Love without Veil or Garland
A Critical Reading of the Judgment on Same-Sex Civil Unions in Brazil
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14296/ac.v7i1.5840Abstract
This article offers a critical reading of the 2011 Brazilian Supreme Federal Court decision recognizing same-sex civil unions as family units. While celebrated as a landmark for sexual minorities’ rights, the judgment operates through an affective grammar that disciplines as much as it includes. Drawing on critical perspectives on law and sexuality, I argue that the decision mobilizes a heteronormative framework of conjugality, in which the very term “homoaffective subject” functions to produce a domesticated and respectable figure, while silencing more radical forms of kinship, desire, and care. The article advances the notion of “affective coloniality” as a key to understanding the normative costs of recognition.
Keywords: same-sex civil union; Brazilian constitutional law; legal recognition; homoaffective; affective colonization.
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