Epilogue

Abstract

This inquiry into the representation of gender variant homosexualities and trans manifestations in contemporary Latin American narratives responds to the circulation of an increasing number of texts featuring figures identifiable for their differently gendered embodiments, a selection of which has been examined here. A compelling connection can be made between the advent of the articulation of locas, travestis, and transsexuals as political subjects in Latin America and this increase in textual representation in the last two decades. As trans and marginalized homosexual subjectivities have gained visibility and social currency, so have representational modes of all kinds begun to respond to their presence.

You see me as a symbol, not a human being.

—Ani DiFranco, “Crime for Crime”

El poder de representar se refiere al poder de nombrar la realidad, de clasificarla, de adjetivarla y hacer valer esa representación en la mente (y en el corazón) de los individuos, construyendo de esta manera una estructura de posibilidades de acción, así como un sistema de diferenciación y distinción social.

[The power of representation refers to the power to name reality, to classify it, to describe it, and to make that representation matter in the minds (and in the hearts) of individuals, constructing in this way a structure of possibilities for action, as well as a system of social differentiation and distinction.]

—Guillermo Núñez Noriega, Sexo entre varones. Poder y resistencia en el campo sexual (Sex Between Men: Power and Resistance in the Sexual Field)

Brevemente dicho, las travestis sufrimos de dos tipos de opresión. Por un lado, la opresión social basada en el imaginario colectivo de lo que es una travesti: misterio, ocultamiento, perversión, contagio, etc…. Por el otro lado, sufrimos la violencia institucional.

[Briefly said, we travestis suffer from two kinds of oppression. On the one hand, the social oppression based on the collective imagination about what a travesti is: mystery, concealment, perversion, contagion, etc…. On the other hand, we suffer institutional violence.]

—Lohana Berkins, “Un itinerario político del travestismo” (“A Political Itinerary of Travestismo”)