Ubiquitous Emotions and the Construction of the Homosexual Subject During the Criminalization of Homosexual Sex in Urban Colombia, 1936-1980

Authors

Hector Andres Valero Lopez, Florida International UniversityFollow

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Major/Program

History

First Advisor's Name

Victor Uribe

First Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Chair

Second Advisor's Name

Bianca Premo

Second Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Third Advisor's Name

Vrushali Patil

Third Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Fourth Advisor's Name

Julio Capo Jr.

Fourth Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Keywords

History of emotions, History of homosexuality, Criminal Law, Sensationalist press, Critical Discourse Analysis, Colombia

Date of Defense

6-28-2023

Abstract

The history of homosexuality in Latin America has been traditionally discussed in connection to urbanization, industrialization, and immigration. Although primary sources are pervasively filled with emotional utterances, historians have not examined the role of emotions in the construction of the homosexual subject during the Latin American twentieth century. This dissertation aims to fill this void.

From a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective and by drawing from the conceptual tools from the field of the history of emotions, this dissertation examines the political consequences of the way in which legal, socio-clinical, and sensationalist journalistic discourses used emotional utterances when describing/producing the new homosexual subject. This dissertation concludes that despite their divergences, all these discourses ended up constructing bodies of knowledge—scientific, legal, and popular—that naturalized homosexuals’ unequal social relationships and marginal identity. At the same time, this dissertation finds that, while sensationalist discourses had more stability and were based on legal positivism, socio-clinical and legal discourses had an inverse development relative to one another. Legal discourses started to frame homosexuality as a social danger in 1936 but, by 1980, juridical ideas took homosexuality as an individual issue. Socio-clinical discourses followed the inverse path.

This dissertation’s chronological focus examines the years between 1936 and 1980, a period when the Colombian Criminal Code outlawed homosexual practices between consenting adults. This work analyzes Bogotá, Medellín, and Cali—Colombia’s three most important cities at the time. Finally, this dissertation’s primary sources include legal manuals, scientific articles, monographs of forensic medicine, sensationalist newspapers, and medical records.

Overall, this dissertation argues that emotions played a critical role in the formation of the homosexual subject. For scientific, legal, and popular sectors, it was impossible to produce and to understand ideas about homosexuality and homosexual men without implicitly or explicitly using emotions.

Identifier

FIDC011193

ORCID

0009-0003-0747-8090

Recommended Citation

Valero Lopez, Hector Andres, "Ubiquitous Emotions and the Construction of the Homosexual Subject During the Criminalization of Homosexual Sex in Urban Colombia, 1936-1980" (2023). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 5373.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/5373