Media normativities in peripheral bodies: traces of resistance and domination in Brazilian serial fiction

Abstract

The article proposes to reflect on how the meanings of peripheral bodies are configured in Brazilian serial fiction. In this proposal, the concept of body goes beyond the physical scope and refers to a broader set of traits that make up its communicability in different environments. We start from the assumption that bodies are generators of meanings with the potential to produce unlimited semiosis, maintaining what is established as a norm (regularities/predictibilities) and promoting ruptures of meanings (irregularities/unpredictabilities), therefore, they engender clearly bio-political meanings (Tucherman, 1999) and are associated with the disciplinary society and the control society (Foucault, 1979). Thus, the research directs attention to the bodies presented in fictional narratives and considered to be out of step with current media and cultural standards, respecting the study of their languages and processes of meaning. We privilege a theoretical-methodological approach that starts from the perspective of the semiotics of culture (Lotman, 1996; 1999; 2013; 2021) to identify and seek to understand the process of semiosis of peripheral bodies in Brazilian serial fiction, using cartography as a method supported by Kastrup’s (2007) reflection on the functioning of the researcher’s attention, considering its four varieties: tracking, touching, landing and attentive recognition. Our observations showed, in general, that the fictional serialized texts of Brazilian productions that are mapped offer relative space to peripheral bodies, but with little protagonism.