Language Subversion: Pajubá As The Tool of the Travesti Imaginary

Abstract

The following text will furnish a reading of the pajubá language, marked by its inventiveness, hybridization of different linguistic matrixes and communicative and aesthetic subversive character. Upon the conditions of oppression, marginality and precarization experienced by the identity construced in Brazil (and in Latin America, following its local specificities) as "travesti", pajubá has constituted itself as one of the specific cultural points of this group. In order to understand the dimensions of the relationship that pajubá presents as a tool of expression of a minority group, we will follow the concept of Chaos-World of the Martinican philosopher Édouard Glissant. Initially Glissant's conception will be presented, followed by a short contextualization of the travesti identity in Brazil and its insertion inside the popular imaginary both by its persecution by the State as well as its media construction. Finally, it will be shown how pajubá operates forms of revision, resistantece and ressignification of this imaginary from a pulsating movement of language, which finds a hybridized form (crioulized, following Glissant's terms) of expression. For such analysis, it will be presented a constitution and some of pajubá's sources, understanding it as a composite language, as well as presenting the travestis poetics that utilize pajubá as an expressive force of insertion in social spaces.