A lampion lights the corners of literature

Abstract

This paper approaches the Brazilian cis-straight-military dictatorship (1964-1988) as represented in the homosexual newspaper Lampião da Esquina (Corner Lampion, 1978-1981), reflecting on the representation of sexual policies adopted by the Brazilian dictatorial regime of 1964. The objective is to present the socio-political profile of the literary column published in that newspaper, in order to demonstrate the relevance of researches on newspaper literature in dictatorial governments. First, I contextualize the creation of Lampion, presenting it as a possible rupture of the established canon through its literary column, since it tensioned the “universal” reference regime: cis-straight, urban, bourgeois, Christian, white man. Then, I analyze the particularities of literary texts published in newspapers, aiming to highlight their heterogeneity and analytical-interpretative specificity. After a detailed description of its literary column, I interpret the historicity and the ethical-aesthetic sensitivity that constitute these texts as the LGBT+ resistance to the dictatorial regime, since the relation between dictatorship and “homosexualities”, I believe, should be read with a theoretical-conceptual foundation capable of showing the intensification, by the regime, of the symbolic practices of production of bodies in reference to cis-heteronormativity.