Performances of Spiral Time

by Leda Maria Martins, Bruna Barros (Translator), Jess Oliveira (Translator), Fred Moten (Foreword by)

Overview

In Performances of Spiral Time, famed Afro-Brazilian thinker Leda Maria Martins theorizes forms of African and African diasporic temporality, corporeality, and space that exist apart from and critique Eurocentric notions of linear time. Martins introduces the notion of “spiral time”—curved and recurrent temporalities materialized in Black corporealities in which the body is the place of the inscription of memory and knowledge. She draws on African and African diasporic philosophy as well as the ritual performance and quotidian practices of Afro-Brazilians, arguing that spiral time is most powerfully expressed by the moving body. Embodied performance—whether manifested as capoeira, Candomblé, or theater—and the influence of oral traditions, sacredness, and ancestrality, cause time and memory to curve and return. With this theorization, Martins not only counters the claim to dominance of Western linear time; she provides a polyvalent and foundational account of African and African diasporic thought and ontology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478029182
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	09/26/2025
Series:	Dissident Acts
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Leda Maria Martins is Professor of Literature, Arts, and Sciences at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.

Bruna Barros is a multidisciplinary artist and translator.

Jess Oliveira is a translator and poet.

Fred Moten is Professor in the Departments of Performance Studies and Comparative Literature at New York University.

Table of Contents

Black Swan Song / Fred Moten  xi
Ritornellos  xii
Composition I. Theosophies, Times, and Theories  1
Composition II. The Curved Time of Memory
Composition III. Poetics of Oralitura
Composition IV. My Destiny Is to Sing, the Mythopoetic Gesta of the Reinados
Composition V. A Canvas-Body, a Firefly Poetics
Ntangu. On Spiral Time, Condensations
List of Performances and Theatrical works
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Ambitious and beautifully written, Performances of Spiral Time shows how to read elements of African and Indigenous American philosophy in the practices and discourses of the Americas. Leda Maria Martins shifts understandings of the temporal and the corporeal by approaching the body as or in movement. Excellently translated, this work of African Diasporic philosophy takes advantage of the poetics of the Portuguese language and, in doing so, embodies the argument in its form.”—Denise Ferreira da Silva

“Performances of Spiral Time offers an introduction to Afro-Brazilian cultural poetics. Written in lyrical, evocative, yet explanatory prose, it serves as a primer on how to see and think about the world from a performative perspective. The book conveys not just an idea of orality, spiral time, and ancestrality, but also the experience of them—what it feels like to inhabit a universe defined by these elements that lie at the heart of African diasporic cultures in the Americas.”—Mary Louise Pratt

From the Publisher

Performances of Spiral Time offers an introduction to Afro-Brazilian cultural poetics. Written in lyrical, evocative, yet explanatory prose, it serves as a primer on how to see and think about the world from a performative perspective. The book conveys not just an idea of orality, spiral time, and ancestrality, but also the experience of them—what it feels like to inhabit a universe defined by these elements that lie at the heart of African diasporic cultures in the Americas.

Mary Louise Pratt

Ambitious and beautifully written, Performances of Spiral Time shows how to read elements of African and Indigenous American philosophy in the practices and discourses of the Americas. Leda Maria Martins shifts understandings of the temporal and the corporeal by approaching the body as or in movement. Excellently translated, this work of African Diasporic philosophy takes advantage of the poetics of the Portuguese language and, in doing so, embodies the argument in its form.

Denise Ferreira da Silva