Alexander Pérez Álvarez
apereza1@unicartagena.edu.co
Universidad de Cartagena, Colombia
Abstract:
In this article, we reflect upon the ethnographic conditions to inquire on queerness in El Carmen de Bolívar, a town in the Colombian Caribbean, which was determined by a tightknit community mesh, daily religious practices, and local forms of moral regulation. Drawing upon PhD research work following situated ethnography and long-term fieldwork, we analyze how hearsay, party, body, affect, and writing participate all in the social production of intelligibility on sexual dissidences. This research goes beyond understanding the queer as a fixed identity or an experience exclusively marked by exclusion; it shows how these lives are informed between acknowledgement, surveillance, humor, and public presence. This article presents ethnography as a relational, affective practice, influenced by shared temporalities, silences, and contradictions linked to the territory. Through this territorial approach to the queer experience in the Colombian Caribbean, this article contributes to current debates on sexual dissidences across Latin America.
Keywords: situated ethnography, sexual dissidences, queer people, Colombian Caribbean, hearsay, party, subjectivation.
