Different setups and performances by drag queens and gender-dissident people: mimesis of a female ideal or a gender revolution?

Abstract

In this article, we discuss the vicissitudes of different assemblies and drag and gender-dissident people performances. Using the term “trans performance”, from the perspective of Juliana Frota da Justa Coelho, we intend to reflect on different formats and effects brought about by genre performances. The objective is, without intending to constitute a supposedly unique historical trajectory, to understand the potential and challenges of these performances and to promote a reflection on the effects of these manifestations on our society and the social context of the places where they occurred and occur. From the queer theory, which presents itself as critical to cisheteronormativity, we turn our attention to the analysis of non-hegemonic performativities that tension such norms. Thus, the article was methodologically divided into three parts: 1) a theoretical discussion on normativity involving the uses of the generated body; 2) a historical contextualization of drag queen performances; and 3) an analysis of some of the multiple meanings and formats that have been adopted in the last decades for the elaboration of drag and trans performances. Those moments presented throughout the article allow us to point out, finally, how the different trans performances offer elements for a potent and transforming critique of the cisheteronormative feminine ideal.