The paper seeks to analyze the limits of the concept of empowerment within HIV/Aids prevention among young gay and bisexual men in Brazil. It uses propositions of an official document of the Ministry of Health of Brazil, in form of a methodological handbook for prevention. It employs empowerment as the main theoretical and methodological tool to conduct prevention actions in this population, and the text develops a conceptual discussion on the possibilities for its implementation. The analysis draws on the post-structuralist framework to examine the ways through which the concept is described and used in the activities that are suggested by the manual. The analyses indicate that empowerment is a strategy that functions within a wide rationality of government of bodies and autonomies of the targeted individuals through their insertion in communities, for the concept becomes a technology of regulation of sexual practices and countable measurement of subjectivity. The analyses also explore notions of risk and accountability which circumscribe the community of young gay and bisexual men. Finally, the analyses underline the impasses that may be generated by the insertion of empowerment within the Brazilian HIV/Aids activism without previous critical review of the ways it is conceived and used.
power; health promotion; public health practice; HIV/Aids