“Homophobia”: A Dialogical-Semiotic Approach

Abstract

The target article from Madureira—The psychological basis of homophobia: Construction of a cultural barrier—is a very rich theoretical proposal, drawing on from different fields, from cultural psychology to the dialogical theories of the self. Despite its richness, in this commentary we will question some of its implicit and explicit assumptions. It seems to us that the author treats “homophobia” as a hegemonic cultural discourse, ignoring that a mixture of opposing discourses are nowadays available at a cultural level towards lesbians and gays, with important consequences at interpersonal and intrapersonal level. In addition, the very concept of “homophobia” (with its implicit assumptions from the field of psychopathology: “phobia”) suggests a very static and intrapersonal way of understanding the diversity of the social mechanisms that underlie sexual prejudice. The way the author describes and tries to clarify the semiotic processes implied in the construction of the interpersonal and psychological barrier involved in “homophobia”, in our opinion, also needs to be further developed. The use of the opposition between HEIMWEH and FERNWEH in the explanation of the barrier it is not, from our view, a description of a (semiotic) process but more a description of an outcome. In order to overcome these problems, we suggest some possible ways to approach this phenomenon from a semiotic and dialogical perspective.