“Our bodies are home to both tormentors and victims”: an interview and theoretical-critical-sentimental craft with Helena Vieira

Abstract

For us, speaking of ancestry is not merely invoking a distant time. It is recognizing the present as a territory where a legacy pulsates—political, affective, spiritual—that transcends borders, names, and geographies. We inherit voices that came before us, but we are also the living flesh of their continuity—a presence that persists and a memory that creates storytelling. It is in this spirit that this interview is inscribed—as part of what we call theoretical-critical-sentimental craftsmanship, woven here in dialogue with Helena Vieira. Recognized for her presence in multiple spaces of creation, research, and mobilization, Helena embodies what we call here a living trans-ancestry—a lineage that becomes body, thought, and gesture, connecting histories, personal experiences, and the continuous invention of knowledge. Helena's word does not merely narrate: it founds, summons, and creates storytelling. What is transmitted in this encounter is not a static past, but a force in motion—that reverberates in the present and ignites critical, trans-feminist, and decolonial reflections. The conversation that follows invites us to listen to a transancestral experience in motion, which, by weaving together diverse temporalities, opens paths to the recognition of plural histories—and to the courageous invention of possible futures. By presenting this conversation in the format of a handcrafted theoretical-critical-sentimental interview, we seek to embrace both the conceptual density and the delicacy of the affections that permeate the encounters, the silences, the pauses, the gestures, and the perspectives on the world. It is with this lively listening, between rigor and affection, that we give the floor to Helena.