The queen and the general: a Foucaultian reading on Couto de Magalhães' intimate diary

Abstract

This article discusses the contributions of Michel Foucault's work for the understanding of the intimate registrations that the Brazilian general José Vieira Couto of Magalhães did on his own diary, written in its majority in London, in the second half of XIX century, time supposedly marked by the repressive rigidities of the Victorian morals. When registering his intimacy, their erotic hetero and homossexual dreams erotic in full details, as well as conducts and sexual passions considered to that time as diverted of the normality, the intimate diary of Couto of Magalhães constitutes a reinforcement of the critic to the "repressive hypothesis" developed by Foucault in his project of a history of the sexuality. On the other hand, the legitimacy of the intimate diaries is evidenced while research source in the social sciences.