Process and method: a personal report

Abstract

This essay reveals the experimental research process
centered on the possibility of creating, by employing
transvestigender narratives, an imaginary that
highlights new meanings about the landscape of
downtown São Paulo. Based on individual biographies,
I sought to explore in different ways the notions of
city, body, and memory, being affected by complex and
empowering experiences of urban practice as awareness
of the city as territory (Deleuze; Guattari, 1995), not
just of dispute, but also of the integral construction
of an environment associated with subjective and
dynamic issues that deal, simultaneously, with space and
narrative. This reflection encompasses the theoreticalmethodological
challenges that arise in confronting
subjectivities entangled with ideologies and practices
rooted in mechanisms of gender, violence, refusal,
affectivity, and suffering. However, within the structure
of this analytical account, we can observe the experience
that positioned me as both researcher and main
narrator, guided by an interest in criticizing the work
process through the approach of Micro-history (Vainfas,
2002) as an analytical tool applicable to the historical
study of proximate realities.