Browsing by Subject "Bicha"

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    Bicha space-time : queer and trans femme spatial practices in Sobral, Ceará
    (2023-04-21) Rojas, Joseph Luis, Jr.; Leu, Lorraine
    Despite prevailing stereotypes that construct the Brazilian Northeast and non-metropolitan urban spaces as anachronistic and conservative, queer and trans people in a growing number of cities such as Sobral, Ceará, have managed to project themselves onto local, regional, and (trans)national imaginaries. Inspired by Dora Silva Santana’s concept of Afro trans vivências, this thesis centers bicha vivências nordestinas (Northeastern bicha living), understood as the embodied knowledge and resistance of Northeastern queer and trans femmes. I follow a group of college-aged sobralenses primarily consisting of (effeminate) gay men, drag queens, and non-binary and transfeminine folks, and examine the ways in which they adeptly navigate and negotiate different parts of the city in an effort to appropriate spaces for queer and trans sociability. I argue that they queer or trans-form space in Sobral, producing what I call transient geographies, through public performances of femininity and gender nonconformity made possible by fleeting but recurring assemblages of queer people in relationship. I also narrate the embodiments and performances of Rawser, a non-binary gay drag queen who sings in the historically macho genre of forró, and Malika, a black trans artist who translocalizes cultural forms such as ballroom and slam poetry. I argue for techniques of transfemmation as a framework for understanding the methods or tactics by which ephemeral performances of femininity and gender non-conformity, such as those modeled by Rawser and Malika, may queer or trans-form space. Collectively, my interlocutors complicate standard depictions of the region, contest social norms, disrupt the expected uses of (symbolic) space, and demonstrate some of the creative ways in which queer and trans femme spatial practices work within, alongside, and against otherwise cisheteronormative geographies.