Novas estéticas para estruturas antigas : tecnologias, próteses de gênero e textualidades do mandato de masculinidade

Abstract

This thesis proposes to reflect on masculinities through the lenses of textualities (Abril, 2007;2012). Therefore, it goes to access gender constructs based on the patriarchal heteronormative matrix, comprehending these as a symbolic web in process, composed by heterogeneous elements, having the body as one of it’s main artifacts, but that doesn’t stop at the skin. We call up Butler (2020), for whom it’s impossible to access any notion of body that’s not signified. Therefore, the masculinities are assumed as hybrids of organism and technologies (Haraway, 2018), by means of gender prosthesis (Preciado, 2019), that act on the body in a somewhat material way. With the prosthesis assumed as artifacts capable of complementing or potentializing body parts, we understand that beyond the diversity of materialities inserted or coupled in the organism, such as dental prosthesis, silicon implants, hormones and food supplements, its necessary to amplify them to materialities and meanings that extrapolate the immediacy of bodies, but that prove themselves efficient in the constructions of meaning that one wishes to attribute them. It's the case of many artifacts, going from cars, jewelry and money, to people, such as women. With this we want to show how the construction of the web of meanings of oneself as man extrapolates the physical dimension of the body,being composed by a complex and diverse web of symbolisms. It therefore interests us to think in the process of the composition of these webs of meaning, more specifically in supposedly transformed utterances of masculinity, so recurring in contemporary society. Therefore, having gender power structures as presuppose, we search to comprehend the configurations of textualities of masculinities that present themselves as other, in the sense that they don’t compromise with traditional senses of virility, in their trespassings with power dynamics. Or, in other words, considering masculinities as a mandate (Segato, 2018), that sustains itself on demands of tributes from the feminine and that legitimizes itself on the mentality of couples, searching to understand how much symbolic projects of transformed masculinities actually alter patriarchal power structures. To do that, we collected more than 300 enunciated materialities of masculinities as research corpus, and, based on the systematization of this material in reading keys, we dedicated ourselves to the writing of three essays. In the essay production proposed here, we trigger specific empirical studies from the theoretical discussions in progress, in order to weave our thesis in a constant dialogic process between elements of reality and the theories summoned.

This thesis proposes to reflect on masculinities through the lenses of textualities (Abril, 2007;2012). Therefore, it goes to access gender constructs based on the patriarchal heteronormative matrix, comprehending these as a symbolic web in process, composed by heterogeneous elements, having the body as one of it’s main artifacts, but that doesn’t stop at the skin. We call up Butler (2020), for whom it’s impossible to access any notion of body that’s not signified. Therefore, the masculinities are assumed as hybrids of organism and technologies (Haraway, 2018), by means of gender prosthesis (Preciado, 2019), that act on the body in a somewhat material way. With the prosthesis assumed as artifacts capable of complementing or potentializing body parts, we understand that beyond the diversity of materialities inserted or coupled in the organism, such as dental prosthesis, silicon implants, hormones and food supplements, its necessary to amplify them to materialities and meanings that extrapolate the immediacy of bodies, but that prove themselves efficient in the constructions of meaning that one wishes to attribute them. It's the case of many artifacts, going from cars, jewelry and money, to people, such as women. With this we want to show how the construction of the web of meanings of oneself as man extrapolates the physical dimension of the body,being composed by a complex and diverse web of symbolisms. It therefore interests us to think in the process of the composition of these webs of meaning, more specifically in supposedly transformed utterances of masculinity, so recurring in contemporary society. Therefore, having gender power structures as presuppose, we search to comprehend the configurations of textualities of masculinities that present themselves as other, in the sense that they don’t compromise with traditional senses of virility, in their trespassings with power dynamics. Or, in other words, considering masculinities as a mandate (Segato, 2018), that sustains itself on demands of tributes from the feminine and that legitimizes itself on the mentality of couples, searching to understand how much symbolic projects of transformed masculinities actually alter patriarchal power structures. To do that, we collected more than 300 enunciated materialities of masculinities as research corpus, and, based on the systematization of this material in reading keys, we dedicated ourselves to the writing of three essays. In the essay production proposed here, we trigger specific empirical studies from the theoretical discussions in progress, in order to weave our thesis in a constant dialogic process between elements of reality and the theories summoned.