ARTS OF EXISTENCE: travestis in news papers of São Paulo, 1970 sand 1980s
gender; transvestites; transsexuals; O Estado de S. Paulo; Folha de S. Paulo.
How do subjectivities (re)existto biopolitics that naturalizes cisgenerity as a norm? Considering the relation between cisheteronormativity and the production of abjection, I high ligh there strategies of self-invention which, implying in autonomous subjectivation, caring for one self and caring for others, suggest modes of existence as art. A esthetics that transform precarious life into potent life. Thus I analyze the historical emergence of transvestites and transsexuals in the diaries Folha and Estado de S. Paulo between the seventies and eighties. Addressing news content as a set of discursive events, I think the gender hierarchy linked to other hierarchies, admitting convergences between the analytic of normalization, proposed by Michel Foucault, and the questioning of gender, formulated by Judith Butler.