The name as passage: queering language in performance

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2238-3999.v16i1p69-86

Keywords:

Queering language, Improvisation, Naming, Performativity, Regimes of power

Abstract

This article investigates the practice of queering language as an aesthetic and political operation in contemporary performance. Starting from the notion of naming as a historical technology of separation and hierarchization, it proposes a shift toward the idea of traversal, where signifier and signified no longer coincide in a stable way. Through a theoretical-practical approach that articulates conceptual reflection and artistic experimentation, it analyzes tactics such as improvisation, repetition, and détournement. It argues that performance can operate as a laboratory of semantic instability, in which the body tensions and reinscribes regimes of intelligibility.

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Author Biography

  • Alice Pacheco Nogueira, University of São Paulo

    É diretore, dramaturgue, performer e pesquisadore. Doutorande em Artes Cênicas pela Universidade de São Paulo (USP), investiga as relações entre linguagem, vulnerabilidade, perspectivas queer e criação nas artes performativas. É mestre em Artes Cênicas pela USP e em Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft pela Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen (Alemanha). Sua produção artística transita entre Brasil e Alemanha e inclui trabalhos como The Name of the Piece, apresentado no Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm, em Frankfurt am Main, e If I Were to Place You Entirely into a Poem, realizado em Berlim. Sua prática artística desenvolve processos de criação em que improvisação, escrita e composição dramatúrgica se atravessam, tratando a linguagem como matéria performativa e explorando zonas de indistinção entre teatro, dança e performance

References

ABRAM, David, The Spell of the Sensuous: perceptions and language in a more-than-human world. New York: Vintage Books Edition, 2017.

BUTLER, Judith Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.

CERTEAU, Michel de. A invenção do cotidiano. Vol. 1: Artes de fazer. Tradução de Ephraim Ferreira Alves. 3. ed. Petrópolis: Vozes, 1994.

DE SPAIN, Kent. The Cutting Edge of Awareness. ALBRIGHT, Ann Cooper; GERE, David (ed.). Taken by Surprise: a dance improvisation reader. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2003. p. 27-38.

DERRIDA, Jacques. Margens da Filosofia. Tradução de Joaquim Torres Costa e Antônio M. Magalhães. Campinas, SP: Papirus, 1991. p. 33-63.

DERRIDA, Jacques. The Animal that therefore I am. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2008.

HALBERSTAM, Judith. The Queer Art of Failure. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011.

NOGUEIRA, Alice. If I were to place you entirely into a poem. Berlin, 2022a. 1 vídeo (60 min). Disponível em: https://youtu.be/5E8GxU2amLA. Acesso em: 25 jun. 2026.

NOGUEIRA, Alice. O Nome da Peça. São Paulo, 2022b. 1 vídeo (66 min). Disponível em: https://youtu.be/2Kfv83xUZ7o. Acesso em: 25 jun. 2026.

Published

2026-08-14

How to Cite

Nogueira, A. P. (2026). The name as passage: queering language in performance. Revista Aspas, 16(1), 69-86. https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2238-3999.v16i1p69-86