Bodies, Pleasures, and
Passions
Sexual Culture in Contemporary Brazil
Richard G. Parker With a new preface by the author
Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions
Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions Sexual Culture in Contemporary Brazil second
edition
With a new preace by the author
Richard G. Parker
Vanderbilt University Press Nashville
© 2009 by Richard G. Parker Originally published in 1991 by Beacon Press. Second edition published in 2009 by Vanderbilt University Press. All rights reserved 13 12 11 10 09 1 2 3 4 5 This book is printed on acid-ree paper. Manuactured in the United States o America Excerpts rom Gilberto Freyre, Casa-Grande e Senzala: Formação da Familía Brasileira sob o regime da Economia Patriarcal, 22d edition (Rio de Janeiro: Livraria José Olympio Editora, 1983), translated as The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development o Brazilian Civilization (New York, Alred A. Knop, 1956), are reprinted here by permission o Fundação Gilberto Freyre. Library o Congress Cat aloging-in-Publication Data Parker, Richard G. (Richard Guy), 1956– Bodies, pleasures, and passions : sexual culture in contemporary Brazil / Richard G. Parker ; With a new preace by the author. — 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical reerences and index. ISBN -1675-6 (pbk. : alk.ethics—Brazil. paper) 1. Sex978-0-8265 customs—Brazil. 2. Sexual 3. Sexual behavior surveys—Bra zil. I. Title. HQ18.B7P37 2009 306.70981—dc22 2009007459
For Vavá
Ah esse Brasil lindo e trigueiro, É o meu Brasil brasileiro, Terra de samba e pandeiro, Brasil, para mim . . . Brasil, para mim . . . [Ah that Brazil, dark and beautiul, Is my Brazilian Brazil, Land o samba and t ambourine, Brazil, or me . . . Brazil, or me . . . ] —Ary Barroso, “Aquarela do Brasil” (Watercolor o Brazil)
Contents
Preace
ix
Acknowledgments xxi A Note on Translations
xxiv
1
Introduction
2
Myths o Origin
3
Men and Women
4
Norms and Perversions
5 6
Bodies and Pleasures 111 The Carnivalization o the World
7
Conclusion
1 8 34 76
184
Appendix 1. Notes on Field Research
195
Appendix 2. Inormants Cited in the Text Notes
203
Bibliography Index
225
211
199
153
Preace
Since the srcinal publication o Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions: Sexual Culture in Contemporary Brazilin 1991, there has been a veritable explosion in social research on sexuality. From a relatively limited eld, dominated primarily by biomedical and sexological research, the study o sexuality has in recent years expanded rapidly across a wide range o social sciences. Signs o the eld’s coming o age are everywhere around us. New scholarly and scientic journals ocusing on sexuality, society, and culture have been launched. New research centers ocusing on diverse aspects o sexuality have been created. Interdisciplinary academic degree programs have been established. Respected oundations and research unding agencies have made sexuality a priority. Perhaps most notably, the volume o publications reporting sexuality ndings increased rapidly recentintellectual years. Whilecenters many o o theseresearch developments arehas concentrated in the in leading resource-rich societies, the trend is clearly global, with important new developments taking place as much in the South as in the North.
Sexual Meanings Two decades ago, the state o what has now come to be known as sexuality studies was very dierent indeed. Only a handul o empirical studies ocusing on the social and cultural dimensions o sexuality had been published, and the eld was almost completely dominated by what had been described as a kind o “essentialist” understanding o sexual lie (Weeks 1985). Within the parameters o this view, sex had been conceptualized as a kind o overpowering and universal drive: a orce residing within all human beings and shaping not only their personal lives but their social experience as well. As ix
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such, it had taken its place as one o the dening aspects o human existence, and had been held up as a kind o central key capable o unlocking the mysteries o our being. At a theoretical level, this view had tended to be developed in at least two major directions. On the one hand, in the writings o thinkers such as Havelock Ellis, Alred Kinsey, and others in the tradition that came to be associated with sexology, it had taken what could be described as a “naturalist” turn, and had ocused on the classication and categorization o sexual behavior as it exists “in nature” (Weeks 1981). On the other hand, despite the proound and potentially radical insights developed in Freud’s writings, in the early work o much Freudian psychoanalysis and o those writers infuenced by it, a no less essentialist perspective had tended to emphasize a central concern with the “psychodynamics” o the sexual “instinct” as it struggled to realize itsel in the prohibitions that society had erected against it. In both these directions, regardless o the many important dierences that one might cite to distinguish between them, there had nonetheless been an equally strong propensity to reduce the question o sex to some kind o underlying reality: a biological or psychological imperative that ultimately determines the meaning o even the most seemingly disparate belies and practices (Corrêa, Petchesky, and Parker 2008). While some orm o essentialism continued to dominate much o our thinking about sexual lie, however, this perspective began to come under increasing attack rom a variety o ronts over the course o the 1970s and the early 1980s. Whether in structuralist thought, Marxist theory, or some streams o psychoanalysis, this period was characterized by a new willingness call into question the “naturalness” o alloaspects human ence.toTraditional wisdom concerning the nature sexual o reality hadexperibegun to give way to a new concern with the social and cultural “constitution” or “construction” o sexual existence, particularly in the work o symbolic interactionists such as John Gagnon and William Simon (1973) and Ken Plummer (1982); in the rethinking o psychoanalysis on the part o writers such as Jacques Lacan (1977), Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1977), and Juliet Mitchell (1974); and in the historical analyses o thinkers such as Michel Foucault (1978), Jacques Donzelot (1978), and Jerey Weeks (1981, 1985). In opposition to the essentialist assumptions that had tended to dominate the analysis o sexual lie in Western societies, work emerging rom all three o these traditions clearly rejected the analysis o sex as a kind o autonomous phenomenon—as a orce o nature that the social order must somehow seek to stife or at least control. It suggested, on the contrary, that the sexual realm must be understood as a product o specic social, cultural, and historical processes. Taken together, such work thus began to open up an in-
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tellectual space or the analysis not so much o sex itsel—understood as a discrete phenomenon, a distinct object o knowledge—as o the various processes through which the sexual realm is culturally dened, delineated, and invested with meanings. The emergence o such a perspective resonated in a variety o ways with the views that had taken shape over an extended period in the social and cultural anthropology that I was trained in as a doctoral student in the early 1980s. Both blessed and plagued throughout its history by a strong sense o cultural relativism, the anthropological tradition had long emphasized the immense diversity o human sexual belies and customs (see, or example, Malinowski 1927, 1929; Westermark 1906). Infuenced by, and at the same time infuencing, the naturalist tendencies in essentialist thought, much o the earliest work in the Victorian anthropology o the late nineteenth century on the variability o human social and cultural lie gave central importance to the task o mapping out and describing the range o sexual behaviors ound among the dierent peoples o the earth (Goodland 1931). And in the early twentieth century, ollowing the emergence o Freudian thought, a new interest in the relations between culture and personality made possible an increasingly systematic exploration o the sociocultural actors that infuence the course and conceptualization o sexual lie in specic settings (Mead 1935, 1949, 1961). It was only during the 1970s and the 1980s that the remnants o essentialist thought began to give way within the eld o anthropology, rst in the emergence o a eminist perspective within the discipline and later in the increased application o insights drawn rom the realm o symbolic analysis, to as a more ully odeveloped concern with theorinterpretation o sexual lie not a product an immutable biological psychological nature but as a highly variable construct o particular cultural orms or congurations existing at specic points in time and space (Ortner and Whitehead 1981). Feminist thinking in anthropology was especially important in shaping the intellectual terrain or the kind o analysis that I sought to develop in Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions. Emerging most clearly in anthropology during the early 1970s, eminist perspectives had been developed in at least two especially important directions. On the one hand, eminist theory had given rise to a central concern with apparently universal gender inequality, and had sought, primarily through cross-cultural comparison, to lay bare the key social and cultural mechanisms through which such inequalities are produced and reproduced (MacCormack and Strathern 1980, Reiter 1975, Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974). On the other hand, this comparative emphasis on inequality had also led to an increasingly sophisticated analysis o
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concrete case studies and to the prolieration o an extensive literature on the anthropology o women in dierent societies (see, or example, Goodale 1971, Strathern 1972, Wol 1972). In both these directions, though, the question o sexuality had tended to be eclipsed by the related, but perhaps less highly charged, issues o gender and reproductive relations. Nonetheless, raising such issues had played a key role in leading to a growing recognition o what Gayle Rubin described as “sex/gender systems” as a legitimate and, indeed, even central ocus or anthropological analysis (Rubin 1975). The development o this eld, in turn, was advanced signicantly through the application o theoretical insights drawn rom the wider perspectives o symbolic analysis and interpretive theory (Dolgin, Kemnitzer, and Schneider 1977; Geertz 1973, 1983; Sahlins 1976). An initial concern with women’s status had increasingly developed into an all-encompassing examination o what Sherry Ortner and Harriet Whitehead (1981) described as the domain o “sexual meanings.” This ocus on sexual meanings depended on an analysis o the intersubjective symbolic orms and the associated structures o social organization that constitute the sexual realm in particular social and cultural contexts, and that invest gender and sexuality with subjective meaning or concrete social actors in specic settings. From this perspective, the sexual universe emerged as a undamentally ideological construct—one that needed to be situated or contextualized in relation to other social and cultural domains (such as religion, politics, kinship, etc.), and that, like these other domains, might be approached, ollowing the example o theorists such as Max Weber (1949), Paul Ricoeur (1971), or CliordItGeertz (1973), muchon as the one interpretation might interpret text. meanings that the is in this emphasis o asexual project that I hoped to take up in Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions can most clearly be situated. It was here, in my analysis, that the anthropological concern with questions o gender and reproduction could be linked to an ex amination o issues such as the dynamics o desire, the conceptualization o sexual pleasure, and the sociocultural organization o sexual practices themselves. It was here, as well, in the emphasis placed on the social and cultural constitution o such meanings, that the anthropological tradition, elaborated largely with reerence to non-Western societies, most clearly intersected with the recent developments that had taken place in the sociological, psychological, and historical examination o sexual lie as it maniests itsel in Western societies. Taken together, these perspectives combined to oer the possibility or a radically new understanding o sexual experience— an understanding ocused less on the search or natural universals than on an awareness o cultural diversity, based not on an assumed essence but on
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the detailed interpretation o dierence. This was the project that I sought to undertake in the eld research carried out in Brazil over the course o the 1980s, which resulted in the publication o Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions in both the United States and Brazil in 1991.1
Sexuality, Culture, and Power Within this context, and taking up this project through an analysis o Brazilian culture and its multiple perspectives on sexuality, I tried to make a number o key arguments inBodies, Pleasures, and Passions that while only partially theorized at the time, nonetheless oreshadowed some o the key issues that have become a central ocus or the eld o sexuality studies over the course o the past two decades. In republishing the book so many years later, it is worth highlighting these issues, as well as acknowledging some o the limitations rom which the book no doubt suered. Both the strengths and weaknesses are linked to my attempt to position sexuality (and its analysis in social research) at the interace between culture and power. Perhaps more than anything else,Bodies, Pleasures, and Passionswas an attempt to draw on Gagnon and Simon’s pioneering work on “sexual scripts” while adding dimensions o power that had been strangely absent in their interactionist sociology. Drawing on a theoretical tradition stretching back to the phenomenological thinking o writers such as Alred Schutz and George Herbert Mead, Gagnon and Simon had ocused on the ways in which the subjective signicance o sexual is built in thethe fowquestion o socialolie interaction with other social lie actors. Theyuplinked sexthrough to that o social inequality through the analysis o sexual deviance and gender dierence as social acts, suggesting that nothing in human lie should be seen as intrinsically sexual, but that virtually anything can be given sexual signicance within a determined social context. They also drew on the dramatistic perspective o writers such as Kenneth Burke and Erving Goman in developing the notion that sexual behavior is thus socially “scripted”—that meaningul sexual practices are produced according to socially determined scenarios, rules, and sanctions. They emphasized that scripts oer “a metaphor or conceptualizing the production o behavior within social lie” and provide a kind o “operating syntax, much as language is a precondition or speech” (Simon and Gagnon 1999, p. 29). They also drew a key analytic distinction between three dierent levels: what they called cultural scenarios, interpersonal scripts, and intra-psychic scripts. Gagnon and Simon dened cultural scenarios as a set o guidelines at
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the level o collective social lie—much as Geertz (1973), trained in a similar tradition, had articulated a vision o culture as a kind o model or blueprint both “o” and “or” reality. Yet as systems o signs and symbols that provide instructions or the practice o specic roles in relation to sexuality, these scenarios are generally too abstract to be applied in all circumstances—the possibility, or even probability, o a lack o congruence between abstract cultural scenarios and the concrete social situations could only be resolved by the creation o interpersonal scripts aimed at guiding behavior in specic contexts. The need to script behavior, and to anticipate the scripted behavior o others, creates a kind o internal rehearsal that Gagnon and Simon described as intra-psychic scripting: a kind o symbolic reorganization o reality allowing individual desires to be linked to social meanings. Within this ramework, emphasis is placed on the experience o desire not as an individual reality, but as part o the constitution o social existence: “Desire is not reducible to an appetite, a drive, an instinct; it does not create the sel, rather it is part o the process o the creation o the sel” (Simon and Gagnon 1999, p. 30). It was this reraming o desire rom an individual to a collective phenomenon that I tried to execute in Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions by ocusing on what I described as the cultural “rames o reerence” through which sexual meanings are organized—and in relation to which conficting and contrasting sexual scripts are produced and reproduced. By treating the complex stories that Brazilians tell about their ormation as a people and a nation as the result o racial miscegenation (with sexual intercourse quite literally a metaphor building), their supposedly “tropical” sensuality, and aboutor thenation complex culturalabout elaborations around the carnaval as an expression o a unique and particular way o approaching the regulation and transgression o sexual desires and practices, I sought to put fesh on the bones o Gagnon and Simon’s notion o “cultural scenarios,” and to treat sexuality as just as open to an anthropological reading o “models o” and “models or” the social construction o reality. By ocusing on the ways in which categories, classications, and congurations rom popular culture, religion, biomedicine, and law structure the possibilities or socially acceptable and unacceptable sexual perormances, I sought to document the ways in which the cultural systems and social practices that map out the sexual eld quite literally produce sexual subjectivities through processes o sexual socialization. Yet they also provide the raw materials through which dierent social actors both reproduce and reconstruct the sexual universe through their own perormances o interactive or interpersonal scripts as
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well as their intra-psychic elaboration o desire as part and parcel o their unique constructions o the sel. In ocusing on the ways in which these various processes have taken shape historically, and on how they are being articulated in contemporary Brazilian culture, I tried to highlight what I think has become one o the key themes o sexuality studies over the course o the past two decades: what can perhaps be best described in terms o the classic distinction in social theory between “structure” and “agency,” between structural actors such as class, ethnicity, or gender and the capacity o individual social persons to act independently or make choices in relation to their own practices. I sought also to document the ways in which the lack o congruence and consistency in the cultural systems that guide sexuality opens up options or the construction o interpersonal sexual scripts that ultimately require social actors to navigate within a range o (conscious or unconscious) choices. Yet I also aimed to add to Gagnon and Simon’s ramework a kind o Foucauldian emphasis on the ways in which these options are inevitably played out within conficting elds o power that condition the possibilities or choice, and channel them in specic ways and with specic limits. Understanding the constraints imposed by the intertwined relationship between culture and power, and the ways in which these constraints underlie the possibilities or deconstructing and reconstructing sexual experience in the real world, has lain at the heart o the development o recent social science thinking and research on sexuality, and I would like to think that Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions made an important contribution in this area. Finally, by ocusing on both popular orms as well asand keylaw, structures and discursive congurations suchcultural as religion, medicine, I was able to provide an early oray into what has become one o the most important areas o sexuality research under conditions o increasing globalization: a ocus on the permeability o cultural boundaries, and the role o social and cultural interpenetration in shaping ongoing processes o change that aect sexual experience as orceully as any other orm o human practice. While a more explicit ocus on globalization would not emerge in my own work until ater the publication o Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions (see, in particular, Parker 1999), one o the key concerns that was already present was a ocus on the ways in which the importation o new conceptual rameworks—such as biomedical understandings o sexuality—created shiting paradigms or the organization o sexual identities and the articulation o sexual practices. Building on groundbreaking work that had been carried out by Peter Fry
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(1982) on the historical construction o homosexuality in Brazil, I tried to expand this ramework in order to explore what might be described as the rationalization o sexual lie more broadly. I drew on the metaphor (rom the Brazilian modernist movement) o “anthropophagy,” or cannibalism— the modernist conceptualization o eeding on external cultural infuences, such as European art and literature, in order to “incorporate” them as part o Brazil’s own unique pattern o cultural production—to describe the ways in which cultural interpenetration aects conceptualizations o sexuality in modern Brazilian lie. While this process o interpenetration and usion would be more adequately theorized some years later (not specically in relation to sexuality, but in relation to cultural interpenetration more broadly) by Néstor García Canclini (1995) in his notion o “hybrid” cultures, inBodies, Pleasures, and Passions I emphasized the ways in which fows o ideas, images, people, and capital can shape changing patterns o sexual culture, thus oreshadowing a growing literature on sexuality and social change under conditions o intensiying globalization over the course o recent decades. While Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions made a number o important contributions and helped to open up new possibilities o uture research, it also suered rom a range o limitations. In particular, a number o important and valid criticisms have been made in relation to its broad coverage o sexual culture in Brazil. Perhaps the most typical criticism was that women were not given enough attention in a book that claims to be about Brazilian sexual culture broadly dened. I completely agree with this criticism, and think that the analysis really ocuses on a male-dominated discursive it isiathey male-dominated discourse women are certainlyuniverse—though conversant in, even may also elaborate theirthat own counterdiscourses. I I had been writing the book just a ew years later, I might very well have presented it as part o the new wave o masculinity studies (see Connell 1995, Adams and Savran 2002, Kimmel and Aronson 2003), since by virtue o being male, there is no question that I had ar more access to men and to men’s discourse than I had to women’s subjectivities and experiences. I also think that women researchers could do a better job o addressing women’s issues than I would be likely to do, and to the extent that this ailing in Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions helped push other researchers to take up these issues more adequately than I had done, this is perhaps one o the indirect accomplishments o seeking to push orward, even into territory that one is unable to adequately cover or explore.2 While it was a less common critique, much the same charge o omission could also be made in relation to the ocus o Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions being ar more urban than rural. Because this book is based on eld
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research carried out primarily (though not exclusively) in Rio de Janeiro, or it to make claims about some kind o national culture in a country as diverse and expansive as Brazil seems dicult to justiy, i not altogether unrealistic. Yet although I ully acknowledge the remarkable diversity o regional cultures, and the specicities o lie in rural Brazil, the primary ocus o the analysis developed in Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions was to try to describe a cultural grammar and a set o cultural rames—rames that I think the vast majority o Brazilians understand and are competent in, even i they have their own regional dialects and variable vocabularies. And while there are certainly important specicities related to rural communities and cultures in Brazil (as elsewhere) that may be especially important when the ocus is on sexuality and sexual practices, the act remains that over the past century the demography o the Brazilian population has become ar less rural and ar more urban. In the 1950s, only 36.2 percent o the Brazilian population was concentrated in urban centers. By the 1980s, when my own eld research began, this total had nearly doubled to 67.6 percent. By 1991, when Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions was rst published, the urban population had increased to 75.5 percent, and by 2000 (the date o the last national census), the urban population had reached 81.2 percent o the total Brazilian population (Minayo 1995, IBGE 2000). Brazil has become an overwhelmingly urban country, and urban cultures, values, and patterns shape and infuence the experience o even the rural population, through media as well as ongoing population movement. So although it is no doubt an exaggeration to suggest that the analysis developed in Bodies, Pleasures, succeeds capturing the regional and demographic diversityand o allPassions Brazilians and allin Brazilian cultures, I still think that it speaks to issues that are widely characteristic o contemporary Brazilian experience, and that are widely understood across the country as key aspects o Brazilian culture.3 Finally, a third major criticism o Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions was the act that the analysis ocused ar more on discourse than on action—on meanings as opposed to behaviors. Yet, as I have already made clear, this was my explicit intention, and is, I believe, what made the book new and dierent at the time, and what gives the book its continuing importance even today. My project was directly aimed at moving away rom the kinds o behavioral studies that had characterized sex research at least since the work o Kinsey and his colleagues (and that continues, even today, to dominate the investigation o sexuality in biomedical research). I wanted to build, in contrast, on the intellectual space that had been opened up in sociology, anthropology, and history during the 1970s and the 1980s, in seeking to explore the social
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construction o sexuality in ways that would emphasize questions o meaning—and that would link the investigation o sexual meanings to a uller understanding o the relationship between meaning and power. This goal, I think, was largely achieved, and the publication o Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions helped to usher in an important new wave o sexuality research in the social sciences that would continue to grow over the course o the 1990s, building a oundation or the eld o sexuality studies as we know it today.4 This growing body o work has especially taken o since roughly 2000, making sexuality research one o the most signicant “growth industries” in contemporary academic lie, and linking academia to advocacy and practice to an unusual and important degree. 5
Toward a Political Economy o Sexual Pleasure Although Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions made an important contribution to the early development o this eld o work, it is also worth asking what more recent developments in the eld it ailed to anticipate, and what its continued relevance may be in light o this. Over the course o the past two decades, we have seen a ar-reaching critique o essentialist assumptions concerning the nature o sexual lie, and the articulation o an increasingly sophisticated alternative ramework that ocuses on the social and cultural dimensions o sexual experience. Work on sexual cultures resulted in new insights into the organization o sexual identities and sexual communities, as well aswithin a growing concern by with the ways in which sexualand cultures are integrated and crosscut complex systems o power domination. This increasing engagement with issues o power, and with the relationship between culture and power, also orced research on sexuality to address a range o broader structural issues that, in interaction with culturally constituted systems o meaning, also play a key role in organizing the sexual eld and dening the possibilities that may be open to sexual subjects (Parker 2009). This, in turn, led to a new emphasis on seeking to move beyond a number o the theoretical limitations o exclusively cultural approaches to sexuality studies, in particular by raming social constructionism within political economy—and with a uller awareness o the act that transormations in socially constituted sexual and gender relations always refect broader political, economic, and cultural changes. The result has been an attempt to build a more grounded and politically relevant social constructionist theory, or what some have described as a new “political economy o the body” and its sexual pleasures, and research attention has thus come
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increasingly to ocus on the historical and political-economic analysis o structural actors such as gender power dierentials and sexual discrimination and oppression (see Lancaster and di Leonardo 1997, Parker 1999, Parker and Aggleton 2007, Corrêa, Petchesky, and Parker 2008). Within this ramework, research has increasingly ocused on what have been described as the orms o “structural violence” that determine the social vulnerability o both groups and individuals—and, in particular, on the synergistic eects o these actors with other orms o social inequality such as poverty and economic exploitation, racism and ethnic discrimination, and social exclusion more generally (see Farmer, Connors, and Simmons 1996; Farmer 2004; Parker 2001, 2009). Researchers have sought to more ully understand the ways in which these orms o structural violence are situated in historically constituted political and economic systems—systems in which processes and policies related to issues such as economic development, housing, labor, migration or immigration, health, education, and welare aect communities and cultures, shaping health and well-being as well as the possibilities or agency, sel-determination, and sexual reedom. While these advances have been important in moving the eld o sexuality research orward and increasing its relevance or a wide range o practical issues and social policy challenges, it is also worth thinking about some o the issues that may have been ignored as work along these lines has progressed, and about the contributions that Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions and work like it might be able to oer in this regard. In particular, it seems to me that the strong emphasis that we have placed on issues o culture, language, and discourse o may unintentionally have diverted attention away rom the importance certain kinds o “silence” (Parkerour 2009). I am struck by the act that in much recent sexuality research, the sexual practices that at some level are the point o departure or inquiry seem to have disappeared (perhaps in a kind o inverse relationship to the development o theoretical rames and methodological tools). Sexuality research has become more legitimate as a eld o academic research in recent years, but the price o increased legitimacy may have been the “sanitization” o subject matter and the loss o a certain kind o transgressive power that characterized some o the early work in this eld (see Corrêa, Petchesky, and Parker 2008, Parker 2009). It is important to link this concept back to some o the key questions o political economy discussed above. Power, in this eld as in others, has not only the capacity to throw some issues into sharp relie (inequalities, or example) or to trigger change (through resistance, or example), but also the potential to silence, and by silencing, to “invisibilize.” This recogni-
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tion is particularly important when it comes to understanding new orms o sexuality, emerging modes o sexual expression, and new ways o sexual relating—or example, the creation o certain epidemiological or behavioral categories, such as “men who have sex with men” (MSM), that supposedly highlight sexual practices but in act operate to erase cultural as well as sexual diversity, or the “LGBTTQI” alphabet soup that constructs “sexual minorities” by confating sexual identities rathe r than highlighting sexual dierences. Indeed, invisibility may well be the other side o silence, and we should never ignore their interactions and intersections (Corrêa, Petchesky, and Parker 2008). It is perhaps here, in relation to the urgent need to remember the importance o sex itsel in sexuality (and in sexuality research), that one o the most important contributions o Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions may be ound. All sexual cultures have their own erotic logics that play themselves out through an elaborate choreography. Meanings and identities must not only be understood in relation to power and domination but must also be articulated with material bodies and their sexual pleasures. It is this complex dance that Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions set out to achieve nearly two decades ago, and that continues to be perhaps its most lasting contribution today. Richard G. Parker, 2009
Acknowledgments
Over the course o a number o years, one acquires many debts. While it hardly erases such debts, it is at least possible to thank some o the individuals and institutions that have most directly helped to make this work possible. My eld research in Brazil has been supported at various points by grants rom the Tinker Foundation and the Center or Latin American Studies; by a Robert H. Lowie Scholarship rom the Department o Anthropology, a Traveling Fellowship in International Relations, and two Graduate Humanities Research grants, all rom the University o Caliornia, Berkeley; as well as by a Fulbright grant and two grants rom the Wenner-Gren Foundation or Anthropological Research. Rewriting and revision o the text, as well as ongoing elddoresearch, made possible by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa Estado dohave Rio been de Janeiro. During my initial periods o eld research in Brazil, I was ortunate to be associated with the Programa de Pós-Graduação em Antropologia Social at the Museu Nacional, and I would like to thank especially Roberto Da Matta, Anthony Seeger, and Gilberto Velho or helping to acilitate this aliation. The rst version o this text was written over a number o years at the University o Caliornia, Berkeley, and I owe a special debt to Alan Dundes, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, and Robert N. Bellah, or their insights, their kindness, and their patience. Nancy Scheper-Hughes, in particular, has continued to oer support and advice, which has been invaluable in the completion o the nal manuscript. A revised version o the manuscript was written in Rio de Janeiro, and I would like to thank Gilberto Velho o the Museu Nacional or helping me to begin this process. More recently, I owe special thanks to Benilton Bezerra Jr., Claudio J. Struchiner, Joel Birman, Jurandir Freire Costa, Maria Andrea xxi
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Loyola, and Sérgio Carrara, my colleagues in the Instituto de Medicina Social at the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, or the intellectual environment that they have oered me, and to Regina Marchese or her help on all manner o issues. While the list o riends and colleagues who have oered help and encouragement is too long to include in its entirety, I would particularly like to thank António J. C. Mazzi, Samina Bashirudden, Carmen Dora Guimarães, Herbert Daniel, Paul Kutsche, Stanley Brandes, Ondina Fachel Leal, Teresa Caldeira, Luiz Mott, Edward MacRae, Nancy Lutz, and Jackie Urla. I must also thank Peter Fry, whose work has done much to shape my own, and whose kindness and generosity during my early days in the eld helped to keep me going, and Gilbert Herdt, or his cogent advice and suggestions. Special thanks go, as well, to Rosemary Messick or her constant support and encouragement. She has shared Brazil with me in a way that I think no one else possibly could, and she has helped to shape not only my work, but my lie. Finally, thanks are hardly enough or Vagner de Almeida. More than anyone else, he opened Brazil up or me, taught me about mysel, and made it possible to go on. He has lived with this project rom beginning to end, and, in a very real sense, it is his as much as it is mine.
Postscript, 2009 Whileonthe o people I needed to thank acknowledge or their help thelist rst editionwhom o Bodies, Pleasures, andand Passions was a long one, and still holds true, ater nearly thirty years o working in and on Brazil, the debts that I have acquired along the way would constitute a book unto themselves were I to try to list them all here. To avoid testing the reader’s patience, and running the risk o leaving someone out unintentionally, I will rerain rom trying to name all o the many people who have taught me about Brazil, who have worked with me in trying to help to build the eld o sexuality research and advocacy there, and who helped to make my lie ar richer and happier than it would otherwise have been. I oer only thanks to all o them or welcoming me to their home, and or letting me share lie in Brazil or so many years. In preparing the second edition, I owe special thanks to Jonathan Garcia and Nancy Worthington or all their help, and or the incredible attention to detail in reviewing the text, correcting errors, and preparing the manuscript. I also want to thank Peter Aggleton or nding time in the midst o
Acknowledgments
an extremely busy schedule to review the Preace. Peter and I have written so much together over the course o the past two decades that I no longer know where his ideas leave o and mine begin—but I know that anything I write is better ater Peter has reviewed it, suggested editorial changes, and helped me to think it through. I am incredibly grateul or his riendship and his constant support. I also particularly want to thank Michael Ames rom Vanderbilt University Press or his interest in republishing Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions , and or his patience and support along the way. His interest in this and a range o other projects that colleagues and I have been involved in is greatly appreciated, and it has been a privilege to work with him. Last, but not least, it is necessary to reiterate my thanks to Vagner de Almeida. For more than twenty-ve years now, he has shared lie in Brazil and abroad, and has taught me not only how to build a bridge between cultures but how to construct a lie worth living.
xxiii
A Note on Translations Published English translations o srcinal Portuguese texts have been used whenever available and accurate. All other translations o both published texts and inormant quotations have been made by the author. Throughout the text, Portuguese terms and expressions have been maintained in reerring to key cultural categories, even in some instances where there seems to be a relatively straightorward English translation. This was a conscious decision, aimed not at making the reader’s task more dicult, the extent to which these categories but are at in underlining act highly complex cultural constructs whose ull range o meanings can never be completely translated.
xxiv
1 Introduction
This is a book about Brazilian sexual culture. It ocuses, above all else, on the question o diversity, and on the social and historical construction o sexual diversity in Brazilian culture. It is clearly situated, then, within a wider understanding o sexual lie that has begun to emerge over a number o years and within a variety o dierent disciplines: a sense that sexual experience, like all human experience, is less the result o some immutable human nature than the product o a complex set o social, cultural, and historical processes.1 More specically, it emerges rom a particular tradition within social and cultural anthropology—a tradition that ocuses on the symbolic dimensions o human experience, and that thus draws special attention to the intersubjective cultural orms that shape and structure the 2
subjective o the sexual in dierent social settings. Becauseexperience so much o bestlie anthropological work on sexual lie has been carried out within the context o relatively small-scale societies, however, questions o sexual diversity and dierence have oten emerged more clearly at the level o cross-cultural comparison than in the analysis o sexual lie within any particular society or culture (see Davis and Whitten 1987). Only very recently, as anthropologists have begun to turn their attention to more complex societies, have these questions been raised within specic settings (see, or example, Rubin 1984). Yet in turning to contemporary Brazil—a society that is nothing i not complex—such questions o diversity or dierence, within a wider whole, are central to any attempt to understand the character o sexual lie (see, or example, Parker 1985b, 1987, 1989a, 1989b). Sexual experience takes shape in Brazil, as in other prooundly complex societies, less in the singular than in the plural, and it is thus less accurate to speak o a single, unied system o sexual meanings in contemporary Brazilian culture than to think in terms o multiple subsystems, recurring yet 1
2
Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions
oten disparate patterns, conficting, and sometimes even contradictory, logics that have somehow managed to intertwine and interpenetrate within the abric o social lie (Parker 1989a). These subsystems lie at the heart o the Brazilian sexual universe and open up its most undamental possibilities. They oer what might be described as rames o reerence, culturally constituted perspectives or vantage points, that Brazilians can draw on in building up and interpreting their own experiences. They are thus essential to understanding the constitution o meaningul sexual realities in contemporary Brazilian lie. Because they coexist, and even intersect in the fow o daily lie, however, drawing lines between these dierent subsystems is by no means an easy task. On the contrary, any analytic distinction between them is necessarily tenuous—and at least somewhat articial. Still, in examining the symbolic congurations, the crosscutting logics, that emerge most clearly and seem to play the greatest roles in the constitution o daily lie, it is possible to make a number o useul distinctions that may open the way or urther analysis (see Parker 1989a). Traditionally, or example, the question o gender has dened the Brazilians’ interpretation o their own sexual practices (Parker 1985b). Situated within the context o a prooundly patriarchal social order, conceptions o male and emale, o masculinity and emininity, have provided the oundations upon which the world o sexual meanings has been built up in Brazil. Both in an understanding o a patriarchal past as well as in the inormal language o contemporary daily lie, perceived anatomical dierences have beenasgradually into aculturally dened notions o gender in Brazil, in every transormed society. Through range o symbolic orms that shape the human body and its practices, the distinctions between two sharply opposed anatomical types have been transormed into notions o masculinity and emininity that encode a particular system o cultural values. As culturally elaborated, these notions have become the basis or a complex system o symbolic domination, establishing hierarchical relationships not only between men and women in general, but between an even broader set o classicatory types which structure the traditional sexual landscape in Brazilian culture and, in so doing, oer Brazilians perhaps the single most important perspective or the interpretation and evaluation o their sexual universe. As infuential—and as widely held—as this gender system has been in Brazilian culture, however, it is but one perspective among a number o other possibilities or the organization o sexual lie. Constituted in relatively inormal terms within the discourse o olk or popular culture, it has been tied, traditionally, to a more ormal system o religious interdictions ocused
Introduction
not only on the body and its acts, but on the implications o these acts or the soul. From the early colonial period to the present day, a relatively ormal—i not always unbending—system o religious prohibitions has reinorced the divisions o gender while at the same time extending the implied signicance o sexual practices themselves, implicating them in a dierent symbolic economy, interrogating them in terms, not merely o their signicance in normal daily lie, but o their meaning or eternal lie. This emphasis on the internal implications o sexual acts, while clearly conrming the central assumptions o the ideology o gender, has thus provided a slightly dierent take, a slightly dierent angle, or the perception o the sexual universe. Its more ormal discourse, in turn, has gradually given way, through the processes o modernization that have rocked Brazilian lie since at least the late nineteenth century, to what might at rst seem to be a very dierent conceptual ramework: a highly rationalized set o scientic and pseudo-scientic ideas about sexual lie drawn largely rom developments in European psychology, sexology, and sociology. Like the strictures that it has at once opposed and rearmed, this scientic sexuality has signaled a undamental shit o emphasis rom the external maniestations o sexual lie to the internal signicance o sexual existence, rom a concern with the body and the ways in which bodies combine to a preoccupation with what might be described as the sexual sel (see, or example, Costa 1979; see also Parker 1985b, 1987, 1989b). Central to this new way o thinking, and distinguishing it rom the religious perspective with which it otherwise seems to have shared a good deal, was an new extremely utilitarian to the whole question sexual behavior—a cultural emphasisapproach on reproduction as the proper oaim o sexual encounters, not simply as a duty to one’s amily, or even to God, but to one’s ellows, to one’s society, to the Brazilian people as a whole. Sexual energy channeled in this legitimate direction was thus contrasted with sexual energy expended solely in the pursuit o pleasure. This outlook, in turn, set o a furry o scientic and medical investigation aimed at uncovering the roots o sexual promiscuity. As in Europe and the United States, sex became sexuality—an object o knowledge. In practical terms, probably the most important result o such highly rationalized investigation was the emergence o a new system o sexual classications built up in the terminology o science. First in the works o pioneering medical doctors, and later in the more popular treatments o newspapers, magazines, lms, and television, sexual normality and abnormality were careully mapped and analyzed, and new sets o classicatory categories, based on the hidden secrets and desires o the sexual sel, have been developed or the organization o the sexual uni-
3
4
Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions
verse. Increasingly, sexuality has become a ocus or discussion and debate within Brazilian society, and its importance has become even more pronounced as controversies such as abortion, the rights o sexual minorities, and most recently, the alarmingly rapid spread o HIV and AIDS have all come to the center o public attention in contemporary lie. Within the terms o this new rame o reerence, the traditional distinctions o gender in Brazilian lie have hardly lost their signicance. On the contrary, it would be more accurate to suggest that analytically distinct, and obviously diverse, sets o interpretive practices have been built up and superimposed on the denitions o gender in approaching and articulating the signicance o sexual lie in Brazil. Rather than eclipsing other possibilities, these more rationalized interpretive rameworks have served to diversiy the wider structure o sexual meanings in Brazilian culture. And they have thus been linked to dierent systems o power, in which the ailure to adhere to relatively ormal, institutionalized strictures can invoke not simply the censure o the local community, but the disciplinary proceedings o various authorities. Because the t between these various perspectives is imperect, their simultaneous existence oers contemporary Brazilians a number o diverse problems and possibilities as they approach the whole question o sexuality. And while these problems and possibilities are socially and culturally ascribed or determined, their resolution is less so—there is room or choice, or both the conscious and unconscious manipulation o cultural meanings. Nowhere, I think, is the variability, the undamental multiplicity, o this conguration more evident than inLinking what I the would describe as the domain erotic experience (Parker 1989a). question o meaning to theo question o power, and existing, as they do, simultaneously or the vast majority o contemporary Brazilians, the conceptions o gender in popular culture, the renunciation o the fesh in religious ideology, and the interrogation o dangerous desires in modern medical and scientic thinking map out an elaborate set o possible sexual practices—some dened as permissible, others as prohibited. The very notion o prohibition, however, also implies the possibility o transgression—a possibility which is itsel no less culturally dened. For Brazilians, it is in the erotic domain (quite “publicly” viewed as an eminently “private” realm) that sexual transgression becomes not only possible, but in act highly valued. Indeed, the private undermining o public norms would seem to play a particularly important role in the constitution o meaningul erotic practice in Brazilian lie. It is here, then, that the body, the soul, and the sel are most clearly brought together in a way that relativ-
Introduction
izes the categories and classications o other perspectives through the articulation o a distinct symbolic construct: a world o erotic meanings. Here, within this erotic world, sexual transactions acquire their signicance neither as an expression o social hierarchy nor as an external indication o inner truth, but as an end in themselves: as a realization o desire in the achievement o pleasure and passion. And this realization places central emphasis on those sexual practices which, in the public world, dominated by notions o sinulness and abnormality, are the most questionable and problematic. Erotic ideology thus structures an alternative universe o sexual experience—a universe that takes concrete shape not only in erotic practices themselves, but in the language and the popular-estive orms that Brazilians use to play with sexual denitions, in the stories which they tell themselves about themselves as sensual beings (Parker 1987, 1989a). Once again, this does not mean that the various categories and classications o other perspectives somehow cease to unction within the erotic world. On the contrary, as I hope to make clear, erotic experience and erotic meanings are built up with constant reerence to these structures (just as other perspectives are constructed with constant reerence to erotic practice). In shiting rames o reerence, however, the signicance o these structures is radically transormed. The classications which, in the public domain, map out the sexual universe can be, in the world o erotic experience, inverted, distorted, and even transcended. They can be played with in such a way as to relativize and even undercut the limitations which they outwardly impose. Indeed, it is characteristic o Brazilian lie that the cultural system itsel, in the eroticism and in interpretation o sexual practices which thisideology ideologyomakes possible, nottheonly recognizes but incites such a process (Parker 1989a). Taken together, then, these rames o reerence cut across the Brazilian sexual landscape. Far rom absolute, either in their number or their boundaries, they constantly generate and make possible still other perspectives, other vantage points or the interpretation o the sexual world in Brazil. In this sense, then, as I hope will become increasingly apparent, they should be thought o less as delimiting the sexual eld (which permeates all aspects o Brazilian culture) than as opening it up. It is through the terms such rames o reerence provide and the orientations they make possible that meaningul sexual realities can be built up in contemporary Brazilian lie. In using the tools they oer, social actors are able to shape and mold the contours o their own sexual universes. To understand these processes, however, and the proound implications that they can have or the lives o particular human
5
6
Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions
beings, we must look not merely to the similarities, the patterns o cultural coherence, that exist between these highly diverse congurations, but also to the crucial dierences which separate them—the logical and emotional contradictions which fow rom them. We must turn, in short, to the ambiguities which permeate so much o modern Brazilian lie (see, or example, Da Matta 1978, Fry 1982, Velho 1981). The pages that ollow constitute my own attempt to work through these many layers o meaning—to open the Brazilian sexual universe up to readers who have little or no amiliarity with it, to enable those who are already intimate with its contours to refect upon it in new ways, and ultimately, to suggest some o the ways in which an understanding o its particularity might oer new insights about human sexual experience more generally. With these goals in mind, as a way o introducing the reader to this unique universe, in the ollowing chapter I turn to the peculiar myths o srcin that have been built up in relation to Brazil: stories which have been told about Brazilians, and which Brazilians have told (and continue to tell) themselves about their history as a people, about their historical roots and their sensual orientation to the world, about their identity as sexual beings, and about their sexual identity as Brazilians. In the third chapter, I move into the heart o the text—the ideology o gender in Brazilian lie, the social and cultural mechanisms capable o transorming the world o perceived anatomical dierences into hierarchically related values associated with masculinity and emininity. In the ourth chapter, I move rom the relatively inormal constructs which have traditionally structured o genderthe to religious, the ar more ormaland andscientic rationalized constructs the thatideology have structured medical, interrogation o the sexual—to a consideration o these more rationalized discourses, o their historical interrelationships, and o the ways in which they infuence the Brazilian sexual vocabulary and constitute an understanding o sexuality in modern lie. In the th chapter, I turn to what I have discussed as the ideology o eroticism itsel—to the culturally encoded erotic meanings and practices which are both produced by and yet, ironically, manage to undercut the hierarchical classications which structure so much o modern sexual lie in urban Brazil. Having worked through these key domains, in the sixth and penultimate chapter, as a way o bringing the discussion back to the more general question o Brazilian identity, I want to turn to the Brazilian carnaval (perhaps itsel best understood as yet another rame o reerence), the popular estive cultural orm through which Brazilians may most clearly comment upon
Introduction
and critique the nature o their sexual universe. Finally, in the concluding chapter, I try to bring back together the many strands o argument and interpretation, and to oer some thoughts not only on the Brazilian case, but on the social and cultural construction o sexual meanings more generally. Without presuming to have ully answered all, or perhaps even any, o the questions that I have raised, I nonetheless seek to repay at least some small part o the debt that I owe to my Brazilian riends in attempting to underline how very much it is that they have to teach us.
7
2 Myths o Origin
I still remember being struck, during one o my rst trips to Brazil, by the comments o a Brazilian riend. It was an unusually hot day, even or Rio, and the late aternoon sun was shining through the western window o the room where we sat. We had eaten a late lunch and were now discussing my plans or eld research during the coming year. My riend had asked me about the diculties o adapting to lie in the tropics, Brazilian lie, and I had responded, truthully, that I could hardly remember having been happier and that it was dicult or me to imagine ever wanting to leave. He smiled, as Brazilians do when they sense a certain anity with an outsider—an even nascent appreciation o their reality. “Be careul,” he warned, “Brazil can be seductive.” Hisitchoice o words was or insightul on athat number o me levels. On the one hand, expressed an ethos world view strikes as particularly Brazilian. Indeed, it is impossible, I think, or anyone who spends any real amount o time in Brazil, or with Brazilians, to ignore the extent to which a notion o sexuality, or perhaps better, sensuality, plays a role in their own understanding o themselves (see Wagley 1971, pp. 255–56). The most striking quality o this act is the degree to which this notion is tied not simply, as North Americans or Europeans are accustomed, to the perception o individual existence, but to the sel-interpretation o an entire society. Indeed, Brazilians view themselves as sensual beings not simply in terms o their individuality (though this too is important), but at a social or cultural level— as sensual individuals, at least in part, by virtue o their shared brasilidade, or “Brazilianness.”1 And this view, in turn, seems to play a key role in dening the nature o Brazilian lie both in and o itsel and in relation to the world around it, the outside world, the world o the oreigner. At the same time, however, as the exhortation to take care in the ace o 8
Myths o Origin
Brazil’s seductive charms might indicate, the emphasis on the particularly sexual nature o Brazilian lie has long been viewed with a certain wariness by Brazilians. It has been both celebrated and scorned. It has been seen, traditionally at least, more as a source o shame than as a reason or pride. Even today, in the most modern sectors o Brazilian society, it tends to be viewed with an underlying uneasiness. To even begin to understand the character o sexual lie in contemporary Brazil, then, we must conront both the remarkable importance that Brazilians have traditionally given to sex in their own interpretations o themselves as a people and the undamental ambiguities which these interpretations have encoded. The rst step toward such an understanding lies in an apprehension o the historical depth o this oten contradictory emphasis on the importance o sexual lie in Brazilian culture. Far rom being the recent creation o an export economy, it is a view that is nearly as old as Brazil itsel. It seems to be rooted in the very earliest refections o the European explorers and travelers who rst began to map the Brazilian landscape—in their vivid representations o a new world in the tropics. First articulated in the words o the outsider, the explorer and, later, the traveler, this characterization o Brazilian lie has been reproduced, in a variety o ways and under a variety o circumstances, by Brazilians themselves throughout at least the past two centuries o their history. It is a view that has become increasingly salient during recent years in the stories that Brazilians have chosen to tell about themselves as a people. 2 Indeed, it has been central to what we might describe as Brazil’s own myths o srcin—myths which tell, or better or worse,give o the ormation o a uniquely sexual an exotic land, and which meaning simultaneously to the pastpeople and theinpresent by providing one o the most powerul and troubling sel-interpretations in contemporary Brazilian lie.3 To grasp all that is involved in the Brazilian understanding o sexual lie, and its role in their understanding o their society, then, it is necessary to take a step back in time. We must examine the development o such interpretations in historical perspective and investigate the conditions o their production and reproduction. It is thus necessary to conront at least some o the texts in which the Brazilian spirit and the sensual ethos o Brazilian lie have been articulated and explored, to examine the relationships that exist between these texts, and the transormations that take place within them. By ocusing in detail on several key texts (texts in which the structures o Brazilian thought emerge with particular clarity and which, or this reason, seem to have exerted unusual infuence in Brazilian cultural history), it may be possible to grasp some o the multiple, and oten highly am-
9
10
Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions
biguous, meanings that have been tied to sexual lie in Brazilian culture, and to use them as a point o departure or a more extended examination o sexual meanings in Brazilian lie.
