ABSTRACT
However, the original framing has installed the idea that powerful, publicly speaking up and acting subjects – that is, political subjects – are suspect. We can witness here a particular dynamic: the more sexual an issue or a subject appears to be, the more ‘political’ it is. Yet such actions are political in a specific and stigmatised way: considered as particular, interest based and conflictive. Inversely, the more desexualised an issue or a subject appears to be, the more apolitical it is: considered as impersonal, value or interest free and in harmony with the social order. The challenge, therefore, lies in how to sexualise and politicise issues and subjects in a democratic way, and in the direction of erotic justice. If we rethink sexuality and politics dialectically, it is possible to identify three key moments in recent Latin American history. First, the widespread use of health discourse as a vehicle for the promotion of sexual rights. Second, the recognition of health discourse as an obstacle to the evolution of sexual rights. Third, the questioning of both health and rights languages as forms of depoliticisation of sexuality practices, parallel to the recognition of sexuality practices as inherently conflictive, and as impossible to reduce to the rational, the public and the normative.1
