Paper short abstract:

Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork on Spanish Pride celebrations and in-depth interviews on the enactment of masculinities, the present proposal aims to analyse the use/s of bodies as significant tools where desire, gender and sexuality are intertwined with identity, consumption and protest.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork on Spanish LGTB Pride Celebrations and in-depth interviews on the enactment of masculinities , we aim to analyze how bodies are used to signify and articulate different social experiences. Some of these experiences are related to the social meanings about sexuality and gender; some other experiences deal with the postmodern conceptualization of issues such as identities, desires, practice and consumption. Through the study of the different bodies that are exhibited and exposed in Pride celebrations in Spain, and the analysis of some interviews on men's bodies in relation to masculinity, we define a context of research in which bodies become sites of social and personal inscriptions and performances enacted through the use of different 'techniques' which we aim to unfold here. Among these techniques we will consider body complexion, hair, ornaments, dress, and the use of body for (and as) social protest.

We also wish to interrogate the methodological tools that can be used to carry on this type of investigation and learn how bodies can be apprehended, written and transcribed.