IV Congresso

 

RETRATOS DO BRASIL HOMOSSEXUAL – FRONTEIRAS, SUBJETIVIDADES E DESEJOS

 

In 1928, Paulo Prado published Retrato do Brasil: ensaio sobre a tristeza brasileira (Portrait of Brazil: an Essay on Brazilian sadness), work that would start the contemporary thinking on national identity, trying to establish a portrayal of a subjectivity still in progress since the groundbreaking Brazil’s Independence centenary (1922).

Eighty years later, the social actors who illustrate this “portrait” – which we wish to “paint” in this Forth Congress – are quite others. The social, intellectual and artistic relations surpass those in Prado’s publication and imagined by the Brazilian Modernism. It’s up to the contemporary thinkers to understand Brazilian culture and identity as they are nowadays, fulfilling by this the social demands and the intellectual questioning about Brazil in the early 21st century.

With an eye on this, the forth Brazilian Association of Homocultural Studies Congress “Portrait of Homosexual Brazil: frontiers, subjectivities and desires” makes a challenge: how, in contemporary Brazil, the several different portraits of homoerotic and homosexual experiences and the homoculture studies are gathered?

The organizers proposal is to start discussion about this, increasing social and academic debate. This leads to a bigger project, which is to think about homosexuality and homoculture in the Brazilian society perspective.

As in Prado’s Portrait of Brazil, we are reaching not only elements that compound Brazil-ness and the Brazilian, but also to understand which identities and subjectivities are in confrontation or not when the matter is homoculture representation. Not only a black and white portrait of Brazilian culture and sadness, but also a vivid and colorful image of homosexual matters and its cultural, political, artistic, social and medical urgencies, and also its recognition as a subject of the Human Rights. Even more so if considered that homosexual experience wasn’t debated properly through the 20th century.

So it’s very important that this 4th Congress is realized, to increase these urgent discussions. By showing the “Portrait of Homosexual Brazil” we will be able to break “frontiers” and install “subjectivities and desires” in our society, enlarging its cultural and sexual diversity.

We propose that the event happens from September 9th to 12th , 2008, in São Paulo, at Universidade de São Paulo, USP (University of São Paulo) stimulating the research development on this social character in the country.  

At the same time, we propose to carry out the first meeting of Brazilian and international militants called “Hispanic-Brazilian Homosexual Militants First Encounter”, that will happen the day before the Congress opening. This exchange will promote a world scale to the debate, which we are proud of, as we know that Spain has a profound experience on homocultural studies and policies.