Theoretical and political debates about families in Uruguay:

connections between the seventies and the present

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to address connections between family, politics, and subjectivity in Uruguay, by connecting the 1970s scenario with current debates about families and their changes. How do the conditions of historical and social turbulence prevailing at that time actualize in the current debates? To this end, the changes in Uruguayan families in the 20th century are mentioned, and reference is also made to the current public policies around them. Likewise, it shows how we witness a robust conservative attack that attacks the conquest of rights and
finds connections with the decade of the seventies. Through a historiographic perspective in Argentina, we observe coincidences with the discourses by the State and the Church about family. On the one hand, moralization processes are identified through the defense of a heteronormative model of nuclear family, and on the other hand, the subjective transformation of women where inequalities and violence are made visible through the gender category. The essay concludes that the movements initiated within families have no turning back and that families do not preexist to their standardization but are produced within the new amorous compositions between genders and generations. The work shows how the field of families is not neutral ground but eminently political, space
of early subjectivation, and privileged space where new collective realities are created and expressed.