Between flesh and word: travesti experience in Casa Ricardo Corrêa da Silva and the deconstruction of Not Being

• Grant number: 25/11441-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: December 01, 2025
• End date: November 30, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Urban Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Antonio Ianni Segatto
• Grantee: Pedro Ruggiero Estanislau do Amaral
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Araraquara. Araraquara , SP, Brazil

Abstract

"The research aims to investigate the travesti experience in the interior of São Paulo, using the LGBTQIA+ Shelter House Ricardo Corrêa da Silva as both a field of study and a space for identity production. The work explores the dynamics and power dispositifs that shape discursive and material corporeality from a Foucauldian perspective, enriched by the contributions of Paul B. Preciado and Judith Butler. The theoretical framework incorporates Jacques Derrida's concept of the Phármakon, ambiguous as both remedy and poison, linking matter and discourse. Paul B. Preciado updates Foucault's panopticon into the ingestible panopticon: biopower radiates from within, and bodies desire power, consuming pharmaceuticals to conform to unattainable gender ideals. This context establishes biopower's functionality at a molecular level, yet such structures can be subverted through dissident experiences. Judith Butler contributes the performative nature of gender and citationality, while also mobilizing the concept of abjection. This describes what is rejected for the hegemonic subject to constitute itself, inhabiting uninhabitable zones essential to its delimitation. Sueli Carneiro introduces the notion of "non-being" as the denial of humanity and rights to Black people, reducing "being" to an ontic condition. The research intersects these concepts to understand travestilidade (travesti identity), suggesting that dissident gender materialities, by distorting hegemonic grammatical structures, constitute the *"non-being"* of the sex/gender/desire system, enabling the *"being"* of the hegemonic Self. Luce Irigaray reinforces that Platonic grammar underlies exclusionary mechanisms, relegating the feminine to an incomplete materiality of *"receptacle" or "non-being."The central hypothesis is that the Ricardo Corrêa da Silva Shelter House represents a crucial space for redefining the travesti experience for vulnerable individuals in Araraquara, helping this population construct and envision sentimental and institutional territories of dignity and humanity. Inaugurated in June 2022, the institution provides social and psychological support for up to twelve residents and is the only publicly funded shelter of its kind in the state of São Paulo. The study acknowledges that while biopower's codes can be *"hacked,"* aesthetic-moral pressures and violence remain persistent realities, and struggles for practical dignity contrast with the post-identity utopias of the Global North. The methodology is qualitative, based on in-depth narrative interviews with shelter residents and staff. A biographical anthropology approach, inspired by Bakhtin's polyphonic novel (via Barthes), will be adopted to capture an agential and multi-perspective view of lived experiences. Weekly visits to the institution will be conducted, and interactions will be analyzed in connection with the gender identities of both interviewer and interviewees. The project seeks to generate a multifaceted understanding of *travestilidade* in the interior of São Paulo, contributing to academic debate and public policy. It aims to territorialize foreign gender theory concepts within the local travesti experience, analyzing how performativity, biopower, abjection, and ontological negation manifest in daily life-including access to pharmacological elements and the production of knowledge about gender and passability.