The ordinary and the spectacle in border government: Gender normativity in Tabatinga

Abstract

This paper arises from ethnographic experience in the city of Tabatinga (AM), place of the triple border of Brazil, Peru and Colombia. We concern ourselves with comprehending the entanglement between "State" and "border", how they are constructed and appropriated by local emotional, economic, sexual and familiar networks, standing from the perspective of gender theory. Starting from the web of affections of three characters who put in place an ordinary form of government, we offer a diachronic analysis of spectacular male governmentalities, which updates a specific myth-concept of border. This path takes us to the analysis of the widening of women's participation and of the social life of public policies that mobilize the category "woman", situationally associated with the border region. At last, we move towards a reconceptualization of border through a elational and processual perspective, in which gender, as an intersectional and performative construct, has a central place.