The Library
Skins of desire : deviant politics, aesthetic transgressions and political dispute over trans people’s terms of recognition in contemporary Peru
Tools
Patiño Rabines, Paola (2022) Skins of desire : deviant politics, aesthetic transgressions and political dispute over trans people’s terms of recognition in contemporary Peru. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
PDF
WRAP_Theses_PatinoRabines_2022.pdf - Submitted Version Embargoed item. Restricted access to Repository staff only until 30 January 2025. Contact author directly, specifying your specific needs. - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (1752Kb) |
Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b3912178
Abstract
As elsewhere in the world, in the past three decades, Peru has seen a decline in the hegemony of a political praxis characterized by Western modernity. In place of primarily logocentric and discursive operation of power, non-discursive ways of doing politics based on embodied performances have become more visible. Among other social movements, trans women’s political struggles are exemplary of this shift and their embodied aesthetic-political practices in their quest for challenging the current “terms of recognition” (Butler 2004) heralds a political-culture transformation. My intention is to elucidate how politics is being understood and how it is being practiced in a southern context, where discursive politics based on logos that aim to build a rational ethic begin to be replaced by non-discursive practices that appeal to other languages, particularly the body. This politics does not appeal to a logo-centered ethic, but rather to an aesthetic ethic where aesthetics is essential to the constitution of action.
The thesis analyses the tension that exists between the desire for recognition of the identity of trans women and the recognition of the other (family, friends, neighbours and society in general), where this tension generates adverse and, in some cases, perverse situations in the lives of trans women that lead them to live precarious lives. However, as the analysis unfolds through the chapters of the thesis, we observe that trans women are both vulnerable and capable of resistance. In other words, vulnerability and resistance happen simultaneously. Prostitution is the space they find to reproduce their material life, and at the same time, to be able to live their gender identity without restrictions. This thesis shows how the vulnerability and precariousness of trans women coexist with modes of feminist agency, resistance and resilience, as well as with proposals for political action to change sensitivities of a modern/colonial, heteropatriarchal and a cold-hearted society towards diversity.
This research represents a contribution to the feminist and decolonial debates on aesthetics and politics, which recognizes that politics is embedded in aesthetics, whether creating new meanings, new places, or making possible new imaginaries. These changes lead us also to new sensibilities through transgressive acts which seek positive recognition of diversity and claim the entitlement to full citizenship. The research also contributes to the struggles of people who have been, and still are, considered “less than human”. As such, I thank the trans women who participated in this research, because that make it possible to show something hopeful for the country. The fall of modern politics allows us to recognize that the ways of doing politics in Peru are changing and bringing to the forefront forms of political action that are considered subaltern or premodern. In that sense, this way of doing politics, which historically reconnects actions and practices of doing politics that have been made invisible by the single history, might go someway towards healing the colonial wound and the politics of oblivion.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HM Sociology H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman J Political Science > JL Political institutions (America except United States) |
||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Transgender people -- Peru -- Social conditions, Transgender people -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- Peru, Transgender people -- Civil rights -- Peru, Peru -- Politics and government, Political culture -- Peru | ||||
Official Date: | March 2022 | ||||
Dates: |
|
||||
Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Department of Sociology | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Lambert, Cath (Catherine Ruth), 1971- ; Blencowe, Claire | ||||
Sponsors: | University of Warwick. Chancellor's International Scholarship | ||||
Format of File: | |||||
Extent: | 176 pages : illustrations | ||||
Language: | eng |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
View Item |