Performances discursivas com/entre pessoas brancas cisgêneras bissexuais em rodas de conversa on-line: (des) (re) construções de sentido sobre “eus” bissexuais

Abstract

This research aims to understand the meanings that influence the construction of bisexual performances for oneself and others in social relations. The specific objectives of the study are: (a) to examine the interrelation between body, language, and performance in the (re/de)construction of bisexual performances; and (b) to discuss the production of meanings surrounding the hetero-homo dyad and its impact on the construction of a bisexual performance. This study is part of the Language and Social Practices research line within the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Education, Language, and Technologies at the State University of Goiás. Therefore, its theoretical foundation is situated within Indisciplinary Critical Applied Linguistics, which seeks to challenge epistemological boundaries, rejecting fixed categorizations and paving the way for new forms of knowledge (Moita Lopes, 2006, 2009). In this regard, performative autoethnography (Gottardi, 2023; Raimondi, 2019) underpins the research, not as a methodology that observes from a distance, but as a relational practice in which the researcher and participants mutually perform one another in the production of knowledge. This theoretical framework is traversed by Cultural Studies (Hall, 2014), the Theory of Language as Performance (Butler, 2018; Gonzalez & Lopes, 2018), and Bisexual Epistemologies (Gaber, 1998; Hemmings, 2002; Monaco, 2020; Saldanha, 2021, 2023; Klidzio, 2023), which problematize the normativities regulating (bi)sexual and gender performances. The methodological instrument is based on online conversation circles held viaGoogle Meet, in which four co-participants and the researcher shared experiences regarding their bisexualities. The analysis is guided by the rhizome metaphor (Deleuze & Guattari, 1995), allowing emergent meanings to avoid being captured by predetermined discursive categories and instead be connected through networks of signification constructed within the conversation circles. Findings indicate that bisexuality is continuously questioned and rendered invisible, often perceived as unstable and, therefore, deemed illegitimate. Regarding self-perception, co-participants negotiate their identity positions depending on contexts and interlocutors, confronting normativities that impose the need to "prove" their bisexuality or their stability within the restricted possibilities of the dyad. Thus, the erasure of performances is not merely an effect of the hetero-homo binary but also stems from a moral framework that positions dissidence as a threat to the established order in a territorialized experience. This research contributes to the fields of language studies and (bi)sexualities by demonstrating that bisexuality must be understood as a field of symbolic dispute, where discourses, performances, and normativities collide in the unstable production of a bisexual “self.”