Lo sexual es político: invectiva y potencia performativa del insulto en Catulo

Abstract

In the catulluian corpus, both invective and flagiatio seem to have a common substrate: the criminal behaviors that are denounced in the poems (robberies of all kinds and seriousness) seem to be the consequence of what becomes the true focus of the poems: the condemnatory operation of passivity, excess and adultery that design censurable masculinity profiles for opposing the guiding principles of Roman virtus. Thereby, the performative power of the insult reveals the sexual protocol and the sex/gender norms proper to that era’s matrix of cultural intelligibility. The reading that we propose addresses these poems as political acts of social nomination which, in denouncing displaced ethical constructions that violate traditional values, simultaneously create an ideal profile of citizen and images of abjection that function as their reverse.