Gênero na rede, raça no berço e sexo na parede: a lésbica como fio de interrogação da sexualidade em práticas feministas brasileiras.

Abstract

This work results from a doctoral research developed between 2010 and 2013, at the PPGNEIM/UFBA. Taking lesbian identity as a question line, I analyze the accommodation of sexuality in the discursive practices of Brazilian feminism, within the scope of the Articulação de Mulheres Brasileiras/AMB [Articulation of Brazilian Women], a space of belonging as an academic activist. Guided by the hypothesis that the tensions between lesbians and feminists recorded in literature, and also in lesbian activism, are located in the way lesbians are positioned in the dispositif of sexuality, the organization of the research corpus was guided by the foucaultian genealogical proposal, carried out through theoretical reframing of the theme, analysis of documents, direct observation and systematic recording. The result is presented in five chapters. The first presents the process of framing the theme and delineating the methodological arrangement. Aiming to recover the conditions of enunciation of the AMB; in the second, I reconstitute the categorical framing of women in the Brazilian dispositif of sexuality, in different historical contexts, as a reference to question how feminist strategies dealt with these locations and, in the meantime, how lesbian identity was positioned. Sequentially, in the third chapter, I present the network, the influences of the experiences accumulated in the epistemic and theoretical transits and operational aspects, noting that its practices are anchored in the signifier “woman”, around which they affirm an ideal of the subject and the purposes for which it is intended, simultaneously affirming its identity as a collective subject. In the fourth chapter, I confront the techniques used in the construction of this subject with those applied by neoliberal governmentality, within which identity politics and the rhetorical field of access to rights via public policies are articulated. Having verified that the articulated arrangements do not take sexuality as a dispositif, I continue the itinerary of this work following the lesbian to, in the fifth and last chapter, inquire about the location of sex within the network. Corroborating the hypothesis of the research, there is an incentive to vocalization as well as many tensions as regards enunciation, related to the threats of fissure that they represent to the stability of the subject, finding in this analogy with the “trans” woman and the [idea of a] “feminist whore”, differing from the situation of the race question, which has its place assured without major conflicts. Finally, this work demonstrates that sex is still located in a pre-discursive domain, pervasive to the arrangements created, including by lesbians, to put the discussion into operation. From which it can be concluded that, if gender is on the network, race is cradled in the cradle and sex, however, remains against the wall.