"O meu estranho mundo secreto”: identidade lésbica e homoerotismo em Eu sou uma lésbica, de Cassandra Rios

Abstract

This work aims to make a critical reading of the representations of the lesbian woman in the novel I am a lesbian (1980), by the São Paulo writer Cassandra Rios, whose works were considered pornographic and censored during the Brazilian military regime. When we follow the memories of the protagonist Flávia, we observe a series of questions about her identity and her desires for other women, which highlights issues related to female homoeroticism, prejudice and discrimination against lesbian women in a markedly social-historical context repressive, especially in relation to identities considered as non-hegemonic. To achieve our goals in reading Rios’s novel, we used the theoretical and critical concepts of George Bataille (1987), Judith Butler (2003), Tânia Navarro-Swain (2004), Adriane Piovezan (2005, Isabela Nóbrega (2015), and Anderson Guimarães (2013), among others, that enabled us to have a more accurate understanding of the representations of lesbian women in Cassandra Rios’ literature.