CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2023
| Author | Dezembro Iazzetti, Brume |
|---|---|
| Title | Between tarantulas and razor blades: 'Travesti' history and the public sphere in Brazil's democratic transition |
| Summary | This thesis is centered on the cultural formation of what it means to a travesti in Brazil, with the democratic transition, in the late 80s, as a key historical period to what is contemporarily understood as a transfeminine gender identity. “Travestilities” encompasses not only travesti as a gender identity, but also an embodied experience, a political community, and a figure in the social imaginary. The democratic transition is set in the crossings of the aftermaths of the Civic-Military Dictatorship (64-85) and the impact of the AIDS crisis, including both brutal persecutions against travestis, but also the first steps of an organized social movement engaging in counter-narratives and alliances. Therefore, this research seeks to analyze how a sense of travesti subjectivity was shaped in the Brazilian democratic transition, in the entanglements between science, state, and society, and the connections between self and “Other”. To do so, this research focuses a) on how a set of stigmas became associated with travestis, and in what sense they legitimized violence; b) on the historical emergence of different constitutive meanings of travestilities, namely in the centrality of body modifications, sociability networks and politicization; c) on the connection of such elements in travesti subjectivity, in complex self-identifications; d) on differentiation processes in the democratic transition, including the distinctions with “homosexuals”, “transsexuals” and “women”. |
| Supervisor | Lafferton, Emese; Luís, Rita; Rin, Odawara |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2023/dezembro_brume.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2025, Central European University