Chapter published in:
Language and Violence: Pragmatic perspectives
Edited by Daniel N. 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.

Published online: 09 November 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.279.09lew
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