The Brazilian Art of Transvestism: Routes to a decolonial genealogy

Abstract

In this study, my aim is to portray routes to an investigation of the Brazilian art of transvestism. In approaching to the epistemological field of social constructionism, I argue that the construction of sexual and gender identity cannot be isolated from personal social trajectory - including their social networks, their integration in cultural communities and their own course of career - I question the use of categories like "transvestite", "transsexual", "homosexual" and "transformista" as they define evident isolated identities. I propose the investigation of the Brazilian art of transvestism as a way to look, from a different point of view, at the subjective experiences as it extends the sexual and gender meanings shared intersubjectively in localized scenarios and understand these contexts as spaces for creating new social meanings. Therefore, I introduce epistemic routes to comprehending the art of transvestism within an ethnogenesis of the Brazilian LGBT community, understanding it as a decolonial genealogy research and taking the concept of "the space in-between" as reading operator.