Existential Erotics

This study analyzes the power of writing as a technology of subjectivation, which can serve as a tool for care, political resistance, and the reorganization of the subjectivity of bodies marked by an oppressive system. Using a literature review methodology, based on works by authors addressing this theme, such as Sueli Carneiro, Conceição Evaristo, Audre Lorde, and Gilles Deleuze, it was possible to substantiate the discussion on the relationship between writing and mental health, both from the writer’s and the reader’s perspectives. Moreover, by examining "escrevivência" as a fundamental pillar of this research, the discussions raised make it possible, in an epistemological field, to envision the humanization inherent in the textual production process. Thus, with the idea of enhancing being and mental health, this study questions how writing can establish itself as a significant tool for expression and discursive appropriation of the subject, thereby provoking a rupture with the latent imposition of an emptiness caused by the colonial past.

The Insistence of the MaterialHabeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the HumanSensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism

This autoethnographic article adopts Rosemarie Anderson’s (2001) notion of embodied writing to ruminate on the bodily violence done to the effeminate body by hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity and femophobia. Specifically, this text seeks to underscore how the socio-culture discourse to “be a man” bears negative consequences for the effeminate body from childhood to adulthood and from the schoolyard to the opera stage. Masculinity and queer theories, alongside the theories of Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Audre Lorde, are interwoven with the auto-narratives and serve as theoretical lenses through which the author widens his narratives beyond the self, situating his experiences within historical and theoretical contexts to contribute to the scholarship around masculinity and opera. At the end of this text, the author suggests that by creating Lordeian connections, new expressions of masculinity might be sought, which could pave the way for new futures within opera.