The aim of this article is to explore how Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s concept of the speechless subaltern challenges/is challenged by the Teat(r)o Oficina Uzyna Uzona’s performance Os Sertões (2002-2007). Whilst Spivak’s Marxist-inspired delineation of the subaltern locks her in a binary embrace with the privileged Subject of Europe, Os Sertões presents us with a tripartite, interrelated set of subject-effects in which the Trans-Man (the militant post-colonial artist) transcends his condition as Man (the castrated subject of neocolonialism), by fusing his discourse with the rhythmic ebullience of the Pre-Man (the subaltern substratum of Brazilian society). The Oficina articulate this conflictual, hybrid, processual subjectivity on stage by returning to the primal scene of Brazil’s violent conception, revealing a differant trope potentially articulating subjectivity and representability in Brazil; rape-as-grammè. It is this strand of textual DNA, this eternal return of sexual, disciplinary and epistemic violence, which is shown to shape Brazilian subjectivity to the present day. However, by anthropofagically co-opting this tragic heritage on stage by emphasising the différance of the subaltern cultural manifestations and praise practice always already spacing the (post) colonial text, the company subvert a historic narrative of loss and privation, transforming it into a rhythmic and libidinal rite of passage whose vitality transcends the limits of phallogocentrism
