"Se pudesse ressurgir, viria como o vento". Narrativas da dor: corporalidade e emo？？es na experiência da travestilidade

based on empirical research with a group of seven transvestis, ages 23 to 40, residents of the city of recife, pernambuco, brazil, this article addresses the way tactics of body modification are performed, re-invented, and lived as central elements of emotional identification in the transvesti experience. narratives of pain illustrate the operation of two languages in transvestis' networks of affection, formulated by a dual qualification of pain. within what we call a 'language of satisfaction,' the pain, risks and danger involved in metamorphic procedures of body self-construction mean little vis-à-vis the satisfaction brought by their results, in face of the desire for transformation that moves them. in contrast, a 'political language,' based on shared histories of social abjection, makes use of the negative symbolic content of pain as ominous to signify travestis' relation with the larger society.