Tra la fine del XIX l’inizio del XX secolo, quando il Positivismo raggiunge il suo apogeo, pratiche scientifiche e fenomeni legati al mondo paranormale si contaminano vicendevolmente, influenzando il panorama culturale e artistico della Belle Époque. Nel contesto europeo gli studi scientifici intorno alle sedute spiritiche e alle ‘materializzazioni’ di fantasmi occupano un posto di rilievo, che mette in luce il primato di medium femminili all’interno di tali pratiche sovversive. Tra queste si ritrovano Linda Gazzera ed Eva Carrière, due giovani donne il cui fascino destò l’interesse di importanti personalità del mondo medico quali Cesare Lombroso e Charles Richet. Durante le loro sedute, difatti, oltre a dirigere giochi di suggestione e illusionismo testimoniati dal medium fotografico, (rinvenute presso il Museo Lombroso, la Bibliothèque de l’Académie de Médecine, e l’Institut Métapsychique International) le due donne attraverso il travestimento medianico e un originale pratica di gender performing che prevede l’uso ricorrente di pseudonimi maschili guadagnano una voce propria, conquistando uno spazio di libertà ed emancipazione sociale altrimenti impossibili da ottenere.
Artists are often stereotyped as eccentric individuals with unique personalities and attitudes. Therefore, while in traditionalist Greek society the LGBT community has long experienced oppression or marginalization, homosexual male artists were comparatively more allowed to deviate from social norms. This led Greek homosexual artists to hide their sexual orientation in their social life while expressing it covertly or, in a few cases, explicitly, in their art. This paper studies the expression of sexual identity in the artworks of the Greek painter, Diamantis Diamantopoulos (1914-1995). In many of his pictures – mostly anthropocentric in subjects, focusing on the male human body – he hinted at his homosexuality more or less covertly. I aim to examine these works in correlation with issues of subjectivity and otherness, in the context of the artist’s lived experiences and social status. My research is based on Erving Goffman’s theory about social roles, and Didier Eribon’s books on sexual and class identity.
The contributions collected in this special issue of Whatever shed light on modes and forms of visual representation within twentieth-century Mediterranean artistic practices for the construction of expanded subjectivities in constant metamorphosis. The essays participate in the construction of an alternative historiography of Italian and Southern European art that acts as a narrative “against the grain” to foster a new area of art historical studies inflected by queer perspectives, complementary to the Anglo-American and North European theoretical and historiographical canons. The studies published here focus on theories and experiences capable of expressing resilient and inventive forms of subjective identities that are hybrid or dissident from social norms. Authors in this special issue have addressed topics of the body, desire, and eroticism in areas traditionally considered particularly heteronormative and whose narrative strategies of subjectivity outside the norm have been less explored.
This paper aims at a queer theoretical reading of what the painter Filippo de Pisis called “irresistible complications”, that is subtle deconstruction of heteronormative narratives, in Magic Realism paintings of the 1920s in Italy. Exemplified by rare emergences of the sociological reception of painted subjects concerning desire, the discussion takes into account two male painters, Felice Casorati and Ubaldo Oppi. Their works dedicated to disquieting female, same-sex affection (the typical subject of Le amiche) are analyzed through the lens of queer theory. René Girard’s triangular desire allows to articulate the thematic presence of the male gaze in this representation of sapphism.
The pioneering depiction of male nudes by the Cypriot painter Andreas Karayan (b. 1943) caused quite a stir in the Cypriot art scene, when exhibited from the late 1970s onwards. Using Constantine Cavafy’s poetry as a starting point and recurring reference, Karayan portrays the male nudes as both sexual(ized) subjectivities, as well as, and because of their eroticism, embodiments of social protest and queer subversion. Even more subversive, however, are some other works, from the late 1970s and through the 1980s: images of (fully dressed) young men in public spaces – bus stops, streets, coffee shops – and of sailors and soldiers in seemingly banal conditions (for instance, resting before or after an official parade). Such works, for the first time in Cypriot art, not only brought, literally, into the open, (homo)erotic desire (gazes are exchanged, seeking response, or are directed toward the viewer), but they are also imbued with political irony and critique that interrogate issues, and queerly subvert discourses, of power, desire, and national and other ‘sacred’ symbols of collective identity.