Out o Eden Many o the central themes that will mark the discourse about Brazil and Brazilians throughout history are present in the very earliest European descriptions o the strange new world in the tropics. Indeed, as early as the rst known text written about the discovery o Brazil—the amous carta, or “letter,” o Pero Vaz de Caminha, the scribe who sailed with Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500, and who reported or Cabral to the Portuguese monarch, Dom Manoel, on the discovery o an unknown land south o the equator—at least one key component o this discourse seems to have been clearly ormed (see Cortesho 1943, Greenlee 1937). For Caminha, as or many who would ollow him, this new world was apprehended and described (not surprisingly, given the major currents o thought o his day) as an earthly paradise, a kind o tropical Eden.4 Nowhere, o course, was this Edenic character more obvious than in the immense richness o the land itsel. As Caminha reported to the king, it was this natural wealth which made the new discovery so potentially valuable to the interests o the Crown. While Caminha and his ellow explorers had no way o knowing what this new land might ultimately oer in terms o much sought ater precious metals such as gold silver, could attest its remarkable natural abundance: “Here, up toornow, wethey cannot know i there is gold or silver, nor anything o metal or iron, nor have we seen it. However, the land itsel has very good air, cool and temperate. . . . The waters are many, innite” (Caminha 1943, pp. 239–40). However, what most seemed to ascinate Caminha were the inhabitants themselves. In their presence, and in their potential or salvation, he suggested, lay the true value o this new discovery: “But the best ruit, that rom this land might be taken, it seems to me, will be to save this people. It is this that should be the principal seed that Your Highness should sow in her” (ibid., p. 240). Indeed, in the European’s perception o the natives, savage yet savable, the Edenic metaphor seems both to complete and to contradict itsel. It is with them that Caminha’s own seduction seems to have played itsel out. Reading through Caminha’s text, it is dicult not to be impressed by the mixture o desire, ascination, and genuine intellectual curiosity that underlie his vision o the local population. In describing their appearance, he
Myths o Origin
returns repeatedly to their most striking characteristic—their nakedness— and to the combination o beauty and innocence which seems to distinguish them rom their European counterparts. It is this quality that stands out most clearly in his description o the group’s initial encounter with a pair o native men: In appearance, they are dark, a bit reddish, with good, well ormed aces and noses. They go naked, without any covering. They pay no attention to concealing or exposing their shameul parts, a nd in this they have as much innocence as in showing their ace. (Ibid., p. 204)
And it is this same innocent nakedness that provides the ocus or virtually every description o the native women: There walked among them three or our maidens, young and gracious, with very black, shoulder length hair, and their shameul parts so high, so tight and so ree o hair that, though we looked at them well, we elt no shame. And one o those maidens was completely dyed, both below and above her waist, and surely was so well made up and so round, and her shameul part (that had no shame) so gracious, that many women rom our land, seeing her countenance, will eel shame in not having theirs like hers. (Ibid., pp. 210–11)
In terms that barely conceal his own excitement, Caminha’s report seems intended to entice as well as to scandalize. The beauty and the innocence o thewithin nativesthearemoral extolled through vivid reerences to precisely parts that, universe o Caminha’s own society, ought those to be most hidden and unmentioned. Indeed, it is through such potentially dangerous reerences that Caminha’s text achieves its most remarkable goal—it manages to link these otherwise distant savages to both the Europeans o the modern day and their Edenic ancestors. In their shameless genital displays, according to Caminha, this new population can be distinguished rom the more amiliar indels o Arica or the Middle East and identied with the contemporary Christian: “Not one o them was circumcised, but, all as we are” (ibid., p. 212). This identication, implicit in the simple innocence o their nakedness, brings Caminha’s set o associations to their logical conclusion and links these new-ound children o God to Europe’s own mythic past as well as to its spiritual mission: “Thus, Sir, the innocence o this people is such that that o Adam would not be greater in respect to shame. Now Your Highness may see i those who live in such innocence will convert or not, teaching them
11
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Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions
what pertains to their salvation” (ibid., pp. 238–39). Because o their innocence, these otherwise savage individuals might be intellectually assimilated and spiritually saved. And it was in the name o salvation, o course, that both exploration and exploitation would ultimately be justied and legitimized throughout the New World. The obvious ascination with the natives, expressed on a variety o levels in Caminha’s text, was not entirely shared, however, by all o the explorers who ollowed him to this new land—and many o whom would dedicate their lives to the spiritual mission that Caminha had rst suggested. During the same period that an idealized image o the Brazilian Indian was taking shape in the thought o Europeans such as Montaigne and Rousseau, Caminha’s vision o paradise had already begun to be transormed in the eyes o observers such as Amerigo Vespucci, Hans Staden, André Thevet, Jean de Léry, and Gabriel Soares de Sousa. 5 No writer, o course, could deny the natural grandeur rst pointed to by Caminha; or these later explorers and travelers, however, the view o an overpowering and abundant nature would tend to merge with a ar more negative (or, at the very least, ambivalent) vision o Caminha’s innocent human inhabitants. Indeed, the sins and transgressions o the savages would be careully cataloged and, as a result, the New World would soon emerge in European accounts as much a green hell as a tropical paradise. Many o the themes rst stressed by Caminha can thus be ound, as well, in Amerigo Vespucci’s early letter to Lorenzo de Medici reporting on his own voyage commissioned by the Portuguese crown to ollow up on the discoveries o paradise Cabral. Like Vespucci new land as close to anis earthly as heCaminha, could imagine: “Inound truth,this i the terrestrial paradise located in any part o this earth, I judge that it is not ar rom those regions” (Vespucci 1954, p. 165). And like Caminha, he was especially struck by the native inhabitants: All the people, o both sexes, go naked, without covering any part o their bodies: and as they leave their mothers’ wombs so they go until death. They have robust bodies, o medium stature, well ormed and well proportioned, and reddish in color, which comes to them, I think, rom the act that they walk naked and are colored by the sun. Their hair is abundant and black. In their gait and when playing games they are agile and noble. (Ibid., p. 162)
In much the same terms as Caminha, Vespucci painted a picture which t neatly with contemporary European belies concerning an earthly para-
Myths o Origin
dise, and which situated this paradise in the newly discovered land o the Brazilians. In Vespucci’s narrative, however, there emerges a darker side to this vision—a set o images which, while clearly no less linked than Caminha’s to the antasies o the European, leave the reader with a ar less simple and innocent understanding o the Indians. Indeed, as described by Vespucci, their customs are grotesque and savage: They are handsome, though they nevertheless deorm themselves, perorating their cheeks, lips, noses and ears. And don’t think that those holes are small nor that they have only one: some that I have seen had, in the ace alone, seven orices, any one o which could hold a plum. They stop up these holes with blue stones, ragments o marble, beautiul crystals o alabaster, white bones, or with other ingeniously worked objects. I you could contemplate a thing so strange and monstrous as, or example, a man having in his cheeks no ewer than seven stones, some o which are a span and a hal in length, you would certainly not ail to become stupeed. (Ibid., p. 162)
Nowhere is their savagery more apparent than in their transgression o the most undamental taboos in European culture, their perverse sexual practices and their consumption o human fesh: There is among them another custom, excessively monstrous and aberrant, o the highest degree o human cruelty. It happens that their women, being libidinous, make swell genitaland members o theirthis husbands to such a sizeand that it seems hideous and the repellent: they achieve with a ruse o theirs with the bite o venomous animals. Because o this, many husbands become eunuchs, losing the member, that, or lack o care, decays. . . . They take as many wives as they like, and the son has intercourse with the mother, and the brother with the sister, and the male cousin with the emale cousin, and the one who is out walking with the rst woman whom he meets. And as oten as they like they also dissolve their marriages, with regard to which they observe no ormality. (Ibid., pp. 162–63) They live according to nature and should be considered Epicureans rather than Stoics. There are neither markets nor commerce among them. The tribes wage war against one another without any art or discipline. Haranguing the young, the elders are able to bend them to their will and excite them or the wars, where they barbarously kill one another. And as to those who become captives
13
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Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions o war, they preserve them not to generously save their lives, but with the end o killing them or ood: or victors and vanquished devour one another and human fesh is a common item o their diet. Have no doubt as to the veracity o this act, because they take it as a natural right o the ather to devour his wie and his children, and I mysel met a man with whom I also spoke and who was reputed to have eaten three hundred human bodies. (Ibid., p. 163)
In Vespucci’s text, the vision o paradise is contrasted with its horriying opposite: an image o hell on earth as proound as the wildest creations o the European mind. And it is in the natives themselves, in their grotesque and distorted bodies, and in their savage and perverse customs, that this image is located and built up. The emphasis on the perceived aberrations o native lie rst articulated by Vespucci would remain a common theme in written accounts o Brazilian lie throughout the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. Vivid accounts o the sexual customs o the native Brazilians—in particular, their apparent polygyny and, to the eyes o the early European travelers, their lack o a clear incest taboo—appear repeatedly in the late sixteenth-century texts o writers such as the French priest André Thevet (1944, pp. 252–53), the Calvinist missionary Jean de Léry (1941, pp. 202–4), and the Bahian planter Gabriel Soares da Sousa: The Tupinambás are so lecherous that there is not a lascivious sin that they do not commit. Even at a very young age they have contact with women, because the valuedtobydothe men, attract boys, them gitsold andwomen, avors, not andhighly teach them what they do notthese know, andoering do not leave them by day nor by night. These heathens are so lustul that seldom do they have respect or sisters or aunts, and, as this sin goes against their customs, they sleep with them in the orest, and some with their own daughters; and they do not content themselves with a single woman, but have many, as is indicated by the act that many die worn out. And in conversation, they know o nothing to speak about except these lthy acts, which they commit constantly. Indeed, they are such riends o the fesh that they are not content, in order to ollow their appetites, with the genital member as nature ormed it. On the contrary, there are many who are accustomed to pass their spare time in putting on the ur o an animal so venomous that it makes them become swollen and causes great pain or more than six months. This makes the penis so thick and deormed that the women cannot wait or nor suer them. And not being content, these savages, to naturally commit in such bloodthirsty ashion this sin, many o them are addicted to the nearious sin, and among them it is no
Myths o Origin aront. And the one who serves as the male is considered valiant, and they tell o this bestiality as o a eat. And in their villages in the interior, there are some who have public tents or those who want prostitutes. (Soares de Sousa 1971, p. 308)
Drawing on the key images o good and evil, o taboo and transgression, within their own tradition, and superimposing these images upon the radically dierent reality o the New World, writers such as Thevet, Léry, and Soares de Sousa, ollowing in the ootsteps o Vespucci, began to build up a representation o Brazilian lie as a primitive Sodom and Gomorrah, a repository o the gravest sins known to contemporary European society. In less than a hundred years, Caminha’s Edenic metaphor had incorporated a proound sense o human railty and ailure, and the notions o innocence and simplicity that had marked that rst encounter had begun to give way to the images o evil that most disturbed Christian consciousness. The perceived ailings o these nearious savages were especially evident, o course, in what would become the dominant image o the índio during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: the bloodthirsty cannibal. Thanks to the writings o Staden and Léry, and to the illustrations o de Bry’s Great Voyages based upon these writings, the Brazilian cannibal was soon a central gure in European thought. As described by these early writers, cannibalism takes shape as a highly ritualized—and, in various ways, eroticized— set o ceremonies linked to warare and the taking o prisoners. 6 The rites recall, on a number o levels, the pagan easts, the intoxicated orgies, o the Greek and Roman worlds—at least as interpreted by the Christian eye: Then the assassin strikes a blow to the nape o the neck, the insides o his head are knocked out and the women take his body, pulling it to the re; they skin it until it is very white and insert a small stick rom behind so that nothing will escape. . . . Once skinned, a man takes him and cuts the legs, above the knees, and also the arms. Then the women come; they grab the our pieces and run to their huts, making a great uproar. Ater this they open up the back, separating it rom the ront side, and dividing it among themselves. But the women keep the intestines, boil them, and rom the broth make a soup that they call Mingau, which they and the children drink. They eat the intestines and also the meat o the head; the brains, the tongue, and whatever else remains are or the children. (Staden 1955, pp. 253–54)
It is hardly surprising that these cannibalistic rites should have captured the European imagination o the day—indeed, they must be understood as
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refections o that imagination rather than as accurate depictions o native Brazilian practices. Their immense power as representations cannot be underestimated, however, or they capture more clearly than any other image the darkest side o the European vision o lie in this mysterious tropical land. Merging with and reproducing the most extreme perversions o sexual transgression, their evocative power would ultimately stretch much urther than the texts rom which they rst emerged or even the reading public or which they were rst intended. The representation o Brazilian lie that began to take shape in the texts o these early writers, then, was already a highly ambiguous one. It combined both the most positive and the most negative images available to the European mind. It was at one and the same time a vision o paradise and a vision o the inerno. It was a vision centered on the question o sexual lie, sensuality, and eroticism no less than on the obvious potential or economic exploitation and colonization. Whether seen as childlike innocents or perverse savages, the native Brazilians were repeatedly analyzed and interpreted in sexual terms. Against the lushness o the Brazilians’ natural surroundings, such conficting interpretations gave rise, in the eyes o the European observers, to both the deeply elt seduction o the tropics and the no less strong sense o horror in the ace o savagery. This contradictory sense o excitement, ascination, and horror dened the oreign view o Brazil during these early years.
The Brazilian Sadness While srcinating, o course, rom without, in the eyes o the European seeking to distinguish himsel rom a strange and rightening other, this highly ambivalent view o Brazil has exercised a proound infuence over Brazilians in their own attempts to distinguish themselves rom the European and the North American (on the broad question o national identity, see Burns 1968, Cândido 1968). I the vision o the outsider has been reproduced and appropriated by Brazilians, however, it has been articulated alongside a set o additional tales—tales which have both deepened and broadened its constellation o meanings. Nowhere has this been more true than in the story o three races—in the emphasis placed, at least since the early nineteenth century when the declaration o Brazilian independence gave rise to a new concern with national identity, on the question o miscigenação or mestiçagem (miscegenation or cross-breeding), omistura raçial (racial mixture), as somehow central to the ormation o the Brazilian people (see Haberly 1983,
Myths o Origin
Ortiz 1985, Skidmore 1974). Because o the emphasis that Brazilians have placed on the mixture o three races, the Indian, the Portuguese, and the Arican, as the key to their own historical constitution, the question o sexuality, o sexual interaction as the concrete mechanism o racial mixture, has taken on an almost unparalleled importance in modern Brazilian thought. Superimposed on the ambivalent visions o the early explorers, it has become central to the Brazilians’ own interpretation o themselves and o their history—to their own myths o srcin. 7 Attention to the highly charged erotic atmosphere o early Brazilian lie, and its impact on racial mixture, is nearly as old as Brazil itsel. While not always a primary theme in their work, it is clearly present during the colonial period in the writings o Jesuit missionaries such as Joseph de Anchieta and Manoel da Nobrega—perhaps the earliest writers to address their texts to Brazilians themselves rather than to write about Brazil or a European audience (see Anchieta 1933, Nobrega 1931; see also Haberly 1983). And, whether in the romantic novels o José de Alencar, the naturalistic work o Aluízio Azevedo, Adolo Caminha, and Julio Ribeiro, or even the more dicult to classiy masterpieces o Graça Aranha or Euclides da Cunha, the questions o sexual interaction and racial mixture are constant themes in Brazilian letters (see, or example, Alencar 1984; Azevedo 1941, 1943; Caminha 1983; Cunha 1940; Graça Aranha 1913). They have been the key issues around which the relatively small intellectual elite has sought to explore its own identity, both in relation to the outside world o the oreigner and in relation to the wider Brazilian population. Given the continued presence the oJudeo-Christian moral order, along the recent o theokind scientic racism that so marked thewith thought o the emergence nineteenth century, however, it is hardly surprising that the perceived centrality o both uninhibited sexual activity and unrestricted racial mixture should have been viewed by this elite with more than a little ambivalence. Indeed, throughout much o the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the tragic consequences o such unbridled sensuality dominated Brazilian letters (see Haberly 1983). And in perhaps no other single text is this tradition played out more clearly or more infuentially than in Paulo Prado’s remarkable Retrato do Brasil: Ensaio sabre a Tristeza Brasileira (Portrait o Brazil: An Essay on the Brazilian Sadness), rst published in 1928 at the height o the turbulent modernist movement in Brazil (Prado 1931). The modernist movement itsel seems to have marked an especially important (and in many ways contradictory) moment in Brazilian cultural history (see Haberly 1983, Martins 1970, Brito 1971). Drawing primarily on contemporary European orms, whether in art or in literature, the modern-
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ists launched a paradoxical attack on the imitation o European models that had, in their view, long characterized Brazilian cultural lie. They set out to discover the Brazilian past, to reinvent it through the process o artistic creation, in order to invent its uture. In attempting to achieve such a goal, o course, the various intellectuals loosely associated with the movement ollowed various paths—yet they returned, repeatedly, to the descriptions o the early European explorers in their recreation and mythologization o Brazilian history. Oswald de Andrade, or example, produced aManiesto Antropóago (Anthropophagist Maniesto), suggesting that the cannibalism o the native Brazilians should serve as a model or the cultural relations between Brazil and the outside world—that oreign models should not be copied, but incorporated and digested in the creation o a uniquely Brazilian culture. He suggested sardonically a new national chronology beginning in 1556, when the Indians o Rio Grande do Norte killed and consumed António Sardinha, Brazil’s unortunate rst bishop (Oswald de Andrade 1967; see also Burns 1968, Haberly 1983). Mário de Andrade, in his highly celebrated Macunaíma: O Herói sem Nenhum Caráter (Macunaíma: The Hero without Character) seems, in many ways, to have taken Oswald’s call to heart. Drawing on a series o Amerindian olktales rst recorded by Koch-Grunberg, he creates an almost Rabelaisian hero as a kind o metaphor or Brazil’s racial and cultural diversity, tracing his circuitous path rom the depths o a primordial jungle through the modern hell o urban São Paulo and beyond (Mário de Andrade 1983). Yet it is in Prado’sRetrato do Brasil, published in the same year as both the Maniesto Antropóago and Macunaíma, that the mythologization o theare Brazilian past asevident—and well as the many contradictions o the modernist project most clearly it is surely inRetrato do Brasil that the intellectual elite’s pessimism over the apparent role o sexuality in their nation’s ormation takes its most extreme orm. At one level, simply a modernist attack upon the artices o the romantics, Retrato do Brasil is a much more complex and important text than one might at rst assume. Just as the earliest explorers had marveled at the contrast between Brazil’s natural splendor and its human impoverishment, so also does Retrato do Brasil situate its problematic in the disparity between the land and the people—between what Prado describes, ollowing the early European writers, as the radiance o the tropical landscape and, what he ocuses on, drawing on a long-standing Brazilian tradition, as the sadness o the Brazilian people. This Brazilian sadness, Prado argues, can be tied to the very impulses which characterized both its discovery and its colonization: to luxúria (lust) and cobiça (greed). Any attempt to understand ully the con-
Myths o Origin
tradictions o contemporary lie must thereore turn to an analysis o these historical orces: In a radiant land there lives a sad people. This melancholy is the inheritance o its discoverers, who revealed it to the world and peopled it. The splendid dynamism o these crude people obeyed two great impulses that dominated the psychology o the discovery and that never generated happiness: the ambition or gold and the ree and unbridled sensuality that, like a cult, the Renaissance had revived. (Prado 1931, p. 11)
Through its undamental humanism and its revival o the pagan pleasures, Prado suggests, the European Renaissance created a morality ideally suited to the age o discovery—an emphasis on worldly ambition that encouraged exploration, and an imagination that endowed the unknown with an almost erotic sense o excitement. Drawing on the texts o those early explorers—simultaneously situating and reproducing them—Prado rearms the vision o paradise that greeted the rst explorers and that, as Prado’s own text makes so clear, has played a lasting role in the Brazilian perception o their own physical environment: In this atmosphere o ideal heroism and impatient ambition, and with uncommon pomp, the squadron o Pedro Álvares let Restello in March o 1500. Upon dropping anchor in Cahy bay, in ront o the blue sawhorse o the coastline, the expedition had a vision o a paradisiacal lie, with the verdure o the tropical country the swarming potency the virgin The letterthe o orce Caminha, in its idyllicand naïveté, is the rst hymn o dedicated to land. the splendor, and the mystery o the nature in Brazil. . . . Pero Vaz was, or us, the chronicler o the marvelous nd. (Ibid., p. 16)
As Vespucci had suggested, i this was not the terrestrial paradise itsel, it was surely not ar rom it. Yet as Prado takes pains to point out, nature alone was hardly responsible or such a vision: The edenic impression that assaulted the imagination o the recently arrived exalted itsel in the total nakedness o the indigenous women. The letter o Caminha itsel speaks clearly o the surprise that was caused to the navigators by the unexpected a spect o the gracious gures that enlivened the landscape. (Ibid., pp. 33–34)
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Combined with the climate and the geography o the new land, then, the grace and beauty o its native inhabitants set the scene or what is in act Prado’s real interest: or what he describes, in precisely the same terms as my anthropological colleague, as the sedução, or “seduction,” o the European in tropical Brazil. As Prado explains it, not all o the early travelers were completely taken with this new land as they rst entered Guanabara Bay, later the site o Rio de Janeiro, but there were ew who could resist completely the seduction o its tropical atmosphere. Paradise or not, here in Brazil the sensuality o the weary explorers, many o whom were little more than boys, could be given ree reign in a way that would have been unthinkable in the established order o temperate Europe: The seduction o the land was joined in the adventurer to the boldness o the adolescent. For men who came rom a restrained Europe, the ardor o the temperaments, the amorality o the customs, the absence o civilized shameulness—and all the continual voluptuous tumescence o the virgin nature were an invitation to the ree and unrestrained lie in which all was permitted. The native, in his turn, was a lascivious animal, living without any constraint in the satisaction o his carnal desires. . . . They returned themselves to the simple law o nature, and the heathen was well sui ted to the sexual anta sy o the young and ardent adventurer at the height o his vigor. (Ibid., pp. 35–36)
Freed rom the constraints o traditional European morality, set loose in this sensualadventurer land, the heretoore and restricted ity ostrangely the European could thusrepressed run its natural course. sensualIt could play itsel out in harmony with the apparently no less strong sensualism o the natives themselves: They encountered no obstacle to the satisaction o the vices and immoderations that in Europe were repressed by a more severe law, a more strict morality, and a stronger sense o shame. They gave themselves with the violence o the times to the satiation o the passions o their crude souls. One o these was the lasciviousness o the white man unleashed in the paradise o the strange land. Everything avored the exaltation o his pleasure: the impulses o the race, the listlessness o the physical environment, the complicity o the desert and, above all, the easy and admiring submission o the indigenous woman, more sensual than the male as in all primitive peoples, who, in love, gave preerence to the European, perhaps or priapic considerations insinu-
Myths o Origin ated the severe Varnhagen. She sought out and entreated the white men in the hammocks in which they slept, wrote Ancieta. She was nothing more than a machine or enjoyment and work in the rural gynoeceum o the colonies. (Ibid., p. 39)
For Prado, then, as or so many o his contemporaries, the seduction o the land itsel is linked to the naturally seductive charms o the natives in such a way as to ree the inherent sensuality o the young explorers. Perceived as the source o both pleasure and productivity, the bodies o the native women (as elaborated, o course, in this undamentally male discourse) would thus take shape as particularly complex symbols—at once the initial site o the European’s essential loss, both o himsel and o the moral baggage that he brought with him, and the womb which would give rise to Brazil’s own distinct population. The emphasis on the native women, on the pleasures and products o their bodies, on their unrestrained sensuality and their easy seduction o the European male is crucial in the conguration o Brazil’s own myths o origin. As Prado’s text makes abundantly clear, however, the symbolic conguration surrounding the Brazilian woman is in act even more complex, or it makes possible, as well, the integration o the third and nal component o the Brazilian racial trinity—the Arican—and thus provides the transition to a new phase o Brazilian history in which the early and unruly days o the colonial encounter give way to a secure patriarchal order built up on the oundation o slavery. Implicit throughoutRetrato do Brasil, this congura-
indigena tion becomes explicit Prado moves rom the mulher (indigenous women) to the negraasaricana (Arican negress) and the mulata (mulatto woman): In the colony the Arican actor was not isolated rom contributing to the usion o elements peopling the land. On the contrary. Just as the arm o the Negro substituted or the labor o the natives, considerably inerior to that o the Arican s, in the same way the negra, more aectionate and submissive, took the place o the Indian woman in the gynoeceum o the colony. (Ibid., p. 192)
Unlike the North American case, at least as perceived rom a Brazilian perspective, such sexual interaction made possible an extension o the same racial amalgamation that had marked the contact o the European and the Indian:
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Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions Being a eature so peculiar to the ethnic development o our land, the sexual hyperesthesia that we have seen in the course o this essay avoided the segregation o the Arican element that occurred in the United States dominated by racial prejudice and antipathy. Here lust and social laxity brought together and united the races. Nothing and nobody repelled the new afux o blood. Except or one or another aristocratic objection, that no longer exists, the amalgam was reely made, by chance sexual meetings, without any physical or moral repugnance. It repeated what had happened with the Indian crossing with the European spurred on by the polygyny o the rst peopling. On the contrary, the seduction o the Portuguese settler by the negra and the mulata would become legendary. (Ibid., pp. 192–93)
Within the connes o the patriarchal order, then, the contact between races was played out along sexual lines. The lust and sensuality that, according to Prado, typied both the European and the Indian are certainly no less present in the Arican. Especially evident in the body o the negra or the mulata, it is this sensuality that will continue to mark the unique course o Brazilian history—and to distinguish Brazil rom both Europe and North America. I the mythic dimensions o such a powerul sel-interpretation seem clear in Prado’s text, however, so too is the proound ambivalence with which the Brazilian elite has oten approached its own past. Indeed, placed within a historical context, the Retrato do Brasil summarizes a long line o late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Brazilian thought—a line o thought in which recognition o Brazil’s multiracial ormation is colored by the ear that the Brazil’s races has somehow marked o the mixture Brazilianopeople and doomed them to aindelibly degeneration at the oncecharacter moral and physical: From the weakening o physical energy, rom the absence or diminution o mental activity, one o the characteristic results both in men and in collectivities is, without doubt, the development o a melancholy propensity. Post coitum animal triste, nisi gallus qui cantat; it is the “collapse” o the doctors, a physical and moral depression, which continues in cases o repeated excess. In Brazil, sadness fows out o the intense sexual lie o the colony, set loose by the erotic perversions, and ultimately emphatically atavistic. (Ibid., pp. 127–28)
It is ultimately in this lascivious mixture o three races that Prado locates the source o that peculiar sadness which his Retrato do Brasil pictures as so characteristic o the Brazilian soul. I lust or gold had srcinally drawn
Myths o Origin
European explorers to Brazilian shores, and continued to motivate the colonial enterprise and to structure the course o Brazilian history, sexual lust had uniquely marked the ormation o the Brazilian people. Taken together, these two central vices had given rise to a third, to what Prado describes as “the romantic evil”: the sense o “melancholy” that seemed, at least to the intellectual elite, to typiy the Brazilian spirit, and to contrast so sharply with the more positivistic goals that they would preer to hold up or their nation. Bringing together so many strands o Brazilian thought, Retrato do Brasil, much like Macunaíma, can be taken as a quintessential realization o the goals outlined by Oswald de Andrade in his Maniesto Antropóago. It is a text which consumes and ingests not merely the orms o European thought, but the very words and images o the earliest European explorers o Brazil. It succeeds in transposing one set o signs onto another. The ambivalent vision o the savage handed down rom the earliest explorers is thus transormed in the no less ambivalent sel-image o the modern Brazilian, who identies himsel at the point o intersection between European and Savage. In both visions, the question o sexuality is obviously central; and however ambivalent, or, indeed, even negative, the emphasis placed upon sexuality seems to have been, its role in raming a myth o srcins, or more accurately, a cultural ramework or the sel-interpretation o Brazilian society in which history and myth merge, can hardly be ignored. Because o this, the possibility or a undamental reinterpretation o this problematic seems to have been opened up.
New World in the Tropics Retrato do Brasil must be understood as both a culmination and a beginning—certainly not the last, but probably the greatest, the most infuential, in a long line o works exploring the Brazilian sadness, and at the same time, among the rst in a series o widely read interpretive works which would open up a new intellectual space or “Brazilian studies” in the twentieth century (see Martins 1970, p. 185). While this tradition has by no means exhausted itsel, it clearly reached its high point but a short time ater the appearance o Prado’s Retrato, with the publication in 1933 o Gilberto Freyre’s Casa-Grande e Senzala, translated into English as The Masters and the Slaves (Freyre 1956, 1983). However ambiguous the argument might at times seem, Casa-Grande provides a undamental rethinking o the problem
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o miscegenation that has so troubled the elite, emphasizing more positively the mixture o cultures and the creation o a new civilization in the tropics as a result o this mixture. The great innovation o Casa-Grande , as has oten been pointed out, was Freyre’s shit rom the question o race, as an essentially biological phenomenon, to the question o culture, and to the social context in which the mixture o distinct cultural traditions had become possible in Brazilian history (see Ortiz 1985). This shit itsel, o course, can be understood at least in part as an attempt to escape or displace the anxiety that he shared with other members o the (predominantly white) Brazilian intellectual elite when aced with the undeniable empirical reality o miscegenation in the population as a whole (see Haberly 1983, p. 162). Yet it was also tied, as Freyre himsel explains in his preace to the rst edition oCasa-Grande, to his encounter with twentieth-century anthropology during his years as a student o Franz Boas at Columbia University: It was my studies in anthropology under the direction o Proessor Boas that rst revealed to me the true value o the Negro and the mulatto—racial characteristics separated rom the eects o environment or cultural experience. I learned to consider as undamental the dierence between race and culture, to discriminate between the eects o purely genetic relations and those resulting rom social infuences, cultural heritage and milieu. (Freyre 1983, pp. lvi–lviii)
Taking this distinction as central to his own approach to Brazilian reality, Freyre by no means denies mixture o races that so obviously tial to the ormation o the the Brazilian population. On was the contrary, he essenloudly arms it. He clearly perpetuates the notion o the Brazilian people as the product o racial mixture and asserts that such mixture has let its mark not merely on the Brazilian body, but perhaps even more undamentally, on the Brazilian soul: “Every Brazilian, even the light-skinned air-haired one, carries about with him on his soul, when not on soul and body alike—or there are many in Brazil with the mongrel mark o the genipap—the shadow, or at least the birthmark, o the absrcine or the Negro” (Freyre 1956, p. 278). I he insists that racial mixture be understood as the uniying element in Brazilian lie, he also asserts that it oers Brazilians their greatest potential— the potential to create, through the cultural usion (built up, one might say, on top o the oundation that racial mixture provided) o Amerindian, European, and Arican traditions, a distinctly new civilization, or what he later describes as a “new world in the tropics.”
Myths o Origin
Yet even within Freyre’s new conguration, the importance placed upon sexuality in the texts o earlier writers is preserved. In Freyre’s interpretation, cultural interpenetration was both concretely achieved and metaphorically represented by the miscegenation o races. Once again, then, the question o sexual practice, like that o racial dierence, is held up and displayed as denitive o Brazilian civilization as a whole. Freyre’s particular version o “genital history” (Haberly 1983, p. 168) takes its place, i not above, then certainly alongside the texts o earlier writers as among the most powerul interpretations o the Brazilian sel and its unique ormation. It has become, no less than the texts o the early explorers, or or that matter, o more contemporary Brazilian writers such as Prado, yet another version o this peculiarly Brazilian theme. Indeed, Freyre’s construction is itsel clearly another transposition o these earlier versions, and it is in relation to them that he situates his own história (the Portuguese term or both “story” and “history”) in CasaGrande e Senzala . Like Prado, then, Freyre gives special emphasis to the perceived character o early Brazilian lie and describes it in terms o its extremely erotic atmosphere: “The milieu in which Brazilian lie began was one o sexual intoxication” (Freyre 1956, p. 85). In Freyre’s discussion, as in Prado’s, the startling sexual reedom o the initial colonial encounter is primary. No sooner had the European leaped ashore than he ound his eet slipping among the naked Indian women, and the very athers o the Society o Jesus had to take care nottotobecome sink into the carnal mire; many o the The clergy did permit themselves contaminated with or licentiousness. women were the rst to oer themselves to the whites, the more ardent ones going to rub themselves against the legs o these beings whom they supposed to be gods. They would give themselves to the European or a comb or a broken mirror. (Ibid., p. 85)
Freyre also suggests that the Portuguese o the sixteenth century were particularly well suited to the process o colonizing and peopling their new discovery. Given the relatively limited size o their own population, it was largely through miscibilidade, or “miscibility,” rather than mobilidade, or “mobility,” that the Portuguese were able to achieve their goals as colonizers. The unusual openness to racial mixing that their colonization entailed had itsel been conditioned, Freyre argues, by the course and character o Portugal’s own historical experience:
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Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions Long contact with t he Saracens had let with t he Portuguese the idealized gure o the “enchanted Moorish woman,” a charming type, brown-skinned, black-eyed, enveloped in sexual mysticism, roseate in hue, and always engaged in combing out her hair or bathing in rivers or in the waters o haunted ountains; and the Brazilian colonizers were to encounter practically a counterpart o this type in the naked Indian women with their loose-fowing hair. These latter also had dark tresses and dark eyes and bodies painted red, and, like the Moorish Nereids, were extravagantly ond o a river bath to reresh their ardent nudity, and were ond, too, o combing their hair. What was more, they were at like the Moorish women. Only they were a little less coy, and or some trinket or other or a bit o broken mirror would give themselves, with legs spread ar apart, to the “ caraibas” (Europeans), who were so gluttonous or a woman. (Ibid., pp. 12–13)
Added to this general predisposition, this general moral climate, was the sharp sense o sexual liberation experienced, as Prado also notes, by the explorers and adventurers upon their arrival in a new world ree rom the restrictions o traditional European lie (ibid., p. 29). Set loose within this climate, the Europeans (and their sexual activities) would prove central to the earliest processes o colonization in Brazil: The lustul inclinations o individuals without amily ties and surrounded by Indian women in the nude were to serve powerul reasons o State, by rapidly populating the new land with mestizo ospring. One thing is certain, and that is that thewas bulkounded o colonial throughout sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and society developed upon the the basis o a widespread and deepgoing mixture o races that only the intererence o the Jesuit athers kept rom becoming an open libertinism, by regularizing it to a large extent through the sacrament o Christian marriage. (Ibid., p. 85)
The “sexual intoxication” o the New World, rst realized in the contact between the Portuguese and the Amerindian, later opened the way or a complete integration o the Arican as well, giving rise, ultimately, to the almost total mixture o three previously distinct races that would, or all Brazilians, but perhaps most sel-consciously or members o the intellectual elite such as Freyre, dene the unique nature o their national reality. The undamental ambivalence that characterizes, in a text such as Retrato do Brasil, this understanding o sexual lie as central to Brazilian reality, is no less present in Casa-Grande e Senzala. It is especially evident, or example, in Freyre’s constant emphasis on the question o síilis
Myths o Origin
(syphilis), which unctions symbolically, much as the notion o “sadness” does in Prado’s text, as the dark underside to the denitive process o miscegenation: The advantage o miscegenation in Brazil ran parallel to the tremendous disadvantage o syphilis. These two actors began operating at the same time: one to orm the Brazilian, the ideal type o modern man or the tropics, a European with Negro or Indian blood to revive his energy; the other to deorm him. Out o this there arises a certain conusion o thought on the subject o responsibilities, many attributing to miscegenation eects that are chiefy due to syphilis. (Ibid., pp. 70–71)
Brought to Brazil by the European explorers, the impact o syphilis in the New World can thus hardly be separated rom the moment o contact that would rst give rise to racial mixture in Brazil (ibid., p. 71). On the contrary, it infuenced the wider patterns o Brazilian history, having its greatest eect during a time that or Freyre is most denitive: within the context o the great sugar plantations o northeastern Brazil during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was here, in the casa-grande , or “big house,” and the senzala, or “slave quarters,” that the reign o syphilis, like the reign o sex itsel, was most intense: Syphilis invariably had its own way in patriarchal Brazil. It killed, blinded, deormed at will. It caused women to abort. It took “little angels” o to heaven. It was a .serpent up inothe house, with noits oneextra-American taking any notice o its venom. . . The brought syphilization Brazil—granted srcin— dates rom the beginning o the sixteenth century; but in the voluptuous atmosphere o the Big Houses, lled with young Negro girls, with mulecas and mucamas, it and kindred aections were propagated more reely through domestic prostitution, which is always less hygienic than that o the brothels. (Ibid., p. 326)
Tied to the unbridled sensuality o the Brazilian past, then, syphilis marks the Brazilian body no less than miscegenation marks the Brazilian soul. Indeed, in Freyre’s text the disease emerges as a symbolic construct o central importance. On the one hand, it gives expression to the proound uneasiness o the Brazilian elite in the ace o their mixed racial srcins—srcins that were unavoidably acknowledged to be a product o the sexual interaction responsible or the spread o venereal disease. At the same time, however, it provides an apparently scientic position rom which to counter arguments
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about the negative biological eects o miscegenation itsel. It identies physical degeneration as the product, not o racial mixture, but o syphilitic inection. Subtly shiting the terms o the debate, then, this emphasis on syphilis in Casa-Grande e Senzala ironically undermines the view o miscegenation that had characterized Brazilian thought during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, holding out the hope that the negative eects o this process are essentially supercial and ultimately corrigible through the techniques o modern medical science. This undamental transormation is completed, in turn, by Freyre’s historicization o the whole issue o sexuality—his viewing the question o sex in Brazilian lie as itsel the product o a specic social setting. Just as Paulo Prado had reworked the texts o the early explorers into a troubled and guilt-ridden interpretation o the Brazilian sel, through his historical/sociological lens, Freyre revises the texts o writers such as Prado. For Freyre, the Portuguese colonists themselves, ar rom being the victims o the seductive tropics and o the apparently inerior natives that they encountered there, were implicated in the sins associated with luxúria, or lust: “It was natural that Europeans, surprised at encountering a sexual code so dierent rom their own, should have come to the conclusion that the absrcines were extremely lustul, whereas, o the two peoples, the conqueror himsel was perhaps the more lascivious” (ibid., p. 96). And just as this disparity was evident in the relationship between the European and the native Brazilian, it was also present in the encounter between the white planters and their Arican slaves: “Eroticism, lust, and sexual depravity have come looked upon asthe a deect the Arican race; but what has been ound to to bebethe case among Negroinpeoples o Arica, as among primitive peoples in general . . . is a greater moderation o the sexual appetite than exists among the Europeans” (ibid., p. 323). Indeed, the heightened sensuality o Brazilian lie ater the arrival o the European must be tied, as Prado had implicitly sensed, to the social and economic milieu which shaped its participants. It must be understood as a direct result o the relations o power and domination and the system o economic production that had marked colonial lie—that had distinguished the conquerors rom the conquered, the colonists rom the colonized, the masters rom the slaves. Slavery itsel, by its very nature as a social institution, was in large part responsible or the moral laxity, the sexual excess, that so disturbed writers such as Prado: There is no slavery without sexual depravity. Depravity is the essence o such a regime. In the rst place, economic interests avor it, by creating in the owners
Myths o Origin o men an immoderate desire to possess the greatest possible number o crias (slaves reared in the casa-grande). From a maniesto issued by slaveholding planters Nabuco quotes the ollowing words, so rich in signicance: “The most productive eature o slave property is the generative belly.” (Ibid., p. 324)
Far rom being the product o the inherent degeneration o a mongrel people, the sexual character o Brazilian lie was tied, not to miscegenation itsel, but to the social context which produced miscegenation. The notion o slavery, in turn, could thus be employed metaphorically in describing the relations o power, o domination and oppression, that marked the whole process o conquest and colonization. The regime o slavery was clearly linked to a particular sexual ethic dominated by dierences in power, by sadism and masochism, by activity and passivity. It was in the institution o slavery itsel that the sexual depravity o Brazilian lie took shape, maniested most clearly, as Freyre repeatedly emphasizes, in the perverse pleasures o the planters’ sons: The planters’ sons ell into other vices; and at times, owing partly to the eect o the climate, but chiefy as the result o conditions o lie created by the slave-holding system, they would precociously engage in sadistic and bestial orms o sexuality. The rst victims were the slave lads and domestic animals; but later came the great mire o fesh: the Negro or mulatto woman. This was a quicksand in which many an insatiable adolescent was hopelessly lost. (Ibid., pp. 394–95)
This emphasis on the most questionable excesses o sexual lie under the regime o slavery enables Freyre to avoid much o the pessimism that characterizes the work o writers such as Prado. Without ever doubting the importance (or, or that matter, the perverse undercurrent) o sexuality in the ormation o Brazilian lie, in Casa-Grande e Senzala, Freyre transorms its implications. He preserves the notion o sexual interaction—indeed, o sexual intercourse—as a metaphor or the ormation o the Brazilian people. But he undercuts the sel-doubt that had previously been associated with that metaphor by tying all that had once seemed most troubling in it to an era now gone, an outmoded social and economic system which, while leaving an indelible mark upon the Brazilian spirit, had nonetheless been passed by in the creation o a new world. At the same time, by yet another metaphoric transposition,Casa-Grande e Senzala opens the way or an even more undamental reorientation. It seeks to re-appropriate even the tragically fawed plantation past by ocusing
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on it as the arena o cultural usion. Nowhere is this more clear than in the language o nurturance and sexual initiation that runs throughout the text. Indeed, in Freyre’s construction, it was the gentle, almost loving contact between master and slave within thecasa-grande that counteracted the abuses o the slave-holding system elsewhere: But admitting that the infuence o slavery upon the morality and character o the Brazilian o the Big House was in general a deleterious one, we still must note the highly special circumstances that, in our country, modied or attenuated the evils o the system. First o all, I would emphasize the prevailing mildness o the relations between masters and household slaves—milder in Brazil, it may be, than in any other part o the Americas. (Ibid., p. 369)
Within the intimacy o the casa-grande, the relations between masters and slaves were, in Freyre’s interpretation, transormed and redeemed: The Big House caused to be brought up rom the senzala, or the more intimate and delicate service o the planter and his amily, a whole set o individuals: nurses, house-girls, oster-brothers or the white lads. These were persons whose place in the amily was not that o slaves, but rather o household inmates. They were a kind o poor relations ater the European model. Many young mulattoes would sit down at the patriarchal board as i they were indeed part o the amily: crias (those who have been reared in the house), malungos (oster-brothers), muleques de estimação (avorite houseboys). (Ibid., p. 369)
Freyre argues in Casa-Grande e Senzala that it was through the darkskinned ama-leite, or “wet-nurse,” that the most positive values o the nonEuropean cultures were rst transmitted to the European masters. It is in the intimacy o this exchange that Freyre locates the historical center, the truest expression, o the Brazilian spirit: In our aections, our excessive mimicry, our Catholicism, which so delights the senses, our music, our gait, our speech, our cradle songs—in everything that is a sincere expression o our lives, we almost all o us bear the mark o that infuence. O the emale slave or “mammy” who rocked us to sleep. Who suckled us. Who ed us, mashing our ood with her own hands. The infuence o the old woman who told us our rst tales o ghost or bicho (animal). O the mulatto girl who relieved us o our rst bicho de pé (a type o fea), o a pruriency that was so enjoyable. Who initiated us into physical love and, to the creaking o a canvas cot, gave us our rst complete sensation o being a man. (Ibid., p. 278)
Myths o Origin
As much as the physical reality o miscegenation and the sadistic sexuality o a slave-holding society, then, the tender intimacy o the casa-grande denes the Brazilian past in Freyre’s interpretation. Symbolized most vividly in the act o suckling, in the milk o the ama-leite, and even more intriguingly in the nostalgic description o the sexual initiation o the plantation lad, it is this characterization that transorms the undamentally negative view o Brazil’s past with its legacy o racial mixture and degeneration, replacing it with an image o cultural usion and creativity. 8 The importance o sexual interaction clearly remains, but it is situated within an interpretive ramework ocused as much on nourishment and sensitivity as on sadism, syphilis, and sadness.9 While Casa-Grande e Senzala is hardly less ambiguous than Retrato do Brasil in its internal structure, it nonetheless develops an interpretation o the Brazilian past that opens itsel up to a radically dierent reading on the part o both the intellectual elite and the general public. It emphasizes the processes o sexual interaction and racial mixture as essentially positive in nature. Even more explicitly than the modernist texts o writers such as Oswald de Andrade, Mário de Andrade, or Paulo Prado, in its nostalgia, its attempt to re-appropriate what Freyre saw as the best o the traditions o the Brazilian past, Casa-Grande e Senzala lends itsel with unusual ease to the process o myth-making, to the legitimization o Brazilian society as a new world in the tropics. As even its detractors would agree, it has proved to be the most infuential interpretation o Brazilian civilization ever produced, striking a chord in popular culture that has played easily into the increasingly political discourse the twentieth (see Burns 1968).nationalistic It again rearms—as i, or theo vast majority ocentury Brazilians, it really needed to be rearmed—that the nature o Brazilian reality has been specially marked.
Sensuality Casa-Grande e Senzala , like the writings o the early travelers or o later intellectuals such as Paulo Prado, was o course directed to a very specic audience: the well-to-do white males who made up the Brazilian intellectual elite o Freyre’s day, and who identied themselves in terms o their European roots. Nowhere is this more evident than in the language o “us” and “them,” o “ours” and “theirs,” that marks Freyre’s discussion o nursing, nourishment, and racial contact in the closing sections o Casa-Grande — in his description o the white sons o the plantation owners nursing at the
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black breast o the Arican slave woman, and coming to their rst and ullest understandings o themselves as men within her arms. Perhaps unconsciously, however, Freyre’s text seems to have tapped into, to have uncovered, and, no doubt, even extended, a broader ideological context or base. Indeed, ater years o popularization—whether in the textbooks o Brazilian school children, the theatrical works and musical compositions based upon it, or the samba enredos (“samba plots”) built up around it during Brazilian carnaval—it is dicult to know to what extent Freyre’s text really shaped this wider context and to what extent it was itsel shaped by it (see Freyre 1983, p. xxviii). Whichever the case may be, perhaps all that really matters is the act that Casa-Grande e Senzala has given the ullest and most vivid expression to what has been a ar wider reaching, and, I suspect, more deeply rooted, ideological conguration: the sense, at once pronounced yet troublesome, o the uniquely sensual character o Brazilian lie and o the Brazilian people. This understanding, although most elaborately articulated in the constructs o certain intellectuals, has nonetheless been present as well in the orms and structures o popular culture. While sexual lie in North America or Europe has been treated as an essentially individual phenomenon, in Brazil it has also emerged as a central issue at a social or cultural level, and has been taken, or better or worse, as a kind o key to the peculiar nature o Brazilian reality. Texts such as Prado’s Retrato do Brasil or Freyre’s Casa-Grande e Senzala clearly play on such understandings o sel. In so doing, they have in large part succeeded in grounding these interpretations in a particular reading o Brazilian (a reading culturally patterned and structured), andhistory have thus providedwhich themwas withitsel a new and unusually powerul authority. I they play upon and legitimate such interpretations, however, they did not produce them. On the contrary, it would be much more accurate to suggest that they shaped and molded the raw material provided by the broader ideological context in giving these interpretations their most concentrated and elaborate expression. These texts thus point us in the direction o the wider context and can be understood completely only when situated within its terms. As one steps back to view the larger picture, however, the understandings that at rst seemed so clear and simple begin to give way. The relatively neat and tidy connections that take one rom the texts o writers such as Pero Vaz de Caminha through those o Paulo Prado or Gilberto Freyre gradually begin to dissolve into a ar more complicated set o transpositions and transormations as one moves to the more encompassing ideological congurations that have made such texts possible. These clearly dened texts begin
Myths o Origin
to disintegrate, much like one’s own image in a house o mirrors, leaving not an underlying essence—a natural sensuality, produced by racial mixture and peculiar to lie in the tropics—but a multiplicity o refections, o representations or cultural meanings, which cut across the abric o social lie but converge in the texts that we have discussed here and in the interpretations o the Brazilian sel that such texts encode. It is this wider, more complex, cultural context—as well as the oten contradictory cultural logics which seem to organize it—that we must now seek to understand.
