Toward a Liveable Life: The Travesti Struggle in Brazil and Its Pedagogies. Maria Clara Araújo

Venue:
Freie Universität Berlin, Institute for Latin American Studies, Boltzmannstr. 1 (Room 003), 14195 Berlin (Map)
Registration required by e-mail to belen.diaz@fu-berlin.de

In English
This lecture is part of the project seminar: Mapping the Global Far Right: Analytical Approaches and Case Studies (Sérgio Costa & Belén Díaz)

This event is organized by the lecturers of the project seminar at the Freie Universität Berlin. It is open to all interested parties.

School of Quilombismo is an itinerant program that builds resonances with imaginative, idiosyncratic, unorthodox and self-determined practices of knowledge and pedagogy. It takes place every year in different formats - from boat trips to walks, from concerts to film screenings. This year's edition is marked by the publication of the English and German translation of the work Pedagogias das travestilidades by pedagogue Maria Clara Araújo dos Passos. School of Quilombismo highlights central aspects and insights of the book and analyzes the connections between the political struggles of the Brazilian travesty movement and comparable developments in other countries. The title of the program refers both to the challenges of emancipatory processes and to the feeling of happiness that arises when finding one's identity.

The translation of this groundbreaking work into English and German is part of the important efforts to establish connections between political struggles on different continents and to facilitate a more intensive intercultural exchange of knowledge. It should be noted that the epistemologies underlying the original text resist seamless integration into a European linguistic framework in many places. A striking example of this is the term "travesti", whose nuances defy simple translation into Anglophone trans* discourses. In the publication itself, this complex ambiguity is explored in depth in a dialog between Maria Clara Araújo dos Passos and the translator Natalia Affonso. The resulting contribution not only illustrates the inherent complexity of such translations, but also serves as a resource to provide orientation for the multiple dimensions that the pedagogical discourses discussed in the book have in different cultures. This dialog underscores the importance of pursuing common policy goals rather than arguing over purely linguistic disparities. In this way, an integrative approach can be developed to grasp politically charged narratives on a global level.

With: Maria Clara Araújo dos Passos