The "Re-Enchantment" of Institutional Politics: Feminism in the Conservative Conjuncture of Brazil

The 2016 municipal elections in Brazil were a big surprise for the large number of young feminists and transexual candidates running for office. In three capitals - Belo Horizonte, Belém, and Porto Alegre - women candidates were the most voted among all the competitors. They are young social activists who fight for the causes of minorities, women, blacks and LGBTs rights.

The paper argues that the turn of feminists activists towards institutional participation is linked to the rise of the conservative and religious forces in the Brazilian Congress, which threaten the achievements of the feminist agenda and the emergence of a new leftist party, PSOL, more sensitive to identity politics repertoire. How do feminist and LGBT activists reposition themselves in relation to institutional political? How do they move between their previous logic of autonomous action and the new institutional roles they aspire to assume? How do they negotiate between political actions considered, in general, as antagonistic? What new democratic practices do they bring to institutional policy? The analysis of the renewed interest of feminist and LGBT activist movements in the institutional politics allows to complexify the predominant discourse of the Political Science on the "crisis of political representation" in Brazil.