Flesh,Fantasy and Politics: Public Displays of Resistance, Compliance and Belonging in Urban Brazil

In the past 15 years, Brazil has become a setting for clashes at the crossroads of gender, sexuality, politics and religion. While progressive groups struggle for structural and behavioral changes, conservative ones fight to legitimate existing social structures, inequalities included. Contrasting visions of possible futures are spread through the country. A previous project (2019-2022) studied these tensions and tracked how the concept of gender circulated through arenas of the Brazilian society, mobilizing different publics towards collective action. The aim of this project is to conclude a monograph deriving from that previous study but focusing on the questions: How are struggles to define rights, justice, and moralities configured in demonstrations and performances taking place in public spaces? How are claims for the implementation of a rights-based agenda and conservative programs opposing to that imaged, imagined and enacted? The book examines street carnival and the political side of spontaneous festivities and studies conservative demonstrations and their carnivalesque aspects. Through an analysis of flesh and fantasies in urban Brazil, this project addresses matters of global relevance and advances knowledge on utopias of redress and strategies of legitimation in acts of resistance, compliance and belonging. Input from multidisciplinary scholars at Tübingen Univ. and Universidade Federal Fluminense strengthens knowledge exchange between Europe and Latin America.