Jazz, maravilha, baratos e afins : socialidade e política entre homossexuais em Cuiabá e Várzea Grande nos anos 1980

Abstract

In the search for remnants of a history that is neither in books nor in museums, I embark on writing this dissertation with the aim of uncovering the memories of the homosexual population that lived in Cuiabá and Várzea Grande, and analyzing the relationships between cultural practices and political organization within a community that experienced the vibrant atmosphere of the 1980s. To achieve this, I draw upon Oral History (Trebitsch, 1994), using the technique of semi-structured interviews to craft an analysis based on the concepts of sociality (Maffesoli, 1998), the politics of subjectivity (Guattari, 1981), and also to propose an exhibition of the 'subterranean memories' of these interviewees, aiming to build new documents about the history of this population in two of the largest cities in Mato Grosso. In this process, we combine the writings of Halbwachs (1990) and Pollak (1989), from the perspective of rescuing individual and collective memory. With these concepts in mind, the aim is to answer the following question: What is the relationship between everyday sociality and political activity among homosexuals in Cuiabá and Várzea Grande in the 1980s? To reach a conclusion, documentary sources (printed newspapers from the period) already collected during the exploratory phase of the research will be used, in addition to interviews with six gay men who lived in both cities during the aforementioned decade. Based on these elements, we will identify the cultural practices of the interviewees and how they allowed for the formation of a gay sociability; locate which actions could be understood as manifestations of the politics of subjectivity; as well as the process of presenting the memories of this population.