“Sapphists and Tribades”

FERNANDA MOLINA

Early Modern Bodies

Routledge

Lugar: London; Año: 2021;

My concern in this chapter is to approach the problem of identity/identities not so much inorder to determine whether women existed during the early modern period who wererecognized and/or recognized themselves as a collective grouping on the basis of their(homo) sexual desires, with their own spaces of sociability, cooperative relationships, codesof communication, and so on, as to explore the process of the creation of homoeroticsubjectivities based on physical, bodily experiences. The body, in both its anatomical andsymbolic dimensions, constituted a territory for sexual exploration that gave rise to processesof subjectivization. My intention is to observe the ways in which these subjectivities,articulated through gender, were generated, reflecting the effects of institutional practices andlanguage regarding the body, but also the physical practices through which desiring subjectsarticulated their sexuality, pleasures, and desires. For this purpose I will survey doctrinalsources, such as legal, theological, and medical treatises that made pronouncements uponaffection and sexual practices between women, as well as the judicial practices that repressedthem. Even when the latter were provisions directed towards the control of sexual behaviour,the disciplining of the body, the reinforcement of heteronormativity, and the production andreproduction of particular ideas of gender, they still represent a heuristic tool that can lead uscloser to the experience of the accused. This study will focus fundamentally on the Hispanicworld, although it will also engage in a dialogue with other European contexts of the sameperiod.