Towards an Entrepreneurial Ethics of Desire?

This article aims to reflect on how changes in digital sociability practices influence on the affective and sexual relationships among gay men in Northeast Brazil. We argue some of these changes are associated with an entrepreneurial ethics of desire, which is a set of desiring and sociability practices influenced by neoliberal imperatives, such as free competition, high selectiveness, meritocracy, economic rationale, utilitarianism, and self-entrepreneurship. In a mediatised reality under platform capitalism, we wonder: by taking on market-oriented practices, how do individuals constitute themselves as differentiated desiring subjects? We seek to elucidate this point by analysing seven in-depth interviews conducted with gay men whose affective-sexual trajectories have been impacted by communication technologies’ transformations in the last three decades. All respondents were gay men between 25-34 years old, residents in Recife’s metropolitan area and were contacted via Grindr. Focused on cultural scripts for sex mediated by digital media and on self-presentation in profiles, we investigate how these individuals negotiate homoerotic sociabilities simultaneously on different social platforms. In an attempt to constitute themselves as “desirable” subjects in digital spheres, these individuals experience several tensions that are triggered by social markers of desire, such as race, class, gender performativity and physicality. Based on an intersectional approach, we aim to identify aspects of what we define as an entrepreneurial ethics of desire. We also propose to investigate whether, in terms of resistance and indiscipline, we can think of an alternative sexual-affective ethics for sociability and desiring practices – namely a queer ethics of desire.