Paper short abstract:

The embodiment expressed and lived in the Drag King performance, in its interaction within the public space, brings on a complex set of tensions. Narrations and reflections that arise when the criteria of identity of the “other” are vague or not understandable.

Paper long abstract:

Performing drag king is a movement that blurs masculinity and feminity territories, taking them out of the field that made them intelligible up until that moment, with the aim of shaking them up to the construction/experimentation of a new subjectivity. Transits appear as acts of resistance, as interactive and reflective corporal practices (Robert Connel), where relationships are not only between the discourses about the body, but among bodies.

The drag king performance affects the logics around the organisation of experience, and sensitive schemes of those whom the drag king performance interacts in the public space. Its mere presence creates the possibility to be comprehended, according to these "social and natural laws", living them without a voice. The spect-actor in the interaction increases the attention, and the memory mechanisms are mobilised in order to connect the information with the cultural background available. Thus, acts of exploration appear, like the association or analogy trying to fit the experience into the normalization mechanisms. This way, the synthesis is completed through the experience of the person that interacts during the performance. This person designs and creates this alterity, which is not subject to its own frames of reference.

To becoming a drag appears as an oxymoron that embraces opposite forces of feelings of power and danger, wishes and fear. A fascination is generated, which is impossible to ignore, and that does not allow to get minimised by the confusion of the senses and does not disappear in front of rejection and aversion.