Marriage in prison: Identity and marital agencies in a LGBT wing

Abstract

This article discusses the conception of marriage in a wing for homosexuals, bisexuals, transvestites and transsexual women and their companions in a Brazilian male prison. Marriage is an emic term for the analysis of the field here understood as politic, both identitary and conjugality-related. Grounded Theory was used as a methodological dimension, in order to make it possible to gain understandings about the strategic forms of agency in the prison territory engendered by persons imprisoned in this wing. Eight interviews of narrative character were carried out with people from the wing. The results indicate that this political process is associated with the experiences of violence, affection and resistance, forming a space for negotiation, whose meanings are strained daily.