This article contributes to a queer historiography of 1970s Italian art by taking an unprecedented approach to the study of Luigi Ontani’s artistic practice: it investigates the camp qualities and queer subtexts of a group of tableaux vivants that he performed in the early 1970s, either in front of a live audience or for the camera impersonating various iconic male and female characters drawn from high and popular culture. Situating the works in the context of the emergent Italian gay liberation movement, FUORI, this study builds on discussions of camp and kitsch by Susan Sontag and Gillo Dorfles in the mid- to late 1960s, as well as later articulations of gender performativity and queer theory by Judith Butler and others, to show how Ontani’s enactments at once embrace camp – in its citational, ironic, theatrical, incongruous, non-hierarchical character – and posit identity as performative, queer, that is, as unstable, fluid, plural, thus undermining the patriarchal, essentialist, bourgeois model of identity predicated on binary oppositions and postulated as fixed, coherent, and natural.
The Italian painter Filippo de Pisis (1896-1956) often used references to Dionysians and Arcadian subjects to emphasize the homoerotic connotations associated with the representation of the male body. Sometimes, de Pisis represents a Dionysian male nude immersed in nature, as in Bacchino (1928) or the striking lithographs illustrating Catullo’s Carmi. At other times, the animalistic dimension of the Dionysian world is transposed into the intimacy of the artist’s studio, as in Nudino sulla pelle di tigre (1931). This paper aims to shed new light on the homoerotic and self-reflexive dimension of these Arcadian fantasies the artist elaborated during a lifetime. I will investigate their connection with a well-established homoerotic visual culture that has been widespread since the late 19th century and the way they offered the painter a prolific and safe outlet for representing the eroticized male body in the Italian context of the early 20th century. It will thus be possible to address through an original perspective the queer dimension of de Pisis’ work, still too often overlooked by the artist’s historiography.
L'articolo traccia un profilo del Corrado Levi – architetto, artista, critico e attivista gay – nel decennio Settanta. Levi evolse da una convinzione rivoluzionaria marxista a inizio degli anni Settanta fino ad abbracciare le potenzialità liberatorie e creative dell’alienazione nelle società del benessere capitalista alla fine del decennio. Commento inoltre il modo in cui Levi investì alcuni esempi della storia dell’arte – es. il dadaismo o Jacopo Pontormo – per articolare una politica dell’immagine dei soggetti queer. Attraverso le lenti della riflessione teorica e dell'esperienza pratica dell'erotismo sadomasochista, Levi contribuì a un atlante visivo che suggeriva l’esistenza di desideri e di potenzialità queer nella storia dell’arte occidentale. Trovando analogie espressive tra i disegni di Pontormo e l'immaginario leather di Tom of Finland, il metodo di Levi contribuì a contestare la linearità dello storicismo e la neutralità emotiva del formalismo e della filologia, per proporre una storiografia “empatica” e affettiva, capace di cogliere il perpetrarsi di Pathosformeln attraverso il tempo. Tale storiografia recupera sia la lezione storica della Kulturwissenschaft di Warburg, sia la nozione coeva di “citazione deviata” di Bonito Oliva.
The essay analyzes a number of examples of the use of the male nude in photographic and performance works made in Italy between the 1960s and 1980s, starting from the hypothesis that merely departing from the norm – represented by the female nude – is already a noteworthy fact. In some of the cases analyzed, the artists explicitly thematize androgyny from literary references, or propose Afrodescendant subjects in contexts that evoke overwhelm. For female artists, however, this choice seems consistent with a commitment to challenge and overturn the usual gender clichés, sometimes ridiculing the male figure. The conclusions of this initial investigation will need to be verified with desirable systematic studies of the use of the male nude in the years of affirmation of both the feminist movement and the first manifestations of self-organization and homosexual pride.
