Love, masculinities and resistance: a queer reading

Abstract

The strangeness, the abnormal, the diverse expressions of gender and the abject that characterize queer, insofar as they enable new perspectives, above all because of the plurality of identities that reveal, challenge heteronormativity, put in crisis the supposed masculine virile identity and cause to be suspicious of norms, orders and what corresponds to them. Based on queer theory, alongside these possibilities of thought, the purpose of this paper is to present some reflections on the love experience lived by the adolescents Camilo and Cosme, narrated in the novel O amor dos homens avulsos, by the writer Victor Heringer, published in 2016. The love experience lived between the characters, when read from the perspective of queer strangeness, proves to be libertarian, even though it faces brutalities resulting from the prejudices constructed and perpetrated by the heteronormative logic. The love present in the narrative is taken as a practice of resistance to heterosexual hegemony, especially in an oppressive political context, and as a fight against toxic masculinity, a source of dehumanization.