Visão corporeada: a construção de uma estética da imagem de tradutores intérpretes de Libras negros

Abstract

This research is situated within the fields of Deaf Studies and Brazilian Sign Language - Libras Translation and Interpreting and aims to critically analyze the so-called myth of the black shirt in the professional practice of sign language translators and interpreters. This norm, historically naturalized, produces effects of racial erasure, Eurocentric standardization of professional bodies, and the silencing of differences. The specific objectives are to problematize the historical and discursive construction of black clothing as a symbol of neutrality and professionalism; to identify the impacts of this norm on Black interpreters; to engage with theoretical and political contributions from the Black Deaf movement; and to analyze discourses and agent images that challenge and reconfigure hegemonic aesthetic norms in the field of sign language interpreting. The study is grounded in intersectionality (Crenshaw, 2002), Deaf Studies (Skliar, 1998; Strobel, 2008), reflections on image, visuality, and agency (Almeida, 1999), and scholarship on Black aesthetics and the image of the Black body (Gomes, 2017), understanding images as active elements in the production of meaning and power relations. Methodologically, this is a qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive study with ethnographic features, combining the researcher’s professional experience, observation of institutional practices, and analysis of audiovisual and discursive materials. Agent images constitute a central analytical category and are understood as visual productions endowed with political agency, capable of activating mental sites of memory and mobilizing collective narratives related to the experiences of Black Deaf individuals and interpreters. By highlighting how these subjects resist, negotiate, and resignify imposed aesthetic norms, the study contributes to the debate on professionalization, visuality, race, and power in the field of Brazilian Sign Language interpreting.