O rol dos perversos: homossexualidade masculina e Psiquiatria na Bahia do Século XIX (1880-1900)

Abstract

The present doctoral dissertation intends to answer two questions and their unfoldings. First, it investigates how discourses about same-sex eroticism among men, present in medical works written in Bahia in the 1890s, began to treat these behaviors as the product of certain bodies, characterized as intrinsically anomalous; second, how Psychiatry provided instruments and vocabulary to think distinctions between beings based on a non-heterocentered eroticism, during the process of establishment and consolidation of this field of medical knowledge in the Bahia Medical College. More than abstract elaborations, concepts such as “homo-sexual”, “homo-sexuality”, “sexual inversion”, and “androphilism”, allowed the thematization of social tensions in urban Brazil in the late 1880s and 1890s. Derived from the previous questions, it is intended to understand how discourses inspired by Psychiatry about subjects who engaged in same sex eroticism were articulated with others, involving the distinctions between genders, and the alleged natural hierarchies between human races. Such a connection would allow us to discuss individual erotic-affective practices considered dissident by highlighting their repercussions at the social level. To carry out this study, research was made on the doctoral dissertations sustained by the finalists of the medical course at the Bahia Medical College between 1880 and 1900, who dealt with the theme either directly or tangentially, making use of concepts and notions elaborated by Psychiatry. This documental corpus was supplemented by specialized periodicals, literature, and texts from other fields of knowledge that share common themes with the subjects of these works. The analysis is anchored mainly in a dialogue with historiography in the field of History of Medicine and Psychiatry in the 19th century, as well as with studies on the History of Homosexuality in the 1800s, particularly in Bahia. When pertinent was dialogue with historiography concerning the production of race as a scientific issue in Brazil of the period was also stablished.