Introduction

Abstract

inaugura la escena escritural chilena con una boca llena. Boca abierta con una lengua que no se detiene, que se suelta y despliega para posarse, lamer, enroscarse, penetrar y libar la posibilidad de crear mundos a partir de escrituras-lecturas conectadas a referentes en movimiento; se encarama, se sube al "trapecio" en la creació n, la invenció n, la acció n, la intervenció n en/con las palabras-cuerpo, signos significantes, sonoridades y materialidades densas, llenas de ecos y resonancias mú ltiples siempre. Pedro Lemebel opens up the Chilean writing scene with a full mouth, a mouth that is open with a tongue that does not delay, that breaks free and scatters-alighting, licking, curling up, penetrating, and sipping at the possibility of creating worlds through writings-readings connected to referents in motion; it extolls, it climbs to the trapeze of creation, invention, action, intervention in/with words, body, signifying marks, dense sonorities and materialities, always full of multiple echoes and resonances.-Gilda Luongo, "Háblame de Pedro. .. " T he cover image for this special issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly reminds us of the dilemma of translating, of being-in-relation, of a moving copresence. Here, one embodied language does not replace another but befriends it, critiques it, touches it, transfuses it. Chilean travesti author Pedro Lemebel poses in a moment of multiple transfusions with her artistic collaborator Fran-cisco Casas. We are to wonder: What is being projected on whom? Whose blood is in the tube? How many figures are there, and what is the ground upon which those figures become (in)dividual? Who are we to them, anyway? Is there a clear directionality at work, or a viscous simultaneity? Are they translations of one another? Are we? If so, must we be first disconnected, then individual, then countable, then substitutable? Pedro Lemebel (1952-2015) sits next to the Chilean