Fátima Medeiros's Putagraphy: place of enunciation, refraction of experience and processes of subjectivation

Abstract

Based on two theoretical and methodological assumptions of the Materialist Discourse Analysis, this article analyzes the book Puta História (2024), by Fátima Medeiros, understanding it as a putagrafia (Ribeiro, 2020) in the format of an autobiographical romance that appears in discourse as a memory produced on the margins and despite the stigma. Starting from the notion of place of enunciation (Zoppi-Fontana, 2002), we investigate the discursive mechanisms for the author, historical militant of the category, projects different feixes de formações imaginárias e efeitos-leitores, diriginó-se both to other sex workers and to an external public. Articulating the concept of putagrafias (Ribeiro, 2020), understood as “a new place to enunciate about a prostituição in which its voice, by means of writing, can be ressoar and make echo” (Ribeiro, 2020, p. 17), we show how the jocosidade in Medeiros’ work operates as a refração da experiência (Lopes, 2023b), I decompose and reconfigure dinners experienced with clients through writing. The analysis demonstrates that the work functions as a subjective gesture and an aesthetic and political intervention that transforms marginalized life into a literary narrative, allowing the author to singularize her trajectory and dispute representations. Furthermore, we show how autobiographical writing acts as self-care and freedom practice (Parteka, 2016), creating symbolic conditions for the realization of intersubjective mourning work (Dunker, 2023). We conclude that the work promotes a positive self-representation of sexual workers, constitutes an artefact of cultural memory and operates as a device of resonance and ressignificance, transforming personal narrative into a powerful object of symbolic and political dispute.