Occupying Politics: Black women reimaging power and representation in Rio de Janeiro's Legislative Assembly

Through a case study of four Black women elected as state representatives in the Legislative Assembly of Rio de Janeiro (ALERJ) - Dani Monteiro, Enfermeira Rejane, Mônica Francisco, and Renata Souza, all positioned within Brazil's left-wing political spectrum - this dissertation examines the political imaginaries constructed within their institutional representative practice, specifically focusing on their ongoing demand for political occupation in positions of power. Grounded in radical democratic theory, this research reconceptualises political representation beyond Pitkin's classical understanding of “making the absent politically present”, arguing instead that politics, democracy, its processes, spaces and agents themselves can be objects of representation.<br /><br /> Drawing from an ethnographic perspective, the research examines legislative sessions' recordings, official transcripts and proposed legislation from 2019 to 2022. The study approaches both representation and politics as performance, acknowledging that political meaning-making occurs through linguistic and extra-linguistic practices - from formal speeches to embodied interventions in institutional spaces. The research applies conceptual and performance coding to capture both the 'what' and 'how' of political practice, acknowledging that political performance encompasses not only speech acts but also gestures, spatial occupation, and other forms of embodied political expression. Following post-structuralist discourse analysis methods, the study identifies differential moments within Black women legislators' discursive chains, particularly focusing on the semantic field of political occupation and demands for participation in power spaces.<br /><br /> The findings reveal multiple ways in which Black women construct political imaginaries through their demand for occupation, grounded in intersectional resistance practices. First, these representatives assert their multiple identities and physical presence in political spaces, while simultaneously producing critical diagnostics that account for the systemic, structural, and discursive mechanisms organising political exclusions. The research highlights their continuous effort to reject negative representation regimes that construct Black women as archetypes contrary to power agents and figures of political leadership and authority, while also challenging how institutions themselves are gendered and racialised.<br /><br /> A significant finding emerges regarding political violence against Black women, which appears intrinsically connected to their demand for occupation. The research demonstrates that making power spaces truly inclusive requires addressing this violence while carefully delineating the boundary between political violence and political hostility, ensuring appropriate responses to resistance against Black women's presence in politics.<br /><br /> Theoretically, this dissertation makes two key contributions. First, it demonstrates how Black women's political practices in ALERJ both confirm and complicate radical democratic theory. While these representatives establish the necessary frontier between 'us' and 'them', their intersectional positioning reveals that oppositional forces don't always divide society into two clear camps. Their hegemonic interventions operate simultaneously through logics of difference and equivalence, sometimes universalising their demands while at other times addressing the specificities of their conditions. Second, the research challenges the apparent distinction between the 'what' and 'how' of politics in representation studies, revealing that the substance of representative action often manifests as a mode of action or way of doing politics -— an insight made possible by understanding that within representative actions, not only groups and their interests are represented, but also politics and democracy themselves as both institution and practice.<br /><br /> This study contributes to our understanding of political representation, radical democracy, and Black women's political practice by illuminating how historically marginalised agents in decision-making institutions construct and represent politics through both historical processes and their contemporary political engagement. It demonstrates the complex ways in which demands for political occupation intersect with questions of identity, violence, and institutional transformation in contemporary democratic practice.

Level thesis:degree_level

thesis.doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher

Universität Bielefeld

Year

2025

Author dc:creator

• de Souza Lima, Livia

Repository record source_url

https://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/record/3007067

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:pub.uni-bielefeld.de:3007067