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3 Men and Women
As important as their myths o srcin have been to modern Brazilians seeking to interpret their own cultural history and to give meaning to their contemporary sexual existence, they are obviously incomplete: they rely on a wider range o concepts drawn rom at least partially distinct domains o cultural reality. This is especially true in their use o a whole set o assumptions related to the question o gender: denitions o macho (male) and êmea (emale), conceptions o masculinidade (masculinity) and emininidade (emininity), notions o what it is to be anhomem (man) as opposed to a mulher (woman) in Brazilian society, and perhaps most important, understandings o the ways in which such notions shape one’s sexual experience in contemporary Brazilian lie. These understandings are present everywhere in daily lie;almost indeed,unthinkingly, they are so central as to beindividuals. taken largely or granted, ternalized by particular Given this act,init is best to begin, once again, by contextualizing such concrete notions within a wider discourse and turning, rst, to the legacy o patriarchal authority in Brazilian history and to the signicance that this legacy continues to hold or the understanding o gender and sexual lie in contemporary Brazil.1
The Patriarchal Tradition Certainly no less than the interpenetration o three distinct races, over the course o at least the past ty years, the legacy o a patriarchal past has become essential to the movement o sel-interpretation in Brazilian society (see Freyre 1956, 1963, 1970; see also Faoro 1979; Vianna 1955). The question o patriarchal authority, in turn, has been linked to the perceived salience o the patriarchal amily in Brazilian history—not simply as a orm o 34
Men and Women
social organization but as an ideological construct, a system o representations, that continues to infuence the ways in which contemporary Brazilians understand the proper order o things in their universe, structure their social interactions, and interpret the meaning o their social relations. As writers such as Gilberto Freyre, Oliveira Vianna, and Antônio Cândido have suggested, the classic model o the patriarchal amily handed down rom the colonial period was dualistic (Cândido 1951, Freyre 1956, Vianna 1955). It consisted o a nucleus composed o the patriarch and his wie as well as their legitimate children, all living together under the single roo o the plantation’s casa-grande. On the periphery o this core, however, there existed a much more extensive and less well-delineated set o individuals, constituted as a group principally through their various links to the patriarch himsel: his concubines or mistresses, his illegitimate children, his slaves and tenant armers, his riends and clients (see Cândido 1951). The gure o the patriarch, and the authority which emanated rom him, clearly lay at the heart o this system, eectively linking the core to the periphery and uniting them as a single, unctional unit. The almost unlimited nature o patriarchal power within this unit has traditionally been interpreted as a response to the contingencies o the colonial situation: the diculties o establishing a social order in an immense geographical region which lacked any eective coercive apparatus but which was characterized by an economy dependent upon an extensive orce o slave laborers. Within this context, then, the patriarchal amily rapidly became the dominant social unit—essential to the processes o social integration as well as individual socialization. Yetdependence because o the o its organization, its dual structure and its heavy on nature the seemingly unlimited power o the patriarch himsel, the distances between its various members were rigidly marked and ordered in terms o an almost absolute hierarchy (see ibid.). This hierarchical structure seems to have been based, above all else, on the exercise o orce by the patriarch: his right to invoke violence. At its most extreme—as Freyre, or example, has described it in recounting the relations between athers and their children in patriarchal Brazil—this right to violence could indeed be taken to its logical end, as a right to death: In patriarchal Brazil the authority o the ather over a minor son—and even one who was o age—was carried to its logical conclusion: the right to kill. The patriarch had absolute power in the administration o justice in the amily, some athers reproducing, in the shade o the cashew grove, the severest acts o classic patriarchalism: killing and ordering killed, not only Negroes, but white boys and girls, their own children. (Freyre 1963, p. 59)
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The hierarchical structure o patriarchal domination was thus crystallized in both the image and the reality o violence. The authority o the patriarch himsel rested in large part upon the social distance which this potential or violence established between him and his ollowers—between the master and his slaves, the ather and his children, the male and his emales. Indeed, the symbolism o violence (all too oten played out in reality), is crucial to any ull understanding o the relations between men and women in patriarchal Brazil. Perhaps nowhere was the distance between the sexes that typied the patriarchal structure more clearly articulated than in its images o male and emale. As described by Freyre, or example, the relations between the sexes under the patriarchal system were based upon a principle o extreme opposition or dierentiation: “It was also characteristic o the patriarchal regime or man to make o woman a being as dierent rom himsel as possible. He, the strong, she, the weak; he the noble, she, the beautiul” (ibid., p. 73). The homem and the mulher, and by extension, the very concepts o masculinity and emininity, were thus dened in terms o their undamental opposition, as a kind o thesis and antithesis. With power invested entirely in his hands, the homem was characterized in terms o his superiority, his strength, his virility, his activity, his potential or violence, and his legitimate use o orce. The mulher, in contrast, was dened in terms o her obvious ineriority, as in all ways the weaker o the two sexes—beautiul and desirable, but nonetheless subject to the absolute domination o the patriarch. This extreme dierentiation carried with it an explicit moral dualism which ed back to legitimate and reinorce the apparently natural order o the gender hierarchy: The exploitation o woman by man, characteristic o other types o society or social organization too, but notably o the patriarchal-agrarian type which prevailed or a long time in Brazil, is avored by marked specialization or dierentiation o the sexes. This justies a double standard o morality, permitting man complete reedom in the pleasures o carnal love and only permitting the woman to go to bed with her husband when he eels like procreating. And or the woman this pleasure goes hand in hand with the obligation to conceive, give birth to, and raise the child. (Ibid., p. 73)
Assured, through his unquestioned domination, o his undamental physical and moral superiority, the homem enjoyed an almost absolute sexual reedom. The patriarch could enter into and maintain ongoing sexual relations not simply with his wie, but with any number o mistresses or concubines
Men and Women
as well (a act which, in Freyre’s characterization, tended to give the patriarchal structure o plantation lie a harem-like quality and made it so uniquely well suited to the processes o racial mixture). The sexual activities o his women, on the other hand, were strictly regulated and controlled by the patriarch himsel. His wie, invariably a white woman, was expected to be available to him, principally or procreation, as he desired. And his concubines— more oten than not, the most avored o the dark-skinned emale slaves on his plantation—were equally circumscribed, expected to await his call and subject to his wishes. This dualistic sexual morality permeated and eectively divided all aspects o daily lie. On the one hand, it successully mapped out sharply opposed male and emale domains, carving out contrasting sets o male and emale space, opposing notions o proper male and emale activities. While the activities o the male were directed toward the wider social world o economic, political, and social interactions beyond the amily domain, the activities o his wie and daughters were sharply restricted, limited to the domestic world o the amily itsel. Thus the casa (house) was reserved as both ortress and prison or his wie and daughters, and the engenho (sugar actory) and, increasingly, the cidade (city), the praça (city square), and the rua (street) were the territory o men, the domain o the patriarch. His world was one o action and was sharply opposed to the relatively inactive, or, probably more accurate, the guarded and bounded society o his women. Just as this double moral standard resulted in the sharp dierentiation o male and emale spheres within the patriarchal amily, it also appears in what Antônio Cândido asaectual the clear-cut o legal procreative unctions romhas thedescribed sexual and realmseparation in patriarchal society (Cândido 1951). On the one hand, tied to the Christian ideal o monogamous amily lie, the legal core or nucleus seems to have provided what Cândido terms “a stabilizing orce” in the otherwise chaotic sexual lie o colonial Brazil, ensuring political and economic continuity by conrming set lines o inheritance running rom the patriarch to his legitimate male ospring (ibid., pp. 302–3). At the same time, however, thanks to the dual structure o the patriarchal system and the colonists’ apparent taste or non-European women, the sexual and aectual interests o the patriarch seem more oten than not to have been directed away rom this legal core and toward the periphery—toward a de acto set o polygynous relationships with any number o his emale slaves (see Cândido 1951, Freyre 1956). While the illegitimate children produced by these relationships seem to have been aorded unusually high status in colonial society, it was through the patriarch’s legal sons and daughters that the continuity o the patriar-
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chal structure was assured—through marriage alliances arranged between patriarchal amilies and through the inheritance o the patriarch’s wealth by his legitimate sons. Within the context o this structure, the double standard which so completely characterized the relations between the patriarch and his women was reproduced in the socialization o his sons and daughters. Indeed, the daughter was subject to an even more rigid set o controls than was her mother. In the interests o protecting her virgindade (virginity), her honra (honor)—and by extension, the honor o her ather—her reedom o movement was almost completely curtailed. Entrusted during the day to the vigilance o a avorite mucama (emale house servant), she was at night relegated to the secure interior o the casa-grande, to chambers which resembled more a prison cell than anything else: We have but to recall the act that during the day the white girl o whatever age was always under the eye o an older person or a trusted mucama, and this vigilance was redoubled during the night. A small room or bedroom was reserved or her in the center o the house, and she was surrounded on all our sides by her elders. It was more o a prison than the apartment o a ree being. A kind o sick-room, where everyone had to keep watch. (Freyre 1956, p. 353)
This almost Arabian seclusion was maintained throughout her childhood, until, at the age o twelve, thirteen, or ourteen, a marriage was arranged or her with another suitable member o the patriarchal class—oten many years her senior. At this point, o course, control over her conduct passed to the hands and o her and sheobegan her career as both the mistress o his estate yethusband, another subject his dominion. The early experiences o the son, however, contrast sharply with this picture. Like the daughter, rom his very earliest days, his contact with the black slave population on the plantation was extensive and intimate. Yet in the case o the son, as Freyre has suggested, such contact provided less an extension o paternal vigilance than a basic sexual education—the boy’s initiation, at a very early age, into sexual maturity. Far rom the strict sexual prohibitions applied to the daughter, whose virginity was a commodity or exchange under the patriarchal system, this early sexual initiation o the son was expected and encouraged as a mark o masculinity and, or that matter, as a potential contribution to the plantation labor orce: No Big House in the days o slavery would want any eeminate sons or male virgins. In the olklore o our old sugar and coee zones, whenever there is
Men and Women reerence to sexually pure youths, it is always in a tone o mockery, by way o holding the ladylike ellow up to ridicule. The one always approved was the lad who went with the girls at as early an age as possible. A “ raparigueiro,” as we would say today. A woman-chaser. A ladies’ man. A defowerer o maidens, one who lost no time in taking negro women that he might increase the herd and the paternal capital. (Ibid., p. 395)
A younger version o the patriarch, then, with his masculinity staked at least in part upon his early sexual activities and his reputation or promiscuity, the image o the young male provides a sharp contrast to that o the emale. Taken together, the two gures seem not only to reproduce, but in a undamental way to deepen the structure o the gender hierarchy—to add new nuances to it. The vision o masculinity that emerges here seems reasonably clear-cut and unied. It is a vision o power, o action and virility encompassed in the patriarch’s absolute domination over all those around him. The complementary vision o emininity, however, is rather more complicated. It is, without question, a vision o ineriority and submission in the ace o patriarchal authority. But the separations between monogamy and polygyny, between legal endogamy and sexual/aectual exogamy, and between the legal and the sexual/aectual unctions within the amily have been tied to a ar more ambivalent characterization o the mulher than o the homem. While the homem was largely synonymous with the gure o the patriarch himsel, a more diversied characterization o the mulher seems to have beenwie builtand up,mother, linking on andthe yetone simultaneously dierentiating visions o the legal hand, rom images o the concubine, on the other. That these gures could so easily be combined in a single representation o the mulher is clearly o crucial importance, or it allowed the notion o the mulher, as an ideological structure, to be ar more easily manipulated in a variety o ways to reinorce and legitimate the structure o patriarchal domination. And, equally important, at least rom our own perspective, it provided an ideological model which has continued to exercise proound infuence over the ways in which Brazilian women have been conceptualized and categorized—the ways in which an understanding o emininity has been built up in the course o normal daily lie. Ultimately, it is here that the importance o the patriarchal legacy described by writers such as Cândido and Freyre takes on its ullest signicance. The historical circumstances that made possible the classic patriarchal conguration have clearly long since vanished. Indeed, the extent to
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which such a structure was ever in act ully realized, even when historical circumstances might have permitted, is a question open to debate (see, in particular, Almeida et al. 1982). In the present context, however, this question is perhaps less important than the act that a socially constituted vision o the patriarchal amily (as opposed to its empirical reality) has continued to aect Brazilian thought, the ways in which Brazilians view not only their own history but their current social milieu as well. And perhaps in no other area has the impact o patriarchal ideology been more powerully elt than in the construction o gender—in interpretations o masculinity and emininity and understandings o the relationships which should exist between men and women in contemporary social lie. While these understandings have been transormed in a variety o ways over the course o many years, a lingering vision o patriarchal lie nonetheless remains and must still be conronted as at least one important oundation or contemporary Brazilian thought.
The Language o the Body While a certain image o the patriarchal tradition provides a context within which Brazilians continue to interpret the relations between men and women, it is in the language o daily lie that their most salient understandings o masculinity and emininity are rst built up. It is in the expressions, terms, and metaphors that are used to speak about the body and its practices that the child’s with relation to reality beginslie to are takemost shape and thatexpressed. the meanings associated gender in Brazilian powerully When viewed rom this perspective, the dierentiation between two undamentally distinct physical types—one male and the other emale—is taken as a simple act o nature. While the maniestations o this apparently natural dierentiation are varied, it is in the existence o two opposed anatomical structures—the pênis and the vagina—that the distinction between male and emale is literally embodied. This initial classication o anatomical dierence is but the rst step, however, in a much more extended process o cultural elaboration that ultimately transorms the apparently given nature o the human body into a set o socially signicant distinctions: the hierarchical relations o gender in Brazilian lie. From this perspective, the penis and the vagina begin to take on meaning not simply as markers o a natural order, but as representations o a particular set o cultural values (see Rubin 1975).
Men and Women
The character o this process, and the underlying structure o values that it encodes, becomes quickly evident as one turns rom these relatively neutral, inrequently used terms to the more common slang expressions that have been developed in Brazilian Portuguese in order to speak about the genital organs in daily lie. While the list o synonymous terms is remarkably extensive, those most requently cited by inormants and most commonly used in colloquial speech consistently articulate a distinction between the male and emale bodies that is anything but neutral. On the contrary, their implicit associations, and, no less important, their explicit use in particular speech acts, repeatedly elaborate the strength and superiority o the male genitals at the expense o the decient and patently inerior emale anatomy. Among the most consistently cited terms or the penis, or example, are expressions such as pau (stick), caralho (small stick), madeira (wood), cacete (club, cudgel), pica (prick, rom picar, to prick or pierce),mastro (mast or sta), vara (pole, shat, stick), arma (weapon), aca (knie), erro (iron, iron tool, iron weapon), bicho (animal), and cobra (snake). While this brie list by no means exhausts the available vocabulary (see Almeida 1981, Maior 1980, Rasmussen 1971), the pattern that it establishes is clear: drawing on the observed, physical qualities o the penis, virtually all o these expressions describe an elongated object, phallic in the most obvious sense. But they do much more than this, as well, or they place emphasis on the potentially active quality o the phallus—on its aggressive quality, on its potency not merely as a sexual organ, but, in the language o metaphor, as a tool to be wielded, as a kind1971, o weapon intimately linked to both violence and violation (see Rasmussen pp. 176–81). The complexity o the associations involved here comes through clearly in my discussion below with João, a twenty-six-year-old bisexual male rom a lower-middle- to lower-class background (see Appendix 2): RP:
And the words or the penis, the stick ( caralho), what are the most common that you use? João: Prick ( pica) . . . RP: Prick . . . and prick has another sense?
João: It has, to bite (morder) . . . RP: To bite? João: That’s it, a prick (uma picada), understand? You were stung, you were pricked . . . A snake, when it bites you . . . you don’t say that it bit you— the snake pricks you (te picou).
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The associations here seem to be largely unconscious. They are implicit. They begin to emerge more explicitly, however, as the discussion continues: RP: João: RP: João:
And what else? Club (cacete). Club . . . what does club mean? Is it something else as well as the penis? It is. The penis has this term o club. Club also means beating ( porrada). “I’m going to give you a clubbing (cacetada)” means that you’re going to receive a beating ( porrada). But the club is the piece o wood that ( pedaço de pau) I get and hit you with. Then, I’m with a club ( cacete), and I’m going to give you a clubbing (cacetada). And joking, I can give a clubbing with my fub (penis) too. Do you understand?
In the play o words, the phallus becomes, guratively i not literally, an arma—a weapon, an instrument o metaphoric aggression, or in an extension o Pierre Bourdieu’s expression, o symbolic violence (Bourdieu 1977, p. 237; Bourdieu and Passeron 1977, pp. x–xii). This set o associations becomes even clearer when we turn to the use o the term porrada—literally, a “blow” or a “beating.” Butporrada is also used to mean the sexual act itsel. It is closely linked to the term porra, which is at once an angry interjective expression, yet another synonym or the penis (once again, rom its association as a clava, a “club” or “cudgel”), and the most requently used popular term or sêmen (semen) or esperma (sperm). Porra, in turn, is tied to the terms esporrar and esporro, which are used to describe the ejaculation o sperm as semen, well as as a verbal or aggression. Understood as both phallus and well asrebuke in its relation to anger and violence, then, porra becomes a kind o essence o masculinity—a symbol o creative power, o potência (potency) and vida (lie): In Brazil, when you hear someone speak really about a symbol o ertility, the people are going to reer to “my porra.” “My porra” is positive. “My porra” is . . . it gives lie. “My porra made a child.” “My porra, you know, created a new being.” (João)
This emphasis on potency or creativity that is so clear in the symbolic associations o porra can be tied, ultimately, to the role played, not simply by the penis, but by the entire genital region, the virilha (groin), as the locus o masculine strength and will. It is in the ovos (literally, “eggs,” essentially equivalent to “balls” in English) or the testículos (testicles), and the saco (sack) or escroto (scrotum), that porra is most obviously thought to be lo-
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cated and in which the strength and courage associated with masculinity are most denitively embodied. 2 In the language o daily lie, or example, saco becomes a kind o barometer o patience and will: expressions such as estar com saco cheio (literally, “to be with a ull sack”) and encher o saco (literally, “to ll the sack”) mean to be “ed up” or “bothered” by something, and the expression puxar saco (literally, “to pull someone’s sack”) is roughly equivalent to the notion o “kissing ass” in English. Such essentially nonreerential usage is made possible by the metaphoric connection between the male genitals and masculine strength, stamina, orce, and virility. Indeed, when used with the augmentative sux - udo, any number o these terms (or example, pirocudo, ovudo, or sacudo) can acquire connotations o both virility and courage. Much like the notion o “having balls” in English, the idea o “big balls” or a “big sack” implies “guts” or “manliness” in Brazilian Portuguese. Ultimately, then, it is in such symbolic structures that an understanding o masculinity is rst built up in Brazilian lie. It is through such structures that the perceived reality o the male body is culturally elaborated and articulated—that the penis is transormed into the alo or álus (phallus).3 In the symbol o the phallus the diverse meanings associated with masculinity in Brazilian culture merge and intertwine. It links notions o virility and potency to notions o orce, power, and violence in varying degrees o conscious and unconscious understanding. And it is in the semantic conguration o these associations in the discourse o daily lie that the meaning o masculinity in Brazil must initially be apprehended. dierent, complicated, emerges one turns the Aemale bodyand andar themore representations o picture emininity that itasencodes. Justtoas the phallus takes shape as a kind o weapon, an instrument o orce and potential violence, the emale body seems to emerge, through much the same process o linguistic association, as both the object o such violence and, paradoxically, a locus o danger in its own right. The list o synonymous terms employed to speak about the vagina in everyday conversation is certainly no more limited than the list that has been developed to speak about the penis. As in the case o the penis, the terminology is varied; nonetheless, here too the most commonly used terms seem to cluster around and elaborate upon the most basic o observed physical characteristics: they include expressions such as boceta or buceta (a box or receptacle), buraco (hole), gruta (cave), racha (a split or ssure), chochota or xoxota (rom chochar, to become dry, weak, or insipid), greta (crack), carne mijada (meat covered with urine), boca (mouth), boca mijada (mouth covered with or lled with urine) and boca de baixo (mouth underneath, below), perereca (small tree rog), aranha (spider),
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and baratinha (small cockroach) (see Almeida 1981, Maior 1980, Rasmussen 1971). I the terms most commonly used to speak about the penis emphasize its strength and its potential or violence, the terms used to discuss the vagina conjure up a sense o ineriority and incompleteness. While the male is characterized by his possession o a potential weapon, the emale is characterized in terms o the ssure between her legs—the mysterious entrance that somehow denes her entire being. For both male and emale inormants, however, it would seem that in the darkness and obscurity o this emotionally charged image, mystery itsel gives way to a sense o danger: the vagina is transormed, in almost classically Freudian terms, into the boca de baixo, the mouth below, the threatening vagina dentata. No less menacing, and more pejorative, the boca de baixo is simultaneously a boca mijada—a mouth contaminated with urine. In the most vulgar metaphor, it is carne mijada—meat contaminated with urine—and is laughingly said to possess the unpleasant cheiro de bacalhau, the “smell o dried codsh.” As one riddle puts it: Question: What is the similarity between the cunt ( boceta) and the sh? Answer: They both stink equally and they both swallow worms!
These symbolic connections are described as an obvious gloss on the natural processes o the emale body associated with the vagina: They speak this. .way because it has all athe impurities o the body . . . urine, menstruation . Understand? (Rose, twenty-ve-year-old heterosexual woman rom a lower-middle-class amily)
Linked to the waste products o the body, to urine and to the fow o menstrual blood, the vagina thus becomes a ocal point or notions o impurity in Brazilian lie. As is so oten the case cross-culturally, it comes to stand or uncleanliness, pollution, and contamination. And, by extension, these negative images are associated with the most deeply rooted understandings o women and emininity in Brazilian culture.4 Nowhere is this linkage more clearly played out than in the symbolic complex developed around the notion o menstruação (menstruation). At its most neutral, the mênstruo (menses) o the emale is described as her ciclo mensal (monthly cycle). More metaphorically, however, it is reerred to as a kind o hóspede incomodo —as an “annoying, troublesome, or unwanted guest” named Chico or Jacinto. The fow o menstrual blood itsel is spoken
Men and Women
o as corrimento (discharge or secretion caused by inection), aspaquete (literally, “a steamship”) or sangria (red wine mixed with pieces o ruit), as a bandeira vermelha (a red fag, associated by inormants with the fags placed on beaches to prohibit entry on particularly rough days as well as with the various materials which women use to catch the menstrual discharge), as an unpleasant regra (rule) o nature, or most orceully, as amal-de-mulher (an evil or a sickness o women). The woman suering rom such a condition can thus be described as menstruada (menstruant), as incomodada (incommodated), or simply regrada (ruled). Once again, an extremely complicated set o associations is at work. At the heart o this complex is the association that is built up between notions o menstruation, sickness, and a contamination that is at once physical and spiritual. The term corrimento, or example, describes not merely the discharge o menstrual blood but also the genital secretions caused by venereal inection. The notion o a mal-de-mulher develops this connection even urther, conjuring up a whole set o similar expressions used to describe venereal inection—or example, mal-de-amores (sickness-o-lovers), mal-decristãos (sickness-o-Christians), and mal-de-Vênus (sickness-o-Venus). It plays on the double meaning o mal as both “sickness” and “evil,” linking together images o disease, evil, contagion, and emininity: Look, there’s a saying in Brazil that I don’t remember well, but that says: “The woman is satanic because she spits re . . . no, she spits blood!” Because you know that the cunt ( boceta) has t he same ideology as the mouth ( boca), right? Thereore spits blood days o menstruation. this connotation oshe something evilduring alreadythecomes rom the woman Then in relation to the Devil. Blood . . . not blood as a lie actor, because blood is the energy o lie, but because she is . . . is throwing out [wasting] the blood, there is already that connotation o something evil . . . It’s like the term mal-de-mulher . . . Mal-demulher can be the name o a sickness . . . Understand? “Ah, careul, don’t touch because this is the mal-de-mulher . . .” In the same way that in certain regions o Brazil it happens that when the woman is menstruating it’s as i it were a sickness. Understand? Then, the man doesn’t even dare to kiss her because he could get the mal-de-mulher . . . They think that it’s a disease . . . like this . . . you make it with a woman with gonorrhea, you put your dick in, and right away you know that you’re going to come out with gonorrhea. You kiss a person with syphilis and you know that you’re going to get syphilis. So, the one man says to the other: “Look, don’t go with that whore, no, because she’s got the mal-demulher, and be careul, because you could get sick.” (João)
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Just as the conceptualization o semen elaborates a set o qualities implicit in the representation o the phallus, the cultural articulation o menstruation extends the apparent perplexities o the vagina. Taken together, these symbolic complexes simultaneously bind and separate. They dene male and emale as opposed, hierarchically related categories within a system o cultural values. Yet at the same time, they link the two through the threat that each potentially poses to the other—through the violent attacks which seem always ready to be unleashed by the male against the emale as well as through the physical and even spiritual pollution passed rom the emale to the male. The physical reality o the body itsel thus divides the sexual universe in two. Perceived anatomical dierences begin to be transormed, through language, into the hierarchically related categories o socially and culturally dened gender: into the classes o masculino (masculine) and eminino (eminine). The nature o this distinction becomes even more explicit and more complicated as one moves rom the terms that Brazilians use in speaking about the organs o the body to the ways in which they describe and comment upon the combination o these organs. As in other parts o the Latin world, these orms o speech in Brazil tend to develop a basic distinction between atividade (activity) and passividade (passivity)—between culturally dened “active” and “passive” roles during sexual interactions. Building upon the perception o anatomical dierence, it is this distinction between activity and passivity that most clearly structures Brazilian notions o masculinity and emininity and that has traditionally served as the organizing principle or much wider world o 1981; sexualParker classications in day-to-day Brazilian lie (seeaFry 1982, 1985; Misse 1985b, 1987, 1988, 1989b). The importance o this distinction between activity and passivity is especially apparent in the language that is used to describe sex itsel—in expressions such as comer (to eat), dar (to give), entregar (to deliver),oder (to uck), car por cima (to be on top), and abrir as pernas (to open one’s legs). Comer, or example, used in the active voice, unctions metaphorically to describe the act o penetration in sexual intercourse. It implies an act o control, an act o domination: The one who eats is on top . . . he’s the one who dominates . . . (Telma, a twenty-year-old heterosexual emale, srcinally rom a very poor rural amily)
In a variety o dierent contexts,comer can thus be used synonymously with terms such as vencer (to conquer, vanquish) and possuir (to possess, own).
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When one soccer team deeats another, or example, its ans claim that their team has “eaten” its opponents. And through the act o comendo, the active partner metaphorically consumes the passive: possuindo, taking possession, asserting ownership. Dar, in contrast, describes the passive role o being penetrated in either genital or anal intercourse: The one who gives (dá) opens his (or her) legs . . . delivers himsel to the other one . . . (Antônio, a twenty-nine-year-old gay man rom a middle-class background)
Just as comer suggests an act o control or domination, dar —or, synonymously, entregar—connotes a process o submission or subjugation. Again, the metaphors can be carried out o the sexual realm: abrir as pernas can describe any variety o personal deeats, while the saying entregar ouro para o bandido (to deliver gold to the bandit) unctions as well to describe a loss o valuables as it does a sexual perormance. Through the act o dando (giving), the passive partner is oered up to be penetrated and possessed (Fry 1982, 1985; Parker 1985b, 1987, 1989b). This set o relationships is also captured in the use o oder, perhaps the strongest o any o the terms used to describe sexual exchanges: To uck (oder) . . . when you’re ucking (odendo) someone, when you’re eating (comendo) someone, when you’re possessing ( possuindo) someone with authority . . . then. you are above someoneo. .dominator, . You have aosuperiority . . You’re on top o someone . . You’re in a position trainer . . . .You’re being the king during that moment. (José, a thirty-two-year-old bisexual male rom a working-class background)
And as in the case o comer, in the passive voice, oder implies ar more than a simple sexual position: it can be used both literally and guratively, much as one speaks o having been “ucked over” in English: You can be ucked ( odido) because someone is eating (comendo) you, in sex . . . But a person who is odido . . . ah, there are so many things . . . Look, my country can be totally ucked because o who is in power . . . Do you understand? You can be ucked because you have cancer . . . You can be ucked because this month you don’t have any money in the bank, and a mountain o debts to be paid. You use this term a lot with money. (José)
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In short, like terms such as comer and dar, oder does not simply describe a sexual act. On the contrary, it simultaneously encodes in a sexual idiom a system o cultural values, a set o social relationships. Like synonymous terms and expressions, it develops a eld o power and organizes this eld around the culturally dened poles o activity and passivity which themselves translate into sharply contrasted notions o masculinity and emininity (Fry 1982, 1985; Parker 1985b, 1987, 1989b). The language o the body in contemporary Brazilian lie thus plays a crucial role in the construction o gender as a social, rather than a strictly biological, act. It is through language that the body is not only categorized, but described and interpreted—invested with multiple meanings and analyzed in terms o dierential values. The Brazilians’ most proound understandings o themselves as men and women are intimately bound to the language through which their culture has enabled them to think about themselves as embodied beings—and about their bodies as sexual objects. Still, this experience and understanding o the body remains but the rst step in what is a ar more extended process o cultural elaboration—a process in which the relatively limited possibilities o anatomic orm, as culturally classied and articulated, give way to increasingly nuanced notions o gender as a system o socially determined categories.
Sexual Categories Through its description and interpretation o the the language o the body transorms biological reality intonatural social world, signicance. A system o sexual classication is built up and a hierarchy o values between the various classes is established. Playing upon deeply ingrained notions o activity and passivity, domination and submission, violence and ineriority, these structures split the sexual universe in two—opposing, without compromise, the world o men, penetrating and metaphorically consuming their partners during sexual exchanges, against the world o women, passively oering themselves up to be penetrated and possessed. As clear as these oppositions seem to be in traditional Brazilian lie, however, the ull range o their meaningul potential is a good deal less straightorward than it might at rst appear. While an opposition between activity and passivity seems to translate into a stark contrast between masculinity and emininity, it can simultaneously be employed to articulate a more subtle set o distinctions. Culturally dened notions o biological gender and social role can be manipulated, arranged and rearranged, combined in a va-
Men and Women
riety o ways, in order to build up more diverse (and hence more ambiguous) images o masculinity and emininity—composite visions o male and emale potential that encode a more elaborate system o sexual denitions. The most obvious extensions o the traditional homem and mulher can be ound in categories such as the esposo (husband) and esposa (wie) or pai (ather) and mãe (mother). Linked through their marital relationship, through the act o coito (coitus) which symbolizes this relationship, and through the underlying notions o dominance and submission which structure it, these gures reproduce and reinorce the undamentally hierarchical distinctions implicit in the more general categories o homem and mulher. Among the most concrete symbols or embodiments o cultural values such as virility and ertility, they serve as examples o masculinity and emininity played out to their ullest potential, and they unction as models or the construction o male and emale roles. But i we take a step back and examine these oppositions within a slightly broader context, it becomes apparent that they unction in concert with a range o other sexual classications. Homem and mulher, or example, are dened not only with reerence to one another, but also with reerence to a variety o additional gures which embody a complex array o both positive and negative male and emale possibilities. An understanding o the homem is constructed not merely through opposition to the mulher, but, at the same time, through his relation to gures such as the machão (macho or he-man), the corno (cuckold), and the bicha or viado (queer or aggot). And the mulher, like the homem, must be apprehended not merely in her opposition to him, but gures such as the virgem (virgin), or puta (whore), andthrough even the sapatão (literally, “big shoes,” but the bestpiranha translated into English as “dyke”). These additional gures may be lesser players in the cast o characters that make up the Brazilian sexual drama, but they all nonetheless perorm crucial roles in the construction o gender in daily lie. It is hardly surprising, given our understanding o both the patriarchal tradition and the language o the body in contemporary Brazil, that the gure o the machão should be as important as either the ather or the husband in constructing a popular denition o masculinity. As much as any other single gure, the machão embodies the values traditionally associated with the male role in Brazilian culture—orce and power, violence and aggression, virility and sexual potency: To be a man, a real man, you have to be a machão. A machão in bed and in the street: you have, or you think that you have, huge sexual potential, a big cock, and you uck with anything th at’s a woman. The machão is a roughneck too,
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Indeed, sexual prowess and readiness to ght in order to deend one’s honor are themselves indicative o a certain kind o power or dominance—a dominance which is perhaps the key characteristic o the machão, and in which he clearly begins to merge with the gure o the pai: But it isn’t just that, no, you know . . . It isn’t just sex. It’s the thing about domination. Because I remember my ather. He was the ather. Everything there at home was his. He had to have charge o everything because he was the man, he was the ather, he was the he-man . . . He had to dominate in everything. (Maria, a twenty-seven-year-old woman rom a very poor amily in Rio)
Together the machão and the pai provide a portrait, or at the very least, an ideal, o the modern homem as hardly distinguishable rom the traditional patriarch. They embody a deeply rooted set o values that continues to unction even today in structuring the world o gender in Brazilian lie—a set o values in which the symbolism o sexuality, violence, and power are clearly linked in the cultural conguration o masculinity. I an image o the true homem is built up, at least in part with reerence to positively valued gures such as the pai and the machão, however, it is not solely with reerence to these gures that the homem is dened. Just as the homem, as homem, must be understood at least in part through his
homem machão opposition the mulher , so too thegures , as as or pai , must be un-. derstood intocontrast to additional such the viado and the corno Understood, in the eyes o their ellows, as biological males who have in one way or another ailed to live up to the masculine ideal articulated so orceully in Brazilian culture, these characters seem to have taken on special signicance as negative images in relation to the homem. The “queer” and the cuckold are visions o masculinity somehow lost or gone astray; they are visions o all that the true homem can never be: A viado or a corno isn’t a true man, you know! (Rose)
The crucial point is not simply that neither the viado nor the corno is a “true” man, but that both gures unction—no less than the mulher —as negative alternatives in building up a positive image o what the true man in act should be: the homem, the machão, the pai. For this reason, the neither truly masculine nor truly eminine gure o the viado or the corno opens up
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a particularly ambiguous cultural space vis-à-vis both the homem and the mulher. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the case o the viado (taken, srcinally, rom the term veado or “deer,” but more commonly spelled and pronounced with an accentuated “i” replacing the “e”), the maricas (sissy) or bicha (literally, a “worm” or an “intestinal parasite,” again, probably best translated into English as “aggot” or “queer”)—terms applied principally to individuals who are thought to take the passive (and thus, symbolically, eminine) role o being penetrated. In a system that places such great emphasis on the distinction between activity and passivity, and which links this distinction to the categorical opposition o male and emale, the viado or bicha is assigned a particularly problematic status. Like the mulher, such individuals are said to dar, or give—in this case, in passive anal intercourse. Regardless o their objectively male physiognomy, then, they are no less clearly opposed in popular conception to the active, eating homem than is the mulher. Yet they are not mulheres, and the ambiguities which such inversions o normally accepted cultural categories produce invest the symbolic space o the viado with an especially powerul emotional charge (see Fry 1982, 1985; Misse 1981; Parker 1985b, 1987, 1989b).5 What seems to be central here is the essentially anomalous eeminacy o what should rightully be male virility and activity. This is evident in the use o terms such as viado or bicha. The use o viado, or example, is linked to a popular perception o the veado (deer) as the most rail and delicate, the most eeminate, o animals: It’s because the animal is so delicate—almost eminine. (Dora, a twenty-twoyear-old woman rom a middle-class amily in Rio)
Indeed, a number o inormants went so ar as to situate the term historically and link it directly to Walt Disney’s popular lm Bambi: This came, historically, ater Walt Disney when he invented Bambi. You understand? Because he was a very ragile animal, very delicate, without strength. In spite o being “male” he was very eeminate. Beore this, the creation by Walt Disney, the terms were maricona, pederasta, a forzinha, marica . . . (João)
Much the same set o associations is tied, in popular conception, to the term bicha. A word designating a variety o intestinal parasites, bicha is also the eminine orm o bicho (a class o “unspecied animals” which can range rom insects to mammals), and it is this second meaning, with its
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emphasis on an animal-like emininity, that most clearly catches popular imagination: It’s principally this business o emininity . . . When we think o a bicha, we think o a eminine animal. (Kátia, a twenty-three-year-old heterosexual emale rom an upper-middle-class amily in south Brazil)
Indeed, as at least one highly educated inormant explained, the term bicha itsel might well have been recently imported rom France—a variation on the French term biche, or “doe.” With the underlying connection “emale deer,” it would thus tie together the whole set o associations suggested by other inormants. The structure o male/emale relations in Brazil has thereore also served as a model or same-sex interactions as well. A sharp distinction between culturally dened “active” and “passive” partners in anal intercourse has been central to the traditional understanding o sexual relations between men. While the “active” partner in same-sex relations would be unlikely, in light o the Catholic condemnation o both pederasty and sodomy, to give public notice o his activities, he is nonetheless able, thanks to his sexual activity, to maintain an essentially masculine identity. The viado or bicha, the “passive” partner in such exchanges, on the other hand, is unavoidably transormed, not merely in his own eyes, but in the eyes o his partner or partners and in the eyes o any other individuals around him who might happen to have knowledge o his sexual practices. He is emasculated. He becomes, through his sexual role, a symbolic emale: Look, the viado gives ass . . . He serves as the woman. (Rose)
He is reerred to, oten mockingly, in terms otherwise reserved or the biological emale: as the eminine ela (she) rather than the masculine ele (he), as a donzela (the little virgin), a moça (the girl, young woman), or amenina (the little girl). He tends to be at least partially ostracized, nding employment only in highly marginal lines o work or in jobs traditionally reserved or women. And he oten seems to adopt a highly exaggerated eminine manner in both movement and speech—acting out, through his caricature, the role o bicha louca, or “faming queen.” Yet regardless o the mockery and pretense, even the bicha louca is not, in act, uma mulher verdadeira, “a true woman.” On the contrary, he remains a dangerous and disturbing anomaly. Genitally male, yet having abandoned the truehomem’s identity as
Men and Women
both machão and pai by adopting the passive sexual role, the bicha becomes a kind o emale animal, betwixt and between the accepted categories o normal human lie (see Fry 1985, Parker 1985b). Because o the emphasis it places upon culturally dened notions o activity and passivity as criteria or sexual classication, along with the clear dierentiation it seems to articulate between culturally dened anatomical structure and social role, the distinction here is crucial to an understanding o the Brazilian sexual universe. Within the terms o this cultural rame, relations between men are structured along the same lines as those between men and women, that is, in terms o sex and power. It is possible, though certainly not unproblematical, or a man to enter into sexual relations not only with women but also with other biological males without really sacricing his undamentally masculine identity. In taking the active role o penetration during anal intercourse, his hierarchical dominance is preserved. In perorming the passive role in such exchanges, however, the viado or bicha gives up his masculine identity—he comes to be dened as essentially eminine in terms o social role and as at best a poor imitation o the biological emale in terms o social status, socially inadequate as a man and a biological ailure as a woman. The threat o anal penetration, whether symbolic or real, thus denes the underlying structure o masculine relationships, and deense against the phallic attacks o other males becomes an almost constant concern during the ordinary interactions o daily lie. 6 Although there are certainly important dierences between the two gures, an analogous symbolic conguration also emerges as one turns rom the viadospeech, to thea corno —literally, the “horn on an animal’s head,” butmulin popular “cuckold,” an homem who has been betrayed by his her. As in the case o the viado or bicha, the list o synonymous terms and expressions developed in order to speak about the corno is extensive. While oering up a range o meanings and implications, however, these expressions virtually all tie back, in one way or another, to the verbcornear —literally, “to gore with horns,” but guratively or colloquially, “to cuckold”: Everything comes rom the verb cornear, you know. The corno is the man who was betrayed or is being betrayed by his wie—he is the cuckold. Cornudo means the same t hing. And along with being called corno and cornudo, he can also be called puto or chirudo. You know what a horn (chire) is, don’t you? A horn is that thing t hat the ox has on his head, that the deer has on his head . . . Instead o saying corno, cornudo, or puto, you can say chirudo —“he’s a chirudo” instead o “he’s a cornudo.” And you can also say: “He’s getting branches
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Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions on his head . . . he’s got a ucking set o branches on his head.” It’s a metaphor . . . the branches o a tree and their similarity to the horns o the man. (José Carlos, a thirty-two-year-old heterosexual male rom the working class)
The betrayal by the mulher thus wounds and transorms the homem ; it gores him and simultaneously places horns upon his head. It constitutes a symbolic onslaught—a rontal attack upon the masculine identity o the homem which, when successully carried out, reduces him to the moral equivalent o the viado. In the animal imagery applied to both, the link between the viado and the corno is explicit. As one inormant described it to me, it is an association which rests on the corno ’s inability to protect and control the mulher, on the impotence that such inability implies, and on the symbolic emasculation that it produces: The corno is being ucked over . . . he is being ucked over without knowing it. He’s a viado; in the Brazilian conception, he’s a viado. Look, the man who lets his woman screw with another man, he’s a viado because he isn’t paying attention to the woman. He doesn’t pay attention to his woman, so she arranges another man. It is always said: “Ah, she arranged another man in the street because he wasn’t any good in bed . . . she had to go out in the street and nd another man.” Do you understand? So you have this business o the viado, the horns, the person with horns, the branches, the antlers. And what’s more, you still have that business: the corno is being screwed by the woman because she’s betraying him. (José Carlos)
The notion o impotence is rapidly translated into an even stronger image o passivity, and the gure o the corno merges with that o the viado: You talk about horns, about antlers or branches, because o the viado. The antlers are the antlers o the deer. It’s this passive business. You understand? He’s being screwed, metaphorically, by the woman who’s betraying him. It’s because o this that the corno is also called a “banana”—because he’s completely limp . . . he’s like a queer. (João)
The gures o the viado and the corno are thus quite consciously associated in popular thought. Each reinorces the other, while at the same time articulating, through the conceptual power o the negative, a certain vision o masculinity as properly realized in Brazilian lie.
Men and Women
For all the similarities that exist in the popular conception o the viado and the corno, however, there is nonetheless at least one crucial dierence between the two: while another male is the key agent acting to produce the symbolic space o the viado, it is the action o the mulher that places horns upon the head o the corno.7 Just as the homem penetrates the viado, the mulher symbolically gores the corno: It’s the mulher who makes a cuckold . . . Even i it was my best riend who ucked with her, you know, it wasn’t him who made a corno out o me, no. I would call him a “son o a bitch”—but she was the one who betrayed me. (João)
Indeed, the mulher hersel can be described as a cornoateira or, loosely translated, a specialist in the art o cuckoldry; and the threat posed by the cornoateira seems to be understood in Brazilian lie as an almost ever-present danger. Just as so much male anxiety seems to be ocused on the gure o the viado and the whole notion o passivity in sex, the possibility that one’s mulher might at any instant be betraying one seems to haunt the Brazilian male. Ultimately, then, i the homem, the proper machão, must be understood in terms o his activity and virility, this understanding must be played o against the passivity and impotence that continually threaten the sel-assurance o male identity. The emotional contradictions o this structure are projected outward in the symbolic complexes that mark o the viado and the corno as traditional categories in the Brazilian sexual universe. In the ridicule andsimply disgustthe which so oten accompany gures, the Brazilian male is not unquestioned dominator these o patriarchal ideology, but a potential victim—constantly open to symbolic attack, not only by other men, but by women as well. Recognizing that women can be seen at once as undamentally inerior, as desirable, and as threatening and dangerous is crucial to any ull understanding o the Brazilian system. Indeed, the ambiguities inherent in such an understanding are central to the popular conception o the mulher. As in the case o the homem, a vision o the mulher has traditionally been built up in relation to a variety o other gures: the virgem (virgin), the piranha or
puta (whore), and to a slightly lesser extent, thesapatão (big shoes or dyke). Like their male counterparts, these emale gures unction symbolically in marking o as well as opening up the eminine domain as a semantic eld. They articulate both positive and negative aspects o a socially constructed eminine role.
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Technically, at least, thevirgem is dened according to her lack o sexual experience. Known also as a donzela (damsel), a moça (maiden) or moçinha (little maiden), or even a santinha (a little saint), she is characterized by her castidade (chastity) and, consequently, by her undamental innocence and purity: In Brazil, virginity means purity. A virgin girl is a pure girl. And she has to marry as a virgin. This is what is correct. (Angela, a orty-eight-year-old housewie rom a lower-middle-class amily in Rio)
The innocence and purity o the virgem is concretely symbolized in her cabaço (hymen): The cabaço is what the woman loses when she ucks or the rst time . . . Understand? In Brazil, you call this the cabaço . . . “She lost the cabaço o the dove (vagina)!” It’s when the prick enters, bursts the cabaço, that the woman loses her virginity. (João)
The social recognition o a girl’s innocence is thus tied to the condition o her body—to its reedom rom sexual contact, attested in the unbroken hymen. According to the dictates o popular morality, it is the hymen that the virgem must preserve until she marries (see Alves et al. 1981, Willems 1953). Within the traditional context o sexual lie in Brazil, the cabaço thus becomes keysexuality representation only o emale sexuality, control over athat which isnotrightully exercised by men.but In o thethe case o the virgem, such control lies, rst, in the hands o her ather and, by extension, o his sons, her brothers. Her cabaço is a symbol o her own innocence and purity, but it is simultaneously a mark o male dominion, a sign o the ather’s authority, and a symbol o amily honor. It is clearly expected that such dominion will pass, at the time o marriage, rom her ather and brothers to the bride’s new husband—a transer o powers symbolized in the initial act o intercourse between the bride and groom ollowing the marriage ceremony: The cabaço has to be delivered to the man ater the ceremony. (Maria)
The “delivery” o the cabaço takes on an almost ritual importance which is hardly less signicant than the marriage ceremony itsel. It establishes the
Men and Women
absolute control o the husband over the body o his new wie, and it transers, at the same time, the question o honra rom the central concern o her ather and brothers to that o her husband. Given the importance o the cabaço as a symbol o male control, it is hardly surprising that the perda da virgindade, the “loss o virginity,” should ocus upon it, and that this should be a highly problematic event capable o calling into question not simply the innocence o the allen virgem, but the honor o her entire amily: The woman who loses her cabaço outside o marriage isn’t pure anymore . . . Now she’s a whore! She dishonored her amily . . . (João)
Speculation concerning a young woman’s virginity is thereore extensive, particularly on the part o men, but among the women o the community as well: People oten deame one another in Brazil . . . I think it’s strange that where I lived . . . it was the kind o place that . . . a girl who loses hersel, they debauch her lie in such a way that the woman simply is transormed into almost nothing . . . She is a whore, she is shameless, she is a vagabond, a tramp, a prostitute . . . She dishonored the name o the amily. Because to lose her virginity beore marriage here in Brazil is to dishonor! (Antônio)
While terms such as deforar or desforar (defower) are normally employed to husband’s possession virgin the sameor act,describe outsidethe o wedlock, is rightul invariably describedoinhis terms o bride, loss, disgrace, dishonor. Through the intervention o men, and the initiation that they provide into the world o sexual experience, the virgem is transormed, in one direction, into the esposa and mãe, the wie and mother, and in the other direction, into the piranha or puta, the whore, who takes her place not merely as an expression o male control, but as a threat to it.8 As in the case o the viado (who is in many ways a strangely analogous gure), the eect the puta has upon the men around her varies depending upon her own activities. In the case o the woman who accepts no ee yet nonetheless gives hersel up indiscriminately or unthinkingly, or example, the puta clearly conrms the undamental virility and masculinity o her illicit partners. At the same time, however, she clearly denies control over her sexual behavior to those men who should rightully exercise it: her ather and brothers or, i she has already married, her husband. She thus under-
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cuts the structure o power within which her sexual activities ought to be deployed and which, within the proper order o things, her actions ought ultimately to conrm. She emasculates the men o her amily and places horns upon her husband’s head. In the case o the proessional prostitute, even i amily ties have been distanced or cut, one nds a structurally analogous system. The michê (payment) which she receives rom her customers conrms their value rather than hers. And while control over her sexual actions might be said, in some instances, to lie in the hands o her gigolô (gigolo or pimp), his own nancial dependence on her, his acceptance o the money she earns, and his willingness or her to engage in sexual relations with other males, transorms him in the eyes o Brazilian society into nothing more than a parasite—a bicha in the ullest sense o the term. Once again, we nd a conguration raught with contradictions. Like the homem who sleeps with the viado, the homem who sleeps with the puta or piranha in no way jeopardizes his own moral standing. On the contrary, in ullling his role as machão, in possessing her, however briefy, he conrms and even pronounces his own masculinity. For him, the puta can become a central object o desire reinorcing a particular vision o himsel and his place in the sexual universe. For her amily, and or the other individuals whose lives she touches, however, she is seen as an agent o destruction, as the woman who “eats,” who devours men, amilies, everything in her path: Piranha . . . This term was used because the sh rom the Rio A mazonas devoured, devour, the people or the animals so quickly . . . So, it’s a term o destruction . . The homes, the piranha transmits disease . . . the piranha .takes thepiranha person destroys o the path o virtue . . . (Luis, a thirty-ve-yearold heterosexual male rom the lower class)
She is as undamentally destructive as the mãe is productive, and it is this destructiveness that makes possible an extension o the puta’s cultural meaning rom the sexual to the nonsexual realm. Just as the term viado becomes an epithet used against a male engaged in virtually any orm o socially unacceptable behavior, expressions such as puta and lho or lha de uma puta (“son” or “daughter o a whore,” roughly equivalent to “son o a bitch” in English) are extended metaphorically as markers o social condemnation and orms o verbal attack: The puta lives by means o acts that are condemned by society. They live rom sex. They make their work out o their bodies. It’s because o this that you call a
Men and Women
puta not just the woman who screws, but anyone who ucks over other people, who lives outside o the normal patterns o society. Puta is a pejorative name saying that the people are outside o the moral patterns, o religion or society . . . The puta is always doing something negative, something to uck someone over—which doesn’t mean to say that the putas who earn their price on the street corners o lie are any less lhas da puta than a general who is acting as a dictator in a country or a boss who is making slaves out o his employees . . . they’re both lhos da puta. (Jorge, a orty-ve-year-old attorney, srcinally rom northeastern Brazil but currently living in Rio)
Like the viado, then, the puta carries an especially strong, and especially ambiguous, meaning, which extends beyond the explicitly sexual. At one and the same time, she can both conrm the masculine identities o her partners and call into question the structure o power upon which those identities are ounded. More orceully than the virgem, she takes on a central role in constituting not only emininity, in and o itsel, but its underlying and undamentally threatening relationship to masculinity. I rom the point o view o the Brazilian male, the piranha represents the most threatening aspects o emininity, however, it is the sapatão, the “big shoes” or “dyke,” the woman engaged in sexual relations with another woman, who embodies its most perplexing possibilities and departs most completely rom the expected norms o eminine behavior. In terms such as bota (boot), botão (large boot), coturno (army boot), lésbica (lesbian), machona (macho woman), mulher aranha (spider woman), mulher homem
machomasculine (man and mulher (male woman), emphasis always given woman), to the sapatão ’s supposedly character, and itisisalmost here that the symbol o the sapato (shoe) becomes central: The shoe has a connotation o the oot, that the man who has a large oot, he is good in bed and has a big prick . . . It’s a popular proverb . . . So, women very . . . very . . . with movements that are very large, without eminine class, completely stereotyped like those o a man, are called sapatão or sapato grande. (João)
Thus not simply any shoe will do. It is the big shoe, the boot, or army boot: You can see that o all the terms or the dyke, “army boot” is the strongest . . . It’s the symbol o the Brazilian army. So, it’s the symbol o machismo, it’s the symbol o the courageous man, it’s the symbol o the strong man . . . He puts
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Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions on those leather shoes, those boots that come up to here, a thing to step in the mud with, to go to battle, to go to war . . . So, it’s very much a man’s thing! Understand? So, the army boot is a shoe that stands up to everyt hing and is strong. (Antônio)
At least initially, the sapatão is dened less in terms o her sexual behavior than in terms o her undamentally masculine style, and it is the shoe or boot that serves as the concrete symbol o this style. This initial emphasis on the masculine style or quality o the sapatão contrasts sharply with the case o the bicha or viado, who is clearly characterized not merely in terms o his eeminized personal style (though this too is noted and commented upon), but in terms o his apparently passive role during sexual intercourse with another male. The lack o sexual emphasis in the case o the sapatão is understandable only i we realize that the very idea o emale sexual conduct outside o a context which is in some way or another dened vis-à-vis male sexuality is almost unthinkable in traditional Brazilian lie. The sapatão must somehow be situated within a male-dened context: There’s also the dierence between sapatão and sapatilha (slipper). Because the sapatão is the active woman, the one who sucks, who puts the dildo in the other’s cunt . . . And the sapatilha is the mulher viada —the one who screws with men, screws with women, the one who simply lays on the bed and lets the “macho” dominate. She’s the one who plays the eminine role. It’s o this that use the word sapatilha, because sapatilha is the shoebecause that ballerinas use.you (José)
Thus, to be ully apprehended and managed both intellectually and emotionally, same-sex relations between two women must be structured along the lines o opposite-sex relations—in terms o activity and passivity, penetration and being penetrated, dominance and submission. 9 From this perspective, a distinction between the sapatão and the sapatilha parallels the distinction between the viado and the homem. Just as the homem is able to preserve his undamentally masculine identity thanks to his perormance o the active role during sexual intercourse, the sapatilha holds onto her eminine identity through her perormance o the properly passive role; and just as the viado sacrices his masculine identity in adopting a passive sexual role, the sapatão sacrices her emininity through her active dominance. While the activity o the homem preserves his status in society, however, the activity o the sapatão obviously does not. On the contrary, she emerges as a
Men and Women
woman out o control, a woman who has stepped—perhaps even more completely than the puta—outside o the patterns o accepted male and emale conduct in Brazilian lie, and whose presence thus calls into question the most deeply held assumptions o the Brazilian sexual universe. Thus the oppositions that structure the general relationship between men and women operate as well within the more elaborate distinctions o the male and emale domains.10 The juxtaposition o oppositions at various levels o abstraction makes possible a degree o nuance in the construction o masculinity and emininity as cultural congurations which is ar greater than might be expected. At the same time, it opens the wider ideological structure o this system to attack at its most vulnerable points, or just as the various “positive” and “negative” characters dene the nature o culturally acceptable identities and behaviors, they simultaneously draw attention to the possibility o deviation rom sanctioned patterns. It is against this nagging possibility, against the threat o internal contradiction and the potential or deviation, o course, that the system must somehow guard itsel. More accurately, it is against the internal contradictions o the system o meanings in which they live that particular men and women must make their way, continually seeking to protect both themselves and those around them.
