Bodies in transit and lives in struggle

cartographies of resistance of brazilian travestis

Abstract

This article aims to cartograph experiences of resistance among Brazilian travestis who work in sex work and reside in Brazil and Europe, analyzing everyday strategies for confronting death. The study adopted cartography as both a method and an ethical orientation, conducting seven interviews with travestis selected through prior relational ties between the researchers and this population. The encounters took place in spaces meaningful to the participants, such as work environments, residences, and sites of activism, understood as dispositifs for the production of meaning. The narratives were analyzed in a processual manner, without rigid categorization, following affects, displacements, and modes of existence. The findings show that, although these trajectories are traversed by structural violence, they generate networks of care, build material and subjective conditions of recognition, and enact geographical and aesthetic displacements as forms of affirming life. It is concluded that listening to these experiences requires displacing pathologizing readings and recognizing the political and inventive potency of travesti existences.