Casamento homoafetivo no Brasil: gênese de um novo discurso

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the vote of the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court‟s Justice Ayres Britto, on the possibility of recognition of stable union and marriage between same-sex partners. The work is theoretically grounded in the fields of Law, especially Family Law, and French Discourse Analysis, as formulated by Michel Pêcheux. It is a look into the functioning of a discourse which has determined the breakthrough of a new practice, of a new perspective of social coexistence, in the light of Law, between and with people with a homoaffective sexual orientation. The development of the concept of discursive memory, as well as the peculiar way the decision works as a discursive event, make it possible to catch a glimpse of new memory network around homoaffectivity. The theme of the present study – the affective relationship between people of the same sex – has been deleted by the collectivity, the culture, the religious tradition. This deletion has reflected, over the centuries, in Western culture, including language – which did not even have names without pejorative connotations, such as that which permeates the term homossexualism, for instance. This thesis deals with the transformation of a socially stabilized and legitimized discourse by institutions (a normative discourse) into a hitherto apocryphal and unrecognized one, in relation to the theme of stable union and homoaffective marriage. The rupture provided by the decision inaugurates a new institutional discourse that offers the possibility of a new legal practice. The confluence of the event (the trial) with a memory (the affective and supportive memory towards the homoaffective people) and with history grants the conclusion that the decision of the Federal Supreme Court analyzed here, for all its consequences – among them, establishing new memory networks – has configured a Discursive Event with significant repercussions in Brazilian society.