Sexual Socialization The patriarchaldiscussed tradition,above the language o the body, and o sexual classications clearly play a central rolethe insystem structuring the experience o sexual lie in contemporary Brazil. In dividing the sexual universe into two sharply opposed domains, as well as in blurring the exactness o this division, these symbolic orms map out the sexual terrain and suggest some o its potential traps or dangers. As is the case with all cultural systems, however, these structures are never apprehended immediately or entirely. On the contrary, they are internalized only gradually through a complex process o socialization beginning in the earliest moments o childhood. This process, while hardly invariable, is itsel culturally determined and constituted. It not only produces and reproduces the structure o sexual relations in daily lie, but becomes an integral part o the ideological system that it articulates. In Brazil, as is almost universally the case in other cultures as well, responsibility or the care and education o children has tended to lie largely in the hands o women. Throughout early childhood, the mãe or some ap-
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propriate substitute (a emale relative such as her own mother or sister, or i economic circumstances permit, a maid or nursemaid) is generally the child’s constant companion; and the undamentally eminine domain o the home, as opposed to the male-dominated world outside the home, typically marks the limits o the child’s world. It is through the mãe or some emale equivalent, such as the babá (nursemaid), that the child’s earliest relation to reality is organized. It is through her breast that sustenance is rst obtained and gratication rst experienced. It is through her intervention that control over bodily unctions and an understanding o bodily hygiene are gradually built up. It is through the toys and clothing that she selects, the songs and stories that she relates, that the traditions o the culture begin to be imparted. In short, while there have recently been a number o signicant changes in these patterns, both nurture and education have been understood as essentially eminine unctions, and children o both sexes have typically been relegated to this eminine domain. Whether boys or girls, their very earliest identications, their rst notions o sel, as well as the images o them constructed in the eyes o others, have traditionally been built up within this context. Because o this extremely close early association o both boys and girls with an undierentiated world o women, however, a high degree o cultural attention seems to be ocused on the importance o developing sharp distinctions between the two genders relatively early in childhood, and the path that each gender must ollow in passing rom childhood to maturity is understood as radically dierent. On the one hand, in the case o emales, both sexual identity and sexual to bethrough taken ascontinuous givens. Identication with the eminine rolepotential is largelyseem assured contact with the older women o the amily, while the maturation o sexual potential is closely linked to the natural order o things through relatively concrete and observable physiognomic changes. Surging up out o nature, emale sexual potential must be culturally molded, shaped, and most important, controlled—brought in line with the socially determined expectations o the traditional emale role, with the passivity and submission that are the marks o emininity in Brazil. In contrast, male sexual identity is understood as problematic. Initially tied to the eminine world, to both the mother’s breast and apron strings, and at least somewhat less marked than his sister by physiognomic changes as he matures, the boy’s most undamental sexual being is somehow more ragile. Threatened rom the very start by an overly close association with the emale domain, the virility and activity that are the key markers o masculinity in Brazilian lie must quite literally be constructed, built rom the ground up through a process o masculinization
Men and Women
capable o breaking the boy’s initial ties with women and transorming him into a man.11 Throughout their early lives, young girls have traditionally remained sheltered within a women’s world. They are quickly taught the skills that are most clearly associated with the woman’s domestic role (whether in her own household or as a maid or employee in the households o others): cooking, cleaning, caring or children, and so on. The speed with which girls are taught these household skills contrasts radically, however, with the delays in and, in many instances, the complete lack o education on sexual matters. For girls, as well as or boys, early inancy tends to be seen as a time o relative innocence—a time when sex plays little role in the child’s lie. But by the age o ve, and perhaps as early as three years, a pattern has set in which marks the culture’s treatment o women throughout their lives. While any signs o unruly or uneminine behavior are careully corrected by the watchul parent, explanation and inormation concerning the girl’s own sexual existence are studiously avoided, and the character and processes o her own body typically remain shrouded in a silence which becomes more absolute as time goes on. The nature and extent o this silence is most evident in regard to the question o menstruation, or it is with the commencement o menarche that a menina (girl) is truly transormed into a moça (maiden), and that her sexual potential becomes unavoidably problematic. From this point orward, her essential emininity, ar rom being threatened by overly masculine behavior, is all too apparent. With this new physiological potential to engravi-
dar , “toname—the become pregnant”—and to thus bringnow shame on the honor o her amily underlying danger o her undamentally sexual being receives increasing attention and her body becomes increasingly marked as a locus o both mystery and lth. Menarche makes visible and real her sexual potential in its most concrete sense, and thus calls into action a complex set o processes aimed at circumventing, controlling, and even denying this new reality—at preserving virginity, enorcing chastity, and assuring passivity. It is a process which emphasizes the prohibition and repression o the moça’s natural potential, and which is characterized above all—at least rom the moça’s own perspective—by an economy o silence or ignorance (see Alves et al. 1981). Menstruation is cited repeatedly by inormants as a source o misunderstanding and trauma, ear and insecurity: I was one o those who didn’t know about . . . menstruation . . . I remember the rst time, when I saw that blood . . . I only saw it when I went to the bathroom. And I became araid. I didn’t know. And later, ater I talked to my sisters, I
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Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions became ashamed. (Sandra, a thirty-six-year-old housewie rom an uppermiddle-class amily) I wound up discovering things, like this, through my girlriends . . . But my mother hersel, she was . . . she would twist things up a lot to talk to you . . . And ater it happened she would come to ask, “How is it that you already knew?” I remember when she tried to talk about, you know, about this business (menstruation), “Ah, Telma, I have to talk to you about something . . . that every girl . . . I don’t know, you’re very young, you don’t even imagine what it is . . .” And so then I said, “But tell me, Mother, what it is.” And rom there, my mother became ashamed, and said, “No, it isn’t something that you talk about.” And this went on and on, and my mother never said anything. And one day, I was at school, and it happened, and I arrived at home crying . . . I thought that I was dying, you know. I had girlriends at school who said to me, “No, it’s this . . . ” and explained. But I arrived at home and wanted to talk to my mother. And she never really explained . . . She just said, “Ah, it was this that I wanted to tell you . . . it was this that I wanted to tell you.” (Telma)
I menstruation seems to be especially signicant and disturbing, however, it is hardly the only area where silence and ignorance are evident. On the contrary, in a society which speaks so much about sexual issues, an absence o speech and, when speech is in act possible, the presence o conficting explanations, characterize the early sexual education o young girls: Something . . . I remember didn’t know woman becomes pregnant . . unny . my mother had neverthat saidI anything . . .how and aI remember that I thought that the woman took some kind o pill . . . It was only at school, when I said, “How is it that it happens, does the woman take a pill, does she go to the doctor and take something, or what?” that my girlriends explained, “No, it isn’t that!” How they laughed at me. They explained, “No, it’s a kind o a seed . . .” So I imagined, naturally, the kind o seed o an orange, o, I don’t know, some kind o ruit. My God . . . I remember the day and the place. But how can it be! My mother never said anything! (Rose)
Just as the transormation rom menina to moça that takes place with the beginning o menstruation is permeated with misunderstandings and silences, so too is the transormation rom moça to mulher with the loss o virginity which marks the young woman’s entry into ull, adult, reproductive sexual lie. Intercourse, pregnancy, and maternity—events extensively commented upon in other spheres o daily lie—are remarkable by their absence
Men and Women
rom the early sexual education o the young women. While some inormation is inevitably obtained, o course, especially through the intervention o riends and schoolmates, it is almost always partial, ragmentary, and more oten than not, contradictory. It must nd its place within the wider context o misinormation and ignorance that has traditionally marked the early years o emale existence in Brazilian society. The extent to which such distortions mark o eminine reality in Brazil is understandable, o course, when situated within the hierarchical structure which it seeks to conrm and reproduce. Because emininity is understood as so inerior and yet, at the same time, so threatening, it must be rigidly controlled and regulated. The withholding o inormation is at least one means o achieving this control. Yet i this seems an especially eective strategy, it is but one o the possibilities that is open to the system as it seeks to perpetuate itsel. Perhaps equally prominent is a strategy in which silence gives way to words, to the repeated proibições (prohibitions) that have traditionally restricted legitimate sexual expression on the part o women in Brazilian culture. This is especially evident in the prohibitions pertaining to the virgem, which threaten her with the label piranha or puta. Following upon the silences o childhood and the transormations o adolescence (marked, o course, by the onset o menstruation), it is in active and vocal restrictions that emale sexual lie is delineated: It’s like that, you know . . . Ever since I was young, I always heard these things, you . . that the and woman to get to get she married as a know virgin,. you know, thathas i she isn’tmarried, a virgin that whenshe shehas marries isn’t worth anything, she doesn’t have any value . . . or the rest o her lie she’s, she’s talked about by everyone. (Maria) I remember that one day I arrived home and I was complaining o a stomachache, and so on, and so on . . . And my ather argued with my mother, because my ather heard me complaining to my mother about the stomachache, you know. “You let your daughter go out with boys who you don’t even know,” and so on . . . He thought that I was pregnant, you know. So, he ought with my mother, and he told her to never let me go out by mysel with a boy. (Telma)
Fraught with potential dangers, the reedom o movement o adolescent girls has tended to be sharply circumscribed, at least insoar as contact with young males is concerned. Namorando (courting) might well begin at a relatively early age, but always under the watchul eye o either adults or groups
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o peers theoretically large enough to ensure respectable conduct (see Willems 1953). And the delimitation o emale sexual activity seems accepted by both boys and girls as the proper order o things, the only acceptable alternative: I wanted to be a virgin when I married. I thought that this was the right thing . . . A young girl can’t permit certain things. (Vera, age twenty-our, srcinally rom a very poor amily in the state o Minas Gerais but currently living in Rio) I understand why a girl wants to stay a virgin . . . You know, she wants to be a proper girl . . . A girl is dierent rom a guy, you understand? She has to act right . . . I she doesn’t, who is going to want to marry her? (João)
I the gure o the virgem provides a ocus or the values associated with emininity, emale virginity (and the lack o sexual knowledge that it enorces) becomes a ocus or the process o socialization which seeks to reproduce these values. It is a theme raised constantly by both males and emales, and seems to take no less a hold upon the ormer than upon the latter, perpetuating, even today, many o the most undamental assumptions o patriarchal sexual morality. Just how strong a hold patriarchal structures continue to exercise in contemporary Brazilian lie can be grasped by contrasting the silences, prohibitions, and repressions that characterize the socialization o emales with the radically dierent sexual upbringing o males. I emininity is understood as aisnatural that but needs only toConstantly be controlled and disciplined, masculinity seen asorce anything certain. threatened, as we have seen, by orces impinging upon it rom all sides, the virility that marks mature male sexuality must ollow a tortuous and troublesome path in coming to be: it must be cultivated through a complex process o masculinization beginning in early childhood. Perhaps because the boy’s physical development is perceived to be so much less clearly marked by breaks than is the case with girls, his social development is more discontinuous. While the earliest years o a child’s lie, regardless o gender, seem to be ocused around the activities o the household, in the case o boys, by the age o ve or six this pattern begins to give way. Although the daughter’s place will remain, in large measure, within the connes o the home, there is a strong (though not always explicitly stated) sense, on the part o both mothers and athers, that the proper path or their sons to take will lead them increasingly away rom this eminine domain. Boys must begin to make their way in the more public, masculine world
Men and Women
outside the home. Individual histories vary, o course, depending largely on economic circumstances—the necessary contribution that some children must make to the amily income, the availability o ormal schooling, and the like—but rom the age o ve or six to the early teens when they begin to court, boys will spend increasing amounts o time with exclusively male company. In particular, they will take more part in the social lie o groups o men such as the riends and associates o their athers or older brothers, and these male groups will take over central responsibility or masculine socialization as well as sexual education and, oten, initiation. To impart to young boys the skills that will be necessary in their later lie as homens seems to be a task taken largely or granted by older Brazilian males. It is rarely organized in advance. On the contrary, it takes place inormally, in the general fow o daily lie. Whether it is a question o teaching an economic crat, a sport such as swimming or utebol (soccer), or later, how to drive or repair an automobile, it is a task that older men both enjoy and take seriously. This is most true in the case o sexual education. Ater all, or the youth to become a true homem, a rigid set o behaviors must gradually be internalized and reproduced, and nothing is so central to this as a proper understanding o sexual lie. The eminine ties o earlier lie must be cut, and eeminate behavior must be eliminated. Properly masculine sexual techniques must be explained and assimilated. And it is within the context o male society that these goals can most eectively be accomplished. Nothing is more important than the task o stamping out the vestiges o eminine passivity that may still mark even the least timid ve-year-old. The chance boy mightpointed grow up a viado the seems particularlyotroublesome, asthat oneainormant outtoinberecalling conversation a group o older men that took place when he was six or seven years old: There’s a phrase that they used . . . especially the ather . . . the phrase was this: “I preer that my son be a bandit rather than a Zica or a sissy.” “Zica” was a name that they gave in those days or viado. Thereore the ather would preer that his son died, that his son was a bandit, tha n that he be a viado. (Carlos, a twenty-seven-year-old bisexual man rom the lower class in Rio)
Surrounded with an extremely strong emotional charge, the gure o the viado serves as a counter-image. He is what the true homem must never be and represents all that is unacceptable in the behavior o one’s children. Expressions such as você está agindo como uma bicha (you are acting like a queer) or você está agindo como maricas (you are acting like a sissy) quickly meet the earliest signs o unacceptably eminine behavior and are in act
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among the earliest sanctions employed in the socialization o gender among young males. As important as the repression o unacceptably eeminate behavior clearly is in the ormation o a ully masculine identity, however, the complete eclipse o eminine infuence can only take place through the no less complete objectication o the mulher hersel. As early as the th or sixth year o a boy’s development, he may well be deemed old enough or at least some tentative direction in this regard on the part o either his ather or some comparable adult (uncles, members o the ather’s riendship network, and so on). Since this direction oten takes place in groups, it tends to provide not only a very real and impressive source o inormation or the boy himsel, but simultaneously, a orum or the rearmation o masculine solidarity and the demonstration o sexual expertise on the part o the adult men: When I was maybe six years old, in groups o men, my ather would say, “You have to uck that one there . . . that one there is a woman . . . you have to uck women . . . uck cunt . . . you have to make her suck . . . you have to uck her ass!” And the others, they would add on . . . They would give lectures. “Take o the bra rst.” “And when you’re sucking her nipple, you take her hand and put it on your cock.” “But you’ve got to have a hard-on, to show her that you’re macho.” And all those things. (João)
In a sense, then, through such exchanges, men dene themselves not only individually, butshed as a whatever group, in vestiges opposition women.infuence It is not enough that the boy should o to eminine might still linger on in his comportment. He must also begin to identiy himsel as a member o a wider male culture complete with its own esoteric and, in this case, erotic knowledge. And he must push even urther in beginning to use this knowledge in opposing himsel and his ellow males to the world o women, the subjects o his sexual will. Older males have urthered this process o identication not merely through verbal instructions, but also by providing published sources o inormation, as well as, in some instances, arranging or sexual initiation itsel. With the easing o censorship that accompanied political liberalization during the late 1970s, sexually explicit publications have become extremely common throughout urban Brazil, and are even ound, though to a much lesser extent, in many rural communities. Sold openly at any newsstand, and purchased almost exclusively by men and boys, glossy magazines such as Playboy, Fiesta, and any number o others, have become a xture o Bra-
Men and Women
zilian male culture. But as early as the 1950s, ar less rened publications known as livrinhos or revistinhas de sacanagem (dirty little magazines or booklets) had established themselves in male culture. Published either anonymously or under a pseudonym—the true identity o Carlos Zéro, by ar the most popular author, or example, remains unknown even today— these booklets eatured a wide variety o erotic stories, told principally, though not exclusively, rom the male point o view, and were illustrated in almost cartoon ashion with a series o sexually explicit drawings or designs (see d’Assunção 1984, Marinho 1983, Da Matta 1983). While the infuence o these more primitive publications has given way slightly beore the onslaught o modern publishing, they are still widely available and, judging rom the comments o inormants, clearly have constituted a key element o the sexual heritage o a whole generation o Brazilian men: My ather used to buy dirty magazines and give them to me to read (and he liked to read them too, obviously). And I loved to see . . . I always liked dirty things . . . ever since I was young. And he loaned them to me to take to school, in order to show my riends, the other boys. Until the day that the principal o my school—an old lady principal, rom an extremely conservative school—got my little booklets, with my older ull o dirty booklets . . . What happened? I was expelled rom school! And my ather and my mother . . . My mother gave me a scolding, but my ather couldn’t say anything . . . He had to put me in a more expensive school—something that I know he didn’t like. Later, he scolded me, he yelled at me, he said that that wasn’t something to take to school, that it something street, that it was look ateven behind thewas chicken coop, or thatthe it was something or,something or . . . thatthat youyou couldn’t bring it inside the house! But I was expelled rom school . . . the woman kept all the dirty booklets, and my ather got so pissed o at her that he went there and said, “I want the booklets o my son!” And she said, “Then it’s you who . . .” “It’s not me who gives them to him, no . . . Ask him.” And I said no, obviously. And the woman said that she was going to open an investigation in order to nd out where I got them, because she had to nd a way to close down the source . . . For you to see the arithmetic progression o the thing. And my ather said that he took responsibility or everything that I did, and that he didn’t want me to continue any longer in that stinking school because the school was very bad and I had gotten horrible grades. And she said that this wasn’t her ault: “It’s not my ault that your son is so dumb.” And my ather became urious. My ather hit the top o the woman’s desk! And immediately the woman opened her drawer, the bottom drawer, where she must have put them so that she could look at them too . . . she opened the drawer, and got all o the booklets
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Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions . . . There must have been eight or seven, I don’t even remember anymore . . . And she returned them to my ather. And my ather said, “Let’s go home!” Real macho! To give a little respect, you know! He got to the car, put everything in my older again, the booklets, and said, “Don’t take this to the school!” (João)
I such booklets provided explicit sexual inormation, however, it is still doubtul that their impact has been as great as what remains the most important rite o passage within male culture in Brazil: sexual initiation arranged, oten, by one’s ather, and carried out, no less oten, by the puta, the paid prostitute (see also Willems 1953). Like the booklets, the brothel takes on a special signicance or Brazilian males as part o a particular kind o sexual ritual, as a site or sexual exploration and discovery: José: RP: José: RP: José:
It was my ather who took me to a bordello or the rst time. How old were you, more or less? Eleven years and three months. He took me to Três Rios. In Três Rios? It’s a city . . . a city in the mining triangle. He took me to this whorehouse where it was . . . like . . . it was the second most amous in Brazil . . . The rst was Mangue in Rio de Janeiro and the second was Três Rios with the brothels. And all o the ranchers rom the mining triangle had their businesses, their oces, in Três Rios . . . RP: And he took you there alone, or with riends o his? José: No, it was me, him, and a riend o his named Joaquim, who, by the way, is aBrigite very bad element. introduced me to Brigite. Bardô. She And didn’tI remember have one othat herhe teeth at the back. And her room was ull o pictures o B.B., o Brigitte Bardot. Do you remember her? And she thought that she was the Brazilian Brigitte Bardot. RP: She didn’t have a tooth at the back? José: No, one tooth was missing. I think that it was a blow that she received. And strange . . . She had a mark on her butt too that looked like the mark rom a knie, rom a knie or razor wound. RP: Your ather selected her? José: That’s right. Papa was the one who chose her because they said that Brigite was the hot one in the brothel. She was the one whose cunt was on re. So there I went. And on arriving home, I stupidly said that I had been in Três Rios. And my mother started to ask questions, in order to know . . . And I said, “Ah, I wasn’t anyplace at all, no.” But it was already too late, right. So, my ather arrived at home, and said, “I took him to the whorehouse all right . . .” And so on . . . and so on . . .
Men and Women “He has to learn to be a man!” And my mother said, “You’re crazy . . . You could cause your son to get a disease.” She never said the names o the diseases . . . She just said “bad disease” or “disease rom women.” So, my ather winked his eye at me and said that I used a condom, a rubber . . . “But he used a condom!” And he winked at me. I hadn’t used anything at all because he hadn’t given me anything. The only thing that he ordered me to do was: “When you uck with a whore, aterward, piss, and wash your prick with coconut soap.” RP: And so what happened with your olks? José: My God, there was a ght in the house . . . RP: And ater that, did your ather take you to the brothel again? José: He took me, yes. RP: Many times? José: No. Two or three more times. Later . . . later I learned the way, you know. Later I learned the way, and all the young guys who had a motorcycle or a car . . . my older cousins who were eighteen or nineteen years old, because at this time I was twelve or thirteen years old . . . I went with them too.
As yet another step in the boy’s transition to manhood, the bordello, like the livrinhos de sacanagem , marks out the space o male sexual lie. As these texts make clear, however, it is also apparent that this space is understood as a contested one—that a sharp distinction is built up not only between women and men, but also between types o women. On the one hand, as the photographic model, the or the prostitute, as sexual objects— the mulher comivel “edible woman.”women On theemerge other hand, as administrator or mother, as the mulher respeitavel (respectable woman), women are agents o repression threatening to delimit or cut the ree reign o masculine sexuality. This duality, o course, is part and parcel o the double standard o sexual morality in modern Brazil. Recreating the same structures evident in patriarchal ideology, in the language o the body, and in the system o sexual classications that we have examined, the processes o socialization ocus upon (and, indeed, become part o) what Emílio Willems describes as the cult o virginity and the cult o virility (Willems 1953). On the one hand, emale sexual lie is dened by a set o rigid controls which make any and all sexual maniestations outside the structure o marriage (dened loosely, not necessarily as a legal or religious institution, but as a socially recognized relationship between husband and wie) absolutely unpardonable. Male sexual lie, on the contrary, is almost incited. Early sexual activity is understood
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and encouraged as undamentally positive and healthy, and the young Brazilian male learns rather early on to structure his own sel-esteem in terms o his sexual prowess. Marriage is expected to play relatively little role in channeling or restricting male sexual activities, and the patterns o sexual behavior established during adolescence (distinguishing, as they do, between certain types o women suitable or certain types o interactions) are expected to continue, or all practical purposes, throughout the sexual lie o the adult male. These cultural patterns are ounded on an understanding o a undamental dierence in the sexual natures o males and emales: a distinction in which the sexual potential o the emale, dangerous and threatening as it is, ollows its natural course through the clear-cut, physiological transormations that take place in her lie while the sexual potential o the male is somehow inhibited by his early association with women, and must thus be coaxed and cultivated, built up and sustained against the constant threat o backsliding. Within the context o such dierent conceptions, then, the cultural treatment o emale sexuality is quite clearly aimed at control and limitation. It is based upon a symbolic economy o silence and ignorance, repression and prohibition. The treatment o male sexuality, on the contrary, must be one o incitement and encouragement, an almost constant discourse about matters sexual within the connes o male groups and an ongoing and explicit sexual education oered by older males to younger ones. It is within the context o such socialization, within its terms and through the mechanisms that it relies upon, that the inequalities which have traditionally the Brazilian sexual universe can be continually and structured no less important, that the contradictions which exist withinreproduced, the system itsel, and which might thus call it into question, can be undercut.
The Gender Hierarchy Ultimately the question o gender in Brazilian lie must be apprehended as Brazilians themselves apprehend it. We can approach this question only through the labyrinth o cultural orms that dene it and give it meaning in the fow o collective lie. It is through these orms, as I have suggested at some length, that the perceived anatomical distinction between male and emale is transormed, gradually, and not by any means unproblematically, into the more nuanced notions o man and woman, masculine and eminine, masculinity and emininity. And it is in terms o these distinctions that men and women build up what are clearly among their most signi-
Men and Women
cant and deeply elt understandings o themselves both as individuals and as members o a particular social order. As we have seen, however, whether in the ideological structures o the patriarchal tradition, the language o the body and the system o sexual classications which marks the fow o daily lie, or the very patterns and processes o sexual socialization, these understandings are repeatedly linked to the question o power. They simultaneously give rise to and legitimize an elaborate hierarchical structure in whichhomens are distinguished in terms o their authority and dominance, while mulheres are distinguished according to their submission and subjugation. They underlie a no less dualistic sexual morality which oers the homem, at least within his culturally dened active role, almost complete sexual reedom, while sharply limiting the sexual lie o the mulher—shrouding it in a world o mystery and misunderstanding. These same understandings both postulate the potentially dangerous orces that might call the hierarchical structure into question, and provide a set o highly specic (and oten highly concrete) channels or the control o virtually anything that might threaten the unconscious acceptance o the established order.12 In its broadest outlines, o course, the structure o such a system might well strike us as commonplace. It certainly seems to parallel the structures ound in the vast majority o human cultures currently available to us through the ethnographic record (see, or example, Rosaldo and Lamphere 1974, Reiter 1975, MacCormack and Strathern 1980, Ortner and Whitehead 1981). Yet what is most interesting about it is the contours o its uniqueness, the o relations its particularity. Forlie i this can be to ollow the structurerichness o gender in human moresystem generally, wetied must the Brazilians themselves in reusing to ignore its historical specicity—its existence as part o a highly complex and distinct historical reality. Indeed, i the structure o the gender hierarchy seems, in so many ways, to parallel the most general shape o those ound around the world in an enormous variety o social and cultural settings, we must remember that it carries with it, as well, the remnants o its own historical baggage—its emergence in the clash o distinct social and cultural traditions, its development within the context o a slave-owning society structured around the absolutes o dominance and submission, and its more recent past as part o a rapidly changing social order in which the traditional structures o hierarchy and domination have suered shocks rom which they may well never recover. The importance o situating this system historically becomes all the more evident, I think, i we reuse to take the question o gender (as anthropology has, more oten than not, taken it) as an end in and o itsel. I,
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on the contrary, we seek to link this system to the more general structure o sexual meanings in Brazilian lie, a more complex and interesting picture begins to unold. Approached in this way, the gender hierarchy takes shape less in absolute than in relative terms. It can be understood, as I have already suggested, as a cultural rame o reerence which Brazilians have used, and which they continue to use, to both structure the nature o their sexual realities and interpret the meaning o their sexual practices. It is in terms o the distinctions which this rame o reerence encodes—distinctions between masculinity and emininity, between activity and passivity, between domination and submission, and so on—that the most deeply signicant understandings o sexual lie in Brazil are built up. Yet as important as this rame o reerence certainly is, it is in act but one perspective among a number o possible alternatives in contemporary Brazilian culture, and its ull signicance can ultimately be understood only in its undamentally historical relation to these additional possibilities. Understood along these lines, then, not as an end in itsel but as a culturally dened and articulated ramework or thinking about the nature o sexual existence, the system o meanings built up around the hierarchy o gender has provided the most widely held view o sexual lie in Brazilian society. As the work o writers such as Freyre has so orceully suggested, its broad outlines can clearly be traced back through the expanse o Brazilian history to the ormation o the Brazilian people. Even today, it holds almost absolute power among the most traditional segments o contemporary Brazilian society—in rural areas, in the larger cities o the more traditional North and Northeast, and among the For lower classes in the large, industrialized cities o southern Brazil. that matter, among theheavily most modernized segments o Brazilian society, the highly educated middle and upper classes, this same system continues to exercise a proound infuence. While individuals rom these groups will be more likely to question and, in some instances, to reject the most basic assumptions o the gender hierarchy as little more than tradition and superstition, they will in no instance be illiterate in its language—they will more or less implicitly understand the underlying principles which organize the system and will be capable, at least in certain circumstances, o unctioning within its terms.13 Nevertheless, over the course o at least the past century, hand in hand with the development and dierentiation o Brazilian society as a whole, there have emerged a number o alternative approaches to the whole question o sexual meanings. These coexist with the traditional gender hierarchy and increasingly oer contemporary Brazilians other possibilities or the constitution and interpretation o their sexual universe. The impact o these
Men and Women
alternative perspectives has become so signicant in recent years that the importance o the traditional gender hierarchy today can be ully understood only with reerence to the other systems or subsystems which intertwine with or intersect it. It is in its relationship with these additional systems, these other perspectives, that the gender hierarchy acquires much o its current meaning in modern Brazilian lie, and it is thus to an examination o these systems that we must now turn.
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4 Norms and Perversions
As infuential as the ideology o gender has been, it is but one among a number o possible perspectives available today or the organization o sexual lie in Brazil. Throughout Brazilian history, and perhaps most clearly in the contemporary period, this relatively inormal cultural system has consistently unctioned alongside a set o more ormal, rationalized discourses that have simultaneously conrmed it, extended it, and in some instances, transormed it. Whether in the early doctrines o organized religion, the slightly later discourses o social hygiene and medicine, or the more recent language o modern science, the sexual realm has also been the object o even more specialized interrogations and interdictions. While themselves characterized by certain undamental dierences in perspective, these interrogations nonetheless seem to oer a shit o emphasis rom the question o gender to what would more accurately be described as sexuality (Rubin 1984). They are typied by a new preoccupation with sexual practices as external expressions o a distinct (and deeper) internal truth. The conceptualization o this truth has itsel taken a number o dierent orms and has changed with the passage o time. In all o its guises, however, it has been ocused on sexual experience not merely as a way o dierentiating men rom women and organizing them into a hierarchy o gender, but as somehow central to the meaning o individual existence, to the denition o the sel (Foucault 1978). As subtle as this shit in emphasis might at rst glance appear, it has nonetheless oered Brazilians a radically dierent rame o reerence or organizing and understanding their sexual universe, and or constituting their own sexual realities within it.1
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Norms and Perversions
Sins o the Flesh As was implicit in the discussion o gender, the Brazilian understanding o sexual reality can hardly be approached without reerence to some orm o Catholicism. The division o the sexes, the structure o male domination, the importance o emale virginity, and so on, can all be linked to a set o religious values that act both to legitimate and to reproduce the accepted order o the sexual universe. Within that rame o reerence, however, such values are rarely stated explicitly. Drawn, as they are, rom a kind o olk Catholicism rooted less in ocial doctrines than in the ideological structures o popular culture, they unction inormally, providing a backdrop or the sexual drama as it has traditionally been played out in Brazilian lie. Throughout Brazilian history, however, this relatively inormal, uncodied, religious backdrop has coexisted with a ar more explicit and ormal set o belies—the ocial doctrines o the Catholic Church, with all its authority and institutional legitimacy—which, while perhaps less immediate in the course o daily lie, have nonetheless exerted a proound infuence on the nature o Brazilian reality. At least since the early writings o Gilberto Freyre, it has been customary to emphasize the “sensual” character o the Catholic tradition inherited rom Portugal—its estivals and village easts in honor o the saints who protected the harvest and oered assistance in matters o love, its baroque processions marked by recrackers and rockets, its remarkably relaxed sexual morality (see Bastide 1951, 334–35).themselves, This “soter”both or “more human” Catholicism has been taken, bypp. Brazilians as an explanation or the success o the early Portuguese colonists in Brazil and as a key source or the unusual degree o sensuality that marks Brazilian lie even today: To the advantages already pointed out that the Portuguese o the teenth century enjoyed over contemporary peoples who were also engaged in colonizing activity may be added their sexual morality, which was Mozarabic in character: Catholic morality rendered supple by contact with the Mohammedan, and more easy-going, more relaxed, than among the Northern peoples. Nor was their religion the hard and rigid system o the reormed countries o the north, or even the dramatic Catholicism o Castile itsel; theirs was a liturgy social rather than religious, a sotened, lyric Christianity with many phallic and animistic reminiscences o the pagan cults. The only thing t hat was lacking was or the saints and angels to take on feshly orm and step down rom the altars on east
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Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions days to disport themselves with the populace. As it was, one might have seen oxen entering the churches to be blessed by the priests; mothers lulling their little ones with the same hymns o praise that were addressed to the Inant Jesus; sterile women with upraised petticoats rubbing themselves up against the legs o São Gonçalo do Amarante; married men, earul o indelity on the part o their wives, going to interrogate the “cuckold rocks,” while marriageable young girls addressed themselves to the “marriage rocks”; and nally our Lady o Expectancy being worshipped in the guise o a pregnant woman. (Freyre 1956, p. 30)
It is this sensual, lyric Christianity inherited rom the Portuguese, then, that has typically been taken as central to the ormation o the Catholic tradition in Brazil. With its relaxed moral code and its emphasis less on the ocial doctrines o the Catholic Church, or even on the priest as a mediator between man and God, than on the domestic liturgies o a cult o the saints tied to the lie o the casa-grande, it has been seen as especially well suited to the early lie o the colony and the tradition o patriarchal authority with its double standard o sexual morality (see, or example, Thales de Azevedo 1953, Bastide 1951, Forman 1975). While the é (aith) o olk belie has clearly been seen as the “cement” holding colonial society together (Freyre 1956, p. 41; Bastide 1951, p. 344), the infuence o the Church as an institution has typically been minimized. Emphasis has been placed, instead, on the ar more inormal Catholicism o the plantations, symbolized not in the church or the cathedral, but in the
capela casa-grande , the “chapel” o the power (Freyre in 1956, 192). Despite their recognition o the limited o the Church the p. ace o this “amilial Catholicism,” however, writers such as Freyre have also pointed to the ongoing eorts o the Church to establish its authority in the New World as crucial to struggles or power that characterized the colonial period. They have thus portrayed a dualistic universe in which the sensual Catholicism o the casa-grande is contrasted to the more rigorous doctrines o the Catholic Church as a competing system o belie, an alternative vision o religious lie (Bastide 1951). Given the relaxed sexual morality that has dened the essential character o the patriarchal regime, it is hardly surprising that the question o sexual conduct should have become an especially important issue in the struggle or moral authority in early Brazilian lie. As Paulo Prado was quick to note in the opening pages o his Retrato do Brasil, the “immoral” character o lie in colonial Brazil had become an almost constant source o concern or the Fathers o the Church during
Norms and Perversions
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Nowhere was this concern more evident than in the activities o the Inquisition in Brazil at the end o the sixteenth century. While the question o sexual immorality was initially o less concern to the Santa Oício (Holy Oce) than was the problem o the cristãos-novos (the New-Christians, or converted Jews), it nonetheless became a central issue as the investigations o the Inquisition proceeded in Brazil (see Auderheide 1973, Novinsky 1980, Siqueira 1978, Vainas 1989): The Inquisition kept its enormous and watchul eye trained upon the intimate lie o the colonial era, upon the bedrooms and the beds (usually, it would appear, made o leather) that creaked beneath the weight o adulteries and orbidden intercourse; upon the small chambers and the rooms occupied by the saints; upon the relations o the white masters with their slaves. . . . They enable us to behold the heresies o the new-Christians and . . . irregularities in the domestic and moral lie o the Christian amily: married men marrying a second time with mulatto women; others sinning against nature with eeminates o the country or rom Guinea; still others committing with women the lewd act that in modern scientic language as well as in the classics is known as elatio, and which the denunciations describe in minute detail; oulmouthed individuals swearing by the “Virgin’s mu’; mothers-in-law planning to poison their sons-in-law; new Christians placing crucixes beneath the bodies o women at the moment o copulation or tossing them into urinals; lords o the manor having pregnant slave girls burned alive in the plantation ovens, the unborn ospring crackling in the heat o the fames. (Freyre 1956, pp. xlv–xlvi)
For writers such as Prado and Freyre the records o the Inquisition have become essential to the whole task o knowing and understanding the most intimate (and scandalous) secrets o the Brazilian past. Yet this continued interest in the Inquisition clearly extends beyond the actual value o its documents as a historical record. Indeed, it seems somewhat incongruous given the act that the activities o the Inquisitors were in reality limited both in time and space (see Auderheide 1973). Arriving in Brazil only in 1591, the Santo Oício would be active there or less than a century, and would limit its investigations almost entirely to a small number o coastal cities. It would ocus its attentions neither on the very wealthy nor on the very poor—who together made up the vast majority o the colonial population—but on the ar more limited middle sectors o these early commercial centers (ibid.). And yet, much like the patriarchal tradition itsel, or even the myths o srcin that we have already examined, the Inquisition continues to
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exert remarkable infuence over contemporary readings o Brazilian history. It seems to have been interpreted as a paradigmatic event in the Brazilian narrative: the arrival, amid the chaos o colonial morality, o what João Silvério Trevisan has described as a Deus punitivo, a “punitive God” (Trevisan 1986, p. 58). Ultimately, the Inquisition has acquired much o its continued signicance as a model or the workings o religious authority in Brazil—a model ocused, in no small part, on the response o religious authority to the permutations o sexual lie. Although the activities o the Inquisition in Brazil have been interpreted, quite rightly, largely in relation to events taking place in Europe, they nonetheless served, as Trevisan has pointed out, the interests o a Church aced with an almost total lack o control over the moral character o colonial lie. Indeed, it was only when Inquisitors made their way to Brazil at the end o the sixteenth and the beginning o the seventeenth centuries that the rst widespread declaration o Church doctrines would take place in the colony: the Editos de Fé e da Graça (Edicts o Faith and o Grace), which were to be posted on the doors o all colonial churches. The posting o these edicts, in turn, would initiate an elaborate cultural perormance in which the moral authority o the Church was to be made painully evident to the colonial population. First, a period o grace was allowed in which individuals could reely coness to their crimes—and in which the colonists were obliged to denounce the crimes o their ellows. The accused were then brought beore the authorities to answer the charges that had been brought against them. Finally, ater an extended, and oten dicult, hearing, thenature guilty o aced punishment determined by the Inquisitors to t the specic the acrime or crimes: Ater the deendant had conessed and been interrogated, it was common practice in the Inquisition or the Visitor to prepare the accusation and to hear the deence procurator and the prosecution and deence testimony (which was always secret). I there were doubts during the trial, the Inquisitor could call or torture in order to dene the extent o the conession. Only then did the Inquisitorial Tribunal give sentence, which varied according to whether the accused was considered incompetent (under age), contumacious (absent),
eigned (pretending to repent), persuaded (continuing in error), alse (conessing only to avoid penalty), revocative (contradicting onesel in the conession) or relapsed (recidivist, ater having been resolved or reconciled with the Inquisition). The sentences were read out in the Tribunals or in public Autos-da-Fé, which were held in the town square, with or without ceremony, and eagerly attended by the whole population. (Trevisan 1986, p. 58)
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The entire event unctioned as a ritual o discipline in which the ocial doctrines o the Church could be publicly displayed and transmitted to the general population in an especially powerul and immediate orm. Because o their intensely dramatic quality, these rites o discipline have continued to exert remarkable infuence on Brazilian thought, not merely as the object o historical research, but as a subject particularly well suited to the treatments o modern theater and drama (see, or example, Filho 1972). In carrying out their investigations, the Inquisitors were able to draw upon predetermined lists outlining over seventy dierent oenses, which could be subdivided urther in order to distinguish between up to two hundred types o oenders. The greatest number o cases clearly seem to have involved crimes against the aith, particularly on the part o the so-called New-Christians. The interests o the Inquisitors were hardly limited to the New-Christians, however. In addition to the crime o judaísmo (Judaism), the records o the Inquisition were dominated by the crimes o eitiçaria (witchcrat), blasêmia (blasphemy), sodomia (sodomy), bigamia (bigamy), solicitação (solicitation), and incesto (incest). The question o sexual deviance was thus raised repeatedly, in relation to women as well as to men, and the language employed by the Inquisitors in order to speak o such sexual conduct was, as Trevisan has noted, both strangely oblique and circuitous, while at the same time detailed and elaborate: In the patronising language o t he Catholic theologians, moralists and canonists o the time, varieties o the sexual act and the genitals were reerred to by sometimes curiousdidcircumlocutions. The Inquisitors, usedsins the same artice, which not prevent detailed descriptionsoocourse, the sexual rom being noted down—sometimes even the opposite. Anal coitus was called “sodomy,” “dishonest touching,” “vile touching,” “abominable sin,” “abominable work” or simply “abominable.” The penis was called the “virile member,” “nature,” and “dishonest member” when used sinully. “Nature” was also used to reer to the vulva, as was “natural passage” or the vagina. The anus/rectum was called the “rear passage” or “posterior part.” “Embrace” and “kiss” were euphemistic variants or anal penetration, as “to sleep carnally rom behind” and “put their natures together in ront” were variations on position. “Agent” and “patient” meant the t wo partners in anal coitus while the one penetrated was also the one who “perormed the emale duty”; “somitigo,” “sodomita” or “sodomitico” reerred to the masculine homosexual. “Dishonest touching” also applied to sinul sexual contact in general while eminine homosexual relations were called “abominable riendship” and “dishonest riendship.” (Trevisan 1986, pp. 193–94)
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Through such attention to the classication o sexual practices, and through the remarkable detail used to describe the transgressions o the accused, the Inquisition would provide colonial society not merely with a set o ormal prohibitions, but with a context in which the question o sexual conduct would be raised or the rst time at the level o public discourse. Indeed, what is striking about the events o the Visitations is the extent to which they orged a link between sexual behavior and language—the extent to which, as Foucault might have put it, they incited sex to speak its name, and ultimately dened it in relation to this speech (Foucault 1978). Whether in its edicts, its lists o delicts and culprits, its denunciations and conessions, or simply its remarkably detailed record keeping, the Inquisition not only described the aberrations o sexual conduct in colonial lie, but invested them with meaning. In the elaborate theater o the Inquisition, then, the interrogation o sexual practices would be linked to the evaluation o moral virtue as central to the project o the Church—a project which would continue to hold meaning long ater the events o the Inquisition had come to a close. Even today, the signicance o sexual conduct is oten built up largely within the terms o an essentially dualistic moral vision in which the notion o carne (fesh) is diametrically opposed to that o espírito (spirit): The Catholic world is always divided between good and evil, light and darkness, spirit and fesh . . . Carnal lie has always been opposed to spiritual lie. The person has to transcend corporeal lie. (Miriam, a twenty-six-year-old lesbian rom the lower middle class)
And while notions such as sin and salvation have remained problematic, at best, in olk belie, they have nonetheless been linked increasingly to the question o sex ocused upon by the Inquisitors. Indeed, it is very probably in orging a relationship between sexual conduct and a concept o sin that the ocial doctrines o the Church have most orceully penetrated the bulwarks o popular thought. While the notion o pecado, or “sin,” is dened by the Church in ar more general terms as “the transgression o religious precept,” it has been consistently invoked as a means o regulating sexual behavior: There are lots o sins o the fesh: gluttony, greed, avarice . . . But above all, the sins o the fesh reer to sex. In act, when you speak o sin these days, everyone will think about sex. (Antônio)
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What have been described as os pecados da carne (the sins o the fesh) have clearly emerged as one o the primary threats to the lie o the spirit and as one o the major preoccupations o the Catholic Church in its attempts to regulate the belies and conduct o the aithul. Sex, in and o itsel, is prooundly problematic within this particular vision o the world. Yet it is important to note just how complex and nuanced this vision is. A distinction is made between legitimate and illegitimate orms o sexual expression and is organized around at least three interrelated notions: casamento (marriage), monogamia (monogamy), and procriação (procreation). Sexual conduct which successully combines these three elements is understood as legitimate and accepted within the Catholic vision o the world. Behavior which ails to link these three elements alls outside o the boundaries o the legitimate or virtuous. It is here that the notion o pecado normally comes into play: In the Catholic vision, procreation within marriage is correct. But outside o this, sex is sin. Adultery, polygamy, prostitution, sodomy, incest, abortion . . . All this is sin. (Antônio)
Violating, in one way or another, the limitations o marriage, monogamy, and procreation, each o the items on this list comes to dene the pecador (sinner) in the eyes o God and o the Church. The stain o sin need not be permanent, o course; as in the model o the Inquisition, it can be removed by the act o conessão: There is also the possibility o conessing . . . o going to the priest and conessing your sins. Even the sinner can save himsel by conessing his errors. (Miriam) The priest is a person under God, and thereore has the right to absolve you (or not). It’s like the time o the Inquisition—they had the power to take your lie. The priest needs to know about your sins. You receive judgment . . . You get chewed out by the priest . . . You are given a series o prayers: Hail Marys, Our Fathers . . . You have to go to the church, give money to the church . . . Doing all o this, you are saved. (João)
But even here, in the possibility o atonement that the act oconessão opens up, the constitution o legitimate and illegitimate sexual practices is obviously quite dierent than in the traditional ideology o gender. No less than
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in that ideology, the detailed classication o specic practices unctions to regulate and control the conduct o sexual lie. But the way in which this process is subjectively experienced is transormed in a number o quite signicant ways. Perhaps the most important point here is the extent to which this emphasis on pecado and pecadores is tied to a notion o culpa (guilt): indeed, it is only through the conession o sin that one can ever hope to rid onesel o the sense o guilt that attacks the soul and thus severely limits the reedom o sexual expression. At rst glance, this notion o culpa parallels the sense o vergonha (shame) that plays such a key role in regulating the ideology o gender in Brazil. As has long been noted, however, the concept o sin in act marks a undamental shit in cultural emphasis. Not only does it emerge most clearly within an elaborate institutional structure (as opposed to the more open-ended fow o popular culture and daily lie), but it also transers the subjective locus o meaning rom outside to in: I don’t know . . . I think that the eeling o culpa is stronger than that o vergonha. You eel it more inside. It doesn’t matter what other people think. What matters is that you eel guilty . . . you eel that you have done something wrong. (Antônio)
While vergonha seems to take place principally in relation to others, then, culpa turns in on the sel: the opinions o others mean relatively little in comparison with one’s own sense o ailure and delement. The sense o
vergonha tied culpa in aand waysothat is not. because the notionisoclearly pecadointernalized is so closely, consistently, to And sexual behavior, the question o sex becomes unavoidably linked to the notion o guilt, to a sense o the sel as culpado, “guilty”: You eel guilty, like a criminal, doing things that are wrong. It’s society that says it’s a sin. It’s you who eels guilty. (Nelson, a thirty-our-year-old heterosexual male rom the middle class)
Sexual transgression becomes a kind o moral crime (crime), then, as opposed to a simple source o shame, and the subjective meaning o sexual practices is reconstructed at a very dierent level. The sinner is simultaneously a criminoso, a “criminal,” a breaker o moral laws. And sex itsel becomes a source o danger, o pollution, and even o evil that plays across the body but takes root within the soul. The extent to which this conguration in act dominates Brazilian lie is
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clearly open to debate. I so many o the leading interpreters o religious lie in Brazil are correct about the extent to which notions such as sin or salvation have actually been incorporated into the patterns o olk culture, then the impact o this system o meanings (like the actual impact o the Inquisition itsel) on the lives o specic individuals may well be relatively limited. Yet the act remains that it exists as an ever-present part o the sexual landscape in Brazil. Even or individuals who have only partially internalized its specic values in their own lives, it is a constant part o the cultural background within which they live. While it would be inaccurate to suggest that this system o belies had somehow superseded the traditional ideology o gender as a way o organizing the sexual universe, it would be equally incorrect to discount its signicance. On the contrary, one can argue that this more ormal system has superimposed itsel on the oundation o olk belie that emerges in the ideology o gender. It has reasserted many o the most basic assumptions o that ideology, while at the same time transorming many o its meanings. Ultimately, this system o religious values has contributed to the development o yet another perspective that can be drawn upon both in generating and interpreting the signicance o sexual experience, and it is perhaps along these lines, rather than in terms o its dominance in daily lie, that its greatest importance lies.
