Banca de DEFESA: EMMANOEL HOLANDA MELO FERREIRA

Uma banca de DEFESA de MESTRADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : EMMANOEL HOLANDA MELO FERREIRA
DATE: 13/02/2026
TIME: 14:00
LOCAL: LABPSI e Google Meet
TITLE:

“More Courage Than Manhood”: Narratives and Resistances of Men Who Become Gay in the Rural Town of Severiano Melo, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil

 

KEY WORDS:

Bicha-body, Andarilhagens, Modes of Subjectivation, Practices of Resistance, Severiano Melo – RN.

 

PAGES: 147
BIG AREA: Ciências Humanas
AREA: Psicologia
SUMMARY:

What is a bicha-body in a rural-city? Derived from biche, meaning doe, the feminine of deer in French, bicha has historically been associated with passivity, animality, and abjection. It is a body that colonialism, Christianity, and science have criminalized and pathologized. However, bicha becomes a way of existing and performing gender outside normative frameworks, destabilizing colonial binaries and reconfiguring the urban-rural space through practices of care and subversion in the face of normative processes of emasculation. But which rural-city are we talking about? Severiano Melo, also known as the Land of Cashew, is located in the interior of the state of Rio Grande do Norte (RN), in the western mesoregion of the state, 357 km from Natal, the state capital, with an estimated population of 5,487 inhabitants (IBGE, 2022). The city is marked by cashew cultivation as its main economic activity; its territorial dimension is subdivided into an urban zone and a rural zone composed of more than 12 settlements (sítios). It is a city influenced by Christianity, especially the Catholic Church, which has Our Lady of Graces as its patron saint, an important totem for thinking about how the city is subjectively organized, as well as by the political power of the Municipal Government. We understand rural-city as a territory marked by interiority (Gontijo & Erick, 2015). In this sense, the general objective of this study is to weave collective escrevivências from the wanderings (andarilhagens) of bicha-bodies in a rural-city, focusing on the performativities and practices of resistance produced in the territory. The specific objectives are: to analyze the experiences of bicha-bodies regarding modes of subjectivation and practices of resistance and care in the city; and to follow life itineraries and political inventions of bicha-bodies in the rural-urban territory of Severiano Melo, RN. This study is an intervention-research of a qualitative nature, guided by a decolonial feminist and queer perspective, based on the understanding of the need to critically address the dynamics of reproduction and maintenance of the coloniality of power, knowledge, and being in the research process (Lugones, 2014; Maldonado-Torres, 2009). We name this method Andarilhagens, a Freirean concept that configures a movement of uninterrupted walking and searching by the wanderer; it is the wandering itself, with its practices and lived experiences, that provides support for theory (Borges, Avelar & Costa, 2022), a way of allowing walking to trace its own goals along the path (Barros & Passos, 2009). In composing this method, we draw on escrevivência and escutatória as tools. Escrevivências, based on the elements of body, condition, and experience (Oliveira, 2009), allowed access to the political-affective dimensions of these subjects. Escutatória, as an intervention aimed at deinstitutionalizing the silencing of gay men in the city, constructs a space of speakability and questioning about what seeks passage in language and what becomes verb in what happens (Costa, Angeli & Fonseca, 2012). The method was divided into two phases: (I) field insertion, using a field diary of memories understood as an invisible text to be constructed by the researcher (Lourau, 1988), which reveals the researcher’s implications and carries out unbearable restitutions to the scientific institution (Lourau, 1993); and (II) individual listening sessions with researcher-participants. From this process, four listening sessions were conducted, three of which are presented in this work. Some themes emerged during the listening process: (1) each subject’s affective relationship with the city; (2) friendship as a possibility of alliance and resistance in the face of cisheteronormativity in the territory; (3) the family–religion dyad in processes of subjective constitution as gay men in the city; (4) hiding as a technology of resistance; and (5) education policy as a tool of liberation. To insert the research into this territory is to continue producing twists and facilitating displacements of colonial cisheteronormative notions about sex/gender-dissident subjects, making this research an educational path regarding gender literacy in city spaces. Furthermore, the construction of spaces of speakability and collective gathering to think, discuss, elaborate, and build other and dignified paths for gay men violated by the emasculating norm of the ci(s)ty produces forms of bonding and care as high-cost technologies developed along this journey. Such ontological effects allow us to affirm the epistemic-methodological contributions of this dissertation to the fields of gender and sexuality studies and rural psychology studies.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
Externo à Instituição - ANTONIO CESAR DE HOLANDA SANTOS - UFAL
Externo à Instituição - ANTÔNIO LEONARDO FIGUEIREDO CALOU - FCST
Presidente - 2086520 - CANDIDA MARIA BEZERRA DANTAS
Externo à Instituição - MAURICIO CIRILO DA COSTA NETO - UnP