Corpos em luta: Marielle Franco, transnacionalização e as articulações políticas feministas na Améfrica Ladina

Abstract

This research aims to study the processes that led to the transnationalization of Marielle Franco after her assassination. Observing local and international tributes to the former councilwoman unveils her greatness as an individual while simultaneously framing her as part of a collective construction of many other feminine and feminized political bodies, both in the present and in the past. Furthermore, the collective knowledge produced by feminist researchers and activists focusing on the Global South—whose perspectives this work primarily engages—synthesizes that feminist political achievements are neither individual nor granted. Considering Marielle Franco in isolation or in terms of a top-down legitimation stemming from Global North conceptualizations would obscure the plural feminist politics emerging from Améfrica Ladina—a decolonial space of struggle that challenges the arbitrary territorial designation of "Latin America."This research adopts a qualitative methodology based on a literature review of feminist theories, organized into three chapters. Complementarily, examples of manifestations and feminine and feminized political bodies are employed to correlate with the processes of constituting transnational networks, particularly regarding the construction surrounding Marielle Franco. The first chapter seeks to establish the theoretical terms that guide this work, such as political body, Améfrica Ladina, and transnationalization. The second chapter undertakes a brief historical overview of feminist actions and some of their key Améfrican exponents while retracing the history and key milestones in the transnationalization of Marielle Franco, especially her role in constructing the socio-cultural-political momentum established through the struggles of feminine bodies throughout history, including her own. The third chapter weaves together concepts and interpretations developed in the previous chapters to connect Marielle Franco to some of the most significant international tributes, ultimately addressing the central research question: “How does the internationalization of Marielle Franco point us toward the transnationality of processes in building local feminist political resistances?”Finally, this research concludes that the transnationalization of Marielle Franco extends beyond posthumous tributes, signaling instead a collectivity of visible and interdependent lives. This dissertation aims to contribute to understanding the entanglements of oppressions that connect local and regional struggles within the transnational context of Améfrica Ladina.