The Health o the Population I some orm operiod, religious hasanbeen presentrole in Brazil since even the early colonial andauthority has played important in organizing and regulating the sexual universe, since at least the mid nineteenth century the doctrines o organized religion have coexisted with a variety o other, equally ormal discourses that have also been infuential in shaping the structure o sexual lie. Disciplines such as social hygiene and, later, modern medicine have gradually taken shape in Brazilian intellectual lie over the course o the past century and have begun to exert increasing infuence, especially among the upper class and the emerging middle class. Like the doctrines o the Catholic Church, they oer a powerul ramework or interpreting and understanding contemporary sexual lie. Marking the end o the colonial period and the gradual transition to a modern nation-state, the nineteenth century emerges as one o the most crucial periods o Brazilian history. Colonial lie at the end o the eighteenth century was characterized by extreme decentralization—a society organized around the great patriarchal lineages and the declining sugar plantations
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o the Northeast, holding relatively little economic interest or the Portuguese crown, and thus let largely to its own political devices. Urban development had, or more than three centuries, been virtually nonexistent, and the center o both power and culture remained the rural casa-grande. While the Portuguese language and the Catholic religion provided at least some grounds or a common identity capable o bridging the gaps between one patriarchal island and the next, both ultimately looked back as much to Europe, to Lisbon and Rome, as to any particularly Brazilian reality. Within the rst years ater the turn o the century, however, the broad outlines o this picture were transormed, and a new set o historical processes began to change the character o economic, political, and social lie. From an economic perspective, radical changes had already been signaled in the mid eighteenth century with the advent o the gold rush in Minas Gerais. Gold resulted in a shit in economic activity rom the North to the South as well as in Portugal’s new economic interest in regulating and extracting wealth rom the largest o her colonies. This southern shit would continue, however, even ater the gold rush, with the emergence o coee as Brazil’s great export crop in the mid nineteenth century. It would carry Brazil, in the late nineteenth century, into the modern era, with the decline o slavery as a politically and economically viable institution and the subsequent constitution o a paid labor orce to man not only the large coee plantations o the rural South but also the increasingly signicant commercial and industrial enterprises o expanding southern cities such as Rio and São Paulo (see Furtado 1963, Conrad 1972, Stein 1957, Toplin 1975). Intertwined important economic developments, ndswith a no less prooundwith set othese transormations in the political realm. Byone 1808, Napoleon’s invasion o Portugal and the fight o the court rom Lisbon to Rio, the ace o Brazilian history would be irrevocably changed. In many ways a strange historical accident, the arrival o the court set the stage or the declaration o Brazilian independence some ourteen years later—the peculiar experiment, rom 1822 to 1889, o the New World’s only sel-declared empire, and nally, ollowing 1889, the constitution o a republic modeled along Anglo-American lines. These political changes must be seen as part o, and as an infuence upon, the economic lie o the colony, as Brazilians struggled with the crucial issue o the day—the institution o slavery—and sought, rst in 1850 through prohibiting the sale and importation o slaves, then in 1871 with the law o ree birth, and nally in 1888 with the complete abolition o slavery, to take their place in the modern, liberal era (see Haring 1958, Conrad 1972, Toplin 1975). Not surprisingly, social transormations were linked to these massive
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political and economic changes. Although Brazil would remain, or quite some time, a predominantly rural society, by the mid nineteenth century the urban population had begun to grow at an unprecedented rate as a result o the migration o both rural and oreign workers, and economic enterprises had begun to shit rom commerce and services to manuacturing and industry. The presence o the monarchy and the declaration o independence brought about the construction o a centralized state and or the rst time oered the possibility o a truly national identity. Taken together with the slow but persistent development o a capitalist economy, these changes signaled the decline o the rural oligarchy, o the classical patriarchal order, and the emergence o a relatively modern nation-state (see Freyre 1963, 1970; Morse 1978). The Brazilian elite—the remnants o the patriarchal oligarchy and, perhaps more important, the emerging bourgeoisie concerned with solidiying its power in the ace o past oligarchical domination—struggled to come to grips with both the practical and the theoretical dilemmas raised by the new order o an independent nation. While the problems they aced were obviously wide ranging and diverse, the most important converged, in one way or another, on the question o the changing Brazilian population (see Costa 1979, Skidmore 1974). Whether in relation to urban growth and the diculties o organizing, controlling, and providing or the infux o new urban dwellers; to capitalist development, nascent industrialization and concerns about the productivity and reproductivity o the work orce; or to political modernization and the well-being o an inormed citizenry, the nature o the Brazilian(see population became a key ocus nineteenth-century ian thought Costa 1979). Mirroring trendsotaking place at more Brazilor less the same time in Europe, it was in the nineteenth-century preoccupation with the nature, health, and reproduction o the Brazilian people that the system o olk belies about sexual lie was most orceully challenged and reinterpreted. The ways in which Brazilians sought to conront the problems posed by this new concern with the population were various. Naturally, their responses were shaped by the unique characteristics o the Brazilian situation—in particular, by the legacy o slavery, the shock o emancipation, and the ongoing preoccupation with the racial composition o the population that achieved prominence in the extended debates concerning miscegenation (see Degler 1971, Haberly 1983, Skidmore 1974). Yet they proceeded, much as in Europe, through a reliance on the developments o modern science—through a positivist aith in scientic progress that seems to have been hardly less proound than the religious aith it threatened, at least in
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some instances, to replace (see Costa 1964). Whether in response to the racial question, out o concern or the well-being o the work orce, or with regard to the vigor o the rising bourgeoisie itsel, Brazilians turned to the most recent o scientic developments, in particular, to the discoveries o modern medicine (see Costa 1979, Machado et al. 1978, Stepan 1976). It was during the nineteenth century—in response to the problems raised by a tropical climate and unchecked and unplanned urban growth, as well as troublesome racial intermixture—that the medical proession really began to assume its modern guise in Brazilian lie. The medical gaze gradually shited rom the level o the individual to that o society, and the object o medicine began to shit rom the simple curing o individual patients to the more ar-reaching prevention o social ills (Costa 1979, Machado et al. 1978). Throughout the colonial period, the primary object o medicine in Brazil had been the struggle against morte, the struggle to cure the specic diseases responsible or death. In the nineteenth century, however, with the arrival o the court and a new infux o European medical thinking, this ongoing struggle against death began to give way to a new, and prooundly dierent, emphasis on the question o saúde, or “health” (Machado et al. 1978, p. 154). This emphasis on health in turn provided an avenue or the increasing penetration o medicine in the lie o society: the prevention o doença (disease) would rely upon the elaboration o new hygienic strategies aimed at preserving the health o the population as a whole (ibid., p. 155). Brazilian medicine became a kind o social science with concerns not unlike those o geography with ararmed deeper practical implications (see Costa 1979).orItdemography, was here thatbut medicine, with the corrective strategies o social hygiene, could come to play a central role in the organization and regulation o sexual lie, in the classication o sexual practices, as well as in the denition o sexual desires, in terms o a new symbolic economy o sickness and health. Central to this way o thinking was an essentially utilitarian approach to the whole question o sexual behavior, an emphasis on reprodução (reproduction) as the only really legitimate aim o sexual activity. At rst glance, o course, this ocus on reproduction might be understood as an extension o the stress placed upon procreation in the doctrines o the Church, or even o the importance o sexual potency within the patriarchal tradition. Yet within this new medical/scientic approach to sexual lie, reproduction would be understood neither as an obligation to God nor as a sign o masculinity and the survival o the lineage. On the contrary, it would take shape as a responsibility owed by each individual to society, by the citizen to the state. In a
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sparsely populated society intent upon the goals o modernization and economic growth, the notion o reproduction would be tied, above all else, to the health and well-being o the people as a whole (see Costa 1979). Energia sexual (sexual energy) that was responsibly channeled into reproductive relations, and which thus contributed to the growth o a healthy population and the advancement o the nation, could thus be contrasted with sexual energy expended or wasted solely in the pursuit o pleasure. However, while the Catholic tradition had condemned as sinul sexual activity outside o marriage and without regard or procreation, the moral discourse o medicine and science in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries would speak in terms o sickness. Just as in the doctrines o the Church, the monogamous conjugal couple would be taken as central to the structure o an accepted moral order (and would be contrasted, we might add, as the saudável, the “healthy,” alternative to the syphilitic immorality o the patriarchal tradition as perceived by Freyre). While sin could only be conessed and orgiven, sickness might open itsel up to understanding, treatment, and ultimately, cure. Social hygiene, modern medicine, and scientic investigation were thus intimately tied to the question o sex in Brazil. As in Europe and the United States, sexo (sex) would become sexualidade (sexuality), an object o knowledge. A whole new set o sexual classications would be developed which, although oten paralleling the categories o the patriarchal tradition, would be aimed less at the articulation o a hierarchy o gender than at the analysis and treatment o sexual anormalidades (abnormalities) and perversões (perversions), at uncovering(normality) the roots oopromiscuidade (promiscuity) and asserting the normalidade reproductive sexuality. In ocusing on the identication and analysis o those sexual behaviors that most clearly undercut the reproductive norm—on onanismo (onanism) or masturbação (masturbation), on prostituição (prostitution) and libertinagem (libertinism), homossexualismo or homossexualidade (homosexuality), and the like—this discourse would take up many o the problems that had dominated both the patriarchal and the Catholic traditions. But it would examine these problems rom an increasingly rationalized perspective and would organize itsel around its own distinct logic, thus oering yet another reading o the nature o sexual lie. Nowhere was this transition rom the symbolism o sin to that o sickness evident earlier than in the case o onanism, or masturbation, already a ocus o concern or social hygienists and medical doctors by the middle o the nineteenth century. No longer a simple transgression against the law o God, the practice o masturbation was reinterpreted as a source o sick-
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ness and danger, o physical and mental degeneration in both children and adults: Masturbation was taken as the cause o the most diverse illnesses . . . it hurt the digestive system (meteorism, vomiting, gastritises, gastralgias, diarrheas, constipations; imperect intestinal absorption, etc.); circulatory system (hypertrophy o the cardiac muscles, strokes, apoplexies, etc.); respiratory system (dicult diction, stuttering, discordance in the sounds, weak voice, hoarseness, dry cough, thoracic anxiety, lack o development o the thorax, respiratory diculty, suocation, chronic colds, tuberculosis, etc.); nervous system (chorea, epilepsy, hysteria, nervousness, insomnia, hypochondria, hyperesthesia, vertigos, etc.). Without mentioning, naturally, all o the evils and deormities that it brought to the genital-urinary equipment. (Costa 1979, pp. 187–88)
The struggle against onanism became a central component in the most modern theories o education. Dened, once again, as a kind o crime against the laws o nature and the preservation o one’s own health, masturbation could be ound at the root o even more serious and debilitating vices o the young: The primary and secondary schools, the boarding schools, the houses o education are, it cannot be denied, centers o moral contagion that extend themselves to the recently admitted o all ages; and i the endemic vice o the establishments spares the child, it will not be long until he succumbs to the spontaneous solicitations o the organs thatthe awaken create or him a new sense. Onanism reigns likegenital a master among youthand o the schools and educational institutions. Indeed, the majority o boarding school students have reached the age o ourteen; the age o puberty has begun or them. The advent o virility causes them sadnesses and melancholies that make them seek solitude; and there, nature inspires in them desires that lead them oten to discoveries which are as contrary to their health as they are to proper customs. With reclusion, the daily, and oten almost continuous, instigation o the excitement continues, little by little, dulling their intellectual aculties, and their organic development ails to continue; there is even a halt in the general development o the organism, while that o the solicited organs is made with surprising precociousness. A vice almost as old as the world, practiced by all o the peoples o antiquity, is born o the isolation or o the lie together o individuals o the same sex and o distinct kinship. It is pederasty, exhausting all o the unctional energies through the exercise o a unction that the novelty o the sensations invites to be put into practice, subjecting the young boys to the sicknesses
Norms and Perversions dependent on this order o causes whose consequences will present themselves sooner or later. (Vasconcellos 1888; quoted in ibid., p. 191)
Wasteul and irresponsible, masturbation became a preoccupation o social hygiene and modern medicine because it so clearly violated the logic o a system o meanings ocused on reproduction as the only legitimate orm o sexual conduct, the only legitimate expression o the natural sexual energy that threatened the well-being not only o individuals, but o society itsel. I onanism seemed to pose a particularly clear threat to social order, however, it was nothing in comparison with the perceived danger o prostitution, libertinism, and homosexuality. While masturbation threatened the health o the young, these other ills struck at the very heart and soul o society, at the nuclear amily, which was charged with the responsibility or the reproduction o a healthy population. The prostituta (prostitute), in particular, was blamed or the destruction o the amily. In seducing her clients, she transormed them into libertinos (libertines) and was in the end responsible or the contamination o their wives and children as well: The prostitutas become the enemies o the hygienists principally because o the role that they supposedly had in the physical and moral degradation o the man, and, by extension, in the destruction o the children and the amily. Contaminating the libertinos with their venereal diseases, they caused the production o children who are sick and damned to premature mortality. Seducing the unwary with their depraved sensualities, they bring misery and unhappiness to entire amilies. (Ibid., p. 265)
It was in relation to prostitution that an increasing concern with sexually transmitted diseases began to emerge. The prominence given to syphilis in the texts o writers such as Paulo Prado and Gilberto Freyre was oreshadowed by the medical interrogation o prostitution and libertinism during the late nineteenth century: The Academy and Faculty o Medicine turned to prostitution and showed how it hurt the Brazilian population by directly aecting the amily. Through theses, memorandums, and sessions devoted to prostitution, the doctors pointed to the deadly consequences o an unruly prostitution. The most important sickness issuing rom this situation is syphilis, a contagious, hereditary, and powerul agent o disease. In the bed o prostitution, the man penetrates to the interior o the “domicile” o syphilis. And rom there he passes it to the bed o his wie, transmitting to her a disease that will deorm and kill her, transmitting to
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And yet, at the same time that the dangers o prostitution were extensively documented and explored, its existence was grudgingly conceded as a kind o mal necessário , a “necessary evil.” It was interpreted as an unortunate side eect o an uncontrollableinstinto sexual (sexual instinct) that was part o the organic constitution, i not o all women, then certainly o all men: The man eager or venereal pleasure eels himsel tormented by an irresistible, imperious necessity, an astounding excitement vivies his organism, a hot re consumes his organs, his arteries pulsate with excessive orce, his humid eyes ignite with supernatural brilliance, his ace lls with color, his respiration becomes panting, his genital parts intumesce, ll up, and in them is experienced the eeling o ardor and titillation. Thought no longer has orce, will does not dominate, all the aculties are concentrated in a xed idea; the urgent appetite that pursues the man robs him o other sensations concerning the objects around him or the dangers that threaten him, and, delirious with the ever that burns him, dragged by the necessity that impels him, carried o as i by a demonic power, he is unresponsive to everything and only lives or the prospect o the pleasures that he craves to enjoy: the most rightening obstacles do not impede him, he ears nothing, everything disappears beore the ardor o his desire; only the organism rules; honor, virtue, duty, religion, and whatever there is that is sacred above the earth are chimeras: only the desire that torments onlypp. the336–37) pleasure that ascinates him, are real. (Herédia de Sá 1845; quotedhim, in ibid.,
Conceived as an uncontrollable drive, as a orce o nature that could never be ully harnessed by the moral strictures o society and culture, sex was an ever-present danger. Because sex existed as a natural drive, vices such as prostitution and libertinism could never be completely eliminated. Their eects could be minimized, however, through the regulatory controls o social hygiene and modern medicine. By the end o the nineteenth century, at the same time that the growth o the urban population provided the context or an emerging underworld organized around the practice and prots o prostitution, attention had been ocused on ways o reducing the potential social ills that it seemed to produce, or example, delimiting the locations where prostitutas could work, orcing them o o the streets and into bordeis (brothels) where their activities, and the state o their health, could be more easily regulated (see Costa 1979, Engel 1988, Machado et al. 1978).
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I the dangers o onanism and the perils o prostitution and libertinism had become a concern or virtually all public ocials by the late nineteenth century, none o these evils was as problematic as the notion o homossexualismo or homossexualidade that emerged at roughly the same time. No gure called into question the “naturalness” o reproduction and the amily as did the homossexual: The homossexual was detested because his existence directly negated the paternal unction, supposedly universal in the nature o the man. The manipulation o his lie, in this case, served as an anti-norm to “normal lie,” assimilated to masculine heterosexual behavior. (Costa 1979, pp. 247–48)
The ear o the homossexual could be tied back to the concerns with the care and upbringing o children and the problems posed by prostitution: Homossexualismo, it was said, exists because the young boys ailed to exert themselves physically and became eeminate. Or because they weren’t in the habit o working and became indolent, capricious, and weak. Attention was called to the lack o care with the morality o the boys in the schools and even in their amilies, which were unprepared to restrain their bad inclinations. On other occasions, the immoral atmosphere o society was itsel criticized as being the instigator o homosexual practice. Along with this, proving that the requency o homosexuality was greater among military men, artists and commercial employees, it was concluded that the causes o the vice were the high prices charged by prostitutes and the ear o syphilis. (Ibid., p. 248)
Perhaps the most ar-reaching consequence o this concern with the srcins o homossexualismo, and with its opposition to the norm o heterossexualidade (heterosexuality), was the creation o the homossexual as almost a distinct species or type: like the masturbador, the prostituta, and the libertino, a undamentally new category or the classication o the sexual universe. Indeed, it is important to stress just how dierent this gure is in comparison to either the viado o popular culture or the sodomita o religious tradition. While the viado was dened by his passive role in same-sex intercourse, and the sodomita by his preerence or anal intercourse, whether with the same or the opposite sex, the homossexual would come to be dened solely by his choice o his own gender as the object o sexual desire: Homossexualidade can, then, be studied in light o positive data veriying that it deals with an anomaly characterized by a group o modications in the a-
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Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions ective tendencies and tastes, accompanied by a special preerence, rom the sexual point o view, o diverse types and degrees, o a latent or declared nature, or intentions, words, attitudes, gestures or acts that an individual maniests in an active, passive, or mixed manner, or another o the same sex, whether man or woman. (Ribeiro 1949, p. 109)
The homossexual could thus be contrasted with the heterossexual , or in some congurations o the problem, the bissexual . Indeed, perhaps more orceully than notions such as masturbation, prostitution, or libertinism, concepts such as homosexuality, heterosexuality, and bisexuality would be used to carve up the sexual universe in twentieth-century Brazil. Focused not merely on particular sexual acts, but rather on essences, these new medical and scientic classications went beyond the doctrines o the Catholic Church to dene sexuality as lying at the core o one’s existence, as constituting the truth o one’s sel. Like the doctrines o the Catholic Church, then, the medical/scientic view o sexual lie that began to emerge in the late nineteenth century placed primary emphasis on a reproductive sexual norm. Even more than in Catholic thought, the conjugal couple became central to the notion o legitimate sexual expression, and those practices that most clearly seemed to threaten the existence o the nuclear amily organized around the conjugal couple would ultimately come to dene devassidão (licentiousness or debauchery), desvio (deviance), and perversão (perversion). Along with the emphasis on the legitimate reproduction o the population, a whole new set o sexual to problematize the nature o sexual in Brazil. Asclassications in Europe andcame the United States, though at a slightly laterliepoint, a concern with the individual body and its various uses became intimately linked to a preoccupation with the social body through the question o sex or sexuality—and modern medical science became increasingly important in exploring the roots o sexual abnormality and dierence. Sexual deviance was transormed into a sickness requiring a cure, and the sick themselves became the objects o whatever corrective strategies modern medicine could muster. Even today, in the very dierent world o the late twentieth century, ew symbolic congurations are as undamental to the structure o Brazilian sexual culture as this notion o doença, or sickness. The sense that certain types o sexual behavior constitute orms o sickness, and that the individuals who take part in such practices are themselves doente (sick or ill), comes up repeatedly in interviews with inormants rom all walks o lie in contemporary Brazil. It clearly continues to serve as a general category or virtu-
Norms and Perversions
ally all orms o sexual conduct that are viewed as deviant, dangerous, or threatening: There are certain things that are . . . I don’t know . . . that are really sick. People who want certain things. I’m very liberal, but there are things that I really don’t accept. Like bestiality or incest. People talk about sexual diseases, like syphilis—but all o these perversions are the true diseases. People orget this these days. (Néstor, a twenty-eight-year-old heterosexual male rom the working class in Rio)
And while the specic types o sexual behavior that are dened as sick may vary slightly rom one inormant to another, they nonetheless tend to reproduce the basic structure o thought that took shape in the late nineteenth century: Society creates rules . . . especially about sex. Sex is or reproduction, or having children. Any other type o sexual behavior is seen as a sickness, whether it’s homosexuality, masturbation, sadomasochism, or whatever. (Roberto, a twenty-two-year-old homosexual male rom an upper-middle-class amily)
Sexual practices which violate the norms associated with reproduction, the well-being o the amily, or the health and tness o children are thus, almost invariably, the ocus o concern: In order to preserve link between sex andmeans reproduction, punishes everyone who practicthe es these acts. Sickness deviance,society a nd deviance must be controlled. (Roberto) You know, the list goes on almost without end. Incest, child abuse, violence against women . . . They’re all sickness. People who do these things need to be treated by doctors, or psychologists, or the police. (Dulce, a orty-ve-year-old heterosexual woman rom the working class)
The concept o doença has thus continued to unction not simply as a way o labeling the unacceptable, but as a way o regulating and controlling it. The notion that certain sexual practices are undamentally unhealthy, to the individual as well as to society as a whole, has opened up an extremely important role or medical science in the care and treatment not merely o sexually transmitted diseases, but o the moral sicknesses that are believed to underlie various orms o sexual deviance.
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The extent to which these developments have aected the thinking o the vast majority o contemporary Brazilians is dicult to judge. There is little doubt that the discourses o modern medicine and medical science have had their greatest impact on the upper sectors o Brazilian society, where access to education and inormation (particularly rom abroad) has been most signicant. I nothing else, the texts o writers such as Paulo Prado testiy to the continued signicance o these medical/scientic concerns or the elite. Except in a very general way, however, the impact o these concerns has been more limited or the less educated sectors o society, where the patterns o thought associated with social hygiene, medical science, and the like have hardly replaced the structures o popular culture. On the contrary, their impact on the lives o individuals in the lower sectors o Brazilian society has been partial and ragmentary. Still, because the emergence o this medical/scientic perspective has been associated with the most powerul segments o society—and particularly with the rising bourgeoisie as it has tried, in the ace o great diculties, to wrest power rom the decaying oligarchy—it would be unwise to underestimate the extent to which many o the general patterns o this system in act have infuenced the thinking o women and men rom the lower sectors. Much like the ocial doctrines o the Church, which it seems both to contradict and complement, this more ully rationalized system o sexual meanings increasingly colors the drama o sexual lie in contemporary Brazil. While it has not become as dominant as it appears to be in, say, the United States or the other countries o the ully industrialized Western world, it adds an important the sexualtouniverse in Brazil. Asnonetheless a rame o reerence, it oers a element powerultoalternative the traditional ideology o gender.
The Modernization o Sexual Lie Just as the developments o the nineteenth century have built upon the earlier oundation o religious doctrine, while at the same time going beyond it in elaborating a new set o hygienic and medical discourses, the twentieth century has been marked by a process o modernization in which the moral discourses o social hygiene and modern medicine have themselves been both extended and transormed. As in all periods o Brazilian history, these more recent developments have clearly been linked to a specic historical context, and have responded to a whole set o seemingly unrelated events—to the unpredictable swings rom tenuous democratic governments
Norms and Perversions
to authoritarian regimes, the changing nature o the international marketplace, and the like. Perhaps nothing has been so important, however, as the ever increasing pace o urbanization, and the ull range o social transormations that the processes o urbanization have unleashed (see, or example, Conni 1981, Morse 1958). By the mid twentieth century, a predominantly rural society had essentially given way to a society dominated by urban centers. While power and authority had been slipping out o the hands o the rural oligarchy since at least the mid nineteenth century, it was not until relatively late in the twentieth century that the real ocus o Brazilian society came to rest in the cities. Even today, o course, that transormation is ar rom absolute, as the large landholders continue to wield considerable infuence over all areas o Brazilian lie. Still, it is hand in hand with the process o urban development that what might be described as the modernization o sexual lie in Brazil has proceeded. This process o modernization has clearly gone orward on a number o dierent ronts at the same time. Thanks in large part to the intellectual erment o modern urban lie, there has been an ongoing appropriation o ideas and values rom Europe and the United States whose liberal character contrasts markedly with the more restrictive tendencies o the nineteenth century. New disciplines such as psychology, sociology, and even sexology have at least partially taken the place o hygiene and medicine in interrogating the sexual realm and shaping the contours o contemporary thinking about sexual problems. And, as in Europe and the United States, these disciplines have consistentlytreatment pushed or a rationalized andoreasonable treatment o sexual behavior—a that would be ree the moralistic overtones o earlier discourses (but that would ultimately articulate its own set o moral values). At the same time, the relative impersonality o urban lie—as well as the receding signicance o the extended amily, traditional morality, and religious authority that have accompanied the processes o urbanization—has opened up new spaces in the abric o society or the reorganization o sexual values and the reconstruction o sexual practices. Ongoing changes in the structure o the amily have continued to undercut the orce o patriarchal authority and have begun to aect the roles and statuses o women in Brazilian society. Indeed, among the more highly educated sectors in large cities such as Rio or São Paulo, the impact o the modern eminist movement has made a mark in recent years. While eminism has hardly achieved the status o a widespread, broadbased social movement, as seems to be the case in parts o Europe and North America, it has nonetheless played an impor-
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tant role in calling into question traditional understandings o gender and sexuality, and has thus contributed to an important rethinking o the Brazilian sexual universe (see, or example, Alves and Pitanguy 1983). The same might be said o the homosexual movement, modeled on the gay liberation movements o Europe and the United States (see Fry and MacRae 1983, Míccolis and Daniel 1983, Trevisan 1986). While something resembling a subculture ocused around same-sex desires and practices seems to have existed in the larger urban centers since the late nineteenth century (roughly coterminous, one might note, with the increasing medical interest in the homossexual ), it is only in the very recent past that anything remotely similar to a “gay community” can be ound in the most modern areas o some Brazilian cities, and even here, the notion that homosexuality might serve as the ocus or a political movement is clearly limited to a very small segment o the elite. Still, the impact o the gay liberation movements o other Western nations has been seen in the creation o a number o political action groups and publications directed at the homosexual population, and these activities have played at least some role in challenging the certainty o many traditional moral values. While they have had little direct impact on the lives o most Brazilians, they have elicited certain changes in lm, television, and the press—media dominated by the elite in Brazil, but clearly exerting an important infuence over the lives o the popular sectors as well. Thus a whole range o developments—again, more oten than not, emanating rom abroad and imported to Brazil by the highly educated urban elite—have played an important role in infuencing a process o modernization sexual liePerhaps that hasthe been linked to the modernization o Brazilian lie moreingenerally. single most striking aspect o this process has been the extent to which the subject o sex has come to dominate so much o the public discourse in contemporary Brazil. No longer relegated to the obscure tomes o medical doctors or the archaic doctrines o theologians, sex has come out o the back rooms and into parlors. In lm, on radio and television, in both elite and popular newspapers and magazines, in bestselling books, indeed, in almost all areas o the modern communications industry, sex has become one o the avorite topics o discussion throughout Brazil. Columnists comment on it, popular psychologists build careers around it, social scientists study it and report about it, and through it all, a remarkably diverse public consumes it (see, or example, Inez 1983, Lima 1978, Suplicy 1983, Vasconcelos 1972). This extensive discourse is characterized by the perceived importance o conronting ignorance with knowledge and inormation—a task which, as
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one leading sexologist has described it, depends on the undermining o repressão through a new emphasis on expressão: When speaking about sex we still have lewd laughter, scowls, playul or coarse jokes. It still isn’t a subject that is discussed like any other. In treating sex, what we say is not as important as how we say it. . . . The rst step in breaking down the generalized taboo against sexuality is to be able to speak about it openly. . . . The negative attitudes concerning sex have an importance that is greater than ignorance. . . . It is repression ( repressão) that deorms the person’s sexual and emotional lie. . . . Just inorming is not enough. In order to develop a positive attitude in relation to sex, the most important thing is to encourage the expression (expressão) o sexuality, rom inancy on. It is this attitude that will encourage the growth o a capacity to relate emotionally with the other and enjoy the ruits o a sexual relation. (Suplicy 1983, p. 27)
In this prousion o discourse, then, modernity denes itsel in relation to the alse assumptions and superstitions o the past, and the unction o the spokesperson or sexual modernization is to open up public debate about the true nature o sexual lie, while at the same time acknowledging that this truth may be dierent or dierent individuals: I don’t perceive my role, or that o any educator, as being that o imposing conormity to a determined pattern o behavior, but as being that o providing new understandings, stimulating the questioning o what is well-known, and bringing o opinions that leads individual decisions. In short, theabout goal isantoexchange provide or growth through thetosearch or the truth. And the truth is not the same or everyone. (Ibid., p. 29)
In short, the question o sex remains undamentally linked to the question o truth. But it has nonetheless become an object o public debate in a rather new way. An earlier preoccupation with perversion seems to have given way to a new sense o diversidade (diversity) in sexual lie, and the discussion o sexual diversity seems to have been ocused less on the pronouncements o moral authorities such as priests or doctors than on the varied opinions o a somewhat wider (though still largely elite) public. In orming such opinions, however, inormation is crucial, and it is to this task o educating the public that what we might describe as the modern science o sex has largely dedicated itsel. Against the continued opposition o institutions such as the Church,
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some orm o systematic sex education has thus been seen as essential to the modernization o sexual lie in Brazil: Sexual Education, or the lack o it . . . is present in all o the aspects o our sexual behavior. . . . A cultural heritage that is not at all positive was bequeathed us in t he area o knowledge about sex, and maintained through violent repressions based upon a alse moralism, it would not permit, in act, a dierent situation. Sex is and will continue to be taboo in the amily, in the school, in the society. (Lima 1978, p. 34)
As opposed to the haphazard and oten inaccurate inormation acquired rom one’s peers through the structures o popular culture, sexologists and sex educators have sought to develop programs aimed at a rational, scientic understanding o sexual lie. Focusing their attentions particularly on the young, they have attempted to provide a undamentally new understanding o the body and its unctions, o its physiological development, and o its role in both reproductive and non-reproductive practices. The oundation or this new understanding o sexual lie has been the emphasis on the anatomy and the physiology o the human body: “I people have a rational and objective understanding o their own body and its unctions, perhaps they will like it as it is, care or it as well in a rational way and come to experience their own sexuality and that o others in a natural and positive ashion” (Mazín 1983a, p. 22). This “objective” understanding o the body and its unctions is obviously very dierent than the reading o the body thatreinorces has characterized traditional ideology o At some it clearly the basicthe dichotomy established in gender. this ideology. At level, another level, however, it restructures this dichotomy, ocusing not simply on the penis and the vagina, but on the ar more complex distinctions necessary or a ully scientic understanding o the body and its role in the reproduction o the species: The organs characteristic o one and the other sex are divided, or study, in external organs and internal organs. The sexual organs—also called genital or reproductive organs—are the ollowing: External organs
Masculine Scrotum Testicles Penis
Feminine Vulva Labia Majora Labia Minora
Norms and Perversions Epididymis deerens Vas
Clitoris Vaginal opening
Internal organs
Masculine Feminine Seminal vesicles Vagina Prostate Uterus Cowper’s gland Fallopian tubes Ovaries These dierent structures in one and the other sex appear as a orm o biological specialization that contributes to the reproduction o the species. This biological dimension, interacting with society and culture, determines the expression o the sexuality o individuals o the human species. (Mazín 1983a, p. 25)
Within this more modern rame o reerence, then, the body itsel is reclassied and reinterpreted. Its structures are analyzed in ar more elaborate ashion, and clearly take on new meaning. Their importance as markers o activity and passivity, dominance and submission, recedes rom view, giving way to a highly rationalized understanding o their complementary roles in the physiology o reproduction. Not surprisingly, with this new emphasis on replacing the silence and ignorance o the past with the objective knowledge o the present, a new set o controversies been opened around the problem o dening legitimate orms o sexualhas expression. Theup repression o masturbation, the taboo o virginity, and the severe restriction o sexual expression in traditional settings have all become subjects o intense debate within the more modern sectors o Brazilian society, as both individuals and institutions have struggled to construct a more rational, enlightened approach to sexual conduct. When conronted with the reasonable, scientic inormation o the present, even the most deeply held convictions rom the past emerge as little more than contemptible superstitions: In the beginning o the twentieth century, in the time o our great-grandparents and grandparents, the act o masturbation was considered extremely dangerous, with consequences as serious as producing blindness, deaness, mental retardation, madness, and other derangements. In the time o our parents, masturbation still was responsible or pimples, impotence, and sterility. Today it is common to hear that the woman who masturbates will be impaired rom
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Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions having orgasm in sexual relations, since she has become “addicted,” or some other oolishness o this type, and that the man who masturbates will become “weak” and impotent early on. As i impotence was something expected in old age principally or one who spent all his sperm in his youth. As i the person had a determined stock that would end denitively ater having been used up. (Suplicy 1983, p. 97)
Far rom being aberrations, practices such as masturbation are reinterpreted as the expression o truly natural sexuality, part o a complex cycle o psychosexual development, and a undamentally healthy way to discharge excess sexual energy: Today we know that masturbation has a specic role in the sexual evolution and the lie cycle o the human being. Masturbation can be viewed as a rehearsal or adult sex. The person learns to relate sexually with himsel, and this process o learning about the unctioning o his body will be very important or his uture ulllment. This does not mean th at masturbation is an immature activity that should be abandoned in adult lie. Masturbation can occur rom birth, increase at the beginning o puberty, decrease in adult lie, and increase in old age. It depends very much on the individual needs o each person and the aective-emotional circumstances o that person in each period o his lie. Even during marriage, masturbation can be utilized as a way o dealing with dierences in the sexual desire o the conjugal couple, either because o the pleasure that is ound in this particular orm o stimulation or in order to conront momentsthat o separation, the approach o childbirth, sickness, or divorce. is recognized a large number o individuals use masturbation in old age asIt a orm o pleasure and a discharge o energy. (Suplicy 1983, p. 99)
Even masturbation serves its own highly utilitarian unctions, then, and rom this modern perspective, the problems associated with it lie not in one’s sexual nature, but in the society that seeks to repress this nature. I sickness exists, it is not to be ound in sex itsel, but in the experience o shame and guilt that individuals must conront in the ace o antiquated prejudices and prohibitions: While students o the subject understand masturbation as part o a process o sexualization and sexual expression among human beings, society makes masturbation something ugly, dirty, sinul, and immature that should be prohibited or children and abandoned by adults upon becoming more mature. In act, there is no relation between masturbation and sickness o any type. Gener-
Norms and Perversions ally, when negative consequences exist, they are related to the guilt and shame that stem rom these prejudices, and not rom masturbation itsel. (Ibid., pp. 100–101)
Thus, the very notion o sickness is turned on its head in these recent reormulations. Far rom being situated in the bodies and practices o specic individuals, sickness is produced through the superstitions and repressions o society itsel; and the road to health lies less in the diagnosis and treatment o specic patients than in the modernization o moral values. Increasingly, this modernization o sexual morality has involved a rejection o the notion o social responsibility inherited rom the discourses o organized religion or social hygiene, and a new emphasis on the undamental importance o personal choice. Even the discussion o procreation has come to ocus less on the duties owed by citizens to the state than on the importance o individual planning and choice. Debate has centered on the notions o sexo ora do casamento (sex outside o marriage) and controle voluntário da reprodução (voluntary control o reproduction), and procreation itsel has begun to be seen as “manageable” through the techniques o modern science: traditional methods o contraception, such as coitus interruptus, have been augmented by more modern possibilities such as the birth control pill, tubal ligation, vasectomy, and so on. Indeed, the various problems associated with procreation and contraception dominate much o the contemporary discussion concerning the nature o sexual lie, and the complex personal choices that are involved in controlling the processes o reproduction are central themes or modern sex educators: The decision to have or not to have a child, and when to have it, is a very personal choice o the couple involved. But this choice is aected by innumerable actors, ranging rom amily and social pressures to the economic conditions necessary in order to raise children. At times people can wish to have children but haven’t the nancial situation or it. Other times, the couple thinks that it is still early to take on these responsibilities and preers to wait a bit longer. A young single woman can want to be a mother but ear the gossip o others. There are many reasons, but what is important is that there is no right or wrong in these choices—they are personal to each individual. (Mazín 1983b, p. 54)
This marks a signicant shit rom the approaches advocated in religious doctrine, with its ocus on procreation as a duty o the believer, as well as the discourse o social hygiene, with its ocus on reproduction as a respon-
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sibility o the citizen. Still, this new emphasis on personal choice in reproductive matters is becoming increasingly widespread, particularly among the young rom the more well-to-do, well-educated sectors o Brazilian society: Things are changing a lot nowadays—at least in the major urban centers. There is more choice. Women want to work. This doesn’t mean that they don’t want children. But they think more about amily planning. Men too. At least the more modern men. (Cristina, a twenty-six-year-old heterosexual woman rom the middle class)
The development o this perspective in turn has had an important impact in reducing the infuence o traditional institutions such as the Catholic Church. Indeed, notwithstanding the ervent opposition o the Church, even aborto (abortion) has been suggested as a viable alternative or individuals aced with the dilemmas o an unwanted pregnancy, and the debate concerning this issue has opened up new opportunities or questioning religious authority: Abortion has always existed, right . . . but these days people even discuss whether or not it should be legalized. It’s very controversial. Most people are completely against abortion. And, really, nobody wants to abort a child. But there are also other considerations. Lack o money, the health o the mother, or some other thing. It isn’t easy. Sometimes the pregnancy is a real tragedy. Abortion and condemned by the Church, but even in the rural areasis tprohibited he numberbyolaw abortions is rising. (Vilma, a t hirty-two-year-ol d working-class woman)
It is clear that in the modern period sexuality, ocused on reproduction, has become something to be managed not merely by the Catholic Church or by the state, but by individuals themselves. Taking control over one’s own body has become a rallying cry, especially or men and women rom the relatively afuent and well-educated sectors o society, and the control o conception has been central to the modernization o sexual lie in contemporary Brazil. The emphasis on individual reedom and choice has made possible as well a undamental rethinking o the distinction between sexo normal (normal sex) and sexo anormal (abnormal sex), at least among some segments o the educated elite. The absolute division between normal and abnormal sexuality has given way to a relativism ocused on both the context o particular practices and the circumstances o particular cases:
Norms and Perversions To speak o “normal” or “abnormal” in relation to sex is dicult. Studies in the area o sexuality have shown, increasingly, that sexual behavior is relative. It depends on the culture, the epoch, and the concept o “normality” o those who practice it. Depending on the angle rom which the concept is analyzed— the social, the biological, the mental, or the ethical—t he concept o “normal” diers. (Suplicy 1983, p. 287)
Given this breakdown o the distinction between notions o normalidade (normality) and anormalidade (abnormality), practices as diverse as homosexuality and bisexuality, ellatio and cunnilingus, anal intercourse, exhibitionism, etishism, sadomasochism, and transvestism have all received more public attention as well as slightly more legitimacy as matters o personal preerence rather than orms o sin or sickness. Classied as comportamentos não-convencionais (unconventional behaviors), such practices continue to be contrasted to the norm o comportamento convencional (conventional behavior), but are nonetheless increasingly interpreted as relatively benign variations—as expressions o a natural diversity rather than a moral perversion. From this perspective, the problem is less the diversity o sexual behavior itsel than the preconceito (prejudice) that condemns it as abnormal. This attack on the prejudices o the past is especially evident in a rethinking o the problem o homosexuality. Not surprisingly, the popular prejudices and stereotypes o the traditional ideology o gender have been subjected to serious criticism rom the more rationalized, scientic perspective. Even the inadequate analyses o earlier, less scientic science have come under attack as little more than extensions o popular prejudice: Even modern scientists have pointed to dierent routes or developing understandings o homosexuality that, nonetheless, are not always objective and not always convergent, or while some begin assuming that homosexuals are born with this orm o sexual behavior already determined (biological determinism), others consider it an individual phenomenon, whether through initiation on the part o a corrupter, whether through the lack o an adequate paternal image or through the presence o a dominant mother, or even through the exaggerated or decient unctioning o their endocrine systems. . . . Obviously homosexuality can thus be regarded as a sickness, vice, maladjustment, or neurosis. (Mazín 1983c, p. 74)
In the ace o such prejudices, contemporary sexologists have ocused on the essentially natural roots o homosexuality and have rearmed the undamental variability o human sexuality:
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Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions The study o diverse cultures . . . has brought anthropologists to the conclusion that some type o homosexual activity is known in almost all societies. The attitudes in relation to these practices, however, are highly varied. . . . In our culture, which discourages homosexuality, the existence o this practice is common. To try to understand what causes the individual to be homosexual and to conront all this prejudice is a task that many have tried to respond to. . . . No single explanation, no “cause” has, up to the present, been considered as the determinant o homosexual behavior. It is understood, at least, that homosexuality has diverse and multiple roots, not determined by a single cause, such as hormones, genes, absent ather and dominating mother, timidity, etc. (Suplicy 1983, pp. 267–68)
Practices such as homosexuality can gradually begin to be reappropriated rom the realm o perversion thanks to a more enlightened sexual science. And while the popular prejudices against such practices have hardly disappeared, the debate surrounding them has orced a undamental rethinking o any number o so-called deviant orms o sexual conduct: Since the sixties, Brazil has changed a lot. At least in the large cities, everything is a lot more liberal. In the past, homosexuality was very repressed. But these days, homosexuals are everywhere. There are gay ( gay or guei) beaches in Copacabana and Ipanema. There are gay bars and nightclubs in Rio and São Paulo just like in New York or Paris. Even the transvestites, like Roberta Close, are on the covers o the magazines. Every year Manchete reports on “the car-
naval the adolls.” doesn’t(Antônio) mean that homosexuality is totally accepted by society.o But lot hasThis changed. The prejudices o the past are irrational, whether it is prejudice against homosexuality or against the loss o virginity . . . Science shows that all this is oolishness. I think that each person is dierent. It isn’t possible to speak o a morality that will serve or everyone. You have to respect individuality and discuss sexual variations rationally. (Rubens, a twenty-our-year-old heterosexual male rom the upper middle class)
As scientic evidence is gathered to demonstrate their relative requency, practices ranging rom anal or oral intercourse to sadomasochism, transvestism, and bestiality have emerged as topics or debate. While such practices have hardly been accepted (even by the most liberal and progressive) as legitimate orms o sexual expression, the absolute moral certainty with which they once would have been condemned has been seriously shaken. The act
Norms and Perversions
that they have become the subject o relatively widespread discussion reveals the extent to which the structures o traditional morality have been undercut in their conrontation with the orces o modernity. In Brazil (as in many other societies, o course) many o these questions have taken on ever greater salience with the emergence o AIDS. Much like syphilis in an earlier period, AIDS has marked the discussion o sexual lie in contemporary Brazil, providing a ocus not only or medical investigation but also or moral discourse. The liberal trends o recent decades, and the apparent modernization o sexual morality, have once again been called into question—charged with responsibility or an epidemic that has rent the abric o modern lie. Both religious doctrine and modern medical authority have been reasserted in the ace o AIDS, as accusations o sin and sickness have again merged in the discussion o a disease linked to sexual transmission and unconventional behavior. Yet at the same time, by the end o the 1980s, the emerging AIDS epidemic had also given rise to a reassertion o more liberal doctrines. AIDS has increasingly become a ocus or more progressive politics, veterans o the eminist and homosexual movements have become leading AIDS activists, and the struggle against AIDS has given rise to a growing social movement committed to the modernization o sexual morality and the deense o sexual diversity. I questions related to sexuality had long been a ocus or public debate, issues such as the importance o sex education, the diversity o homosexual liestyles, and the complexity o sexual behavior have acquired a special urgency in the years since AIDS rst became an issue in contemporary Brazilian lie (see Parker 1990). Even ollowing emergence AIDS, then, while sexual behavior continuesthe to mark out anounmistakable normconventional in contemporary Brazilian lie, the possibilities o unconventional sexual behavior have been posed in a strikingly new way as questions o diversity rather than o perversity. As in the case o almost all o the more ormal discourses we have examined, the impact o these developments has been limited. It has been associated almost entirely with an afuent, intellectual elite, and even among this elite, its impact has been ar rom widespread. But the change in orientation is clear. In books and magazines, on radio and television, in university lecture halls and chic caés, a rethinking o sexual lie has become part o the wider discourse o social lie in contemporary Brazil, and the prejudices and stereotypes o the past have increasingly conronted the changing patterns o modern lie. Complicated problems that were once discussed only in the privacy o the Catholic conessional or, later, in the writings o medical doctors have been taken up not only in the debates o sexologists or proessional sex educators, but in the conversations o a much wider public. This
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highly rationalized interrogation o the sexual realm ocuses on sex as a central truth o human existence, while opening up any number o undamental doubts about the exact nature o this truth.
Gender and Sexuality Whether in the doctrines o the Church, the discourses o social hygienists and medical doctors, or the discussions o modern sexologists and social scientists, the past century has been marked by the emergence o a undamentally new way o speaking and thinking about the nature o sex in contemporary Brazil. The increasingly rationalized analysis o sexual practices has hardly supplanted what we described as the traditional ideology o gender as the cornerstone o the Brazilian sexual universe; on the contrary, we have consistently stressed the extent to which its impact has been limited by any number o social and economic circumstances. It would be more accurate to suggest that, rather than replacing an earlier system o thought, this newer system has been superimposed on it, oering at least some members o Brazilian society another rame o reerence or the construction o sexual meanings. In the emphasis on sexuality, as opposed to gender, sexual practices have taken on signicance not simply as part o the construction o a hierarchy o men and women, but as a key to the nature o every individual. Yet i the hierarchy o gender has receded rom view within the terms o this new rame o reerence, the question o power clearly has not. Power is as prooundly involved in this modern as in the ideology gender. But in the invention o sexuality, thediscourse relationship between sex andopower has been restructured: the hierarchy o gender has become what, ollowing Gayle Rubin (1984), we can describe as a hierarchy o sex. Within the ideology o gender, sexual acts have been less signicant in and o themselves than through their specic relation to masculinity and emininity. They oered a way o organizing a hierarchy between men and women as well as between types o men and types o women. Yet it was always in relation to the perceived qualities o gender—in particular, in relation to male activity and emale passivity—that their meaning was understood. Within the discourses o sexuality, on the other hand, sexual practices are linked ar less to the question o gender than to the question o reproduction. Whether in the doctrines o the Church, the lectures o the doctors, or even the debates o the sex modernists, the meaning o specic sexual acts seems to be as important as the gender o the actors. Regardless o the many important dierences which obviously separate these various perspec-
Norms and Perversions
tives, in all o them, the signicance ascribed to the act itsel is built up in relation to a logic o reproduction rather than a calculus o activity and passivity. As in Rubin’s ormulation, a hierarchical system o values is constructed in which reproductive, monogamous heterosexuality denes a norm rom which all other orms o sexual practice clearly deviate (Rubin 1984, pp. 279–82). Even in the debates o the sex modernists, who have questioned the absoluteness o this norm, it is in relation to it—in relation to the logic o reproduction—that discussions have been built up. As Rubin has suggested in analyzing the traditions o Western Europe and the United States, the sex hierarchy maps out the range o possible sexual practices on a kind o continuum. At one end o this continuum, we nd a sexuality that is dened as “good,” “natural,” or “normal”: the norm o reproductive, monogamous, marital, noncommercial heterosexuality. Other sexual practices are dened as “evil,” “unnatural,” or “abnormal” and are pushed to the opposite end o the continuum—the bottom o the hierarchy. The reproductive norm has clearly dominated the discourse o sexuality in Brazil since at least the middle o the nineteenth century, and has been reinorced in a variety o relatively ormal ways, ranging rom the ideological strictures o received religion to those o modern science. The activities o any number o orces, such as the police in large urban centers, who have traditionally worked hand in hand with the priests, hygienists, and doctors in seeking to regulate sexual conduct, have not only conrmed this norm, but have sought to ensure it, oten through the use o orce or sanctions against those who have somehow deviated rom it. Sex solely or pleasure, sexual promiscuity, prostitution, homosexuality have all been the object not merely o stigma, but oten oand outright repression aimed at minimizing the threat that they pose to normal sexuality. As in the system o gender, the specic practices mapped out on the sex hierarchy simultaneously dene types o individuals. In the case o the various deviations that undercut the norm o reproductive heterosexuality, they ultimately dene the pervert, who in turn can be classied more specically: sodomita, prostituta, onanista, homossexual, sadomasoquista, travesti. Within this system, these gures unction, as clearly as the corno or the viado, the puta or the sapatão, as negative images. They not only complete the hierarchy o sex, articulating its own distribution o power, and set out its negative limits, but rearm the reproductive norm. As in Europe and the United States, however, the lines separating these various gures, separating what Rubin has described as “good” sex rom “bad,” can be, and clearly have been, contested. While the norm o reproductive heterosexuality has been more or less constant, the denition o the perversions has been less
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clear. Particularly in the mid twentieth century, the modernization o sexual values has permitted a wider space between the extremes o the sex hierarchy or acceptable sexual diversity. Even or the most liberal sexologists and sex educators, practices such as sadomasochism, transvestism, and pedophilia have generally remained incurable abnormalities. Yet the line between the normal and the abnormal has been blurred as any number o practices, ranging rom masturbation and homosexuality to contraception and even abortion, have been raised as possibilities. Such practices have hardly been accepted by the majority o Brazilians as right and proper, but they are nonetheless at least debatable. 2 While this rethinking o sexual values has made possible a certain reorganization o the sex hierarchy, however, it has not essentially altered the process o rationalization that has characterized the changing shape o sexual lie in Brazil or more than a century now. On the contrary, it has reconrmed the undamental importance o the reproductive norm in dening itsel with central reerence to this problem. More orceully than either the Catholic tradition or the discourses o medical science, it has emphasized the proound signicance o sexual meanings. Indeed, the liberalization o sexual diversity that has accompanied the modernization o Brazilian lie has reconrmed the central importance o sexuality as somehow a key to the very denition o the sel. In so doing, even the most modern voices o the present have been linked to a system o power that unctions, to ollow Michel Foucault, not simply through the repression o deviance, but through its incorporation into wider structures and its investment with meaning. Sex hasdoctrines become both an object knowledgeoand a source truth. Whether in the o religion, theodiscourses doctors andoscientists, or the pedagogy o modern sex educators, sexuality itsel has taken shape as a social and cultural rame, situated within and inseparable rom a complex system o power. It has oered at least some Brazilians another way o building up the sexual universe that they live in, another way o interpreting its meaning and making sense o their own experience.
