Brokeback Mountain and everyone's secret: subjectivities in contemporary life

Abstract

This article consists of a discussion on homosexuality today based on a number of social and psychoanalytic aspects that have been theorized on elsewhere. Current aspects that affect perspectives and subjective positioning on the theme (the zeitgeist that characterizes contemporary life with its cultural and intellectual standards) are also referred to. Authors including Bauman (1998) and Jameson (1997) discuss social change as the generator of subjective changes such as fragmentation, superficiality, heterogeneous discourse and spatialization of time, as well as the end of unity and centrality that have been typical of the subjective organization of modernity. These new aspects come on stage before the backdrop of contemporary life, and call for subjective positions. It is in this perspective that homosexuality should be seen and focused on today, both theoretically and pragmatically. The current possibilities for the dissolution of identities constructed within the framework of modernity (identities seen as fixed and stereotyped armor of the personality) may indicate a broadened concept of mental health and well-being, and may free people for more creative and more enjoyable potentialities of fulfillment.