OLHARES DA/NA CI(S)DADE: transexualidades/travestilidades, raça e práticas nos espaços citadinos de Belém – PA “em plena luz do dia”

Abstract

This thesis aims to understand the relationship between the gender transitions of trans/travestis people and their practices in urban spaces (CERTEAU, 2014) in Belém “in broad daylight”. Thus, the ethnography proposed here was elaborated from references and reflections of Urban Anthropology, in dialogue with gender, sexualities and race studies. One of its bases was the biographical narratives (ROCHA; ECKERT, 2013a) of five interlocutors who, based on their life trajectories, allow them to reflect on the issues of gender, sexuality and race involved in their daily transits through the city. In addition to the semi-structured interviews focused on life trajectories, the narratives and reflections of trans/travestis people about Belém were also used, as well as direct observations with them, using the street ethnography technique (ROCHA; ECKERT, 2013b) to describe and interpret the situations that occurred in places in Belém such as streets, squares, sidewalks, and also in their displacements in the city within bus. The ethnographic data constructed in this way were organized into “scenes”, inspired by Perlongher (1984), in which it is possible to perceive the performances (TURNER, 2015; SCHECHNER, 2012) contained therein, gestures and facial expressions, evidencing the looks of strangers in the capital of Pará as one of the micro-gestures that make up the urban interactions (GOFFMAN, 2014) of trans/travestis people, when their bodies are sometimes rejected, sometimes desired, or observed with curiosity, demonstrating part of the complexity of the urban lifestyle in this amazon city. In these games of glances, territorialities (PERLONGHER, 1984; 2008) are also perceived in their symbolic-spatial demarcations in Belém, which helps us to think about the idea of a ci(s)ty, that is, a city that has in its foundations cisgenderism and whiteness, acting in the delimitations of the concrete spaces of the city and composing part of the social relations experienced therein.