5 Bodies and Pleasures
As complex and varied as they are, the structures that dene both the traditional hierarchies o gender and the more modern interpretations o sexuality do not exhaust the eld o sexual meanings in Brazilian culture. On the contrary, we can point to at least one more perspective that both draws upon these discourses and situates itsel in opposition to them. We might describe this cultural rame as an ideology o the erotic, organized in terms o a very dierent logic, and oering its own distinct reading o the sexual universe. Although elaborated with constant reerence to the structures o both gender and sexuality, this system o erotic meanings has ocused neither on the construction o hierarchies nor on the rationalized interrogation o inner truths. Instead, it examines the diverse possibilities or sexual pleasure that these otherItways o conceptualizing sexual lie haveolargely ignored circumscribed. has thus oered an alternative model the sexual uni-or verse or Brazilians to draw upon in shaping and interpreting their sexual experience.1 Like the systems o gender and sexuality, or or that matter, the srcin myths that have been built up around the symbolism o sexual lie, the ull development o this erotic rame o reerence can also be situated historically. It can be linked to the same processes that have been responsible or the increasing rationalization o sexual meanings in Brazilian lie: to the massive social dislocations that have taken place in Brazil since at least the early twentieth century as a result o the pace o industrialization, urbanization, and modernization. Its most elaborate articulation as a distinct cultural perspective can thereore be ound in those sectors o Brazilian society where these interrelated processes have been carried urthest—where the changing nature o Brazilian lie has increasingly undercut the legitimacy o social structures such as the amily, the Church, and even the state. Indeed, 111
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as the institutions that have traditionally unctioned as the chie regulators o sexual lie have been called into question, new territory has been opened up or sexual exploration and experimentation. However, it would be a mistake to interpret this ideology o the erotic as nothing more than an unintended consequence o modernity itsel. Its relation to the central traditions o Brazilian culture is ar more complicated and intimate. Although it seems to intersect at a number o points with the sel-conscious modernization o sexual lie described above, it can also be linked in a variety o ways to the wider world o sexual meanings in Brazil. It can be ound, or example, as a subversive undercurrent in the structure o the plantation economy and the patriarchal order. Indeed, throughout Brazilian history, while it has tended to escape or even overturn the boundaries o both gender and sexuality in its alternative reading o sexual lie, this erotic rame o reerence has nonetheless been unavoidably tied to these other systems. Through its relationship to these other systems, it has unctioned to structure the nature o erotic experience, and only by examining it in relation to them will it be possible to interpret its own distinct logic and to understand the ways in which this logic transorms the meaning o sexual practice in Brazil. This, in turn, will enable us to explore the range o meanings associated with erotic lie, and to examine erotic experience, not by reducing it to some other level o reality or additional set o explanatory principles, but by interpreting it as itsel a cultural construct: a product o intersubjective symbolic orms, ideological structures, semantic congurations, and the like, which take on signicance within the fow o social lie.
Transgression Whether implicitly or explicitly, the systems o gender and sexuality quite clearly articulate a repertoire o sexual practices, some dened as acceptable and others as prohibited. Yet they ail to limit this repertoire ully because the very notion o prohibition implies the possibility o transgression. Like a denition o the acceptable, a denition o the prohibited—and by extension, o the orms o transgression—has been central to the symbolic economies o both gender and sexuality in Brazil. It is through the negative images o sexual transgression, whether in concrete gures such as the cuckold or the whore or in abstract concepts such as sin, sickness, or abnormality, that the systems o gender and sexuality have been able to regulate and reproduce themselves. Yet because this is the case, because their internal order depends upon their ability to produce the very belies and practices that appear
Bodies and Pleasures
to subvert this order, both o these systems paradoxically open up a cultural space or an ideology o the erotic capable o contradicting their most basic assumptions. Central to this ideology o the erotic in Brazil is a culturally dened distinction between public and private realms which is perhaps best captured in olk expressions such asEm baixo do pano, tudo pode acontecer (Beneath the sheets, anything can happen) or, even more common,Entre quatro paredes, tudo pode acontecer (Within our walls, anything can happen): There are so many phrases . . . “Beneath the sheets, anything can happen.” Or “Within our walls, anything can happen.” There is also “Within our walls everything is possible!” There are also sayings like “What would these our walls say?” or “The walls saw, but they can’t talk.” Because the only evidence is that there are the our walls. You understand? And the walls aren’t going to talk. So, you can do everything. The woman doesn’t just uck with her legs open. She sucks cock, she gives her ass, she creates positions. Understand? And not just women. Men too. Women or men—really, these phrases don’t reer to just one sex. (João) This is always said by people like this: it’s a group that is always talking about sex, about sexual relations, and the people always say that “anything can happen within our walls” because the world doesn’t matter. A woman ull o inhibitions, a man ull o inhibitions, the macho guys, or the superemale— suddenly, they can be not so emale or so macho within our walls. Because there isn’t anybody and only what happens insidewithin is whatour matters. You understand? So,watching, the people say, “Anything can happen walls.” (Antônio)
Used in a variety o contexts that exhibit little sexual content, these interrelated expressions nonetheless derive their meaning principally rom their sexual connotations and invariably play upon the same underlying semantic structure. 2 Whether “within our walls” or “beneath the sheets,” the key is that one is somehow hidden rom public view: It isn’t important where you are . . . The point is that you are hidden! It can be at home, but it can also be on a deserted beach, at night, in the street, in an alley . . . (Kátia)
In private, or when hidden, then, the character o sexual lie is undamentally transormed. Anything can happen. One encounters a reedom o sexual
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expression that would be strictly orbidden in the outside world, in the public world o daily lie. Thus, at the same time that these olk expressions articulate a clear distinction between the public and the private realms o sexual experience, they subvert this opposition by hinting at the unexpected possibilities o sexual pleasure. Through a series o symbolic inversions, they play rather reely upon a undamental dichotomy in Brazilian culture, rst noted by Gilberto Freyre and later elaborated by Roberto Da Matta: a separation o cultural domains which is given representation in spatial imagery, in an opposition between the casa (house) and the rua (street) as key to the organization o daily lie (see Freyre 1963; Da Matta 1978, 1985). As we saw in examining the ideology o gender, the house tends to be linked to a whole set o notions related to emininity and the proper limits o emale sexuality. It is normally understood as the domain o the amily and o amilial values. While it may be a world inhabited rst and oremost by women, it is also associated with at least some orm o traditional, patriarchic authority, and is obviously seen as the site o domestic (or domesticated), properly reproductive sexuality: The house is where the name o the amily has to be respected . . . The morality o the amily . . . It’s the place o good conduct and exemplary morality. The preservation o the traditional amily environment within the home is the duty o everyone: the mother and ather, the children, the grandparents . . . (João)
The street, on the other hand, stands as a ar more impersonal domain o work and It oers individual reedom as well as temptation danger. It struggle. is a undamentally male space, inhabited, perhaps, by whoresand and sinners, but certainly not by a proper wie or mother: The street is a platorm or waging war, where, traditionally at least, the ather, the head o the amily, went to struggle—went to earn a living . . . The street is where you meet dangers and the house is the ortication where the amily is protected. But in the street you also enjoy yoursel . . . It’s the place o the “lie”: o women who are in the lie (mulheres da vida) rather than t he morality o the amily . . . (João)
In erotic ideology, however, the normal relationship, the sharp dichotomy, between these two domains can be at least temporarily inverted, as the sexual reedom (and the danger) o the street invades the secluded space o the house—or, or that matter, as the controlled sexual unctions associated with the amily lie o the house escape its controls and play them-
Bodies and Pleasures
selves out in the impersonal (and, hence, once again, dangerous) world o the street. The normally clear-cut distinctions between inside and outside, between private and public, suddenly dissolve, and the structures o daily lie are overturned, relativized, and rearranged. In these moments, according to this ideology, anything can happen. Everything is possible (see Parker 1987, 1989a). This notion o tudo, “everything,” is pivotal. It is central, with its implied mixture o temptation and danger, to what Brazilians dene as sacanagem (see Da Matta 1983; Parker 1987, 1989a). Sacanagem is in act an extremely complex cultural category that has no exact English translation. Indeed, its meaning in Brazilian Portuguese is highly varied, contradictory, and constantly shiting. Traditionally, it seems to have carried a set o essentially negative connotations. It was used, most commonly, with reerence to pederasty or homosexuality, and a person described as sacana was marked with the stigma o sexual deviance (see Almeida 1981). And while this meaning has become considerably less current, especially in more modern, urban settings, sacanagem, along with the verb, sacanear, is still widely used throughout Brazil to reer to “trickery” or “injustice” much as we, in English, might reer to having been “screwed over” or “ucked over” by someone or something: On the one hand, it means “to do bad” to someone: “Today I was screwed (sacaneado) by my boss” . . . I was red, or something like that . . . “Today I got (sacaneei) that bastard” . . . I got revenge with someone who had screwed me over (me sacaneado), who had done me some wrong. (José)
But over the course o the past decade, the notion o sacanagem also seems to have acquired a number o more positive connotations. It now has a playul side as well, and it is oten used to reer to the riendly “teasing” o one’s colleagues or ellows: Sacanear also means to tease with a jest (uma sacanagem)—making a joke, doing a prank . . . “How I teased (sacaneei) my riend yesterday!” . . . How I kidded him! (José)
Nowhere is the ambiguity osacanagem more evident than in contemporary usage as a general term reerring to a whole range o things sexual—above all else, to those aspects o sex that are considered especially marginal, prohibited, or dangerous:
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Sacanear also means “having sex.” At times, it has a negative meaning. A rape is a sacanagem. It links sex and evil or violence. But it also has a positive, exciting side . . . Making love isn’t sacanagem, but you do sacanagem while making love when you do the uncommon: you go to a motel, you screw in a place that is public or dangerous, you suck, or uck the ass instead o the cunt . . . In this sense, sacanagem is used playully, speaking about breaking rules, and is seen positively. The sacanagem becomes an excitement. (José)
Ultimately, then, this concept o sacanagem links notions o aggression and hostility, play and amusement, sexual excitement and erotic practice in a single symbolic complex. Whether used positively or negatively, whether reerring to injustice or violence, to joking, to teasing, to obscenities or sexual innuendos, to pornographic or erotic materials, or to specic sexual practices themselves, sacanagem ocuses on breaking the rules o proper decorum—the rules that ought to control the fow o daily lie. In almost all o its meanings, it implies at least some orm o symbolic rebellion or transgression—overturning the restrictions which govern normal social interaction. It is in the sense o “doing everything” that would normally be prohibited that this transgression is most clearly maniest. In thinking about things sexual, it is the idea o doing everything that seems to lie at the heart o what a good many Brazilians would dene as boa, or “good,” sacanagem (see Parker 1987, 1989a). Within the undamentally marginal and rebellious world o sacanagem, sexual interactions acquire meaning, at least rom the point o view o their participants, neither as nor an expression o the relations that separate men rom women as an external signhierarchical o some inner truth. On the contrary, they become an end in and o themselves, a realization o what Brazilians describe as desejo (desire) or, more commonly, tesão (potency, sexual excitement, hardening or arousal o the sexual organs), in the achievement o prazer (pleasure) and paixão (passion): What is important in sacanagem is excitement, pleasure. Coming doesn’t matter that much. What matters is the excitement. What matters is doing the sacanagem. (João)
Within the context o this erotic rame o reerence, however, excitement and pleasure are to be ound in those sexual practices that, in the ideologies o gender and sexuality, would be considered most questionable:
Bodies and Pleasures To have sex beore marriage, to masturbate, to take a prick between your legs, to let the man suck your breasts, to give your tush. All these things are more exciting because they were said, ever since you were young, to be wrong. People come to be more interested in these things. They want to discover these things. (João) The things that are most prohibited are always the most exciting, you know . . . It’s like in that song by Caetano Veloso: in sacanagem, “it’s prohibited to prohibit.” Doing everything is what counts . . . it’s what gives the most pleasure. (Tereza, a twenty-year-old lesbian rom a middle-class amily in São Paulo)
Indeed, because certain practices seem to exceed the boundaries o good taste, they are seen as especially excitante (exciting). They open up a orbidden world—a world that is at once unknown and dangerous. The pleasures that can be ound in this world become all the more proound because o the danger that one must conront in order to achieve them. Focused on the transgression o those rules and regulations that would otherwise prohibit certain sexual practices, this rame o reerence implies a very dierent interpretation o the nature o sexual lie rom that provided by either the ideology o gender or the discourse o sexuality. This interpretation is itsel clearly immanent, o course, in the prohibitions that dene these other systems. Yet within the context o these systems, the practices that break through the boundaries o good taste remain an aront to any proper sense o shame, a repository o sin, an undeniable sign o abnormality. the erotic rame o reerence, however, their negative. signicance is radicallyWithin dierent. It is undamentally positive rather than Indeed, in this model o the sexual universe, anything is possible, prohibition is itsel prohibited, and even the most taboo desires and practices can be seen as especially exciting. Within the terms o this alternative model, the signicance o sexual lie is reinterpreted. The desires and practices that provided the ocus or interpretations o both gender and sexuality are no less central here, but the meanings associated with them—both socially and psychologically—are transormed. While perhaps never completely eclipsed, the hierarchical distinctions between men and women and the detailed classication o sexual normality and abnormality give way to a new understanding o sexuality—a symbolic economy which takes shape as an esthetic o excitement and desire, o the body and its potential or pleasure.
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Excitement and Desire As in both the popular ideology o gender and the more ormal discourses o sexuality, sexual desire seems to be understood, in this erotic rame o reerence, as a orce or energy that is tied to lie itsel. Within these other systems, however, the status o sexual energy is ambiguous—positive in certain, limited situations, but prooundly negative in others. To draw on a distinction used long ago by Freud, the value o desire seems to lie in the object rather than the instinct or the drive (see Freud 1962b). Within the erotic rame o reerence, however, it is desire itsel, rather than its specic object or aim, that becomes the center o attention. Desire is seen as positive in and o itsel, and the object o desire is less important than the physical sensations that it produces. Indeed, the very notion o desire as a kind o diuse energy is itsel constructed through a complex cultural symbolism that simultaneously denes it and links it to its concrete, physical maniestations in the human body—to sexual arousal. In keeping with the transgressive logic o erotic ideology, it is in the widest possible play o this energy that the positive value o desire is most evident. Like the body, the notion o desire opens up a range o possible meanings and interpretations. Depending on the specic context, um desejo can be translated as “a desire,” “a wish” or “a longing,” “an aspiration,” or even “an appetite.” The verb desejar can be understood as “to desire,” “to wish,” or “to want.” And these various meanings can be applied, as well, to a range o situations which carry no specically sexual connotations: In a general sense, desire isn’t exclusively sexual . . . It reers to anything that you are wanting: you can desire a good grade on an exam, or you can desire some kind o ood, desire to be rich, that your samba school wins, or your soccer team . . . or you can desire a person. (João)
The key here would seem to be a general notion o lack, o being unsatised: It’s the lack o something that creates desire. You want to satisy your desire. (Antônio)
Satisaction and desire are thus tied to one another through their mutual opposition. Regardless o what one desires, the experience o desire is a demand or satisaction, or attainment, or completion. Within this wider understanding o desire, sexual desire is something
Bodies and Pleasures
o a special case. While desire can be generalized and applied in almost any situation, sexual desire serves as a metaphor or all o the maniestations o desire, regardless o context: Still, it’s true that sexual desire is strongest. When you speak o desire, you think principally o sexual desire. (Kátia)
At some level, then, a general notion o desire and a specically sexual desire become largely synonymous. And just as sexual desire serves as a model or the wider range o meanings, the notion o satisaction becomes linked to that o pleasure. The human body itsel becomes both the object o desire and the provider o satisaction. It is a source o pleasure capable o satisying desire. The complex symbolic connections that are involved here become clearer in the more extensive language o desire that has been built up in popular culture—a language that links the largely mental connotations o desire to its more concrete maniestations in the arousal o the body itsel. With this in mind, desire can be elt, or example, as a kind o ome (hunger): Fome is another word or desire too. When you are hungry, you want to eat something, right? It’s the same with desire. You eel it in your body. (José)
Sexual desire is thus synonymous with sexual appetite: playing upon the notion o the sexual object as a kind o ood, and the sexual act as an act o eating, an act or o incorporation, desire ishowever, linked todesire hunger, appetite, to the desire nourishment. sexual Like hunger, cantonever be ully satised. No matter how sated one might momentarily eel, both hunger and desire inevitably return: You eel satised ater eating, but you will always get hungry again. It’s the nature o things. And it’s the same thing with sex. You eel calmer ater a good fing, but in a little while your desire will return. (José)
Yet even while ocusing on the inevitable transience o sexual satisaction, this symbolism o hunger links the experience o desire to a highly concrete notion o corporeal pleasure. Drawing on images that have been, rom any other perspective, stripped o their sexual meaning, and incorporating them within the ideology o the erotic, it conronts, once again, the boundaries that have been built up to separate and compartmentalize experience. As in sacanagem itsel, the established order o daily lie is almost unexpectedly
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dissolved, and the dynamics o desire and excitement operate within this dissolution. Reproducing the central meanings associated with desire, then, the notion o hunger is even more clearly situated in relation to the body itsel. Mental desires, wishes seeking satisaction, are tied to physical sensations, excitations. While this process is particularly obvious in the symbolism o hunger, it is developed as well in a whole set o images related to the temperature o the body and the physical transormations that are associated with sexual excitement. Notions o hot and cold are used extensively to speak about desire and to link it, in a variety o ways, to the arousal o the body. While slightly less common, the expression Estou com calor (I’m hot) can carry precisely the same sexual implications as Estou com ome (I’m hungry); the physical experience o sexual excitement is understood as an experience o heat. Sexual energy is quente (hot), and becoming aroused sexually is associated with esquentando (heating up), with a rising body temperature, a sense o physical warmth that is ocused in the genital region yet diused throughout the body: Sex is very alive. Heat . . . hot . . . excitement is something hot: the heat o sex. The ardor o sex is very great. Every moment that you eel more excitement, an increase o sex, the heat is greater. (Sérgio, a twenty-nine-year-old heterosexual male rom a working-class background)
Not surprisingly, the notion o ogo (re) is easily incorporated into this set o images as a particularly appropriate metaphor or both desire and excitement: Fire is something that burns. And it has a color that is alive. It’s something that spreads very rapidly. So re is a metaphor or talking about sex. It’s that sexual voluptuousness that mounts up in you . . . a strange thing that you say is burning inside o you. (Sérgio)
The ambiguous associations are evident. Like desire, re is tied to both lie and death. Essential to culture, to cooking, to protection, it is at the same time a source o danger, a violent potential that can escape human control. It conjures up a whole set o religious images linking the sins o the fesh to the res o hell, and is an especially apt extension o the transgressive logic o erotic ideology. Easily linked to the heat o sexual excitement, it becomes one o the most common ways o speaking about the sexual experience o the body:
Bodies and Pleasures We have expressions like “re in the cunt,” “re in the asshole,” or “re in the tail.” You use this a lot or someone who is nervous or excited: “Damn, guy, you have re up your ass!” But it’s like sacanagem: it has a sexual side too. Saying this sexually signies the desire to have sex, to give your cunt or your ass. “You have re in your cunt” or “You have re in your ass” means “desire to do something.” But it also means “that pleasure” when you are screwing . . . you have your prick inside, ucking, and you say, “You have re in your cunt.” When you’re in that voluptuousness, that pleasure o ucking, you also talk about re in the cunt. You understand? It’s psychological and physical. (João)
An individual can also be deined using terms such as hot, iery, or recracker: “Hot” is perhaps the most common. “She’s a hot woman!” It means that she is very sexy, very sensual, ardent. “I’m hot!” means that I am sexy—or that I’m excited, that I have re. It’s this business o heat, o sexual re. (Antônio)
Thus one’s own experience o excitement can be described in terms o re, and expressions such as dar ogo em mim (put re in me) or botar em brasa (turn into live coal or ember) are not uncommon metaphors or sexual arousal. Like hunger, this notion o re, tied as it is to the heat that one eels throughout one’s body when sexually excited, becomes central to the language o desire. It is through such metaphors that one not only speaks o excitement and desire, but in act experiences them. 3 As important o hunger, heat, the andplay re o may be inacross building up the experienceasoimages sexual desire, however, arousal and through the body is most ully captured in the notion o tesão —like sacanagem, a key category in Brazilian sexual culture that can be translated into English only through approximations. While more common than any o these other terms in popular usage, tesão shares their wide range o meanings. Indeed, i anything, it both expands and species their reerents. At one and the same time, tesão can reer to desire, to any number o sexual or nonsexual excitements, and to the actual state o sexual arousal. It can apply, in some circumstances, to a sense o excitement that seems to have little or nothing to do with the nature o sexual experience: It isn’t always sexual. Any thing or activity that excites you, that animates you, is something that gives tesão. When you really like a class, or some piece o work that you are doing, then you speak like this: “I have tesão.” Because o the class. You understand? (Kátia)
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Yet even in such uses, it is the notion otesão as undamentally sexual in nature that serves as the basis or a metaphoric extension o its meaning: Well yes, tesão has lots o meanings. But above all else is the meaning rom sacanagem. Tesão is what you eel in sacanagem. What you eel in your body. That desire that you get. You know, tesão is tesão—and it’s very good! (José Carlos)
It is here in the sexual realm that the vocabulary is most ully elaborated. In public, it becomes a mark o attractiveness and attraction: a particularly attractive person can be described using the noun um tesão (a tesão), or the exclamation Que tesão! (What a tesão!). This same character can be reproduced in private, as well, in speaking o one’s lover as meu tesão (my tesão). Whatever the context, tesão serves as the key symbol or sexual desire and excitement: It’s so many things. Tesão is the attraction that you eel seeing a beautiul, attractive person . . . It’s the desire to uck, the excitement. It is a common word, you understand? It’s what the people say. (João)
Thus both the eeling o desire and the physical maniestations o arousal are labeled and classied in terms o tesão. As in the notion o hunger, though even more orceully, mental image and physical experience merge into one another. As in almost all the imagery o desire that we have already examined, the notion o tesão the boundaries that havemeanbeen built up around the erotic in thebreaks worlddown o normal daily lie, as sexual ing becomes both a metaphor and a model or all orms o experience. It is through this notion o tesão, more than any other single construct, that desire invests itsel in the excitement o the body. Indeed, it istesão that marks the physical arousal o the body itsel. Like sacanagem, tesão seems to be at once diuse and ocused. It is elt throughout the body while at the same time drawing attention to the sexual organs. It describes the erection o the penis, clitoris, or nipples, and the moistening o the vagina: Tesão is what you eel in your body. It’s the sexual emotion that puts your prick hard. It’s that excitement. It’s the voluptuousness. It’s the desire that runs through or that happens in your body . . . It’s the excitement that the woman eels in her vagina, what makes her nipples hard. People joke, they say, “She’s got tesão . . . She’s getting all wet!” But, really, it’s exactly this that happens. (João)
Bodies and Pleasures It’s that desire that you get to have sexual relations—what you eel in your body. The transormations o your body. That heat. Excitement. Desire. All these things. (Jorge)
I tesão is ocused rst and oremost in the genital region, however, it is hardly limited to it. On the contrary, it seems to spread out throughout the body: You eel tesão everywhere. It’s that vibration. A thing that’s very alive. (Maria)
Tesão shows up in all the parts o t he body—like the ass, legs, arms, breasts . . . It’s a generalized thing, not only in the genital organs, but in every part o the body. (Antônio)
In keeping with the playul logic o the erotic, the physical sensations o arousal become the subject o jokes and games: People make jokes. When it’s really cold, and the woman’s nipples get hard, you know, because o the cold, the people tease ( sacaneam) her. They say: “Hard nipples!” “She has tesão!” It’s like in that rhyme or children: “Mariazinha, o all the curves, nipple hard, cunt wet, the rooster crows, the prick rises, the cow bellows, the prick buries itsel in” ( Mariazinha, do bole bole, peitinho duro, boceta mole, o galo canta, meu pau levanta, a vaca berra, o pau enterra). (João) Are you amiliarstudents with thatuse? square, shapeWhen o thethey letter T, that or engineering Thereinisthe a joke. pass, in thearchitecture street or some other place, then the people say: “You have tesão!” or “You have tesão in your hand!” Because ever since the word tesão appeared—I don’t know exactly when, but it must have been in the sixties—there has been created the expression tesão na mão (tesão in your hand). It means “jacking o,” “masturbating,” or “desire to touch another person.” You understand? So when the people pass with the T-square in their hands, there is a popular saying: “You have tesão in your hand!” (Antônio)
Once again, then, within the terms o this rame o reerence, the signicance o arousal is radically dierent than in the other systems that we have examined. The hardening and moistening o sexual arousal is interpreted neither as a sign o potency and activity nor o reproductive potential. On the contrary, it is understood in relation to pleasure. Its meaning is undamentally playul, transgressive, and erotic, and it is through such inter-
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subjective symbolism that the subjective experience o erotic meaning takes shape. In all o these culturally constituted images, both desire and excitement emerge as much in specic symbolic orms as in the physical reality o the body itsel. That is, the experience o the body is unavoidably merged with the cultural representations o that experience. The two are mutually implicated. Within their intersection, the subjective experience o the erotic can be located, and desire is most clearly linked to antasia (antasy). Even here, however, in the set o connections that link desire, excitement, and antasy, it is essential to emphasize the extent to which the most private o erotic images are built up out o the possibilities oered by the wider cultural context. Fantasy takes shape as itsel a cultural category. As understood in popular culture, o course, it has relatively little to do with the abstract, technical terminology o psychology or psychoanalysis. While its popular usage may lack some o the many-layered associations that are so central to psychoanalytic understanding, however, it nonetheless oers a remarkably similar understanding o the world.4 It appears in sonhos (dreams), imagens (images), and representações (representations): Fantasies are like dreams. They are dreams, really. They are made up o images, ideas, thoughts in your head. A sexual antasy is an image, or the series o images, that you have about what you want to do sexually. (Kátia)
Built up in thoughts and images, antasy becomes the ideal expression o the underlying cultural logic that organizes theLike erotic. It dissolves theitrepressions and restrictions o realidade (reality). all erotic imagery, ocuses instead on the satisaction o desire and the meaning o pleasure: In your antasies, everything is possible. What causes people to have antasies is the dissatisaction or the desire to possess what they don’t have. In antasy, you can have it. You can do what you want. All your desires will be satised. It’s the opposite o real lie. (Kátia)
The possible combinations, o course, are almost limitless—yet, once again, the key to the constitution o antasy, like sacanagem and tesão, can be ound in the logic o transgression: The most erotic antasies are those that we think about, but can’t do. The repression created by society is placed like a wall between us, our desires, and our realities. In antasy, we can pass through this wall. (José Carlos)
Bodies and Pleasures In antasy, you can do everything that can’t be done in reality. All your desires are realized. Obviously, even in antasies, lots o people repress themselves. But it’s the only place where you have at least the possibility o doing everything. There are no prohibitions in your antasies. (Antônio)
In the transgression o rules and regulations, o prohibitions and taboos, desire plays itsel out in antasy. Fantasy, in turn, becomes a model or the erotic. Just as it is shaped by erotic ideology, it becomes the ullest expression o this ideology. Like sacanagem , it oers an alternative vision o the sexual universe—a universe dominated neither by a hierarchy o values nor by a utilitarian economy o energy, but by passions and pleasures. Within this passionate world (a world in which desire and excitement take precedence over domination and subjugation), the erotic emerges as a kind o jogo (game) in which the cardinal rule is that the rules themselves must be broken. In some ways, it is less the history o one’s actual sexual encounters than the world o antasies and possibilities that is most deeply exciting. While oten reerring back to the memories (or memory traces) o pleasure that one has experienced in the past, desire in act occurs beore the pleasures o the present. It is an anticipation o satisaction that, like antasy, depends upon possibilities o transgression or its meaning and power. Desire is incited as much in the caça (hunt) as in the actual catch. Thus, because it undercuts the monogamous norm o a rationalized sexuality, paquerando or azendo pegação (searching or getting—roughly equivalent to the English notions o “picking up” or “cruising”) becomes exciting in and o itsel: You know, sometimes it is better to search than to get. The excitement is in the search, in the seduction . . . (Paulo, a twenty-six-year-old heterosexual male rom the middle class)
The act o sedução (seduction) is central not simply because, as in the ideology o gender, it implies a kind oconquista (conquest) or dominance, but because it overcomes some resistance or restriction. Indeed, seduction becomes all the more exciting when the object o desire is orbidden, when the
cantada (a pass or erotic invitation, derived rom the verb cantar, “to sing”) must be disguised or secretive: People always want what is prohibited. And it’s more exciting to make it with people who are prohibited too: a girl who is still a virgin, or a married woman. Everything is more complicated. It’s more exciting also. (Rose)
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As in the images o antasy, it is this search or what is lacking, or what is denied or prohibited, that denes desire. It takes on a playul character, as seduction becomes a kind o game, and excitement is built up within a radically restructured playing eld. Anticipating the possibilities o pleasure that are understood as implicit in erotic practice, the symbols and meanings that mark out this new eld o play oer a particular reading not merely o excitement and desire, but o the signicance o sexual lie as a whole. Reproducing the transgressive logic o sacanagem itsel, the play o desire is thus in some ways as much about transorming the range o erotic possibilities as it is about the actual reality o sexual behavior. Anticipating pleasure where it is most explicitly denied, notions such astesão and antasy become central to the ideology o the erotic in Brazilian culture. At the same time, they suggest a reinterpretation o the whole range o sexual meanings: o the human body and its sexual potential, the variety and structure o possible sexual practices, and so on. In order to understand the ull implications o this reinterpretation, we must turn to the ways in which this erotic rame o reerence reinvents the body as an object o desire and as a source o pleasure, as well as to the implications that this understanding o the body holds or sexual practice itsel. It is in this erotic understanding o the body and its practices that excitement and desire are most ully realized. It is here, as well, that the qualities that distinguish the erotic rom both the hierarchies o gender and the discourses o sexuality are most evident.
Bodies and Pleasures No less than in the ideology o gender or the more rationalized interrogation o sexuality, a particular interpretation o the human body is central to the erotic rame o reerence in Brazilian culture. As in these other systems, the body is never simply given: it is built up in the symbols and meanings that are used to conceptualize it. Within this erotic rame o reerence, however, the body is constructed neither as a oundation or the hierarchy o gender nor as a physical site or the truth o the sexual subject, but as we have seen, as an object o desire and a source o pleasure. The cultural congurations that shape this erotic body characterize it in terms o its beauty and its sensuality, its erotic potential. And the ways in which Brazilians think and speak about this erotic potential are surely as important to their understanding o sexual lie as are any o the conceptions that we have examined thus ar. Not surprisingly, erotic anatomy is dominated by the genitals. The meanings associated with the genitalia within the erotic rame o reerence, how-
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ever, are very dierent than the symbolism o the other conceptual systems. While the male and emale genitals are taken, within the ideology o gender, as diametrically opposed anatomical and symbolic structures, and as unctionally interrelated organs in the utilitarian analyses o sexuality, rom an erotic perspective they are characterized by their complementarity as much as anything else—by their potential or mutual pleasure. The combative and the clinical languages o gender and sexuality give way to the essentially playul language o sacanagem . Terms such as banana (banana), mango (mango), mangueira (mango tree), pepino (cucumber), or linguiça (sausage) are ways o describing the penis, while concha (conch or shell), ruta (ruit), pomba (dove or pigeon), and rosinha (small rose) can be used to speak o the vulva or the vagina. Even the harsher language o gender opposition— weapons, snakes, and spiders—is transormed, recontextualized, in the playul world o the erotic. Indeed, in shiting rames o reerence, such terms, labels, and metaphors can be invested with new meaning: The words are strong. But the context changes. When you say “cunt” in the street, it has a very negative meaning. But when you say the same thing with your wie or with your girlriend, the meaning is totally dierent. It reers to the same thing, but it has a dierent meaning. (Jorge)
Thus the range o erotic meanings associated with the genitals is ar dierent rom either the ideology o gender or the discourse o sexuality. The vagina is no longer dark and dangerous, but warm and inviting, the penis no longer a violent weapon, a sourceexpands o pleasure ulllment. And the erotic elaboration o thesebut meanings into and a detailed description o the surrounding sensual landscape: the lábios da buceta (lips o the cunt) and the grelo (clitoris), the membrana or pelinho (oreskin) and the cabeça do pau (cock head), the ovos (eggs, i.e., balls, testicles) and the saco (sack, i.e., scrotum), all become important, not because o anatomical curiosity or reproductive unction, but because o their erotic potential. In short, then, the meanings associated with the body—and, in particular, with the genital region—are contextual. Their signicance is relative and constantly shiting. Within the erotic rame o reerence, it is neither their hierarchical nor their unctional character that matters. They are understood as instruments o pleasure rather than as markers o power. This does not mean that the associations built up in other contexts evaporate within the realm o the erotic. On the contrary, the meanings o the erotic are superimposed on them, taking precedence over them within specic situations. Layers o meaning take shape and come to the ore in dier-
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ent ways, at dierent moments, or dierent individuals. Within this context, the notions o power, violence, danger, ertility, or potency elsewhere associated with the genitals may simply slip away. On the other hand, they may themselves be eroticized, becoming part o the conguration o pleasure. The implications o power or violence may thereore become part o the incitement o desire, or the meaning o ertility central to the conguration o arousal, and so on. The point is that even these associations become linked to the construction o an erotic universe. They become essential to the realization o sensual pleasure rather than serving simply as markers o masculinity and emininity or as tools or reproduction. Just as the ideology o the erotic transorms the meaning o the sexual organs, it simultaneously transorms their absolute primacy within the symbolic economy o the body. While this primacy is never entirely undercut or orgotten, the relationship between the genitals and the rest o the body is nonetheless reconstituted. The symbolism o gender and sexuality tends to narrow down, or to ocus in, on the male and emale genitalia, the reproductive organs; the language o the erotic, on the other hand, seems to expand out to all the limbs, members, and organs, which are themselves invested with erotic meaning: The whole body is important. The ace, the eyes, the mouth, the breasts, the ass, the legs . . . The attraction is in the whole person. The best sacanagem is when you do everything: kiss her whole body, lick her ears, caress her legs, her ass, rub your cock between her thighs, between her breasts, suck her nipples . . . (Carlos)
While the erotic potential o the body may be centered in the genitals, it is realized in virtually every area o the body. The eyes, nose, hair, neck, back, arms, thighs, legs, and even hands and eet can all be invested, under the right circumstances, with erotic meaning. In short, any part o the body can be eroticized, or incorporated into a system o erotic meanings. Indeed, the emphasis placed on a number o key areas almost exceeds that placed on the genitalia themselves, and structures such as the boca (mouth), the peito (chest) or peitos (breasts), and in particular, the bunda (rump or ass) seem, at times, to rival the penis and the vagina in the construction o erotic ideology. In keeping with the totalizing logic o sacanagem, the erotic emphasis on areas such as the mouth or anus explicitly overturns the limitations o reproductive sexuality. A woman’s breasts are especially important within this rame o reerence, or example, not because o their biological unction,
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but because o their beauty, their shapeliness, the special color o their skin, the particular orm o their nipples: Men are ascinated by breasts. I don’t know why. I think that Freud explains it, right. But it’s more than this. It’s the orm, the size . . . A woman with beautiul breasts is simply more attractive. (Rose)
The act that the breasts have a role to play in the reproductive process is hardly lost within this cultural system. But as the reerence to Freud might suggest, even this biological unction is eroticized, with the verb mamar (literally, “to suckle or nurse”) used to describe sucking or licking a lover’s breasts and conjuring up, perhaps, the memory trace o a child’s earliest source o pleasure, transposing the mother/child relationship into the erotic present: Mamão (papaya) is another word or the woman’s breasts—it comes rom mama (mammary gland). And mamar (to suckle) also. Do you know this word? It’s what the baby does: sucking the breasts o the mother. You understand? But men also say, “I’m going to mamar that woman!” “I’m going to eat her!” “I’m going to uck her!” And when you are licking her breasts, sucking her nipples, her teats, you also say that you are mamando (suckling). (João)
An even more complicated set o transormations is involved in linking the emale breast to the male penis as the source (as we have seen) o a certain kind o leite (milk): When you want the woman to suck your cock, you say, “Come here! . . . Mama (suckle) here! . . . Drink my milk.” Because cum is also called leite (milk) or leitinho (little milk). (Wilson, a ty-two-year-old heterosexual rom the working class)
The various parts o this erotic body thus become interchangeable. Symbolic associations are built up between them, and a whole range o highly charged connotations underlie them. The mother’s breast becomes a lover’s breast. The breast becomes the phallus—or the phallus, the breast. The boundaries between adult and child, between male and emale, become blurred in the play o erotic meanings, while the nature o pleasure is built up in these symbolic orms as prooundly diuse, multiplex, polymorphous. Much the same set o symbolic processes can be ound, as well, in the eroticization o the boca (mouth). The srcin, as the use o the verb mamar
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indicates, o the individual’s earliest notion o pleasure, the mouth is linked as well to the vagina (also described, as we have seen, as the boca de baixo, “mouth below”). Here, however, the connotations o this association are not threatening, but exciting. The lábios (lips) o the mouth are associated with the labia o the vagina, not primarily as a source o danger, but o pleasure. Common to both men and women, the boca quente (hot mouth) is taken as a sign o passion, the língua (tongue), no less than the lips, is understood as a sexual organ, and both beijando (kissing) and chupando (sucking) are seen as central to the structures o erotic practice. Once again, then, this symbolic complex builds up an understanding o the sexual universe in which the utilitarian, reproductive unctions o sexual behavior have relatively little meaning and the absolute, hierarchical divisions between males and emales are increasingly dicult to maintain. On the contrary, drawing on much the same imagery o nourishment and satisaction associated with the emale breast, the language o the boca tends to tie the nature o erotic experience to a whole range o sensual pleasures. Building on the notion o desire as an insatiable hunger, the erotic takes shape in a language o the gostos (tastes), cheiros (smells), andsabores (favors)—a language o culinary metaphors in which chupando the parts o the body is described, or example, as chupando uma manga (sucking a mango) or chupando um picolé (licking a popsicle, i.e., a penis). Perhaps more than any other single set o images, this language o tastes and smells, o ood and eating, dominates erotic metaphor in Brazilian culture. Sexual pleasures are tied to the pleasures o the palate, and the denition o sensu-
alidade is broadened andruns expanded. The (sensuality) imagery o ood and eating throughout Brazilian sexual culture. We have already seen the extent to which notions o comendo (eating) and dando comida (giving ood), or instance, structure the hierarchy o gender. The symbolism o ood or nourishment is central to the denition o masculinity and emininity: whether the mother’s breast or the wie’s culinary talents, the provision o nourishment and the preparation o ood are explicitly tied to the emale role in Brazil. They dene it and articulate it. The kitchen is a emale domain, and cooking is second only to the bearing o children in the unctions associated with women in traditional culture. Because the pleasures o the palate can be tied, symbolically, to the pleasures o erotic experience, however, the symbolism o gender can also be transormed into the language o the erotic. Women (and even men in homosexual encounters) themselves become comida (ood), and within this erotic perspective, even women can assume the dominant role o comendo (eating):
Bodies and Pleasures The concept o ucking is that it’s the man who always eats ( come). But, in reality, the one who swallows the sausage is the woman with her mouth called boceta. It’s the vagina that possesses the orm o a mouth, not the prick . . . When the woman is on top o the man, and she’s the one who makes the movement to the point o coming, then you say that the woman is eating ( comendo), swallowing the dick. (João)
Here the symbolic violence that dominates the ideology o gender gives way to a very dierent set o meanings linked to the possibilities o erotic practice. The imagery o ood and eating becomes a way o speaking about erotic attraction and sexual satisaction. An attractive woman or man is described not only as bonita or bonito (pretty, handsome, good looking), but as gostosa or gostoso (tasty or tasteul). Someone who is not especially attractive physically, but who is still seen as in some way exciting or desirable, can be described as comível (edible). And a particularly pleasurable experience (whether sexual or not) is almost invariably described as uma delícia (a delight), deliciosa or delicioso (delicious): You analyze sexual pleasure like you analyze a good eijoada (black bean stew). When nished, you would say: “What a delight!” “It was delicious!” “It was tasty!” It gives the connotation o pleasure as much in ood as in sex. (José)
Again it is the notion o pleasure that provides the symbolic ocus within this rame o reerence. Sexual pleasures become tied to a whole range o other corporeal experiences, andnegative the so-called sins o theRelativizing fesh take on damentally positive rather than connotations. theuninterpretation o the body as a marker o gender or an object o science, the symbolism o the erotic recreates it in its own image—an image o favors, tastes, and smells, in which the multiple possibilities o pleasure are constantly rearmed and restated in metaphoric language. Like the symbolism o the breast, the emphasis placed on the mouth, and on a whole range o meanings associated with eating and nourishment, at least partially displaces the signicance o the genital organs as the absolute center o erotic experience. More accurately, it integrates the genitals into a wider understanding o the body and its pleasures. Oral pleasure becomes as signicant as genital pleasure. Indeed, within this imagery, the two are hardly separable. Each seems to implicate the other. Nowhere is this alternative understanding o the body and its pleasures more pronounced than in the remarkable emphasis that is placed on the bunda, the rabo (tail), the popas or nádegas (buttocks), and the bundinha or cu (asshole). Aside
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rom the genitals themselves, there is nothing that so dominates the language o the body in Brazil: For the bunda? Let me think. There are so many words. “Tail” . . . “anus” or “rectum” . . . “hole” . . . “blind eye”—conception o Brazilians, isn’t it, because it’s a hole like the eye, but an eye that can’t see . . . so it’s a blind eye. You also talk about the “eye o the asshole.” Also “smelly,” “stinking thing,” “arting thing,” or “shitter” . . . “Behind” or “cunt behind.” Mom never talks about the bunda—only about the “behind.” My grandather, too. He didn’t speak about the bunda o a woman, but about the “behind.” There is “rosette,” that comes rom the color pink, and “coubaril tree”—I don’t know why, but it’s a tree . . . “Ant hill” is another—it’s where the ants live. “The bunda o that woman is an ant hill.” It means that she is crazy to give (in anal intercourse). Another is “bottom” . . . or “peroration” . . . “Oven” also. It’s that business o heat, o re. (João)
Like the symbolism o ood and eating, the bunda plays a key role in the ideology o gender. As we have already seen, it is essential in the verbal dueling and joking that establish relations o symbolic dominance in the course o daily lie, and it is no less important to notions o masculinity than the symbolism o ood is to emininity. Associated with deecaçdo (deecation) and sujeira (lth) through its unction in the body, words such as bunda, rabo, and cu are among the most highly charged obscenities in the Portuguese language: Antônio: I think t hat word ( cu) is so ugly. RP: Why? Antônio: Oh, I don’t know. It’s something dirty. It gives the connotation o lth. It’s a really strong word. RP: Do you use the word? Antônio: Only once in a while . . . Principally in the street, you know, you tell someone to stick it up their ass, or something like that. RP: And to speak about the body? Antônio: We talk more about the anny (bunda). Bunda is less ugly. RP: Why? Antônio: I don’t know. It’s less negative. I think that it has less connotation o lth, o shit.
Because o its oten overwhelmingly negative connotations the place o the anus within the erotic esthetic is perplexing. The metaphoric association
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o tastes and smells, culinary masterpieces, and the like, with sexual pleasures oers a relatively straightorward transposition o positively valued images rom the world o daily lie to the symbolism o the erotic. The primacy o the bunda, on the other hand, relies on a more complex set o symbolic transormations. The act that the sexual organs are also the organs or the excretion o waste rom the body is constantly rearmed in the language o popular culture. The vagina is described, as we have seen, using terms such as carne mijada (urinated meat). Xixi (urine) and derivatives such as xixim or xixita can all be used, though not very commonly, as synonyms or the vulva. Pipi can reer not only to urine, but to the sexual organs o both boys and girls. The sexual organs o young boys and girls are clearly perceived as potentially sexual, but they are most oten spoken o in relation to the act o urinating. And the child’s bundinha (little anny) is understood in even less overtly sexual terms. It is closely associated with deecation, with ezes (eces), or more commonly in the language o everyday lie, with azendo cocozinho (“going potty”), but hardly with sexual pleasure. The excretion o bodily waste products is understood as the central unction o the child’s genital organs and anus, and control over such unctions is among the earliest demands that society makes upon both boys and girls: Children always have a little chamber pot, pink or the girls and blue or the boys, and always in a place that is visible to the child. The mother begins to teach him early on to use the inant toilet: the chamber pot. Or to call an adult to thatorgets he needs to urinate deecate. There is physical reprimand thesay child to speak aboutorhis physiological necessities. When the when child pees or poops in his diapers and doesn’t tell his mother that he needed to do this, the mother reprimands the child by spanking his buttocks. This is a orm o educating the child to use the toilet and not to do his necessities in his clothing. (Dulce)
As a ocus or attention and restriction on the part o the wider society, it is not altogether surprising that these same unctions should also oer a certain kind o physical pleasure or adults as well as or children—that they should be perceived as a orm o release rom the discipline imposed upon the body: It’s a kind o pleasure, having a good pee or a good shit. I think that you tense up so much in order to control your body. Aterward, you can relax yoursel. (Néstor)
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This release may be only temporary, but its signicance is more long-lasting. It is in this undercutting o social restrictions that erotic ideology locates the most exciting pleasures o later lie, and the early experience o the child serves not only as a oundation or the construction o the erotic, but plays a key role in relativizing the meanings that are associated with the physiological processes o the body. No less than the imagery o ood and eating, this association between urination, deecation, and pleasure celebrates the material existence o the body, even in the ace o society’s severest reservations and restrictions. With the physical changes that accompany adolescence, the explicitly sexual—as opposed to urinary—unctions o the genitals come to the ore. The role o the genitalia in sexual intercourse, and as a source o sexual pleasure, soon takes precedence over the earlier meanings associated with them. Yet these earlier meanings never really disappear. On the contrary, the taboos associated with the excretory unctions o the genitals and the anus become linked, by analogy, to the repressions associated with their sexual potential, and by extension, the pleasures associated with urination and deecation as a release rom the controls o social existence come to be tied to sex itsel: When we are children, we learn that lth is to play or mess with shit or piss. But when we begin to get to a certain age, where the sexual emotions are in orce, then we come to hear and have to learn that sex is part o the lth o lie. Now, it is no longer just unwashed hands that are dirty, but our minds. (João)
Like the excretion o waste products, sex comes to be understood as simultaneously liberating and pleasurable yet dirty, and nowhere are these connections more evident than in relation to the bunda: The penetration o a prick in an asshole is really known as dirty sex, not just because it’s the asshole that deecates . . . It’s the conception o the social structure. This type o incorporation o lth is placed in all the meanings o things that are done outside o the taboos o society. (Roberto)
Because o such complicated associations, by the time o early adolescence, the bunda seems to have taken on a meaning especially well suited to the transgressive logic o the erotic. The changing shape o the developing girl’s bunda is, i anything, even more noticed and commented on than are her enlarged breasts. The act that the bunda (like the boca) can serve as a
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substitute or, or an alternative to, the vagina is constantly rearmed. Particularly or males, there is a kind o etishization o the bunda as a sexual object which envelopes and transorms its earlier association with deecation. Control o the sphincter, which is primary in the disciplining o the body through the sel-regulation o deecation, is transormed into a sexual practice and a source o pleasure. Like the mouth and the vagina, the anus is ar more than just an orice; it becomes central to the erotic techniques o the body: The asshole isn’t just a hole. It can be tightened, contracted, relaxed . . . It has to be relaxed to let the prick enter. Then it can be tightened to hold on to it. It’s like the cunt, or a mouth . . . you have to know how to use them. (Néstor)
Within this ideology o the erotic, then, the bunda can become a ocus or sexual pleasure. Because o its especially negative connotations in the everyday world—its associations with excremento (excrement), with bosta or merda (shit)—it has a unique role to play within the erotic economy o the body. Intimately linked to notions o sujeira (lth), it is especially well suited to the undermining o social norms and proper decorum that is undamental to the constitution o erotic experience. The bunda both complements and completes the erotic images that we have already examined. Like the genital organs, the breast o the nursing mother, and the suckling/sucking mouth, the anus becomes a point o contact between the body and the world around it. As much as the incorporation drink, theLike subsequent o waste links the material bodyotoood this and wider world. sex itsel,excretion both o these processes break down the barriers o individuality, presenting the body as integrated and united rather than separate and distinct. For this reason, the symbolism o sujeira, so prooundly negative in the world o daily lie, can be inverted and transormed in the world o erotic meanings. Rooted in images o excrement, the use o sujeira as a metaphor is normally taken as an indictment o the immoral and the unacceptable. In the play o the erotic, however, this set o meanings is overturned. Just as the deecating anus is transormed into a sexual organ and an object o desire,
sujeira takes on a positive connotation. Within this rame o reerence, to call a lover sujo or suja (dirty) can imply that he or she is especially exciting. To playully suggest perorming uma sujeira (a lthy act) can be the invitation to a sacanagem which is all the more arousing because it breaks the rules o proper decorum:
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Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions Outside o sacanagem, the word sujeira is used in a thousand dierent orms. But when we reer to sujeira with sacanagem, it is just as possible to nd a good connotation as a bad one. For example: “Let’s do a really dirty ( suja) sacanagem.” It isn’t negative. It doesn’t mean dirty sex—dirty because o people’s hang ups. Here, the really dirty sacanagem means that everything that is possible sexually will be done. It’s what carries us to total pleasure. It’s the so-called sex without hang ups—without restriction. (Antônio)
While the value o actual physical cleanliness is never disputed (on the contrary, it is constantly described by inormants as essential to erotic appeal), the use o sujeira as a metaphor ollows the underlying logic o sacanagem itsel. It inverts the meanings o daily lie, stands them on their head, and oers a radically dierent reading o the signicance o sexual practice. Sujeira thus becomes another component in an erotic vocabulary—a vocabulary that reconstructs the body as a source o pleasure and integrates it ully, through its sensuality, with the physical world around it. This constant emphasis on the sensuality o the body clearly marks the construction o erotic meanings in Brazilian culture. Just as a notion o sensuality typies the Brazilian interpretation o their own character as a people and invests itsel in their understanding o the social body, so too it becomes absolutely central to their understanding o the physical, individual body. Tying together a variety o disparate—indeed, sometimes highly contradictory—images, this understanding o the body extends the notions o sacanagem, tesão, and the like, that structure an ideology o the erotic. It provides an alternative o the sexual dierences universe in or which the bodyorbe-recomes signicant not asreading a marker o gender as a vehicle production, but as a source o sensual pleasure. Linked, as it is, to sensuality, the notion o pleasure in turn permeates the meaning o sexual lie, and the very experience o pleasure as a physical reality is itsel built up through the cultural symbolism that structures the erotic universe. Within this rame o reerence, the body itsel is reinvented. The primacy o the genitals to sexual lie is never undercut, yet it is at least partially displaced. Almost any part o this sensual body can be eroticized—treated, or a variety o reasons, as especially pleasurable and exciting. Indeed, the body as a whole is approached in almost esthetic terms, and it is in its totality, its completeness, that its beleza (beauty) lies. Ultimately, then, this erotic reading o the body is inextricably linked to the dynamics o sexual desire and excitement in Brazilian culture. The most diverse parts o the body become sources or the sensation o sexual pleasure. At the same time, however, they are also transormed into images and
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symbols which, through any number o complex psychic processes, incite desire and excitement. 5 Because desire and arousal are not simply natural impulses experienced as essentially the same or all human beings regardless o their social or cultural circumstances, the highly specic cultural orms that map out these domains o erotic experience become linked to the no less specic imagery o an erotic body. Together, they orm an elaborate system o meanings that contrasts markedly with the systems o gender and sexuality. It is within the context o this particular system and its polymorphous, open-ended understanding o both desire and pleasure, that what we might describe as the culturally constituted structures o erotic practice take shape.
