Regimes of visibility, social change and conventions about sexuality and aging: a study about women who have homosexual relationships in São Paulo and Buenos Aires

Abstract

The objective of this project is to analyze the relationships between aging and experiences of sexuality between women who have homosexual relationships in São Paulo and Buenos Aires. The aim is to understand the specificity of contemporary forms of sociability and eroticism between women in Latin America. The universe of analysis covers the women between the ages of 40 and 70, from diverse social backgrounds. The processes of socialization and eroticism involve the production of identities and subjectivities, in addition to being embedded in the broader context of modernization and globalization. Considering that, this work will be structured around three points: 1) The economy of visibility/invisibility as a production regime of subjectivity and sociability; 2) the different conventions of family and friendship that exist in this regime; and 3) a classificatory analysis of the denominations and self-references. The starting point of this research will be my doctoral dissertation. My dissertation presents a set of social representations concerning the sociability of women who have homosexual relationships in order to describe the processes of subjectivization that make viable certain repertoires of subjects while shadowing others.