Masculinidades debaixo de fogo: homossocialidade e homossexualidade na guerra colonial (1961-1974)

  • António Fernando Cascais Universidade Nova de Lisboa/Instituto de Comunicação da Nova
Keywords: Masculinities, homosociality, homosexuality, Portugal, colonial war

Abstract

The experience of homosexuality among Portuguese troops engaged in the colonial wars in Africa (1961-1974) appears primarily in those rare works that do not defend the colonial conflict nor shy away from crises of masculinity. Conversely, works apologetic of Portuguese colonialism are almost exclusively homophobic. In texts that narrate the colonial experience of openly gay writers, such references arise indirectly and in the background. Generally focused on the conflicts and traumas of young soldiers, allusions to homosexual experience negotiate a tension between surrender and self-defensive resistance. That this tension is normally resolved in favor of the latter shows how resistance was not a subversion of heteronormative masculinity; rather, it contributed to the repression of its crisis. The result is a reinforcement of the open homophobia encoded in the revolutionary ideals that led to the events of April 25, 1974.

Author Biography

António Fernando Cascais, Universidade Nova de Lisboa/Instituto de Comunicação da Nova

António Fernando Cascais is the editor of O vírus-cinema: cinema queer e VIH/sida (2018); Hospital Miguel Bombarda 1968: fotografias de José Fontes (2016); Queer Film and Culture (2014); Olhares sobre a cultura visual da medicina em Portugal (2014); Lei, segurança, disciplina: trinta anos depois de Vigiar e punir de Michel Foucault (2009); Indisciplinar a teoria (2004); A sida por um fio (1997), and issues 38 (“Mediação dos saberes,” 2007), 33 (“Corpo, técnica, subjectividades,” 2004), and 19 (“Michel Foucault: uma analítica da experiência,” 1994), of the Revista de Comunicação e Linguagens.

Published
2019-06-18