Culture’s veil over androgyny: between the strange and the sublime

Abstract

This article presents results of the research “The Imagery Discourse of Androgyny: a conceptual, social and psychological perspective” that aimed to collect the impacts and meanings that the visual encounter with works of art, which portray androgyny, produces in the subjects. Following a methodology of focused group interviews, we present the works and conduct the online conversation wheel. In this discussion, we will work with the expressions and ideas that stood out in each group as a centripetal force to think about the affectations of the androgyny theme, elucidated from the stimulus of the artistic pieces presented in the focused group interviews. Thinking about the different possibilities of affections triggered in the face of art, the discussion includes the classic idea of ​​the beautiful and the sublime, and the innovations from the Freudian text, which involve discussions about the strange or unfamiliar and the ugly. Added to our discussion is an articulation between the beautiful/sublime with the notions of identification and belonging; as well as we assume the ugly/strange as connected to the perspective of subversion and unfamiliarity.