I LOST MYSELF FROM THE NAME

images, narratives, and curricula embodied in Gisberta's memory.

Abstract

This article analyzes images, narratives, and memory disputes surrounding Gisberta Salce, a Brazilian performer travesti murdered in Porto in 2006, taking as its starting point two photographs: the widely circulated image published after her death and an earlier photograph from 1998 in which she appears singing at a solidarity event. We argue that these images operate as pedagogical technologies and, therefore as curricula, reiteratingproducing truths while universalizing distinct modes of recognition. Among many possible approaches, we reflect on how pedagogies produced around death elaborate knowledge through embodied curricula. The article also examines the official naming of Rua Gisberta Salce Júnior, questioning the limits of recognition politics and the framings that reiterate violence even when they promote symbolic reparations. In dialogue with curriculum studies and research on everyday life, we propose inhabiting “I do not know” as a method, acknowledging embodied knowledges that escape archival and official narratives. We argue that artistic-cultural production also produces and organizes knowledgecurriculum and can displace regimes of visibility, opening fissures in hegemonic rationalities and imagining alternative futures.