XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Memory in Brazil

Session Submission Type: Complete Panel

Abstract

Settler colonialism is inextricably linked to the pervasion of racial-gender-sexual prejudice throughout Brazil. From the Portuguese Inquisition (1536-1821) and Military Dictatorship (1964-1985) to Operação Tarântula (1987) and the Bolsonaro regime (2019-2022), the systematic persecution of those who fall outside of whiteness, heterosexuality, and cisnormativity is an integral part of Brazilian history. In light of this violence, how do LGBTQIA+ Brazilians devise their own practices and institutions of memory? What possibilities might geography, performance, linguistics, and cultural history open for understanding LGBTQIA+ histories beyond abjection and archival absence? This panel speaks to the limitations of turning to colonial archives for historical truths. We point instead to community-based archives, oral histories, and embodied knowledge as forms of memory work that offer more holistic, autonomous portraits of LGBTQIA+ life in Brazil. Addressing the erasure, hypersexualization, and commodification of LGBTQIA+ identities, we consider how grassroots approaches to memory both offset the violence of the past and refuse to romanticize the present. By attending to LGBTQIA+ histories differently, this panel envisions a more capacious, intersectional approach to Brazilian Studies.

Sub Unit

• XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Individual Presentations

• Performing (im)possible lives: dissident territorialities and the fabulation of queer memories in the practices of Coletivo das Liliths in Salvador, Brazil - Iale Camboim, Universidade Federal da Bahia

• "Let's put an end to this nonsense": Trans/Travesti Memories of the Brazilian Civil-Military Dictatorship in the Regular Testimonial Collection Program at Memorial da Resistência (São Paulo) - Yuri Fraccaroli, University of California, Santa Barbara

• Sapatonas of the Past: Lesbian Memory Initiatives and the Revival of Lesbian History - Augusta da Silveira de Oliveira, Brown University

• Sexual Memories and Choreographies of Cruising in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil - Joshua Reason, University of Pennsylvania

Chair

• Watufani Poe, Tulane University

Session Organizer

• Joshua Reason, University of Pennsylvania