Between the grotesque and the laughable: the place of black woman in comics in Brazil

In this article, I discuss stereotypical forms of body representation of black women in Brazilian society in the twentieth century. I use three comics' characters as sources of interrogation - Lamparina, Maria Fumaça and Nega Maluca - understanding that they exhibit characteristics that reinforce racial and gender hierarchies by operating under a logic that seeks to establish concepts of normality based on racial belonging. The black body is then presented as the other, and the field of parody and the laughable is one of the few places where it is allowed to transit. My discussion dialogues with poststructuralist reflections, taking as its theoretical reference Michel Foucault's concept that every device, to a greater or lesser extent, is a power device.

body; black woman; comics; stereotype; device.