ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how Djankaw, a Black trans resident of a quilombo (a settlement founded by descendent of formerly enslaved Afro-Brazilians), uses Instagram as a political platform to resist racism, transphobia, and colonialism. Employing Deleuze and Guattari’s theories concerning movements of de-re-territorialization, we pay attention to how Djankaw negotiates her/his subjectivities in her/his posts, constructing meanings of a fluid body and subject but also claiming belonging to a specific geographic space and cultural heritage. Our analysis focuses on how Djankaw’s digital performances—as a Black (in terms of race and ethnicity), queer (in relation to gender and sexuality), and quilombola (regarding origin, nationality) subject—are assembled on this photo-sharing platform to rupture and relocate hegemonic understandings of these very subjectivity processes. Such rupture is particularly apparent in the spiritual practices that are performed in some of the posts, and which work to encompass and merge different understandings of space. By following such movements, Djankaw produces statements on the race, ethnicity, and ancestry of her/his people that also question political interpretations of territories and their inhabitants.
