A study on the intersections of nation, sexuality and race in Brazil 1880-1900

Abstract

At the end of 19th Century, scientific and literary discourses had as axis the concept of nation and the fear it could be at degenerative risk (Borges, 2005). This project proposes to analyse this diagnostic and the way it connected science and literature in a historical moment in which sexuality became important because of the articulation between the new bourgeois family model and the "national imperative" of building a "healthy" society. Our theoretical line is a queer sociological one because we intend to understand those social practices that organized society as a whole sexualizing bodies, desires, identities, culture and institutions (Seidman, 1996). In a post-colonial and ex-slavery society, the emergence of the sexuality apparat took place through a particular process of sexualization of race and racialization of sex (Brah, 2006, Preciado, 2007). Through the sociological analysis of the scientific and literary discourses of that historical moment, we intend to comprehend this process in Brazil and its articulation with heteronormativity (Warner and Berlant, 2002; Halperin, 2002). (AU)