ABSTRACT
Jair Bolsonaro, the unapologetically homophobic and ultraconservative Brazilian president, managed to emerge from the margins of the political system and gain electoral momentum during the impeachment hearing against President Dilma Rousseff in 2016. The hearing, which ultimately unseated the country’s first female president, epitomizes the current affective polarization of Brazil in which sexual dissidence plays an important role. This chapter discusses the politics of discourse, affect, and sexuality which propelled Bolsonaro and his far-right ideologies into greater political relief. To do so, I will focus on the occasion when Jean Wyllys, a human rights activist and the only openly gay member of congress at the time, spat at Bolsonaro. Wyllys’ misdemeanour caused a commotion in the country and was recontextualized in several contexts, such as memes, social media, op-eds, YouTube parodies, etc.
This chapter investigates the intense circulation of Wyllys’ actions and how it responds to and takes issue with the larger affective scenario in the country. I analyze the socio-semiotic life of Wyllys’ spit by tracking its textual trajectory with a view to discussing the performativity of disgust and the development of political (in)sensibilities with regard to gender and sexuality in contemporary Brazil.
