Ditadura civil militar brasileira e a biopolítica cisheteronormativa da censura no teatro soteropolitano (1968 – 1988)

Abstract

The thesis analyzes the phenomenon of moral censorship as a regulatory activity of artistic production and the population during the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship in the city of Salvador. Examining news published in newspapers in the capital of Bahia, interviews with actors/actresses and playwrights from Salvador and official documents issued by the Department of Censorship and Public Entertainment (DCDP), such as censors' reports, license permits, texts of plays with inscriptions made by censorship technicians, laws and decrees issued by the Brazilian government between the years 1968 to 1988, the thesis highlights the use of censorship technology as an apparatus of biopolitics (FOUCAULT, 2008) of the dictatorial State in the reiteration of cisheteronormativity (BUTLER, 2001; VERGEUIRO, 2016) and in the regulation of the condition for the appearance of representations of dissident sex and gender lives. To this end, the thesis shows how the pre-1964 context, with the profusion of moral panic, established the rhetoric in defense of morals and families and the notion of a stabilized, safe and unitary social order, which resulted in the use of censorship technology as a means of regulating sexual and gender dissidence by the civil-military dictatorial regime. The thesis is that moral censorship played a key political role in the reiteration of cisheteronormativity by regulating the conditions for the appearance and sayability of sexual and gender dissidence, such as homosexuals and transvestites, in texts from Salvadoran shows. In the end, the thesis criticizes the concept of political theater and suggests the analytical category of artivism as capable of generating new discursive arrangements to understand the resistances carried out by producers, artists and shows that sought to make visible non cisheterocentric forms of life during the dictatorial regime.