Poppers uses and homoeroticism: towards a queer genealogy of the pharmacosexual regime

Different studies have shown that poppers users in sexual contexts use this antianginal as an anal dilator. From the risk paradigm, the socio-medical discourse has traced a regime of truth; that men who have sex with men (MSM) users of the substance are at risk. This is articulated around pharmacosexual essentialism, the medicalization of sex and famacologicism, placing them in a smooth, apolitical and culturally threatening social space, thus omitting their constituent and agential character. From a critical and transdisciplinary position, we investigate other possibilities, starting from a productive hypothesis of power associated with the pharmacosexual assemblage. We problematize the use of poppers in relation to the body and pleasure as a counter-knowledge dislocated from the sexual function. We argue that poppers act as a technological artifact that assists not only the denaturalization of bodily limits, but also a pharmacopolitical counter-fiction as a transitive space from which it is possible to contest the modern pharmacosexual regime.