POWER AND RESISTANCE IN THE MEDIA INVENTION OF HOMOSEXUALITY IN BRAZIL

Abstract

This work undertakes a genealogy of homosexuality in Brazil in view of the implementation of scientia sexualis and the media consolidation of the homosexual figure since the AIDS epidemic. Until the beginning of the 20th century, sexual practices between equals were organized based on gender roles. Since then, there has been a growing interest from the media, science, medicine and the State about the body and practices of men who have sexual practices with other men. The question is: which games of power and resistance gave emergence conditions to the ways of being homosexual present in our time? The objective is to describe how the subjectivation processes of men attracted to same-sex partners are constituted by the deployment of sexuality, especially in its communicational dimension. For this task, Foucauldian genealogy is used to describe the history of possibilities of becoming a homosexual subject in the face of power-knowledge relations materialized in a network of statements and practices used to interpret, manage, discipline and regulate sex between men. It is concluded that scientia sexualis was responsible for inciting certain ways of being, being in the world and intervening in it. And yet, that it invented the notion of male homosexuality, as a way of subjectivation widely known and reproduced since the AIDS epidemic, with the undeniable participation of the press. Since the AIDS event, the way some individuals are seen, recognized and come to exist in the world changes as a result of powers and resistance.