The Structures o Erotic Practice It has oten been suggested that while the meanings associated with sexual practices cross-culturally are almost innite, the actual practices themselves are in act rather limited—conditioned by the limitations o the body, with its nite number o convex and concave suraces (see, or example, Gagnon 1977). While there may be some truth to such an assertion, because the body and its possibilities are themselves culturally constructed, sexual practices can never be treated as somehow simply given in nature or, or that matter, limited by nature. What one society may conceive o as sexually possible, another may not, and the experimentations that might open up the widest rangeOnothe imaginable practices rarely initiated entirely by individuals. contrary,sexual it is the culturalareconstruction o potential practices that allows individuals to imagine them, and in Brazil at least, it is within this erotic rame o reerence that the possibilities o sexual practice are ormulated. Given the emphasis that this ideology places on the transgression o sexual prohibitions in the constitution o meaningul (exciting) erotic experience, it is hardly surprising that the structure o erotic practice, like the body itsel, should be characterized by what we might describe, ollowing Freud, as a remarkable polymorphous perversity (Freud 1962b). In Brazilian culture, however, the polymorphous character o sexual pleasures is hardly limited, as in the traditional psychoanalytic ramework, to the experience o inants and then gradually suppressed through the child’s entry into the world o culture. Instead, at the same time that the restrictions which circumscribe the growing child’s erotic lie become evident, so too do the practices which circumvent these restrictions. It is this ull range o sexual
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possibilities, then, rather than some more delimited segment o it, that becomes meaningul even to adults within the erotic rame o reerence. And it is the ull range o meaningul possibilities suggested by this rame o reerence that particular individuals can in turn draw upon in shaping their own erotic meanings. This way o construing the erotic universe once again undercuts and transorms both the ideology o gender and the discourses o sexuality in Brazilian culture. In both o these systems, primary emphasis seems to have been given to some orm o genital (hetero)sexuality as the only really legitimate orm o sexual expression. Other sexual practices are certainly articulated: anal intercourse, masturbation, bisexuality and homosexuality, and so on. But in every instance, these practices are dened in negative terms; as negative examples o prohibited conducts, they serve to dene and legitimize the normal, the conventional. In the constitution o the erotic, however, these prohibited practices acquire positive value. From early childhood on, masturbation, oral eroticism, and anal eroticism, as well as same-sex relations and any number o other deviations, emerge alongside the genital sexual norm as alternatives or the structuring o erotic practice—alternatives which may or may not be realized in the conduct o any given individual, but which are at least imaginable within the ideology o the erotic. Indeed, in keeping with the transgressive logic o sacanagem itsel, these otherwise marginal sexual practices become absolutely central to what we might describe as the erotic scripts produced in Brazilian culture.6 Masturbation is among the earliest o sexual practices to take on an explicitly erotic experience, meaning. Asthe in vocabulary the case o that so many other signicant domains o sexual can be drawn on in order to speak o masturbation is itsel an indication o its signicance. While the verb masturbar-se (to masturbate onesel) is requently used, particularly to speak in public or in polite company about issues related to masturbation, it is a airly technical term with rather ormal or even medical overtones. Far more common, in popular speech, are expressions such as tocar punheta or males or tocar siririca or emales. The verb tocar is used in Portuguese to mean both “to touch” and “to play (an instrument),” and this combination o touching while at the same time mastering a pleasurable technique is clearly pivotal in any number o expressions, as is the playul, joking quality that characterizes the world o the erotic generally: Tocar punheta, or men, and tocar siririca, or women, are the most common expressions. For tocar punheta there is also tocar fautim de cabo (to play a handle-shaped fute) and tocar trombone de vara (to play a pole-shaped
Bodies and Pleasures trombone)—it’s because these instruments have the orm o a prick. There are various jokes. When someone asks, “Do you play some musical instrument?” you respond, “Yes!” The person is going to ask which instrument it is. And you tease ( sacaneia) him, saying “handle-shaped fute” . . . There are other really common expressions as well . . . carinho de mão (tenderness by the hand), deperar o rango (“to pluck the chicken”) . . . you understand . . . it’s because you’re jacking o your dick, and it’s like taking out the eathers o the chicken . . . There is also vício solitário (solitary vice). This is strong. You should write about solitary vice. (João)
Regardless o the nuances that can be ound in these various expressions, a common thread ties them to the wider structure o erotic ideology. While they play upon a range o associations and meanings, they all ocus on erotic pleasure as an end in and o itsel. Indeed, within this rame o reerence, masturbation is understood, not as a threat to procreation, but as a source o pleasure that is all the more exciting because it is repressed. It is thus hardly surprising that masturbation should be intimately linked to antasy. Much like antasy, it is in some ways an erotic ideal, as it oers a stage or the ullest realization o the transgression that underwrites the play o erotic desires. In masturbatory antasy it is possible, however momentarily, to construct one’s own sexual dramas with a reedom more absolute than anything one will ever experience in the course o daily lie: Beating o is better than ucking . . . With punheta, and in any place or any time, you canand get the whatever desire. You to think and(José develop your imagination, climaxyou o coming will just givehave you satisaction. Carlos)
Once again, however, such erotic possibilities are hardly “natural.” They must be learned. They are dependent on a whole set o meanings that are commonly transmitted during childhood or early adolescence by one’s riends and associates: I began to masturbate behind the water tank with a riend who was two years older than me. He wanted to compete with me in everything, but I always won the contests. But with jacking o ( punheta) and hair around the prick he beat me because he was older. (João) The games and championships o jerking o were important rituals in the day to day lie o my youth. Every day, ater school, we had reunions o the whankers, some with big cocks or their age, and others in the phase o devel-
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Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions opment. Whoever shot rst became the stud o the group. The reunions took place in ruined old houses or in the middle o groves o banana trees. The ritual became almost a religion, and you couldn’t let on about this secret, principally because we lived in a society that was extremely repressive and Catholic. But there was always someone who got upset or rustrated in the group and who opened his mouth like Judas Iscariot. We received beatings rom our amilies, but we didn’t take long to start up our mutual competition again, because the solitary jacking o ( punheta) did not cease to exist at our homes or in the bathrooms o the schools. The unny thing is that our athers punished us, but they had also passed through the same jack-o club (clube de punheta). (Antônio)
Given the divisions o gender, the learning o masturbation is tied to a setting which carries a whole range o bisexual or homosexual connotations as well. The transgressive logic o masturbation itsel becomes linked to the context o transgression in which it is learned, and while the structures o antasy that are built up in relation to masturbation may, at one level, serve to conrm or rearm the accepted norms o heterosexual desire, they can also unction, on another level, to undercut the distinctions between homosexuality and heterosexuality that have been established in the discourses o daily lie. Within the reality o erotic practice, then, the meanings o gender and sexuality can be rearranged and transormed, and this process can be seen with particular clarity in the transgressive play o desire that becomes linked to masturbatory practice. While masturbation is most commonly understood as a orm o autoeroticism, important to understand the extent to which oit the is also integrated intoita iswider structure o sexual interactions. Because prohibitions that have been built up in the ideology o gender and the discourses o sexuality, masturbation can become central to early sexual explorations with others as well as alone. The same-sex settings which serve as the context or learning about the sexual meanings associated with masturbatory practice can easily be transormed, and mutual masturbation becomes a key sexual interaction in more private same-sex explorations as well: I remember that or a ew years during my adolescence I had a number o riends who were my partners or good times. We always went out in pairs to hunt or girls. We passed through bars, parties, streets, plazas, alleys, and clubs, but at the end o the night we hadn’t gotten what we really wanted. Sometimes we would pick up hookers to uck with us. The price was agreed upon or serving the two o us. But there were nights when we didn’t get
Bodies and Pleasures anyone and we went to sleep in one o our houses. We slept in the same bed. We talked about everything and everyone. We got into erotic conversations, and the cock started to get excited. We looked at porno magazines ( revistas de sacanagem) and put our hands to work. Everything started out really slow, because nobody wanted to be accused o being a bicha. But ater ta lking a while, we wound up jacking one another o. (João)
Indeed, given the continued signicance o virginity, as well as the desire to avoid unwanted pregnancy, masturbatory practices are also an important part o the sexual scripts o young males and emales: Marly was a virgin (or is even until today), but she liked to see my prick hard beneath my jeans. This is when we were in her parent’s house. I rubbed against her so much that I chaed my dick and came in my pants. The good times were camping where we had a tent or just two people. There, with lots o diculty, I got all her clothes o. I pushed my dick against her belly. “One palm above the vagina.” (It’s almost a popular saying.) One palm, so that jism doesn’t all and make her pregnant. You understand? I was always very cautious about pregnancy. I always came jacking o (tocando uma punheta) between her breasts, and then I passed my nger in her cunt, giving her a good rub ( tocando uma boa siririca). She would grab my prick and start to jack it o again—especially at the moment when she was coming. (Roberto)
And perhaps especially in keeping with the wider logic o sacanagem, masturbation also serve thedanger only eective o sexual contactinteracin certain publiccan settings whereasthe o beingorm discovered prohibits tions involving more extensive disrobing or intertwining: My boyriend really likes to stir me up, especially in public. He gets excited almost anywhere. On the bus, he always stands behind me in order to protect me rom inappropriate pushes—but he always rubs against my behind. At the beach, we go to swim and in the water he is ater me right away with his nger. He really likes to masturbate me. I like it too. When there isn’t a possibility o a more comortable place, I like this game with the hands. One day I was almost caught in the act by my mother, who, in spite o not having complete certainty about what was happening, was still suspicious. (Rose)
In almost all o its maniestations, then, masturbation quite consciously undercuts the utilitarian logic o reproductive sexuality. In all o its meanings,
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it seems to reproduce consistently the basic structure o the erotic in Brazilian culture—to articulate, once again, a radically distinct vision o at least one aspect o the sexual universe in Brazil. This same vision can certainly be ound, as well, in the elaboration o oral sexuality and oral intercourse. I the mouth is clearly associated with a variety o sensual pleasures going back to early inancy, during childhood and early adolescence it is increasingly invested with meaning as central to the scripting o erotic behavior. Even or very young children, the romantic beijos (kisses) that pass across the screens in movie theaters or on television are among the earliest models or structuring sexual conduct: When I was seven or eight years old, or maybe one or two years earlier, I already tried to portray a kiss on my lips. I didn’t know just how to do it, but I had the idea o rubbing lips against lips—this was already enough to reproduce what I had seen at the matinée in the cinema. One o the things that I waited or most was the nal kiss in every lm with the word “end” representing eternal happiness. On Sunday itsel, I didn’t have the opportunity to practice my antasies with the community o emale cousins that lived around me—but on Monday, ater school, there we went behind the chicken coops or in the area o the water spouts, the place where our mothers washed clothes and passed around the gossip o the day. But ater our o’clock, you only heard the alling o the water in the large wooden troughs . . . There was the school o kisses. We passed hours and hours with our lips stuck together—without opening the mouth, only lips. Until the day that an older cousin learned that, along with the lips, the tongue had to bebecause used. The wasocomplete and the usion was ormed, the party mixture lips, tongues, andpsychological saliva gave usconthe sensation o something lthy. But in spite o the Sunday Masses with teachings o sin, o fesh, and so on, it didn’t take much time to develop the true meaning o the kiss. Sometimes I was surprised by an adult, and then the conusion took shape with blows and punishments—especially without the lms on Sundays, and with dominical conessions with the priest o the parish. I prayed ten Our Fathers, ten Hail Marys, and other prayers as well, in order to puriy my soul and deliver mysel rom the sin o the fesh. But when the punishment ended, there I went again to the lessons and practices with the kisses. (João)
While this school o kisses may ocus, initially, on imitating the practices o matinée idols, with their sensual lips and their long, dramatic kisses, the act that the beijo can be applied to any part o the body is quickly perceived as well: to kiss not only the lips, but the genitals, is a common enough ex-
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tension o the early sexual play o children. As children grow older, it is a relatively easy step to the notion that kissing everywhere, even remote recesses o the body, is especially exciting and erotic. And the eroticization o the mouth, in turn, is incorporated into the imagery o ood and eating. Verbs such as lamber (to lick), chupar (to suck), and sugar (to suck up) are all invested with erotic meanings. Just as it can be kissed, any part o the body can be licked and sucked: There are verbs like “to suck,” “to lick,” or “to suck up” . . . It doesn’t mean that it’s only sexual. You can suck a candy, you can suck a nger, an ice cream, a ruit. It has various meanings. But it’s sexual too: “suck cunt,” “suck cock.” “To suck up” too. “To suck up” is like “to suck.” It’s very sexual. “I’m going to suck up all the liquid rom your cunt!” You understand? And not only the cunt. The entire body. You suck the breasts, the ngers, the toes . . . You lick the belly, the anny, the balls . . . It really excites me when someone licks my balls, my groin, and my prick. (José Carlos)
A banho de gato (cat’s bath) reers to the thorough licking o even the most inaccessible places, and a chupão (hicky), to the mark let on the skin rom prolonged sucking or kissing. Although the intricacies o such practices can perhaps be ully discovered only through one’s interactions with others, the act that they constitute signicant orms o sexual conduct is constantly rearmed in the language o popular culture. As in the case o masturbation, notions o licking and sucking are central to the early sexual explorations adolescence. masturbation, the importance o oral sex (especially oromales) is otenLike learned in the context o same-sex interactions—with members o one’s peer group, or example, or rom older males—and can sometimes be integrated with homosexual play or experimentation: My older male cousins began to teach me sacanagem by making me suck their dicks. They told me that to be a man I needed to suck and to give (dar) to them. The rst time that my cousin, Cênio, put his prick in my mouth, I almost died rom nausea. But I went to look or a boy younger than me and I did the same thing, telling him that in order to be a man he had to suck my prick. (Sérgio)
Also like masturbation, oral sex can oer young couples an important alternative to vaginal intercourse that can be used extensively to circumvent the restrictions placed on sexual conduct. Indeed, its practice is oten taught to
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young emales by their male partners, and it can come to play a leading role in the sexual scripts o both males and emales in the early explorations o adolescents: I played around a lot with my girlriends in my room behind the mirrored door o my clothes closet. It was an extremely sae place or them to suck me, because my mother never suspected. I put my prick out without taking o my pants. My girlriend sat on the edge o the shel inside my clothes closet. She sucked me looking at the mirror. The door to my room stayed open and nobody suspected what was happening. At the same time that she sucked me, I spoke, in a loud voice, about angelic things, and it was all done like that . . . (Sérgio)
Perhaps even more than masturbation, then, oral sex is oten especially important in early sexual exchanges with others, regardless o gender. The erotic possibilities o the tongue and the mouth are intimately linked to the notion o sacanagem: to the idea o sexual practices which escape the regulations o conventional lie, and which are exciting in proportion to the prohibitions which inscribe them. It is probably this early association with transgression, coupled with, or superimposed upon, an understanding o the body and the sources o pleasure, that lies behind the importance o oral sexuality in the construction o erotic lie. As primary as oral eroticism may be, however, it hardly compares with anal eroticism and anal intercourse in the erotic. Just as the emphasis on the bunda seems to exceed the emphasis given to even the boca in erotic esthetics the body, the importance anal intercourse in thethe structures o eroticopractice is more powerullyoevident than any other single aspect o erotic ideology. Along with both masturbation and oral sex, anal eroticism has a key role in early sexual play. For boys, it is the ocus o same-sex explorations such as azendo meia (literally, “doing hal”) ortrocatroca (again, literally, “exchange-exchange”), games in which partners are said to take turns masturbating, ellating, or most commonly, penetrating one another: Fazer meia or troca-troca is a game that every group o young guys at the age o puberty plays. It’s simply one guy jacking o another, or sometimes one sticks it in the other and then an exchange is done. (José)
Although oten an egalitarian transaction in which active and passive positions and roles are exchanged and the partners view one another as equals, meia or troca-troca would seem to unction as well as a kind o transgres-
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sive underside to the highly conscious cultivation o heterosexual masculinity that denes the interactions o male groups. Just as older males instruct younger ones in the intricacies and techniques o lovemaking with women, and oten even arrange or heterosexual initiation, in meia or troca-troca the older males oer an initiation into homosexual practices by symbolically eminizing their partners. As one requently cited expression puts it, Homem, para ser homem, tem que dar primeiro—in other words, “A man, in order to be a man, has to give (to take the passive role in anal intercourse) rst.” Older or stronger partners thus assert their own dominant masculinity in troca-troca by slyly manipulating the situation in order to penetrate their partners beore nding some excuse to leave the game. What ostensibly begins as an egalitarian exchange can thus quickly be transormed into a problematic competition as the many dierent meanings o sacanagem are brought together: Sometimes one gives (dá) rst, or sucks or jacks o the other, and then when it is the turn o the one who received pleasure rst, he doesn’t want to do it or the other. There are sometimes when this same rst person goes about telling others that the second did this or that with him. T he connotation o activity and passivity. The active deames the passive, giving rise to ghts and shame, i not blows and serious punishments coming rom amily members. The game can sometimes get complicated. (José)
Emasculating young boys in order to create men, then, troca-troca (or any playul sexual .interaction the males same lines) to reproduce the logic o sacanagem It provides along younger with aseems wide range o inormation about same-sex practices and initiates them, at one and the same time, to the hierarchical structure o domination associated with activity and passivity, as well as to the transgressive logic which overturns the restrictions and repressions o daily lie. While anal eroticism is clearly important, in a number o complicated ways, in the early transactions o males with other males, like orms o masturbation and oral eroticism, it is also common in interactions between males and emales. Like both masturbation and oral eroticism, it is oten used to avoid the loss o virginity (embodied in the hymen) or the dangers o unwanted pregnancy. And because it is thought to parallel most closely the practice o vaginal intercourse—which is culturally elaborated both as a desirable ideal and, or the young, as a prohibited taboo—anal intercourse would seem to oer a ar more satisying alternative than any o the other possible practices:
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Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions Especially or adolescents, ucking ass (comendo bunda) is an act o substituting or vaginal coitus. Fucking ass begins early in the start o puberty. In giving or eating an ass, the pleasure is heightened in comparison to sucking or jacking o. Some people say that it’s better to screw an ass than a stretched out or overused cunt. (Antônio)
Anal intercourse may have special importance or young people, but its signicance is hardly less evident even later in lie, when the problems associated with virginity and (more problematically) pregnancy give way, and vaginal intercourse becomes common and expected. On the contrary, particularly or men, but also, it would seem, or many women as well, anal eroticism continues to be associated with the transgression o taboo. Indeed, because one’s earliest transgressions are invested with a surplus o meaning and are thus remembered as especially exciting and pleasurable, anal intercourse continues to be central to the structure and signicance o erotic practice: Anal sex is my avorite. When we’re young, we learn that it is condemned by the Bible, by the teachings o the Church. The sense o sin is very great. But we also learn that ucking an ass is very pleasurable ( gostosa), very exciting. There is the desire mixed with a sense o prohibition, o sin . . . When they get older, people remember these emotions. For many people, the ass can even become a xation. (Jorge)
Anal is thus linked to masturbation and erotic oral sex as key elements withinintercourse an erotic vocabulary in Brazil. Invested with meaning through the sexual scripts learned during childhood and adolescence, these practices maintain their signicance during adulthood. Because o the numerous prohibitions surrounding them, they t perectly into the transgressive structure o the erotic. They are not simply a dark underside o perverse pleasures which somehow escape the controls o culture, or they are themselves culturally constituted in relation to the notion o control. Given these acts, it might be tempting to downplay the importance o vaginal intercourse and genital sexuality within the world o the erotic. Nothing, however, would be more inaccurate. Genital practices are very much a positive ideal. The point is not that the genital is downplayed in erotic ideology, but that it is integrated equally within a wider set o practices rather than set above these practices as somehow more valuable or correct. The signicance or meaning o genital sexuality is thus transormed within this erotic rame o reerence, with its emphasis on the polymorphous na-
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ture o pleasure, and Brazilians oten joke about the limitations o what they call papai-e-mamãe (literally, “daddy-and-mommy”), or what in English is sometimes reerred to as “the missionary position”: heterosexual genital intercourse with the emale partner beneath the male. While papai-e-mamãe ts perectly into the ideology o gender, with its symbolic domination played out in the structure o sexual practice, as well as in the discourses o sexuality, ocused on what is perceived as the “natural” orm o intercourse or copulation, it is hardly suited to the cultural logic o the erotic. On the contrary, within the erotic rame o reerence, emphasis is placed upon the extensive variety o possible sexual positions: We Brazilians like to vary positions. Doing the same thing every day becomes monotonous. I preer to screw my wie “on all ours” (de quatro). I like to eel her ass banging against my dick. I also like “ried chicken” ( rango assado): having her lie down, with her legs spread way out. The ried chicken that I like is to put my prick in her ass and then to take it out and put it in her pussy. There are various books that they sell on t he newsstands teaching the 600 or 700 dierent sexual positions. (José Carlos)
The point is that the positions or genital intercourse merge with a whole range o possibilities that are quite clearly ocused on other combinations: Papai-e-mamãe gets boring really quickly, right. It’s that same position o in and out and come. This served or the previous century, or or women who are ull o restrictions. (Rose) Positions like ried chicken, sixty-nine, or ucking on all ours get away rom the rule o the t aboo about ucking only the cunt. These positions can be used or other types o sacanagem . . . you know . . . sucking, or screwing someone’s ass. (José Carlos)
Ultimately, then, within this erotic perspective, the primacy o genital intercourse tends to dissolve. Traditional vaginal intercourse is integrated into a more extensive set o practices—and variety is clearly emphasized as the spice o lie. Some sense o this transormation can be ound in an understanding o the extent to which genital intercourse can help dene a wider notion o transando, rom the verb, transar. Transar, like sacanagem and tesão, links a set o apparently unlikely meanings and can be rendered into English only with some diculty, using the verb “to transact.” On the one hand, transar
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can reer to economic exchanges, to having nancial dealings with someone, to selling or dealing a product, and so on. Uma transação is “an economic transaction,” and a transa reers to “a deal,” “an agreement,” or “an arrangement.” At the same time, however, transar is perhaps the most commonly used term or speaking o a sexual interaction or, perhaps better, transaction. Uma transação reers to “a sexual aair” or “fing” or even to the person with whom one had sex. Uma transa reers to “the sexual transaction” itsel, to the sexual act: Transar, in the sense o negotiations, is the complete opposite o transar doing sacanagem. In the rst, it’s organizing a business deal. This means that everything has to be arranged beore arriving at the end o the planned negotiation: transar an exchange o cars, houses, magazines, and so on. The sense o sexual realization is completely absent in the word when it’s used or business purposes. There are also sentences like, “Let’s transar well!” It can mean so many things: “let’s dance,” “let’s take some drugs,” “let’s have a good conversation,” or “let’s have sex,” “let’s uck.” Maybe it comes rom prostitution, where there is the nancial transa beore the sexual transa—the prostitute negotiates (transa) the price with the john beore they trick (transa), screw, or uck. But these days, transar isn’t just used or the act o prostitution, no. It is used or a tasty ( gostosa) screw, a terric screw. (José)
Transar can thus be used as a synonym or verbs such as oder or trepar in order to describe vaginal intercourse. But it includes even more than this. Whilelimited it maytoreer to genital sex, it need notuma necessarily include it. right A transaction mutual masturbation is still transa, and in the circumstances, transgressive and dangerous, it can be ar more exciting than uma transa that culminates in intercourse: A good, erotic transa doesn’t mean just sticking it in. It’s doing everything, you understand? It’s doing roça-roça (literally, “rub-rub”), kissing the whole body, sucking . . . A good sacanagem is a lot more than just ucking. (João)
In the end, the priority o coitus is part o a ar wider understanding o sexual practice. The pleasures o genital sexuality are integrated with a uller range o sexual practices rather than being set o against them. Indeed, once again, the boundaries between the public and the private, the utilitarian and the pleasurable, are subverted, as the economic transações o daily lie merge with the sexual transações o erotic lie. The distinctions characteristic o the perspectives o gender and sexuality give way, again, to a total-
Bodies and Pleasures
izing vision o the world which transorms their impact, and the subjective meaning o erotic experience is built up through this vision. This same process plays itsel out even in what one might expect to be as much the nal goal o erotic interactions as it is o sexual intercourse within the ideologies o gender or o sexuality: in the experience o orgasm or, in popular terminology, gozo (perhaps best translated into English as “coming”). The notion o gozo is obviously central within this erotic rame o reerence. It is understood as the most absolute orm o pleasure that exists— and thus as the ullest realization o erotic potential: Gozo is one o the popular words or “sexual orgasm.” It comes rom the verb gozar (to enjoy, experience pleasure). It’s the act o ejaculating. You say it when you arrive at the climax o the screw—women as well as men—like: “I’m going to come” or “Wait to come with me.” (Antônio)
Yet while the notion o gozo reers to the moment o orgasm, and to the release o sexual fuids associated with this moment, it is also broadened to include the whole experience o pleasure. Indeed, it is even extended to the nonsexual pleasures o daily lie: the verb gozar can be used not only to speak o the pleasurable release o tension that accompanies orgasm, but any number o other pleasures. It can describe the pleasure o eating a particularly enjoyable dish, o playing a game, or becoming involved in an exciting project. It is oten used to speak o the kind o playul teasing that is so much a part o sacanagem itsel: Gozo is used popularly to express satisaction and pleasure ( gozação), jokes that are in good taste or bad taste. For example, “She lived ully ( gozou a vida) until her death”; “Stop jerking me around ( gozar na minha cara)”; “The joking (a gozação) was widespread.” There are also the double meanings: “The gozada (joke, orgasm) o the girl was well done” or “Let’s gozar (enjoy ourselves, come) all night long.” (Antônio)
Once again, as is so oten the case within this rame o reerence, the well-dened boundaries built up to separate distinct domains o experience are broken down. The pleasures o sexual intercourse merge with the pleasure o other orms o divertimento (amusement). And while gozando (coming) never really loses its primacy in the structures o erotic practice, it is certainly not the sole objective that it seems to be when viewed rom the perspectives o gender and sexuality. Sacanagem need not end in gozo in order to be satisactory or ullling. Within the erotic universe, it is the way one
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proceeds, rather than the predetermined end, that denes the quality o the experience, and thus even the conceptualization o gozo seems to reproduce the transgressive logic o erotic ideology. The pleasures ogozo can be ound not only in genital intercourse, but in masturbation, in oral intercourse, in anal intercourse, and in a whole range o other rictions and antasies. Gozo is not limited to the end result o orgasm; it encompasses transgression itsel. It is in the emphasis on the widest possible range o sexual pleasures that the erotic denes itsel in relation to the other perspectives that structure the sexual universe o contemporary Brazilian lie. Thus the structures o sexual practice, the acts that individuals perorm, or think about perorming, whether alone or with partners, emerge less as products o nature than as constructs o culture. While the physiology o the body may place certain limits on the possibilities that can be encoded in cultural symbols and played out in social action, these limitations, whatever they might be, are actually ar less important than the systems o meaning which construct the body and its pleasures in any given social and cultural context. What particular individuals can or cannot imagine is shaped, as much in the sexual realm as in any other, by the intersubjective symbols and meanings o the world in which they live.7
Gender, Sexuality, and Eroticism As in the cases o both the ideology o gender and the discourses o sexuality, questioninoact justhas howingreat or widespread an impact this erotic system othe meanings contemporary Brazilian lie remains dicult to answer. The question is all the more elusive because the erotic rame o reerence really cannot be linked, in any way, to the kinds o social institutions that have played an important role in our discussions o gender and sexuality: to the amily, the Church, the medical proession, and so on. On the contrary, it is almost through a negative relation to these sorts o social institutions that the erotic presents itsel—in their absence or decay it asserts itsel most strongly. In the moral space opened up by the disintegration o the amily and the declining infuence o the Church, in the largest, most impersonal urban areas, in the marginalized subcultures tied to prostitution or homosexuality, in the social circles o sel-styled bohemians and the alternative cultures o the young, the erotic system o meanings that we have described is as signicant as any o the meanings associated with either the ideology o gender or that o sexuality. In this sense, we might easily point to the essentially historical relationship between the ideology o the erotic and
Bodies and Pleasures
these other cultural systems: to the increasing importance o the erotic at those points at which these other systems seem to recede. Yet just as it would be incorrect to argue that the ormal doctrines and discourses o sexuality have managed to supplant the traditional ideology o gender in Brazilian lie, it would be incorrect to suggest that the erotic has somehow displaced either o these other rames o reerence. This would ignore the act that the relationship between these various rames o reerence is not historical but structural as well. Because o its emphasis on transgression, the ideology o the erotic is unavoidably tied to these other systems and their elaborate prohibitions. It is built up through constant reerence to the hierarchical and utilitarian structures that regulate sexual practice in normal daily lie: the structures o gender and sexuality. Clearly relativizing the signicance o these structures, erotic ideology seems to open up a whole new range o possibilities or the organization o sexual lie. It reinterprets the meanings associated with the body, with sexual excitement and desire, and with sexual practices themselves; and above all else, it ocuses on the pleasures that these other rames o reerence so oten deny as the most important goal o sexual lie. Yet i it calls into question the structures o both gender and sexuality, the act remains that it exists only in relation to them. It would also be a mistake to think that the erotic escapes the intimate relations with power that characterize these other systems. Because the erotic must be understood as a social and cultural construct, rather than as a orce o nature unlimited by the conventions o social lie, it is linked to the structures power that permeate experience. The by relationship between poweroand eroticism can onlyall besocial understood, however, situating the erotic in relation to the other systems that we have examined. We must understand it not only in and o itsel, but as a kind o alternative to these other systems. I both gender and sexuality are dened (though, obviously, in their own ways) through dierentiation, distinction, and hierarchy, the erotic overturns their order. Breaking down the separations o daily lie in the feeting moments o desire, pleasure, and passion, the erotic oers an anarchic alternative to the established order o the sexual universe: an alternative in which the only absolute rule is the transgression o prohibitions. Because o this emphasis on transgressing the established order o daily lie, o course, even the structures o power can themselves be eroticized within this rame o reerence. The social inequalities separating individuals rom dierent classes or dierent races can be invested, as we saw in examining the texts o writers such as Prado and Freyre, with a heightened erotic value. The sexual interactions o a white male and dark-skinned e-
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male, o an upper-middle-class married man and a lower-class transvestite prostitute, o a middle-aged woman and her teenage lover, or example, take on a special signicance because they violate the dierentiations that, it is thought, should order the sexual universe. No less than same-sex interactions, extramarital aairs, masturbation, or anal intercourse, they become especially erotic because they destroy the hierarchical values o the everyday world. As in the cases o gender and sexuality, then, the relation between eroticism and power must be understood not by seeking to reduce one to the other, but by examining the ways in which each takes shape through the other. The symbols and meanings that structure the world o erotic experience cannot be explained away by dissolving them into an underlying system o power, any more than the structures o power can be interpreted as somehow dependent upon or derived rom the orce or energy o the libido. That is, the workings o power must be understood through the cultural orms and meanings o the erotic, and the symbolism o the erotic must be interpreted through the structures o power and its capacity to transorm them. Organized around a distinct cultural logic and possessing its own particular relation to power, then, this ideology o the erotic can be situated in relation to the systems o gender and sexuality. Like these other rames o reerence, it cannot be altogether separated rom the rest o Brazilian lie, as i it had no meaning outside o the speechless walls or the cover o darkness that mark out its context. I erotic experience is built up in opposition to the world o convention, it simultaneously spills out to invest any number o other social and cultural orms with erotic meaning. Nowhere is this truer than in or thethe caseunique o carnaval , which has come, thesacanagem years, to stand as a symbol character o Brazilian lie.over While has been described by Roberto Da Matta as a kind o “carnivalization” o the world o daily lie (Da Matta 1983), the world o carnaval might just as easily be examined as a kind o large-scale “ritualization” o what we have described as the transgressive play o sacanagem . Yet i carnaval is somehow especially linked to the world o erotic meanings, it is also unavoidably tied to structures o sexuality and gender, and even, as we shall see, to the myths o origin that provided us with a point o departure or this examination o the Brazilian sexual universe. In closing, then, it is worth turning to the car-
naval, and to the key role that it plays in the construction o sexual meanings in contemporary Brazilian lie.
6 The Carnivalization o the World
Sin, the saying goes, does not exist beneath the equator. It is an idea that has been traced as ar back as the writings o the austere Dutch historian Gaspar von Barlaeus, in his seventeenth-century chronicle Rerum per Octennium in Brasilien (Barlaeus 1980). First published in 1660, Barlaeus’s work would become a classic document o the Dutch occupation o northeast Brazil (see Freyre 1956, Boxer 1957). For all its historical importance, however, its greatest impact has been as an example o the perplexed northern European mind conronted with the almost intangible reality o tropical Brazil: All wickedness was amusement and play, making known among the worst the epiphany: “—On the other side o the equinoctial line there is no sinning”—, as i morality notline pertain all places and peoples, butasonly the northerners, and asdid i the that to divides the world separated welltovirtue rom vice. (Barlaeus 1980, p. 49)
No less than the writings o Pero Vaz de Caminha, Vespucci, Thevet, Léry, Soares de Sousa, or Staden, Barlaeus’s chronicle seems to have marked Brazil out as somehow unique and problematic: hardly, in this instance, a tropical Eden, but rather a land o sin and wickedness, whose inhabitants seemed to believe that the universal laws o morality and virtue did not apply to them. With his northern severity, Barlaeus, o course, could only sco at such a misguided notion beore going on to outline the renewed sense o order that Dutch rule had gradually been able to enorce upon the chaotic existence o the tropics. Surely he could not have imagined the impact that his own words would later have in shaping a very dierent understanding o the world. In the early 1970s, at the height o the military dictatorship that lasted 153
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rom 1964 until the return to civilian rule in 1984, the poet and novelist Lêdo Ivo published his prize-winning political allegory Ninho de Cobras (Snakes’ Nest), set in the provincial port city o Maceió, in the northeastern state o Alagoas, during World War II (see Ivo 1981). Exploring the underside o social and political lie in Maceió, Ivo ocused on the oten conficting perceptions o reality that result as much rom political as rom psychological repression. The almost mythical power o the past in the present reappears throughout his text. It is most evident, however, in a chapter entitledA Festa (the Portuguese term or both “party” and “estival”), ollowing the description o a night-long party held by members o the local elite at Dina’s, one o Maceió’s leading houses o prostitution, when Ivo echoes the words o Barlaeus or his own purposes: “Beyond the Equator sin does not exist,” Barlaeus had noted when writing the chronicle o the Dutch period. Then that landscape had been part o New Holland and through the rows o crooked streets and warehouses bursting with sugar passed the worst scum o the earth. Besides the Portuguese, there were Dutch, French, Scots, Englishmen, Jews, and Germans who, sought ater or hunted by the Inquisition and other tribunals which oreshadowed the eve o the stake or the gallows, had arrived there with their dreams and vices. . . . “Beyond the Equator, sin does not exist,” they alleged in word or in thought; and they killed Indians and Blacks and their own white companions. They sacked plantations, robbed warehouses and ravaged women, depositing in them, in their burning Indian or Negro cunts, the seeds o the green or blue eyes o those red-haired and the white-eatured Northeasterners o today. This permissive code has crossed centuries. And today, in Maceió’s turbulent brothels, when somebody shouts “everybody naked,” or wild orgies splash creek or ocean waters awakened by man’s lasciviousness, a hidden tradition suraces once again. It is a tradition o creatures aithul to the lie o the fesh and the senses and suocated by the Church and the State. . . . It is as i the Alagoans momentarily remembered those remote times when everything was permitted. (Ivo 1981, pp. 113–15)
What is most striking about this narrative is its suggestion about the ways the collective memory o this past breaks through, at certain moments, to structure the experience o the present. In the ace o centuries o social development and repression, the vision o a past in which, as Ivo puts it, “everything was permitted” continues to interrupt the fow o social action. What Ivo describes as a “hidden tradition” suraces to give meaning to contemporary lie. In short, the vision o wickedness and lasciviousness that Barlaeus
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abhorred seems to have been recreated and transormed as a cultural tradition that plays an important part in contemporary Brazilian lie—that momentarily breaks through the repressions and prohibitions o modern lie to oer up a vision o the world in which anything is possible. Here, in the present, however, what is most striking about this “hidden tradition” is the degree to which it has been recreated in positive, rather than negative, terms. A vision o evil and wickedness has given way to a kind o playul celebration o the most undamental possibilities o lie. This quality was captured by Chico Buarque de Hollanda in his 1973 reinvention o Barlaeus, “Não Existe Pecado ao Sul do Equador” (Sin Doesn’t Exist to the South o the Equator), one o the most successul songs o Brazilian popular music.1 Playing on the double entendre o the human body as a world unto itsel, and the waist as an equatorial line dividing north rom south, “Não Existe Pecado ao Sul do Equador” takes Lêdo Ivo’s text one step urther, suggesting that i sin exists, it is only in the mind. True to the transgressive logic o erotic ideology, beneath the waist is a world o pleasures and passions, o tastes and favors, that would be unimaginable in Barlaeus’s northern reality. Subverting the established moral order in a poetic voice reminiscent o Oswald de Andrade’s cannibalistic modernism—or, perhaps more accurately, the “tropicalist” movement in Brazilian music during the late 1960s and 1970s—it oers the vivid sensuality o Brazilian lie. 2 Once again, then, what emerges rom these various texts, ragmentary as they are, is a vision o a world divided, split into two sharply opposed modes o being or orms o experience. The seriousness and severity o daily lie, which isomade possible only through repressionworld o desires and the prohibition pleasures, is contrasted withthe a rebellious o sensuality and satisaction in which the pleasures o the body can escape the restrictions imposed by an oppressive social order. It is a vision o a world ree rom sin and given over to the sensuality o the body, and it is most ully realized today in the experience o carnaval, the annual pre-Lenten estival that has existed in the West since the early days o Christianity but that has taken its most elaborate orm in contemporary Brazilian culture. Always understood as a estival o laughter and license preceding the severe restrictions o Lent, carnaval has become much more than this in the complicated scheme o Brazilian lie. Like the myths o srcin that tell o the ormation o a uniquely sexual people in an exotic land, the carnivalesque tradition has taken on new meaning, beneath the equator, as somehow denitive o the peculiar character o Brazilian reality (see Da Matta 1978). For Brazilians and oreigners alike, the carnaval has become almost synonymous with Brazil itsel. Like Brazil, it dees the possibility o any single
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reading or interpretation (see, or example, Da Matta 1973, 1978, 1981; Ortiz 1976, 1978; Queiroz 1981; Risério 1981; Sebe 1986). Yet even i it were nothing else, carnaval would still be the clearest example in contemporary Brazilian lie o those peculiar moments when a hidden tradition comes out o hiding and an entire society discovers and reinvents itsel—when, or a ew brie days, myths o srcin take shape in cultural perormance, the past invades the present, and the sensuality o the body dees sin. It is a time when everything is permitted, when anything is possible.
Celebrating the Flesh The carnivalesque tradition has, o course, already been described and analyzed extensively by any number o writers (see, or example, Bakhtin 1968, Baroja 1979, Burke 1978, Gaignebet and Florentin 1974, Ladurie 1979, Toschi 1955). It has been interpreted, through its essential opposition to the world o daily lie, as a kind o ritual o reversal or rebellion in which social lie is turned on its head and time played back to ront (Davis 1975, Leach 1961, Turner 1969). It has been seen as a world o laughter, o madness and play, in which the established order o daily lie dissolves in the ace o an almost utopian anarchy, in which all hierarchical structures are overturned and the undamental equality o all human beings is proclaimed. Above all else, it has been understood as a celebration o the fesh in which the repressions and prohibitions o normal lie cease to exist and every orm o pleasure is suddenly (Bakhtin 1968). Indeed, even name o the estival itsel has beenpossible interpreted as meaning “a arewell to the fesh” (rom the Latin carnis or “fesh” and vale or “arewell”)—a kind o nal triumph o sensuality beore Lent (Leach 1972). And although there has been at least some awareness o the specic maniestations o this celebration o sensuality across both time and space, o the concrete symbolisms that are present in dierent historical periods and dierent cultural contexts, the basic ormal unity o this carnivalesque tradition has been an underlying assumption o almost all o the signicant work that has been carried out (see Burke 1978). The outlines o this structure are as distinct in contemporary Brazil as in any other part o the world today (see, or example, Da Matta 1978, Sebe 1986). Indeed, the sensuality o the carnivalesque tradition is nowhere more evident than in Brazilian carnaval , which is arguably the most elaborate, widespread recreation o the logic o the estival anywhere in the contem-
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porary world. No less than the traditional carnival o medieval Europe, the modern Brazilian carnaval embodies a single overriding ethic: the conviction that in spite o all the evidence to the contrary, there still exists a time and place where complete reedom is possible. I the carnivalesque tradition has taken root in Brazil, however, it has hardly remained stagnant. On the contrary, it has clearly continued to change and grow in response to the specic circumstances o Brazilian lie, merging with the “hidden tradition” o the Brazilian past that is essential to the understandings that Brazilians have built up o themselves as a people. In other words, the carnaval itsel has been “Brazilianized” and has itsel become a kind o metaphor with its own highly complicated set o meanings. Once again, some sense o what all o this means on the ground, o how it is experienced and understood by the people who participate in it, can best be approached through the language that they use to make sense o it. The world o carnaval , like the world o sacanagem more generally, is a world o diverse pleasures. As Nancy Scheper-Hughes has noted, one o the key metaphors structuring the Brazilian perception o reality is the notion o normal daily lie (as opposed to the world created by the carnaval ) as a kind o luta, “struggle” (Scheper-Hughes 1988). This luta takes many orms and is played out on a number o dierent levels, but it clearly characterizes the nature o day-to-day existence, lled, as it is, with trabalho (work) and sorimento (suering). The lie o any given individual is conceived, in essentially linear terms, as a constant uphill battle, a struggle that must constantly be waged in order to produce and reproduce even the most minimal conditions o one’s existence: You talk about lie as a “struggle.” It’s the metaphor o the verb “to struggle.” The meaning o this is that lie, survival, is an eternal war. The struggle or our daily bread . . . The struggle or a miserable salary . . . The struggle because o a lack o hope . . . In itsel, everything in order to arrive at the end is simply a total struggle to t he death. (Antônio)
This linear (and ultimately tragic) trajectory o one’s lie is interrupted each year by the cyclical rhythm o the seasons, by the time outside o time, during carnaval when the work and suering o daily lie give way to a world o risos (laughter). Here, in this world o laughter, the normal conditions o human existence, marked as they are by an almost overwhelming tristeza (sadness), are transormed in the elicidade (happiness) and alegria (joy or elation) o the estival:
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Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions It’s like in that song rom the lm Black Orpheus: Tristeza não tem m, elicidade sim (Sadness has no end, but happiness ends). Leaving sadness, the struggle o day-to-day lie, orgotten inside an imaginary drawer, the people allow themselves to be carried away by the reality o antasy (uma antasia real ) in the three days o carnaval. They are three days o merrymaking, s weat, and beer, but everything comes to an end on Shrove Tuesday. (João)
In these feeting moments o happiness, the daily struggle o lie is reinvented, transormed into brincadeira (play, un, amusement, joking, etc.). No longer the deadly serious battle or existence, the playul struggles o the carnaval take on an altogether dierent orm in the chaotic battles o the traditional entrudo (a ritualized street ghting in which the participants pelt one another with lth, garbage, mud, excrement, or urine); the somewhat tamer jests and jokes o oliões (literally, “merrymakers” or “revellers,” but derived rom the French terms or madness and madmen); the brincando (playing) with water pistols, clubs, or similar weapons in the street; or even the playul campeonatos (championships) o the greatescolas de samba (samba schools) that are a ocus today or the carnaval o Rio de Janeiro. The use o the verb brincar (to play) is instructive, or it is especially here, in this notion, that the sexual meanings in the symbolic structure o the estival are most evident. Brincando (playing) can take shape on any number o dierent levels. On the one hand, it reers to the apparently innocent play o children, thebrinquedos (toys) and brincadeiras (un and games) that everyone remembers rom their childhood: In the lie o a child, the word brincar is perhaps one o the most requently used, not to mention “to eat” and “to drink.” This word is heard all the time in the lie o the child, not only rom the child himsel, but rom everyone around him. There are examples like: “Go and play, little boy (or little girl)”; “Today you will not play”; “Let’s play hide-and-seek, doll, car, tag, ring-around-a-rosy, and so on . . .” The child believes that lie will be one long game. He won’t wake up to reality until a certain age when he has to start to struggle or a livelihood. It will be a huge change rom the world o toys and games to a real, a degrading, world. (Rose)
At the same time, however, there is the less innocent play o early adolescence and even adulthood—the brincadeiras sexuais (sexual play) that, as we have seen, has such an important place in the ormation o the erotic universe:
The Carnivalization o the World The brincadeiras sexuais in the lie o a child around the age o puberty pass rom the material toys (brinquedos) to the playthings ( brinquedos) o the sexual organs . . . The doll and the toy car are let aside, or almost totally orgotten, in order to give room or the so-called brincadeiras o discovery o the body in transition to adulthood. The child, or the adolescent, will pass through a phase that is more daring . . . and sexually active. (Rose)
It is this notion o play as not only pleasurable, but also prooundly sexual in nature, that shapes the ully adult use o brincar as a synonym or both sexual intercourse itsel and erotic play more generally: The verb brincar is also used. “I want to play (brincar) with you” or “I want to play (brincar) in your cunt (or your ass, or your mouth).” “Let’s play a good game ( brincadeira).” “I have a toy (brinquedo) here that you will like.” “Can I put my toy (brinquedo) in your garage?” It’s a word that is used oten in sacanagem. (João)
Linking the play o children to that o adults, then, and true to the totalizing and transgressive logic o erotic ideology, the use o brincar in the world o sacanagem breaks down the kinds o hierarchical categories and distinctions that normally order daily lie. It builds up another, very dierent, understanding o human experience, in which enjoyment and pleasure become the ocus o attention, the most important reason or being. It is in this world o play, o course, that sadness most clearly gives way to happiness, that gozo o lie.joyIt and is hardly surprising, then,and thatgozação brincarescape shouldthe be serious used as struggle well as the verb or “doing carnaval ”: Brincar is used also or the carnaval. You say that you are going “to play” (brincar) the carnaval. “Let’s play (brincar) the carnaval.” This verb was chosen because o giving adults the liberty to let everything out during these t hree days o merrymaking and paganism or the Christians. To play (brincar) the carnaval is to dance, to drink, to uck, to get high, to kill, and to die. They are days to let out your emotions like a child—but the adult, when he plays ( brinca) the carnaval these are perhaps the only days o the year that he can really be himsel and not some jester rom everyday lie. (João)
Through the notion o play, then, the experience o carnaval is linked, simultaneously, to the innocent and careree play o children and to the sexual
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play o adults. In the playul space that carnaval opens up, the normally marginal experience o children comes to the center o the social universe, and or a ew brie moments, adults are able to let go o their worries and responsibilities to enter into a world o play as i they were children once again. The past that is recreated in the carnivalesque present is at once social and individual: the hidden tradition o an unruly and sensual historical past and the repressed reedom o childhood. Linking the pleasurable experiences o inancy to the erotic pleasures o adulthood, oral symbolism abounds. For young and old alike, the oversizedchupeta (pacier) is among the most common brinquedos used during the carnaval, and since its srcinal recording in 1937, “Mamãe Eu Quero” (Mommy I Want), with all o its possible meanings, has continued as perhaps the most popular o all carnaval songs:3 Mamãe eu quero, Mamãe eu quero, Mamãe eu quero mamar. Dá a chupeta, Dá a chupeta, Dá a chupeta, Pro bebé não chorar. [Mommy I want, Mommy I want, Mommy I want to suckle. Give me the pacier, Give me the pacier, Give me the pacier, So that the baby won’t cry.]
