O que resta ao corpo : disputas de sentido em textualidades sobre assassinatos de travestis e transexuais

Abstract

In this work, we are interested in investigating the meanings in dispute that are configured by the texts that deal with the murders of transvestites and transsexuals in Minas Gerais, which contribute to the constitution of vulnerabilities to which dissident bodies are submitted. Therefore, we assume that such textualities are crossed by social dynamics and shaped by power relations, especially with regard to gender norms. We understand gender norms as tools of power networks that entangle bodies in society, determining the parameters of normality and, consequently, deviations. Thus, turning our gaze to productions that deal with murders, that is, to the ultimate end of the condemnation of deviant bodies, is a way of looking for traces of the operations of these norms. To address these issues, we begin theoretical reflections by approaching gender and the gender norm, in a perspective that highlights the link between them in the conformation of bodies in society. Queer studies and the decolonial perspective help us to think about the constitution of difference in the support of power relations. Based on an approach inspired by Foucault and Butler, we advanced in discussions about power, triggering debates on necropolitics and precariousness, which allow us to better understand violence, especially that directed at trans people. Our analytical movement promotes a dispositional look to investigate the textualities of the corpus, since the interest here is to unveil the normative operations in operation through the configuration of meanings, we chose a methodological procedure that highlights instability and the provisional, mobile and these textually appropriate senses. For this purpose, we collected an analysis material consisting of journalistic articles identified as a source by the maps of murders of travestis and transsexuals developed by the Association of Travestis and Transsexuals (ANTRA) in 2017 and 2018, the Social Defense Event Records (REDS ) prepared by public security agents from the same period in Minas Gerais and dealing with these murders, as well as the reports produced by ANTRA that not only gather data on the crimes, but consist of a counter-production that questions the context of killing. The aim was to carry out an analysis of the textualities that make up this material, so that it would be possible to see recurrences, disputes and other clues that would help us understand the networks of vulnerabilities that surround trans and transvestite bodies in our society.