(Un)archiving other lives: the infamies of the archive and the names of prostitution in Fortaleza in the first half of the 20th century

Abstract

This text is a historical analysis of the relationship between prostitution and the (in)disciplining of bodies and spaces in the urban configuration of the city of Fortaleza, capital of the state of Ceará, between the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th one. Throughout these decades, we’ve had emerged discourses and practices that made meretricious behaviour a problem for the urban, social, and moral organisation of the city, which also came to be described, thought about, and disputed from the point of view of sexual morality. This was a period in which attempts were made to regulate and control existences and behaviours considered inappropriate and deviant in relation to the norms in force and a model of what a civilised and modern society would be. The individuals and groups marked and stigmatised with the images and profiles of these ‘deviants’ were the objects of the attempts at repression and segregation that were being organised and institutionalised. It was in this context that the prostitute appeared as one of the figures in this gallery of social outcasts and prostitution began to be talked about and defined as a threat and a danger to the ‘good customs’ of the capital of Ceará.