Paris in Copacabana: Favela nightclub, transvestites and historical experiences in Rio de Janeiro (1960)

Abstract

This article focuses on historicizing the processes of subjectivation and the production of historical transvestite subjectivities in the city of Rio de Janeiro during the 1960s. The analysis is constructed from the Copacabana neighborhood and the Favela nightclub, the first house to set up a show exclusively with transvestites in the city. Thus, I highlight the nightclub as an important space for the creation of sociability and friendship networks, without forgetting the possible conflicts and tensions that contributed to the invention and reinvention of subjectivities at that time. For historiography, this is the “first generation” of transvestites in the city. For reflection and analysis, press sources, images and the oral narrative of Suzy Parker, a transvestite recognized as part of this generation, will be used. It is in this field that it will be possible to think about desires, exchanges, dreams, negotiations and affections that enabled the creation and imagination of new desires and pleasures in the process of emergence of new subjectivities.