In an article he published in 1973 in the queer magazine FUORI!, Mario Mieli stated his appreciation for Francis Picabia’s aphorisms. Building on this surprising statement, the paper addresses and contextualises the underground circulation and some queer appropriations of Picabia’s work and writings in 1970s Italy. The publishing history of Picabia’s aphorisms leads to a reconstruction of the gallerist Luciano Anselmino’s collection and commercial activity. Next, the paper focuses on the role that Corrado Levi played in the dissemination, critical reception, and Italian collecting of Picabia, tracing and contextualizing the presence of writings by the artists in Levi’s publications of the 1970s and early 1980s.
Nicoz Balboa is an Italian artist based in France. In his graphic novel, Play wih fire, Balboa undisclosed his queer sexual orientation and gender identity by portraying himself as a lesbian woman in the first part of the book and as a non-binary subject ready to undertake an FtoM gender transition in the second. The artist’s autobiographical effort to communicate the troubles of gender dysphoria and the socio-relational issues that generally accompany it are further complicated by the representation of the author/narrator/protagonist’s role as mother. The article aims at reading Play with fire, Born to lose (2017), and his last work Transformer and the connected production of vignettes Balboa posts on his Instagram page through the lens of theories on motherhood and queer motherhood that insist on the political value of making non-heterocisnormative parenting visible. Coupling this theoretical framework with a methodology that employs the tools of comics semiotics, the study argues that Balboa’s graphic narratives contribute to partially de-essentialize motherhood by visually challenging its association with femininity. At the same time, the author’s self-representation as a masculine mother fruitfully problematizes (trans)gender identity using a portrayal that explicitly criticizes the rhetoric of the “wrong body” and questions gender binarism.
The purpose of the article is to carry out a historical and political reconstruction of sexual dissidence in student spaces through an exploratory review of testimonies and scattered memories produced by organizations, groups and active in Chile during the period of mayor student revolts between 2008 and 2018 in. Conceptually, it seeks to present a notion of sexual dissent that is not only distinct from the politics of sexual diversity by the official organizations of the LGTBI+ movement, but also allows for the elaboration of a new perspective to understand queerness/cuirness and its relationship with the process of social mobilization in the country from a Latin American perspective. The originality of the study consists in queerizing the recent history of the Chilean student movement through a periodization of counter-hegemonic actions, specifically performances, assemblies and occupations. It is concluded that the practices of sexual dissent and activism understand social movements as a direct political result of encounters and interaction between bodies and affections and whose street performativity questions the forms of heteropatriarchal political action in the context of neoliberalism in Chile.
Este trabajo exploratorio, enmarcado en una investigación más amplia sobre las identidades, la violencia y el discurso de odio (DO) en las redes sociales, indaga en la construcción del odio en un discurso transexcluyente desplegado en Facebook por un grupo de feministas radicales, a propósito de una deportista trans. Contra los trabajos previos que limitan el DO a la presencia explícita de ciertas palabras o al llamado a matar al vulnerable, el análisis ofrece evidencias lingüísticas y semióticas que permiten afirmar que el odio, en los discursos en línea, no siempre está dicho o es explícito, ni se limita a la palabra. En el marco de la aprobación de la “Ley trans” española, los comentarios analizados crean un frente común de pensamiento homogéneo, basado en una concepción de “ser mujer” conservadora, esencialista, biologicista y fija, que denigra (incluso con recursos verbales típicos del discurso misógino) a las mujeres trans, a quienes describe como amenaza o enemigo: son no-mujeres, animales, insectos y aun monstruos.
This article is aimed at investigating the way toys are used within BDSM practices. “Toys”, as a term, encompasses a wide variety of objects such as gags, cuffs, or whips which form the material bedrock for BDSM sexualities. At the same time, the presence of so many objects within sexual practices is a cause of anxiety, evident even in specialist scholarship on kink. Drawing on examples from my fieldwork among Polish BDSM practitioners, I will be attempting to provide a different perspective on the role of toys in kink, one that does not replicate the anxieties about fetishism and commodification, while at the same time attending to the queer use of everyday objects that is so common within the world of BDSM.
