Provocations for a sociology of sexuality: Systems, language, love

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to think, with from a Sociology of Sexuality, the epistemological provocations proposed by Judith Butler and Niklas Luhmann, mainly the assumptions that the subject does not exist (yet comes into existence through language) and that society exists apart from the subject (being composed of communications). The article discusses how Sociology thought the sexed body, passing through the polarization between essentialists and constructionists, until recent attempts of synthesis between these poles, illustrated by a topology based on the lacanian Mobius strip. The article proposes to illustrate the importance given to language in the constitution of bodies, sexuality and the value of “human”, from the example of “feral children” and the Bluterian concept of “abject”. Finally, we consider Love from a systemic perspective, with contributions from Neuroscience, concluding that Sociology of Sexuality benefits from the Luhmannian system: the subject becomes more autonomous in front of his social, psychological and biological contexts and sexuality systems. In this scenario, not only the subject becomes central, since his own physical body is the intersection of social, psychological and biological systems, but also human sexuality becomes increasingly autonomous, aestheticized, atomized into a matter of individual choice with political, spatial, bodily and social repercussions.