira has so many definitions illustrates its ability to reconcile opposites. For example, considering capoeira as a “fight” reminds Browning’s readers that “Africans in Brazil developed [capoeira] with the potential to disarm whites” (88). This “violent potential” reveals capoeira’s purpose as a tool of direct political action (97). However, when analyzed as a dance, capoeira’s emphasis on “the pleasure of having a body” and “motion for the sake of pleasure” become clear, highlighting its “humorous” nature (88, 89). Thus capoeira’s various definitions reflect its multifaceted purposes. By embodying all those purposes in the same physical form, capoeiristas express capoeira’s central tenet: nothing is binary, and instead, seeming opposites exist within each other.
Browning further emphasizes this premise of duality by referring to capoeira as ‘play’ despite its politicized, militaristic history. Although capoeira’s origin remains disputed, many capoeiristas say that enslaved Africans in Brazil developed the game as a means to defend themselves and escape their enslavers (94). Capoeira continued to represent resistance to oppression throughout the nineteenth century, when the Brazilian monarchy “legislated corporal punishment or forced exile for practitioners of capoeira,” demonstrating that rulers viewed capoeira and its cultural heritage as threats to white authority (97). Thus capoeira’s history is serious and intertwined with oppression, characteristics that are not to be taken lightly. However, a modern capoeirista often appears “silly,” with “feet slapping happily like palms in the air” or a cheerful “upsidedown mug” (89-90). The game comes with an inherent sense of playfulness. Therefore, Browning insists that a capoeirista “play[s]” rather than fights or dances capoeira (88). This lighthearted language reveals a purpose perhaps even more important than capoeira’s political uses: by “ironiz[ing],” or rather, ‘playing’ with dualistic opposites like “good and evil,” capoeira scrambles conventional conceptions of juxtaposition (90). Ultimately, its audience “can’t tell anymore what is ugly and what is beautiful” and finds it natural for a game with roots in political resistance to take itself lightly (90). Yet this playful joy does not minimize the struggles in capoeira’s history, nor the oppressive “political and economic situation” of modern Brazil (125). Instead, capoeira’s multiplicity of definitions and conveyance as ‘play’ reveal its capacity to convey an uplifting message without invalidating a history of struggle for justice. As Browning concludes, capoeira’s joy allows the game to offer “hope” not separately from, but rather through its “commitment to the principles of resistance” in the face of oppression (125, 92).
Works Cited
Bory, Alison. “Minstrelsy and African-American Dance.” 14 November 2024, Humes 103, Davidson College, Davidson, NC. Lecture and slideshow.
Browning, Barbara. “Headspin: Capoeira’s Ironic Inversions.” Samba: Resistance in Motion, Indiana University Press, 1995, pp. 86–126, drive.google.com/file/d/1EshMvM5dKOtePQFUiNgeJvNTz3HD3BTR/view.
