Chapter published in:
Language and Violence: Pragmatic perspectives
Edited by N. Daniel Silva
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 279] 2017
► pp. 189–226

Chapter 8
Queering violence and narrative

Voices from a marginalized community

This chapter argues that it is useful to take a queer stance on studying narratives about violence in marginalized communities, considering “queer” a position countering any type of normalization that produces stigmatized margins (Halperin 1995; Louro 2004), not limited to gender and sexuality. Normative, marginalizing discourses, (re)produced by the media, “the talk of crime” (Caldeira 2000) and hate speech (Butler 1997) tend to characterize Brazilian favelas as dangerous places filled with violent criminals, homogenizing and further stigmatizing their residents (Kokoreff 2003; Valladares 2005). We examine how experiences of violence and daily life are constructed in adolescent favela residents’ narratives, focusing on how they destabilize certain aspects of the normative, marginalizing and homogenizing discourses of the media, and how violence and narrative itself are queered in their constructions.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The (re)production of favelas in Brazilian academia
  • 3.Queering violence
    • 3.1Queer Theory as a position against normativity
    • 3.2Queer theory, performativity and marginalization
  • 4.Narrative analysis
  • 5.The neighborhood and the young adolescents interviewed
  • 6.Analysis: Queering violence and narrative
    • 6.1Countering the homogenizing view of favela residents
    • 6.2Positive descriptions of the neighborhoods
    • 6.3Criticisms of the neighborhood unrelated to violence
    • 6.4Violence, normalcy and criticism of government institutions
    • 6.5Queering violence and narrative
  • 7.Final considerations
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 09 November 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.279.09lew
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