Rethinking intimacy: love, friendship and sexuality in three generations of queer women in Mexico City (1960-2010)

This dissertation investigates the transformation of intimacy in the lives of three generations of women participating in queer spaces in Mexico City, at a moment in which sexual citizenship is being redefined in Mexican society. More specifically, this research considers how the social organization, discourses and practices of intimacy have shifted for women participating in queer spaces in Mexico City since the 1960s. My study looks at how the emergence of these transcontinental debates intertwines with the new nationalist rhetoric that has proclaimed Mexico as a pluriethnic and multicultural (instead of mestizo) nation. After positioning these debates in processes of national identity and transnational dynamics, I explore through my ethnographic data, how gay and lesbian individuals in Mexico City have reconfigured their views on intimacy (i.e. love, friendship, sexuality) since the 1960s, and in particular in the midst of these changes on sexual citizenship. I focus particularly on women participating in queer spaces. I suggest that if we truly are to understand queer lives in Latin America, it is imperative to engage with discourses on intimacy produced through the State and other institutional actors and the ways in which these are experienced, rather than primarily centering our analysis on ontological questions as research on same-sex sexuality in Latin America and the Caribbean has continuously emphasized. My qualitative research is based on ethnographic fieldwork I conducted in Mexico City for 10 months in 2009-2010, including participant observation, 45 qualitative interviews and the review of newspapers of record. It is also influenced by seven intermittent years of everyday life in Mexico City since 1998 and a previous anthropological fieldwork research in 2000. Ultimately, my study contributes to the fields of the anthropology and sociology of intimacy, interdisciplinary studies on gender and sexuality in Latin America and notions of sexual citizenship, nationalism, space and place.Ph. D.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Anahi Russ