O Priapo pático e as identidades eróticas desviantes em Roma: limites das subjetividades masculinas (séc. I a.C. – II d.C.)

Abstract

The pleasures in life are many, but perhaps none is more important than experiencing the pleasure of love and companionship. Discussing the forms of love is thus an increasingly necessary topic in contemporary society. Often, however, this discussion occurs in a way that disqualifies the other, carrying the burdensome and painful stigma of premature conceptualization. Therefore, the dissertation investigates how Roman men could confront the preconceived notions of Roman virilism through the emasculated representations of Priapus, especially between the first century BC and the second century AD. The work thus develops in the search for diversity in Priapus, a god of many faces, who is often remembered only for his enormous, erect, and deformed phallus, with which he defended his land and raped thieves. The methodology, therefore, is to understand the transformative potential in the conceptual and visual language intertwined in the figuration of Priapus (Pathic) in literature and material culture. In this way, the dissertation was able to perceive the possibility of the Roman man finding other ways to love and be loved, other forms of masculine sexual subjectivation, the "pathics erotic identities". Finally, the work discusses the urge for studies that present more flexible conceptions of sexual subjectivation in Antiquity and be attentive to the emergence of diversity, non-conformist erotic identities in their society. Above all, we perceive that remains open the investigation about how deviant sexual subjectivities reinterpreted cultural codes, social and political conventions, that, ultimately, inform male adequacy in the Roman public space. Thus, we aspire and suggest a new field of investigation on the fundamental protocols of non-conformist (pathic) existence in Antiquity.