Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review“Lino e Silva’s remarkable book fulfills its ambition to decolonize the freedom at liberalism’s heart. Equal parts erudite political theory and delicate anthropology, it roams a favela in Rio for stories and imaginaries across Blackness, queerness, gender, and class, where it discovers everywhere the bubbling of minoritarian desires and practices of freedom. This beautifully written work does nothing less than bring liberalism—as theory and practice—into the twenty-first century.” * Wendy Brown, University of California, Berkeley *
“A contemplative and engaging ethnography of life in one of Rio de Janeiro’s infamous favelas,
Minoritarian Liberalism is an exploration of alternative freedoms, distinctive bodies, and surprising pleasures. Best of all, the book features travestis: feisty, gritty, dazzling individuals who never cease to enchant and disquiet.” * Don Kulick, author of 'Travesti: Sex, Gender and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes' *
"Pretty much the perfect ethnography: a rich set of narratives, properly self-aware, strong descriptions of place and situation, and some really useful theoretical and conceptual frames that go beyond the context of the inquiry itself." * Timothy Burke, Swarthmore College *
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Minoritarian Liberalism: A Travesti Life in a Brazilian Favela presents a rich ethnographic study of queer residents of Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro’s largest slum, deftly crafting a tale of migration, survival and complex social relations against a backdrop of violence and poverty. . . . Lino e Silva offers radical readings of bodily, sexual, social and religious practices as means to liberation outside the familiar technologies of the liberal state." * Radical Americas *
Table of ContentsPreface
Introduction
1 Through Pleasures and Pain
2 Laws of the Hillside
3 Northeastern Hinterlands
4 Queer Kids and the Favela Closet
5 Encountering Demons and Deities
6 Roman Slavery
7 As If There Is No Tomorrow
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Index
