A new old story: On censorship and LGBT+ literature

Abstract

If, on the one hand, the book as an object has historically been wielded as an instrument of hegemonic power, on the other, given its plurality of contents, it corroborates the existence, not only fictional, of multiple identities. Against this premise, the censorship of LGBT+ content for children and teenagers gains new dimensions during the Bienal in Rio de Janeiro. In order to interpret the response of young audiences to the incident, its relationship with socio-cultural aspects and, mainly, to what extent the literary environment is reflected in those posts, we propose an analysis of semantic networks within the selected corpus. For the theoretical approach, our argument is supported by literary and book historiographies, cultural studies and gender studies. As a result, in short, we have analyzed four central themes, called clusters: Some users' desire to read the distributed content and the rejection on the part of non-supporters; the relationship between education and surveillance directed at children; the feeling of belonging within the LGBT + community; and Christian morality as an argument against the action.