The purpose of the current work is to study one aspect of the representation of persons with dissenting gender, which has become more visible and less cartoonish in Latin American literary production since the year 1994. We are referring to the presence of trans characters (i.e., transvestite, transsexual and transgender) that begin to acquire new identities with the help of a context comprised by people without blood ties with the main character. To illustrate this, we will discuss two recent Argentinian novels, Soy lo que quieras llamarme (“I Am Whoever You Want to Call me”) by Gabriel Dalla Torre (Neuquén, 1977), published in 2012 by El Ateneo in Buenos Aires ( Letra Sur International Award for Novel), and Las malas (“The Evil Ones”) by Camila Sosa Villada (La Falda, Córdoba, 1982) published by Tusquets in 2019 (Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Award in 2020).
This article examines Las malas (2019), by Camila Sosa Villada. It is intended to show that in this text a complaint is made against the social conditions to which transvestites are subjected, which are considered abject bodies and, therefore, susceptible to being violated, disappeared or discarded. Likewise, we want to verify that this novel presents the transvestite as a being with agency, whose presence not only questions the foundations of the heteropatriarchal system, but also reconfigures some of the sacred institutions of said system, such as motherhood or family.
This article examines the literary representation of dissident sexual and gender subjectivities in revolutionary Cuba in Marcial Gala’s novel Llámenme Casandra (2019). Grounded in queer, gender, and cultural studies, it analyzes how gender fluidity challenges the state apparatus of social control that punishes any infringement of the “new man” model. It also reflects on the stigmatization of gender transgressions and its impact on the articulation of transgender subjectivities devoid of agency.
The lesbophobic lexicon in Peru is created by the rejection of lesbian women because of their sexual orientation. The objectives of this paper are the following: to identify insulting lexical constructs against lesbians in Peruvian virtual forums and to interpret them as representations of symbolic violence and performative acts of hate speech. Methodologically, seven lexemes (“camionera”, “machito”, “chito”, “machorra”, “machona”, “marimacha”, “tortera”, “marimacha”) that are used in the interactions of forum members are selected. To study the semiotic signifiers and meanings, we start from the definitions proposed by academic dictionaries, particularly on Peruvianisms, and then contrast them with the social meanings situated in the discourses of the forum members; subsequently, we explain that the lexical voices generate and reproduce violence and hatred against the group of lesbian women. The article concludes that the lesbophobic repertoire perpetuates practices of symbolic violence and maintains aggressive discourses of rejection.
In the following article I seek to investigate a hitherto forgotten but emerging aspect of Latin American critical and cultural studies, namely, the migration and diaspora of transgender youth and transvestites from the Southern Cone to the United States for artistic, creative and humanitarian purposes. I say forgotten inasmuch as the sensitivities experienced by the trans prefix were, in the beginning, discarded from the queer or sexual dissidence theories; and I point to it as emerging insofar as the new critical perspectives promoted by emerging researchers have set their sights on such bodies and subjects as true epistemes of contemporary cultural endeavor. The thesis states that transgender sensitivities are fundamental to understand the relationship between the national post-dictatorial period and the cultural productions of the 1990s. The works that artists and writers such as Germán Bobe, Iván Monalisa Ojeda and Francisco Copello carried out during those years allowed us to understand an entire Chilean and Latin American scene of young creators who fought dictatorships and canons with their bodies always accompanied by the sign of sexual dissidence
The constant and significant presence of queer motifs in Latin American literature of the last thirty years should not be glossed over. Of course, the recruiting of yet another imported label, trafficked from the geographical, economic and academic “North” into a third-world context should not be taken for granted; and it will also be important to vigilate over the modes and circumstances of a theoretical landing which will have to negotiate its ambiguous conquests with the specificities of a peripheral context. However, it is just as important to signal that the theory’s antinormative and destabilizing potential seems to find the “natural” context in which to unfold in a continent which, from a number of viewpoints, in the overlapping of its manifold wildcards, emerges into the history of Modernity without being able to fully dwell in any of its categories. In Latin America queer becomes the emblematic catalyst of the locally active difference in all possible inflections, the ideal trigger of the apocryphal versions of the apparently already written story of the plausible relationships between bodies and territories, versions which pour forth not only from the incongruencies of gender and sexuality, but also from the ethnic, sociopolitical, and epistemic discontinuity which is written in characters of blood in the mind-blowing chronicle of these lands. So that it comes to work as a powerful mechanism of contemporary interpellation of the old and deceitful story of “Latin American identity”.
