g&l (print) issn: 1747–6321 g&l (online) issn: 1747–633x g&l vol 17.1 2023 54–76 © 2023, equinox publishing Submitted: 2020-10-28 Accepted: 2023-02-13 https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.18549 Research article Reclaiming presence: Anti-gender nationalism and Marielle Franco’s deictic feld of resistance in Brazil Daniel N. Silva and Allison Dziuba Afliations Daniel N. Silva he/him/his Departamento de Língua e Literatura Vernáculas, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil Email: dnsfortal@gmail.com Allison Dziuba she/her/hers Department of English, the University of Alabama, United States Email: aadziuba@ua.edu Abstract Political actors’ embedding of the here-and-now of enunciation into construc- tions of gender, sexuality and race is a deictic practice that can be uncoupled from its context and projected into political felds. Tis article unpacks alter- native invocations of the deictic feld by Jair Bolsonaro’s new right in Brazil and by Marielle Franco, a queer Black councilwoman who was assassinated in 2018, the same year Bolsonaro was elected president. While Bolsonaro has vilifed progressive tropes, such as gender equality, sex positive education and Marielle’s legacy, Marielle and later her mourning movement have mapped her here-and-now onto mottos such as ‘Marielle lives’, which defy chronologic time. Marielle’s central fgure has thus been ‘present’ across the political spectrum – for progressives as a fgure of immanence, and for white supremacists as a symbol of the Black gendered body whose life is not mournable but whose phan- tasmatic presence is a continuing threat.