Policy and resistance in the homosexual nightlife

Abstract

This study aimed to explore the political power of nighttime leisure in São Paulo created for consumers of dissident sexuality and gender, through an ethnography. Daily life was taken as an analytical key, providing timely dialogues between Occupational Therapy and social/human sciences about the activities in their entirety. Therefore, it was sought to investigate meanings that term resistance gains in this context and, secondly, to approach the political-body dimension, addressing affective-sexual practices within some parties. The LGBT pop scene investigated was composed of five parties, three of them in the Augusta region and two in Barra Funda. All places were markedly juvenile, frequented by male homosexuals, linked to the pop style. We used interviews with DJs and party producers and other "night people", in addition to the ethnographic data. The data analysis based on Cultural Studies, Michel Foucault, and Giorgio Agamben. The term "resistance" gains contingency meanings related to the dispute of gender representations on the media stages. The visibility of the bodies of dissenting sexuality transcends the symbolic domain of social esteem and reinforces the notion of gender as a public political phenomenon. In addition, heterotopic practices of an affective-sexual nature in the darkroom may reveal the political power by the suspension of devices producing sociosexual hierarchies.