Contesting bodies across institutional spaces: legal frameworks and the exclusion of black trans politicians in Brazil

This article examines the first criminal prosecution under Brazil’s Law 14.192/2021 on violence against women in politics: proceedings concerning racist and transphobic speech directed by state representative Rodrigo Amorim at Benny Briolly, a Black travesti councilwoman. Using the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse alongside theories of performativity and affect, we reconstruct how prosecution and defence translate speech into, or away from, legally actionable harm. The case shows how parliamentary immunity, contested gender recognition, and normalized political hostility can sustain exclusion. We argue that racialized emotions govern political space by marking which bodies may legitimately appear within it.