Pleasure Practices in the Writing of Contemporary Brazilian Authors

Abstract

People who identify as women (both cis- and transgender) often experience unease around bodily pleasure due to hegemonic power dynamics and repressions. Patriarchal, authoritarian, sexist, colonial and capitalist expectations about a woman’s worth, societal role and “place” all influence this unease. Therefore, the process of a woman feeling good in her body and attending to its needs and desires – what I refer to as a pleasure practice – is a political, healing and liberating act that involves defiance of social norms, particularly for women with intersectional, marginalized identities. Drawing on Audre Lorde’s theory of the erotic and Andrea Saad Hossne Universidade de São Paulo (USP) Tatiana Nascimento’s concept of the “direito ao devaneio”, I argue that the prose and poetry of Brazilian LGBTQI+ and/or Black women writers, written in the last five years, reveal an increased attention to validating a wide range of pleasure practices. These authors include Carol Bensimon, Cristiane Sobral, Katiana Souto, Kika Sena, Nanda Fer Pimenta, Piera Schnaider and Tatiana Nascimento. Although women have been using creative writing to affirm their pleasure practices for a long time, each new generation adds to this effort by asserting that there is still work to be done and by expanding conceptions of bodily pleasure beyond hetero, cis, Eurocentric, monogamous norms.