Performances of Spiral Time

“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

"The writings and lectures of this Afro-Brazilian thinker have become a source of inspiration for many. Against the Eurocentric notion of linear, progressive, and sequential time, Martins proposes a spiral and performative temporality in which past, present, and future are interconnected and inseparable. There are no fixed compartments—everything is in relation. Her thought draws on the deep spirituality of Black cultures that inscribe curved time in a celebration of life in a moving, joyful body." - Manuel Borja-Villel, Artforum