Abstract
As queer theory scholars have noted, around the world, governments use LGBT politics –whether anti-gay or pro-gay rights -- as a medium to advance other political projects. Gay politics become a national symbol tied to modernity, moral authority, and global belonging, often serving as a litmus test for a nation’s progressiveness. Within South America, Argentina stands out not only for its aggressively pro-LGBT policies but also for its exceptional racial politics—namely, the national self-image of “White Argentina,” a vision in which the country imagines itself as white and Eurocentric. This dissertation is an ethnographic exploration of Argentina’s racializing investments in LGBT politics and how these investments are creatively taken up by and unfold among cosmopolitan gay men. Told through the story of “Gay Argentines” and the institutions they inhabit, this dissertation examines eroticism as a relational medium of racecraft within Buenos Aires’ LGBT tourism. The fetishistic identity of the Gay Argentine, racialized and eroticized by gay tango, becomes a living, breathing nexus of white gay masculinity. Gay Argentines, white foreign tourists, and non-white immigrants enact a social dance of racial-sexual domination, with Gay Argentines as a fluid figure within this hierarchy. Gay Argentines are Othered whites who navigate racialized submission to white foreign tourists. At the same time, Gay Argentines are themselves agents of domination—dominating non-white bodies and performing the familiar script of white nationalism. Gay Argentines and the institutions they inhabit illustrate the erotic as political, and pleasure-seeking as the material, affective enactment of those politics. Institutions like the commercial hostel Lugar Gay and the LGBT Nomads tourist collective were founded by Gay Argentines and structured through eroticism. These spaces are contoured by the white national masculinities of “White Argentina” that Gay Argentines embody. Whereas the apoliticism of the leisure-class LGBT Nomads views pleasure as play, the gay refuge of Lugar Gay perceives pleasure as political—conceiving of the potential for the erotic as a transformative and generative force in gay men’s lives. This research illustrates the potential for the relational economies of queer erotics to function as a homonationalist medium for national and geopolitical concerns, while at the same time serving as a racial and gender dialogue for queer politics and of whose desires take center stage.
Committee Chair
Shanti Parikh
Committee Members
Bret Gustafson; Marlon Bailey; Rebecca Lester; William Acree
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Author's Department
Anthropology
Document Type
Dissertation
Date of Award
12-16-2025
Language
English (en)
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7936/x0pp-xk02
Author's ORCID
0000-0003-1857-6537
Recommended Citation
Vargas, Zeles, "The State Made Desire: Eroticism and Fetish Racecraft in Argentine LGBT Tourism" (2025). Arts & Sciences Theses and Dissertations. 3693.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.7936/x0pp-xk02