A tríplice semântica do gênero: tensões e disputas na teoria feminista

Abstract

Why is the word “gender” used by various authors with multiple meanings, even when the semantics they attribute to it is virtually the same one from words like “women” or “sex” or even concepts like “social relations of sex” (rapports sociaux de sexe), if such categories were already effectively used before the formulation of gender as a concept? What we call here the triple semantics of the genre must be understood based on its articulation with the conditions of its production and a wellfounded analysis of its diffusion and its current position in the Social Sciences and Humanities. Some questions are crucial for understanding the circulation, diffusion and reception of the concept of gender, as well as for analyzing possible theoretical, conceptual and institutional consequences of the elaboration and circulation of this concept – both in the academic field and in its intersections with the field political. The mapping proposed here as a starting point allows us to base future analyzes on the international circulation of the concept of gender and the formation of Gender, Feminist and Women's Studies itself. It indicates, together with the proposal to understand the uses of “gender” as a semantic triple, the need for a theoretical-empirical articulation that allows elucidating not only social, but also epistemic processes involved in the circulation and, above all, in the formation of a concept as being the dominant way of approaching a given social or sociological problem. If, on the one hand, this article focused on the variation in uses and approaches that produce different meanings for a term that is originally a concept; on the other hand, we indicate, as a conclusion, five fundamental points in the search for a more in-depth contextualization of the processes through which this variation came to exist. It is only, therefore, in the articulation of these two analytical dimensions, that there can be a slightly more complete contribution to the understanding of Social Sciences and Humanities about processes of this nature.