DIVERSE BODIES AS A POSSIBILITY OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE: JOANA D’ARC AND HER DAUGHTER VITÓRIA’S DANCE

Abstract

This paper analyzes the experiences of Black, peripheral, and disabled bodies from an intersectional perspective, considering gender, race, class, disability, and territory as social markers of difference. The research object emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic through the activities and relationships established by a network of peripheral women activists in Brasilândia, a working-class neighborhood in the northern region of São Paulo, Brazil. Through the life trajectory of Joana and her daughter Vitória, a disabled woman, we seek to understand how practices of care, kinship, emotions, and solidarity participate in the production and experience of urban space. We argue that being a poor person with a disability in the urban periphery produces specific forms of inequality, shaped not only by physical and institutional barriers, but also by restricted access to the city, the precariousness of care networks, and the social production of bodies perceived as incapable or dependent. Disability is therefore understood not as an exclusively individual or bodily condition, but as a social experience constituted through the relationship between subjects and a society organized around ideals of autonomy, productivity, and ability. The paper also expands the discussion toward the affective, sexual, and erotic dimensions of disability, questioning the ways in which disabled people are recognized—or denied recognition—as desiring and desirable subjects. By articulating disability, race, gender, poverty, care, emotions, and territory, this study seeks to demonstrate how historically marginalized bodies not only experience the city but also actively produce it through their relationships, affects, kinship networks, and everyday practices.