Brune Mantese de Souza

This research consists of an ethnography on the meshwork comprised of hair studios and barber shops in the urban complex formed by Tabatinga (Brazil) / Leticia (Colombia) / Santa Rosa (Peru), Amazonian region. I am particularly interested in those salons led by trans women and other gender identities within the field of transfemininities, but not exclusively them. The aim is to understand hair interventions as aesthetic stabilizations of a set of social relations, and the central question is how – and through which techniques and substances – these interventions can be understood not only as gender expressions but also as technologies of gender production, embodiments, and personhood. Could hair interventions affirm and stabilize genders? Could they also provoke and materialize transitions, disrupt barriers, and be instruments of gender ambiguity beyond binaries and the hegemonic confluence between sex, gender, and sexual orientation? I am also interested in understanding how other social markers of difference coalesce in these constructions in a region so markedly by black and indigenous people. The research employs canonical research strategies in anthropology but also uses hair interventions on hairstylist training heads for the construction of its research corpus, which will result in an exhibition.