Recreating a world outside o time, a world where wishes and desires can always be satised, this emphasis on sucking and suckling breaks down the lines that separate children rom adults and the divisions that separate one individual body rom another. Like the structures o erotic ideology, it opens up the possibility o a union or unity that is at once maternal and erotic, and it presents this possibility in almost ritualized orm in the playul games and music o the carnaval. This emphasis on union, on the undamentally erotic merging o the body with other bodies, is especially evident in the experience o the carnivalesque crowd—the massa (mass) o revelers playingcarnaval (see Bakhtin
The Carnivalization o the World
1968). Pressing up against other bodies in the crowd, eeling the physical contact, being pulled along by the fow o the group, the individual body merges with the collective body: During the carnaval you stop being the master o your own body. The mass becomes master . . . (Alexandre, a twenty-seven-year-old homosexual male rom the lower middle class)
Losing control, losing mastery, over one’s body and merging with the bodies o others, the individual nds himsel integrated into the masses, or perhaps more accurately, the povo (people). The povo in turn is oered a new and dierent awareness o its sensuality, its material unity and community. For a ew brie moments, hierarchy and patronage collapse, and the masses rule the streets. Within this unruly crowd, bodies not only rub up against one another and, at least in symbolic terms, merge into one: they can be exchanged and transormed. The carnaval proposes that antasy should become reality, and antasia, the very term used to describe the mental images o psychic antasy, is also used or the costumes o carnaval . Through antasias and masks, individual reality is transormed and the antastic reality o carnaval is created: It’s the representation o a transgured reality. The costumes and masks that people use in the carnaval are the mirrors and refections o their own lives . . . You put that on glitter happy, bright colors in(Kátia) order to disguise and conceal the tragedy societyand itsel is going through.
The diversity and complexity o the carnaval costumes dey description, ranging rom clown-like ools and Chaplinesque tramps to grotesque monsters, anthropomorphic animals, skeletons, and ghostlike representations o death. While many o these antastic disguises might just as likely be ound today in the carnivals o Europe or the Caribbean, and obviously draw on a carnivalesque tradition that subsumes the Brazilian carnaval, it is not surprising that just as many have taken a particularly Brazilian turn. The characters o a number o imaginary gures, such as Zé Pereira, rom carnivals o the past, are recreated and become popular motis in the present. Pretos-Velhos (old Blacks, who are among the principal guias, or “guides,” in ecstatic trance religions such as Umbanda) and any number o other gures rom the world o the Aro-Brazilian religious cults are common in the world o carnaval . And while indigenous peoples have been driven urther
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and urther into decay and extinction, costumed grupos de índios (groups o Indians) have become a special ocus in carnival celebrations throughout Brazil. Marginalized and oppressed in contemporary lie, in the world o carnaval these gures come to the center o attention. They call up a violent Brazilian past, yet they integrate it into a orm derived srcinally rom Europe. Indeed, in properly cannibalistic ashion, they almost devour that orm: they ingest it, digest it, and spit it out again in what is somehow a distinctly Brazilian shape. Calling up the hidden tradition o a past in which everything was permitted and sin ceased to exist, they create a present that is clearly part o a broader carnivalesque tradition, while at the same time uniquely Brazilian—the quintessential expression o the Brazilian spirit. Given both the obvious presence o sexual symbolism in the carnivalesque tradition and the importance o sexual meanings in the Brazilians’ interpretation o their own reality, it is not surprising that the playul manipulation o sexual images dominates this world o masks and costumes. Joking clowns adopt enormous, clublike phalluses that can be used to beat upon the bodies o other merrymakers. Grotesque, diabolical, or monstrous gures combine the body parts o male and emale in order to create ambiguous andróginos (androgynes). Men transorm themselves into women, and women (though somewhat less commonly) into men. Indeed, no symbolic orm dominates the symbolism o the estival as completely as transvestism: carnaval learns Transvestism during is one to o the most common things in Brazil. Since childhood the Brazilian cross-dress in the carnivalesque period . . . The girl dresses hersel as a man, with masks made o pillowcases and with large shirts, suit coats, and men’s pants, wearing a hat and masculine shoes. The boy dresses himsel as a woman, using dresses, purses, jewels, wigs, and masks made o pillowcases as well. (Rose)
This gender-crossing is to be expected in a estival that plays all social lie back to ront, reversing or inverting the established order in relatively systematic ways. Yet even here, emphasis must be placed less on some assumed or predetermined ormal unity than on the undamental multiplicity that the carnaval seems to open up. The transvestism o the estival is anything but a single, structural phenomenon. On the contrary, it is multiple and varied. There are the comic blocos de sujos (groups o lthy ones), or example, whose gender-crossing is relatively balanced between male and emale, and whose tone is largely comic or absurd:
The Carnivalization o the World In the 1950s, 1960s, and even the 1970s, it was common or children to crossdress and go out asking or coins . . . The girls would put on, and put on even today, large asses, and with their aces hidden they can play ( brincar) and say improper things to people or firt with the guys that they are ater. They liberate themselves a little more than normal. The boys put on large alse breasts and let people play with their boobs and with asses made out o pillows. This transvestism starts very early. Parents help to make the costumes, and sometimes the whole amily goes out together cross-dressed, or in large groups galled blocos de sujos—which may or may not use masks, but with heavy makeup and extravagant eminine clothes . . . The joke o the large asses, pregnant bellies, and large breasts is one o the most common things in the blocos de sujos. Signs and dolls are used by the merrymakers who cross-dress as pregnant mothers or single women with one child already in their arms and another in their wombs. (João)
While the blocos de sujos oten seem to ocus on the mundane and ordinary—maids, housewives, and the like—in building up their comic transormations, there are also ar more stylized and serious perormances. Young adolescent males rom the lower sectors dress as high-class whores and call themselves piranhas. Homosexually identied males rom the more modern middle sectors choose low-cut gowns exposing their masculine chests, make use o an exaggerated makeup, and sprinkle glitter in their beards or mustaches in a carnivalesque version o what has been described in English as “gender-uck” (Read 1980, pp. 17–18). And most ubiquitous, the traves-
tis (transvestites) who usually work the shadowy all major Brazilian cities during daily lie become absolutestreets centerso oalmost attention with their elaborate gowns and stylized perormances: The true travestis that already live the entire year in their costumes ( antasiados), these let themselves go in the best possible way. In the extravagance o their clothes, makeup, and gestures, they seek the best way to appear within a society that in one way or another repudiates them. In the carnaval, where everything is really permitted, the true travesti lets out all his capacity to appear as extremely exotic and extravagant characters. (José)
What at rst glance appears to be a unied symbolic inversion takes shape, upon closer inspection, then, as a set o transormations as diverse as the sexual universe more generally. Celebrating conusion and ambiguity, but building up subjective meanings as varied as their subjects, these multiple transvestisms push and pull at the seams o any system o meanings that
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would seek to separate the world into two distinct, opposed, and hierarchically related categories, in order to organize the better part o collective lie around this separation.4 As the emphasis on transvestism obviously suggests, the sexual universe that the carnaval opens up is altogether dierent rom the world o daily lie. Just as the meanings associated with sacanagem oer an almost carnivalesque incursion o pleasure into the established patterns and rhythms o a world in which prohibitions and repressions do exist, and everything is quite explicitly not permitted, the estival creates a special time and space, opposed to this everyday lie, when the silent, and sometimes perverse, pleasures that occur “within our walls” escape their boundaries and create a ully public world in which, like the private world o erotic ideology, anything is possible. The two seem to reinorce one another, each providing a kind o model or the other, and even in the cyclical passage o time, they are intimately tied together: The sexual rhythm o the year gets aster during the summer, principally with the arrival o carnaval. With the heat o the summer, people have more energy or everything . . . Libertine sacanagem becomes especially active during this period o the year. Everyone tries to nd the sun, and the beaches become super-ull with sweaty and golden bodies. Clothes become a key or the exhibitionism and display o the body, o the gits o nature. Everything is very seminude, especially in cities where there are beaches. The nights are exhilarating, and there is no place where there aren’t people. They are hot nights, propior ),love, sex, reedom o the body.oIncarnaval the summer, a sin ( nada étious pecado principally with the arrival mixingnothing with theis summer and tropicalism o this country. Everything comes to a climax in the carnaval . . . This is the key that closes the psychological summer o the Brazilians. Ater the carnaval, the sun is still there or a ew months, but the interior heat and the hope don’t generate so much excitement as in the summer that comes beore carnaval. (Antônio)
Linking notions about the sensuality o sol (sun), suar (sweat), praia (beach), and verão (summer) to the practice o sacanagem , then, the car-
naval embodies a “tropical” vision o the world. Quite literally “beneath the equator,” the place o the estival within the annual cycle is transormed: coming not at the end o winter and the beginning o spring, but at the end o the tropical summer, the estival takes shape as part o a somewhat dierent rhythm. Perhaps less the traditional ertility rite looking to the com-
The Carnivalization o the World
ing o spring, it is more an orgiastic climax capping the long, hot summer. At the same time, however, because it is not sel-contained, because its impact spills over into the world o daily lie, like the carnivals o the northern hemisphere, this carnaval , too, oers a vision o the uture: a utopian vision o the possibilities o lie in a tropical paradise, somewhere south o the equator, where the struggles, suering, and sadness o normal human existence have been destroyed by pleasure and passion. In the carnaval, everything is permitted, as it would be in the best o all possible worlds. The polymorphous pleasures o erotic ideology become the norm, rather than the transgression o the established order, and the ullest possibilities o sexual lie take concrete orm in the play o human bodies: During the carnaval everything is permitted in terms o sex or drugs. The carnaval balls are, in certain places, a true orgy. Everything is permitted. You understand? There is no censorship, and the unrestrained exhibitionism and the desire to expose onesel are very common in the carnivalesque atmosphere. During this period, sex is present everywhere. There is no place where we don’t encounter a sexuality linked to grotesque sex. The interesting thing is that it isn’t the sex that is grotesque but the people who make it grotesque. Within a society ull o ups and downs, the permissiveness o the carnaval is not interrupted by anything, and bodies, souls, and semen are let at their will, giving to everyone the reedom to do what they really desire. It is a good period or prostitution and the buyers o pleasure. Everything is sold, everything is bought, everything is given, everything is received with a lewd and inviting smile on the ace. corners, bars,and bathrooms, parks, become buses, trains, and other places areBeaches, stages or sensuality sex. The streets completely given over to the beat o samba and the renzy o sweaty bodies having sex. (João)
Impersonal sex between strangers who may never see one another again, sex in groups, sex in the streets or on the beach, sex in public, in ull view rather than hidden within our walls—all become part and parcel o the play o carnaval. Sexual transactions that cross the lines o class, age, and race, lesbian and homosexual interactions, exhibitionism, and any number o other marginal pleasures become possible in a world where repression and oppression cease to exist. Playing, pressing up against other bodies (and ultimately losing one’s own) in the crowd, entering the bodies o unknown partners, their aces hidden behind masks or beneath makeup—anything is possible in a world where sin ceases to exist. Freeing the imagination rom the seemingly interminable struggles that are inevitably one’s lot in lie, it oers a
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better world, a world o pleasure and satisaction, o joy and happiness. Even i these ew moments o pleasure and joy must always come to an end on the morning o Quarta-Feira de Cinzas (Ash Wednesday), they nonetheless hold out the possibility o something better than the endless sadness o daily lie. They oer esperança (hope), and they root it in the pleasures and passions o the people as a whole.5
In the Wheel o Samba I the carnaval recreates a more long-standing and widely distributed carnivalesque tradition, then, it does so in specically Brazilian terms. For all the ormal similarities that one might point to, carnaval in Rio de Janeiro, Recie, or Salvador is not just a somewhat more contemporary version o the traditional carnivals o Venice, Madrid, or Lisbon. It has not merely responded to, but has in act ully integrated, a distinctly Brazilian reality into its symbolic structure. Through a kind o cannibalism that the modernists o the 1920s and 1930s could not help but admire, the contemporary Brazilian carnaval seems to have ed upon a traditional European orm in order to invest it with a particularly Brazilian content. And because o this, just as sexuality has been seen as the concrete mechanism o the racial mixture that is understood as undamental to the ormation o the Brazilian people, the carnaval, with its symbolism o sexuality, and its own mixture o European, Amerindian, and Arican cultural traits, has increasingly been oered up as the That most the authentic expression o theprovided underlying ethos o Brazilian carnaval should have ertile ground or thelie. elaboration o both indigenous and Arican cultural traditions is hardly surprising. Because the estival creates a space outside o the normal social order, outside o the structures necessary or civilização (civilization), it takes shape as something somehow primitivo (primitive) and selvagem (savage). It is understood as a time when the most “primitive” and “savage” urges o the individual unconscious rise up and play themselves out on an elaborate stage, and it is a simple step rom this understanding to a more global view o the estival as a time when the civilized structures o European tradition give way to the “savage” or “primitive” congurations o Arican and Amerindian cultures. Indeed, to many early observers, there was really little dierence between the pagan excesses o carnaval and the excessive ceremonies o the pagans. The grotesque anthropophagous ceremonies o the native Brazilians and the orgiastic dances o the Arican slaves seemed to fow into and merge
The Carnivalization o the World
with the obscene celebration o the fesh during carnaval, and it is not unexpected that the symbolism o these “savage” perormances should have been incorporated into the estival (Sebe 1986). Given all o the sexual and sensual connotations o the act o eating in Brazilian culture, the symbolism o anthropophagy is especially well suited to the semantic structure o the carnaval. The transgression o a ood taboo can easily be linked to the transgression o sexual taboos in a symbolic construct ocused on devouring the fesh o another human body in order to incorporate it within one’s own. As a symbol o incorporation, then, anthropophagy can be invested with layers o meaning ranging rom cannibalism itsel, to the act o sexual intercourse, to the mixture o races and cultures that is taken as denitive o Brazilian reality. In the persons o the blocos de índios, the use o masks and costumes harking back to the totemism o the native Brazilian tribes, and the altogether unruly and chaotic incorporation o “savage” imagery (ranging rom the use o colored eathers and headdresses to bows and arrows), the symbolism o the carnaval not only overturns the order o daily lie, but oers an interpretation o Brazilian reality as less modern and civilized than savage and primitive (see ibid., pp. 48–53). As important as this conguration ocused on indigenous culture has obviously been, however, the distinctly Brazilian character o carnaval has been most clearly asserted in the music and dance derived rom the Arican cultures o a slave-holding society. The batucadas (the rhythmic beating o percussion instruments) and sambas (both a style o dance and a specic type that dominate the their contemporary areisinterpreted in termsoomusic) their Arican roots, and perceivedcarnaval sensuality linked to the milieu rom which they emerged. Not surprisingly, given the signicance o Aro-Brazilian religious traditions even today, there has been relatively widespread agreement on the importance o religious ritual as a ocus or the preservation and transmission o Arican traditions within the oppressive setting o a society organized around the institution o slavery. Arican music and dance have been seen, in turn, as closely associated secular expressions o Arican culture that were srcinally derived rom the context o religious ritual, but that took on new meaning, at least in part, because o the encouragement o the slave owners themselves, who viewed them in erotic terms and saw them as useul in increasing the size o their herds: The samba dance was introduced in Brazil by the Aricans. In the slave quarters, and in their rituals, the dance began to take on great orce. It was seen,
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Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions even by the masters, as an erotic dance—a kind o aphrodisiac. You understand? The slaves spent their days at orced labor on the plantations. At night, they got together in circles, and with the palms o their hands and a ew primitive drums began to sing and dance samba. The ritualization o the mulata woman’s walk and the agile grace o the eet o the mulato man began to spread in Brazilian culture. From the most remote and marginalized places, it was gradually introduced into the general culture, and now it is not known as just a part o black culture, but is generalized and known worldwide. (Sérgio)
While there were numerous dierences, themselves refecting dierences in the Arican srcins o the slaves, rom one region to another, dances such as batuque, caxambú, or umbigada (named ater the umbigo, or “navel,” and characterized by the touching o ventres, or “bellies,” a symbol or sexual intercourse between the partners that would be a prelude to actual intercourse ollowing the dance) are taken as predecessors o the modern samba (Carneiro 1982).6 Following the reed slaves rom the rural plantations to the cities, and up into the hills and avelas o Rio de Janeiro and Salvador,rodas de samba (wheels or circles o samba) sung and danced to the beating rhythms o the batucada situated themselves at the margins o Brazilian society— in the shantytowns where even the police were unwilling to venture, in the Aro-Brazilian religious cults with their perceived emphasis on witchcrat and sorcery, in the bohemian bars associated with crime and prostitution. Yet like the sambistas (samba composers or dancers) who invented them, they come down rom the hills each year or carnaval, when the most marginal elements o Brazilian come to the center o the social universe and create a world o antasysociety and happiness. Like the symbolism o anthropophagy, the symbolic associations o the samba are particularly well tted to the world o carnaval . Recreating the estival in Brazilian terms, samba simultaneously reproduces the erotic ocus o carnivalesque symbolism. In its rhythms and movements, as much as in its lyrics, it reinvents the body, reeing it (as on the plantations) rom the discipline o work, and opening it up to the experience o pleasure: The rst thing that is important or the samba, in order or you to really dance the samba, is that you have to let your body go ree. You have to be light, to have ree movements. The second thing is to make it charming. And to get across the grace o the samba, you have to smile, to let out energy with your ace. It’s the happiness (elicidade) o carnaval. The third thing is to place the samba principally in the arms, in the belly, in this part here . . . The samba
The Carnivalization o the World is divided between the head, the torso, and the limbs. With the head, it’s the movement that announces the samba. With the smile, with singing, with the music . . . You understand? With the torso, you give lascivious movements, sexual movements. With the eet, you give the rhythm and the movement o the samba. I you have a good oot, i you know how to move with your eet, your body will go along in the swaying movement also. (João)
Like the carnivalesque symbolism o the body more generally,samba ocuses less on distinctions o right and let than on those o upper and lower. The waist becomes a kind o equatorial line separating the upper body (and especially the head, where the reason and repression that must be overcome by the ecstasy o the carnaval are located) rom the lower body (the torso or pelvis, where sin, o course, no longer exists, and the eet, that eel the madness o the music and rhythm): The rhythm, the movement that comes rom the eet, lls the whole body with the shake-shake ( mexe-mexe) o the samba. The belly, the ass, the thighs, the belly-button . . . These are the most important parts o the body or the lasciviousness o t he samba. The ass, where you stir, emphasizing the swinging hips o the black woman or the mulata . . . The thighs, where you control the sexuality o the body in the swinging o the hips, in the dips, when you go all the way to the ground . . . The movements are well dened with the movements o sex. (João)
Rising up rom the out, eet and lling the entire arms body that withare lie,among the movement o the samba opens like the outstretched the most characteristic gestures o the carnaval, to abraçar (embrace) the world. Balançando (swinging or rocking) and mexendo (stirring or wriggling) dierent parts o the body in response to the polyrhythmic structures produced by the batucada, the samba dancer descends to the ground and rises up again, stopping abruptly, but momentarily, only to begin again, demonstrating control and balance while at the same time oering up an impression o complete abandon: The light and graceul movements o the arms are combined with symmetric and rapid steps, with abrupt and balanced stops, giving a special touch to the samba, drops to the ground, giving or showing the capacity to take this dance all the way to the level o the ground . . . You have to swing your body, stir your body. (João)
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Reproducing the strangely controlled madness that has always been associated with the carnaval, but giving it a specically Brazilian cast, samba rees the body rom the daily constraints imposed upon it, deying sadness and suering within the space o the estival. Like the symbolism o carnaval more generally, it celebrates the fesh. It ocuses on the sensuality o the body. It oers a vision o the world given over to pleasure and passion, joy and ecstasy. At the same time that it reproduces the logic o carnivalesque pleasures in a specically Brazilian language, the role o samba in the carnaval also plays into the wider system o inversions that bring the most marginalized sectors o Brazilian society to the center o the estive world. Just as samba descends rom the avelas, so too do the sambistas—the poorest (and darkest) segments o urban society, whose struggles and suering in an oppressive economic and social system cannot be stated strongly enough, become the ocus o the carnaval . Freed, momentarily, rom misery and oppression, they are disguised as kings and queens, wealthy and powerul men and women who exert infuence and draw attention that would be unthinkable in the world o daily lie: In the carnaval the poorest sambista goes out to play (brincar) costumed (antasiado) as a king o France or Portugal. In daily lie he has no importance within the society. But on the avenue, he’s the proessor. (Sérgio)
I the poor and the powerless can become kings and queens, however, this carnivalesque is hardly the only in which down rom theinversion hills in order to take centerway stage duringthe thesambista estival.comes The symbolism o carnaval works as much through intensication as through inversion, and it is perhaps in the gures o the malandro (translated, at best, as a “rogue” or a “scoundrel”) and the mulata (a dark-skinned, mulatto woman) that the marginalized reality o the avela is most clearly enacted in carnivalesque perormance. Treated normally as a “bad element,” a dangerous good-or-nothing who is likely to be a criminal, a racketeer, or a thie, in the carnivalization o the world, the malandro becomes a kind o culture hero—a trickster, really, known or his ability to circumvent the rules and regulations o the established order: The malandro always likes to “put something over on” or “rob” other people. He’s a man who is looking or reedom—reedom o expression and nancial
The Carnivalization o the World reedom . . . Society labels him as an assailant or a thie. It treats being a malandro as i it were like being a bum, an easy and dangerous lie . . . (Jorge)
I it is the mark o the malandro that he is able to nd a way around the structures o authority, it is no less clear that he lives not or hard work or struggle, but or pleasure and sensuality: The malandro is a poet, an artist o lie. Most times, he doesn’t like to work. He waits or everything to all rom the sky. He lives or pleasure, or sacanagem, carnaval, all these things . . . (José)
Like carnaval itsel, then, malandragem (the way o being that characterizes the malandro) seems to merge with sacanagem, to become part o a single conguration in which the rules o convention cease to exist and a world o pleasures and passions opens up. It is a way o surviving and o nding meaning and enjoyment in lie—an armation o sensual pleasures in the ace o the most severe diculties. It is a style o lie, a mode o being, that is dened as distinctly Brazilian, and that nds its ullest realization in the carnaval.7 Like the malandro, the mulata is given a key role in the symbolic universe o the carnaval. Dened, ever since the days o slavery (as the writings o Gilberto Freyre made so evident), as an erotic ideal in Brazilian culture, the mulata is perceived as the perect embodiment o the heat and sensuality o the tropics (see Sant’Anna 1984). The living expression o racial mixture, she possesses and attractiveness unimaginable in any other woman anywhere elseaincharm the world: The mulata is the black goddess o Brazilian culture. She is a symbol o sexuality and ertility, and is known as one o the most beautiul women in the world. She possesses movements and gestures that no other kind o woman possesses. Like the way she walks, talks, smiles, makes love . . . Her voluptuous way o moving her body is imitated by many, but only the mulata has such grace in moving her behind. (João)
Yet i the mulata appears as an ideal o emale attraction, it is an ideal that exists within the paradoxes o Brazilian lie, within the double standard o a patriarchal tradition developed in a slaveholding society. Perhaps best captured in a proverb cited by Freyre, the mulata has been held up as a sexual, rather than social, ideal: Branca para casar, mulata para oder, negra para
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trabalhar (White woman or marrying, mulata woman or ucking, black woman or working) (Freyre 1983, p. 10). In the most sensual o celebrations, however, the mulata, perhaps even more orceully than themalandro, comes to the center o attention: The mulata is known as a sexual symbol o the carnaval. It’s the mulata who knows how to stir things up, who knows how to samba and play. She is the symbol o the attractive woman, the Brazilian woman. (Wilson )
In the elaborate theater o the carnaval , the mulata thus emerges as the most concrete symbol o a much broader ethos. Embodying an entire ideology, she becomes a representation o Brazil itsel—o the Brazilian people, ormed rom the mixture o three races and cultures, somehow marginal and distant (beneath the equator) rom the world’s great centers o wealth and power, yet possessing a seductive charm that sets them apart rom any other people anywhere on the ace o the earth. I much o the sexual symbolism o carnaval seems to undercut the certainty o established classications, relativizing and destroying them through grotesque combinations or elaborate transvestisms, then in a strange way this world o samba that has been integrated into the structure o Brazilian carnaval seems to display them in an intensied or exaggerated orm. Samba itsel, at least in its most popular maniestations, is created within a undamentally male space: the popular bars where the predominantly male composers spend their ree time, and where women who wish
putas to avoid beingthe labeled as o or piranhas unlikely to venture. Even the language, poetry, samba is a kind oaremale discourse, which oten ocuses on the suering and injustice imposed, it is claimed, upon men by women. These distinctions are even more obvious in the movements and gestures o samba dancers, with their strikingly sexual choreography, their pelvic thrusts, their grinding hips, their elaborately simulated transactions. I the transvestite seems to terrorize the normal distinctions o gender and sexuality, then the malandro and the mulata loudly proclaim them. Even here, however, as everywhere in the world o carnaval, things are not always all that they seem to be—or, perhaps more accurately, things are oten more than they seem to be. I the symbolism o the samba displays the hierarchy o gender in particularly stark orm, it simultaneously calls into question the neatly ordered structures o bourgeois sexual morality. It oers up a sexuality that is at once primitive, savage, and tropical. Reckless and unruly, it is a sexuality that rises up rom beneath the equator, that takes shape in the rhythms o tribal ritual and plays itsel out in the symbolism
The Carnivalization o the World
o carnaval. Situating itsel within a structure o antasies that is perhaps as old as the rst European contact with the non-European world, it plays on a whole set o white images about black sexuality and sensuality. Transorming these images into a vision o a uniquely Brazilian sexuality—a vision built up in the rhythms and movements o samba, the trickery and cunning o malandragem, and the voluptuous pleasures o the mulata—this conguration identies itsel as somehow more “authentic” or “true” to the tropical nature o Brazilian reality, and certainly as more “alive,” than the pale conormity o the bourgeois order could ever be. I it reproduces in exaggerated orm certain oppressive structures rom the world o normal daily lie, it simultaneously uses these structures to overthrow others in the kind o constant, playul, sarcastic movement characteristic o a world that has been carnavalizado (carnivalized). From the point o view o the elite, it is here that both its ascination and danger lie. 8
The Greatest Show on Earth In light o the emphasis it places on the savage, sexual nature o Brazilian lie, it is not surprising that or as long as there has been a historical record o the estival, it has been marked by discord and debate. At the same time that the transgressive values o the carnaval have been loudly proclaimed in the streets, they have been constantly criticized by the voices o restraint and order. Like the myths o srcin that tell o amixture licentious past, an races, atmosphere o “sexual intoxication” resulting in the o distinct and ultimately, the ormation o the Brazilian people, the sometimes violent and always sensual perormances o the carnaval have been met with a proound ambivalence (see Turner 1983). As much as thecarnaval has been celebrated, it has also been denigrated as an aront to proper conduct and good taste. Providing unortunate evidence o what some have seen as the most embarrassing aspects o Brazilian lie, and threatening the sel-assurance o the established order, it has been the object o extensive criticism as well as outright repression. Over the course o more than a century, there has been an ongoing eort (particularly in Rio de Janeiro, where the estival has been most visible to the wider world) to domesticate the most savage expressions o the carnivalesque tradition, to nd a way o organizing its disorder. Ironically, this process has contributed to the attention that has been ocused on the estival, to its gradual development as a symbol or an even larger reality.
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From the early colonial period on, the celebration o carnaval in Brazil was marked by a sharp dichotomy that has continued on up to the present: a distinction between the carnaval da rua (carnaval in the street) and the carnaval do salão (carnaval in the large hall or ballroom). This opposition between rua and salão, in turn, has been translated into any number o other oppositions between the popular classes and the elite, between the infuences o Arican or Amerindian cultures and the predominance o European patterns, and so on. The carnaval da rua, perhaps most requently described as the entrudo , was characterized by its unruly and rebellious nature, its violence and dirtiness, as the oliões pushed, shoved, and pelted one another with water, mud, urine, and other unidentied substances. It was the carnaval o the poor, which meant that its participants were overwhelmingly black—the so-called savage, primitive, Arican elements in Brazilian society. The carnaval do salão, by contrast, was a celebration o the white elite, regulated by invitations or paid admission. Held most oten in large theaters, the elaborate bailes (balls) were modeled on Portuguese and Italian celebrations and characterized by their elaborate costumes and disguises (see Da Matta 1978, Eneida 1958, Sebe 1986). By the middle o the nineteenth century, the celebration o the entrudo had become the object o considerable concern on the part o the elite, and by 1853, an edict had been issued banning the entrudo as a carnivalesque game. While a succession o similar mandates issued over the course o the next ty years would never completely succeed in doing away with the entrudo, the battle lines had clearly been drawn, and an attempt to civilize the
carnaval had begun. Gradually, this process took shape through classes the ormation o somewhat more organized groups, derived rom dierent and communities that came together to celebrate the estival. Beginning in the 1850s, or example, members o the rising middle classes came together to orm what were known as Grandes Sociedades (Great Societies), which paraded through the streets o the city in elaborate costumes, marching to the music o brass bands and pulling foats that oten ocused on political issues o the day, as well as organizing balls or the participation o their members. The poorer sectors, in turn, adapted this notion to the more scattered reality o the traditional entrudo , joining in somewhat less ordered groups known as cordões (cordons), ranchos (literally, “strolling persons”), and blocos (blocks). Composed largely o members o the working class or the petit-bourgeoisie, the cordões and the ranchos, like the Great Societies, paraded in costume throughout the city, marching to the music o bands and choruses. While less organized than the societies, they still tended to be neighborhood groups that maintained some kind o link outside o the world
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o carnaval . The blocos, on the other hand, were made up o the poorest segments o the population, and had little ormal structure aside rom the spontaneous grouping o the estival, when participants would dress up in old clothes and comic hats in order to parade about as Zé Pereiras or comic clowns (Eneida 1958, Sebe 1986). Given the signicant presence o poor blacks and mulattos, it was principally in the blocos that the infuence o samba was rst elt during the 1920s and 1930s. The earliest samba schools arose out o a number o the larger, better organized blocos during the twenties and were closely linked to specic neighborhoods, principally avelas, that existed on the margins o Brazilian society: The samba schools began in avelas and poor neighborhoods. They were seen by the wealthy society as a den o perversion and marginality. The samba was a thing o the “rabble” and not o educated and sophisticated people. The police used to beat them up, but received beatings rom the drummers and the sambistas as well. (Oscar, a orty-nine-year-old heterosexual male rom the working class)
As highly visible organizations o poor blacks—and, hence, in the eyes o the elite, o malandros, vagabundos (vagrants or vagabonds), and marginais (marginals)—the samba schools were subject, especially during this early period, to more than a small amount o harassment on the part o the police, and were themselves extremely concerned with projecting an image that wouldposition be respected accepted by theled elitetosectors o thestruggle society.over Their marginal withinand society as a whole an ongoing just how they would be incorporated not only within the estival, but within the world o normal daily lie. The position o the samba schools changed radically, however, in the 1930s, with the rise o populist politics and the emergence o Getulio Vargas as president o Brazil. In seeking to recruit support among the lower sectors—and to thus incorporate them into the existing political structure— populist politicians began to turn signicant attention to the schools and to oer public unding or their activities. By 1934, the União Geral de Esco-
las de Samba (General Union o Samba Schools) had been ormed and had begun, with the blessing o the government o Rio de Janeiro, to sponsor a carnaval parade o up to thirty dierent schools. City authorities, newspapers, and the police had all become involved in planning and organizing the desle (parade or review), and an increasingly elaborate set o rules and regulations had been invented in order to organize a competition between the
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schools. The most notable requirement was the stipulation that the enredos (plots) o the sambas presented by the schools were to be based upon “national motis”—on the events or personalities o Brazilian history. Playing into the rising nationalism o the 1930s and 1940s, such an ordinance is not surprising—but it is instructive. At the same point that elite writers such as Gilberto Freyre were turning to history in order to create myths o srcin, the participants in carnaval were being pushed to turn to history in order to create ritual, in order to present a reading o the Brazilian past to Brazilians in the present. The elaborate perormances o the samba schools would become a way o representing the past, again, not necessarily in terms o any kind o empirical, historical understanding, but along the lines o a particular ideology, a cultural construction. By the 1950s and 1960s, the samba schools had achieved a remarkable degree o legitimacy within the wider society. Thesambistas had come down rom the hills to perorm at the very heart o the carnaval in Rio de Janeiro—and like the carnaval in Rio more generally, had been held up to Brazil as a whole as a kind o model or the perormance o the estival. Indeed, even the membership o the schools had been transormed. While they continued to be based in predominantly poor black neighborhoods, they had been subject to what has been described as an “invasion” on the part o the predominantly white middle and upper classes: From the 1960s on, the samba schools became ashionable or every type o social class. They weren’t just made up o only blacks and poor people anymore, but o everyone who was by the batuques o agogôs percussion instrument consisting o attracted two dierent-sized bells that are hit (a with a stick), tambores chocalhos (rattling gourd percussion instruments), and every type o instrument that awakens in the hearts and minds o the Brazilian the contagious rhythm o the ca rnivalesque plots. The carnaval o the samba schools has come to take on a worldwide position, especially or the Brazilians. The ashionable schools vary a lot rom one year to the next—especially when the school is champion o the carnaval. The next year, it will be one o the avorites o those who want to parade down the passarela do samba (ramp o samba, where the largest schools parade) in Rio. (José)
This invasion o the schools by the middle and upper classes has been interpreted in dierent ways. It has been seen as a sign o the incorporation o the marginal sambista into the structure o the global society, as evidence o the hegemonic appropriation o a popular orm o black expression by the white elite, and as a product o the inclusion and communitas o the car-
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naval itsel. Whatever else it may be, however (and it is all o these things), it is vivid evidence o the extent to which the world o samba has come to the center o the carnivalesque world while the estival itsel has become a massive spectacle—what by 1965 could be described, without exaggeration, as o maior espetáculo popular do mundo (the largest popular spectacle in the world) or o maior show da terra(the greatest show on earth) (see Sebe 1986, pp. 72–73). As bets the greatest show on earth, the parade o the samba schools has moved to the central avenues o downtown Rio—indeed, since the early 1980s, a whole avenue has been set aside or it, and a huge concrete structure known popularly as the Sambódromo (Sambadrome) has been constructed as a permanent replacement or the temporary bleachers o the past. The competition between the schools has been divided into three levels: Grupo I, the superdesle (superparade) o the largest schools, parading with anywhere rom 2,000 to 3,500 members; Grupo II, o slightly smaller, intermediate schools; and Grupo III, made up o the smallest o the schools. A commission o judges, nominated each year by Riotur, the government agency that administers tourism in Rio de Janeiro, is charged with the responsibility o evaluating the perormance o each school in terms o a highly detailed set o criteria ranging rom the srcinality o the theme to the rhythm, melody, and narrative o the music, the design o the costumes, and the quality o the dierent groups or components that make up the school. Not surprisingly, given the number o participants, the parade o any given school is in act a highly organized event that combinescarros alegóricos alas (literally, are subdivisions within school, and (foats), which parade together“lines,” using which matching costumes), and boththe male and emale destaques (“eminences,” specic individuals who stand out rom the crowd because o their elaborate and ornate costumes) and passistas (solo dancers, who stand out because o their command o samba). To these various elements are added the comissão de rente (“ront commission,” which always marches at the head o the parade and is normally made up o ocials o the school), the mestre-sala (“majordomo,” said to be the nest male dancer in the school) and his partner, the porta bandeira (“fagbearer,” said to be the most beautiul woman), and, o course, the bateria (percussion band) that creates the music or the samba. Placing thousands o perormers on the avenue, each school arranges its component parts in slightly dierent ways, depending upon the demands o its particular theme. Yet even this variation takes place within an overall structure that has itsel become an accepted tradition throughout Brazil. The parade o the samba schools has not only become central to the shape o the estival in Rio, but has be-
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come largely synonymous with Brazilian carnaval more generally—a quintessential expression o everything that the carnaval involves and, certainly, among the most widely popular parts o the estival: From one year to the next, the parades have come to carry a surprising popularity. Huge lines are ormed, and days beore they open there are thousands o people waiting to purchase tickets . . . The schools have become so important or the carnaval that the government spent millions to construct the new Sambódromo, and the parades o the largest schools are realized in two days o spectacle . . . And even with two days o parade, there are millions o people who aren’t able to get tickets. (Rose)
Situating itsel between the carnaval da rua and the carnaval do salão, the parade o the samba schools has thus become the best known, most visible, organized, and stylized drama within the estival as a whole. Ordered and controlled by the state, it has also replaced the rightening chaos o carnivalesque play with what is, in its own way, a highly disciplined alternative. However, it has hardly succeeded in silencing the all-encompassing sensuality that is so undamental to the whole meaning o the estival. It would be more accurate to suggest that the parade, as well as the samba schools more generally, has managed to incorporate the whole carnivalesque system o meanings into its own structure at the same time that it has incorporated itsel into the wider structure o the carnaval. Focusing on the world o samba, with all o its connotations o savagery, poverty, marginality, recreating world as a antastic spectacle o color andand movement, the yet parade createsthis a kind o utopian illusion. Nowhere is the world created by the estival more completely and absolutely opposed to the world o normal daily lie, o work, suering, and sadness, than in the parade o the samba schools: The parade o the samba schools is called the greatest show on earth. The beauty o the colors o the costumes, accompanied by the steps o the samba as well as the plot, gives an incredible beauty. The sequins, precious and semiprecious stones, satins, silks, and purpurins futtering in plumes . . . It is a parade o great happiness and incredible energy. It is one o the marvels o the world. (Oscar)
Without ever losing sight o the act that it is only through work that the incredible luxo (luxury) o the parade is made possible, this world is as ar rom the abject poverty o the avelas as is imaginable. And without ever
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losing sight o the oten oppressive, exploitative bureaucratization and commercialization o the estival, it is still a world in which the experience o oppression and exploitation is swept away in a sense o reedom—a world in which the masses are healthy and energetic, well ed and well inormed. It is a model o the world as it ought to be, yet as it is only duringcarnaval. It is a vision, o course, oesperança, o hope, a vision that is presented as the most authentic expression o the Brazilian people. Linking the passion o the carnivalesque present to the dream o liberty in the uture, this utopian vision incorporates, as well, the whole sexual symbolism o the carnaval. The sexual imagery o the estival is most vividly displayed in this world o plumes and papier-mâché. As in less organized orms o carnivalesque play—in act, all the more orceully because o its highly organized nature—the schools ocus on sexuality and sensuality as intimately linked to the deepest meaning o the estival: The parade has become a type o stage or sensuality, with its foats and its dierent sections in their tropical, sensual renzy . . . The bodies are or the most part semi-nude, showing the energy o hot, happy, virile bodies . . . The couples o passistas or sambistas intertwine with their legs and with movements o their buttocks in a totally sensual orm. The in and out movements o their legs, bellies, sexes, and buttocks give the connotation o an eternal sexual climax. It’s a type o theater o sex or sacanagem, even in the plots, that touches on all o the meanings o sex beginning with Adam and Eve on to the bunda o the Brazilian mulata. (José)
Once again, the hidden tradition o a licentious past is recreated in the present, while at the same time oering up an alternative vision o the uture. The symbolism o carnaval has responded most clearly (even i in a particularly stylized way) to the changing shape o the Brazilian sexual universe through the parade o the schools. Over the course o the past decade, or example, the increasingly open expression o emale sexuality has been pushed, each year, to an extreme in the perormances o the schools: The image o the mulher has changed a lot in the carnaval. Going topless and with buttocks exposed has taken an important place in all o the samba schools. Nowadays, there are enormous foats with dozens o beautiul women partially or, many times, totally naked. Wearing only plumes on their heads to cover up rom what the most extreme might say, they would otherwise be totally nude. Strong, young, muscular men, with small loincloths, are placed on these foats also. The demonstration o their sexual attributes, as much o
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As well as women, the most marginalized groups o transvestites and homosexuals have come more to the center o carnivalesque perormance in the samba schools, and they can customarily be ound not only in the alas, but among the most important destaques in even the most traditional schools: Transvestism and homosexuality have been impo rtant par ts o t he samba schools. There are special foats or male homosexual destaques with their luxurious and extremely eminine costumes. They dress up as Gal Costa or Maria Bethânia, or other amous gures rom pop music or television. There are even entire alas made up o bichas, all o them dressed up as Carmen Miranda or old Bahian women . . . The bichas have an incredible ascination or the androgynous madness o the carnaval. The number o gay groups in the parade has increased every year. They develop all sorts o dierent types, rom the most sophisticated to the most grotesque. They stu their costumes with large asses, hips, breasts, and bellies. Fruits and vegetables are used oten as well . . . Squash, pears, oranges, watermelons, cucumbers, or the traditional manioc root as a phallic symbol . . . the manioc root is used a lot or the joke o the carnivalesque prick. The carrot and the banana also. You’re going to see this a lot with the destaques on the foats during carnaval. (João)
As much ascelebrations in the symbolism o samba itsel, out then, or thatplay matter, in the licentious o the fesh that mark theorunruly o carnaval in the streets, sexual meanings have been undamental to the highly ordered pageantry o the schools. Indeed, in the drama and spectacle o the parade, as much as in other orms o carnivalesque play, sexual imagery has not only responded to changes taking place in the everyday world, but has pushed the structures and meanings o daily lie beyond their limits, incorporating even the most marginal elements o the Brazilian sexual universe into the heart o the carnivalized world. The impact o this presentation o the sexual universe has been magnied by the attention the schools have received. Broadcast live to every region o the nation, the parade characterizes the estival or the widest possible public. Marketed, both at home and abroad, as the greatest show on earth, the parade has become synonymous with the carnaval as a whole. Undercutting the sobriety o daily lie in a world o motion, music, and color, this remarkable pageant is the greatest illusion o all. Yet in the reality o an-
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tasy that it creates, it pushes up against the repressive limits that structure the world o convention. It plays with them and stretches them. Like every orm o carnivalesque play, it oers an alternative vision o lie as it might be rather than as it is. As much as the more haphazard chaos that it was srcinally designed to replace, the organized chaos o the parade shapes and denes the nature o sexual lie in contemporary Brazil. Ironically, in so doing, it has shaped and dened the nature o Brazil itsel.
Carnaval as Metaphor The vision o carnaval is quite clearly utopian—a model o the world as it might be rather than as it is. It is also, o course, an illusion, and no matter how ully they throw themselves into its peculiar reality, its participants never completely lose sight o its feeting quality: Everyone knows that carnaval is an illusion created to orget about day-today lie in such dicult times. There are songs that reer to the carnaval as “smoke,” “wind,” “light,” or “heat.” There is a song that says “or everything comes to an end on Ash Wednesday.” Another highlights love: “Love that takes place in the carnaval disappears in smoke.” They are three days o un and madness, until Wednesday, when everything begins again. (Maria)
Yet i the ephemeral, imaginary character o the carnaval is not lost on the men and women who live it each year, the neither is around its power perience, and even, perhaps, to change world it: to transorm exIn spite o being an illusion, the carnaval still possesses great psychological power or the Brazilian. They say that liberty went to live in some other place . . . So carnaval tries to search or liberty. It is a utopia that in reality is real and not just a dream. Within this surrealism o the carnaval, it is possible to imagine a better world, a world that is really made up o true antasies and reedom. One carnaval ends, and you already wait or the next. There are 362 days o waiting and preparations or the realization o the new carnaval. (Antônio)
Building, in dierent ways, on all o the perspectives that we have already examined, the carnaval oers yet another. Within the space o the estival, it becomes possible not only to transgress the restrictions o daily lie, but to push the limits, to reinvent the possibilities, o that wider social and cultural universe. Built, perhaps, on shiting sand, but rebuilt each year again, this
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oten contradictory capacity or transormation, or the continued search or reedom and happiness, lies at the heart o the whole carnivalesque antasy. It is central to the meaning o the carnaval within Brazilian culture. Because o its internal contradictions (the illusion that can nonetheless transorm the world), one can read this symbolic conguration in any number o dierent ways. For example, it is impossible to ignore the extent to which the symbolic structures o the estival exaggerate the most oppressive structures o the real world—male antasies and desires continue to dene a particular vision o emale sexuality, and or that matter, bourgeois morality continues to organize the expression o what is perceived to be a more “savage” or “primitive” sensuality: There are various interpretations—rom sexism to the sin o the fesh. Because everything is permitted in these days, there are controversial ideas about what is called “morality” and “proper conduct.” There are certain intellectuals, or alse-intellectuals, who talk about the “opium o the people.” Others deplore the worship o high luxury or o carnality. But, in reality, these people are a pretentious minority. For the majority o Brazilians, playing (brincar) the carnaval is an authentic expression o the people ( povo). Playing the carnaval is to eel ree. It is to eel extremely Brazilian. (Jorge)
Thus it is also impossible to ignore the degree to which carnivalesque imagery destroys conventional assumptions, oering women as well as men, the povo as well as the bourgeoisie, the opportunity to manipulate the webs o meaning the systems o power which an theyidentity nd themselves enmeshed, to create and a sense o themselves as ainwhole, as a people. What is most striking about the carnaval is its ability to encode and articulate so many dierent, oten contradictory, meanings, and to thus open itsel up to so many divergent interpretations.9 Because o this ability to incorporate contradictory interpretations within a single whole, the carnaval has oered a undamentally popular counterpart to the myths o srcin o elite writers such as Paulo Prado and Gilberto Freyre, with their emphasis on the ormation o the Brazilian people through the process o racial mixture. With all o its chaos and conusion, its contradictions and its juxtapositions, its exaggerated sexuality and its transgressive laughter, thecarnaval stands as an ironic answer to the search or a sense o identity that has troubled Brazilian thinking or more than a century. As much as the stories that Brazilians have told themselves about their own ormation as a people, it has oered its own reading o Brazilian reality—a reading ocused, like the myths o srcin, on the sensual
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nature o Brazilian lie, on the chaotic mixture o races and cultures that has given rise to a new world in the tropics. While the elite myths o srcin have ocused on the past as a way o giving meaning to the present, however, the more popular perormances o the carnaval have themselves cannibalized this past not simply as a way o reinventing the present, but as a means o inventing a uture. The symbolic system that they create is ultimately less closed than open, and the identity that they suggest, less singular than plural—like the carnaval itsel, diverse and multiple, based not so much on the usion o opposites as on the juxtaposition o dierences. In its invention o another (more undamentally popular) reading o Brazilian reality as still in the process o becoming, the carnaval has emerged as ar more than a secular ritual marking out the cycle o the year. It has become a metaphor or Brazil itsel—or at the very least, or those qualities that are taken as most essentially Brazilian, as the truest expression o Brazilianness. No less than the myths o srcin, it has become a story that Brazilians tell themselves about themselves (about their past, certainly, but also about their uture). It is a story that they use as yet another rame o reerence that allows them to manipulate, rearrange, and even reinvent the contours o their own sexual universe. Even more than the myths o srcin, the carnaval has clearly been oered up, as well, as a story that they tell to outsiders—a story about Brazil’s peculiarly seductive charms, its exotic sensuality, its tropical pleasures, its erotic diversity and openness. It suggests, to Brazilians and outsiders alike, that here beneath the equator lie might best be understood and appreciated as a work in progress, that reality is complex and multiple, and absolute that nothing ever quite what it appears to be.seem, Eveninwhat appears the most can is always be transormed, it would a world where sin ceases to exist and anything is possible.
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7 Conclusion
Even in the most small-scale society, it would be impossible to exhaust the ull range o sexual meanings within the space o a single analysis. The diculties are magnied, many times over, when one turns one’s attention to a society as large, as diverse, and as prooundly complex as contemporary Brazil. Because o Brazil’s incredible complexity, it is essential to stress that this is an analysis o sexual meanings in Brazil rather than o Brazil, that it has emerged rom research in heavily populated and highly developed urban centers such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, where the greatest diversity could be expected to occur. Without losing sight o this specic context, however, I am still willing to argue that the system o meanings examined here has had a very powerul throughout Brazilianwe society, and thatnot much o the analysis applies inimpact dierent settings. Because have ocused on the sexual reality o any particular group or community, but on the broader cultural grammar that individuals, as well as social groups, draw on in building up their sexual realities, it has been possible to isolate certain orms and patterns that remain signicant even in the ace o varied content. While the specic terms or expressions may vary rom region to region and group to group, and while the grammar itsel is built up in dierent ways or the members o dierent social and economic classes, sexual diversity within Brazil as a whole is made possible by the existence o the wider cultural system that shapes it—a system itsel composed o multiple subsystems. Ultimately, then, even in seeking to examine the widest possible system o sexual meanings, the picture that emerges is less singular than plural. Focusing on the diverse cultural rames o reerence that map out the sexual universe, what we nd is not a single reading o sexual lie, but many varied, competing, and oten contradictory readings. On the one hand, as much in 184
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what I have described as the myths o srcin as in the cultural perormances o carnaval, we nd a kind o sel-interpretation o an entire society played out through the idioms o sexuality and sensuality. In a mythic time outside o time, whether in the distant past o colonial chaos or the annual perormances o the carnaval, sin is said not to exist beneath the equator. Sensuality is celebrated and is linked, at the deepest level, to what it means to be Brazilian. It is elaborately presented, not only by Brazilians to themselves, but by Brazilians to the outside world. Yet it is possible to detect a certain ambivalence lying not ar beneath the surace o this celebration o sensuality—an uneasiness, or even a sense o shame, about the perceived immodest excesses o the past, and a certain revulsion, or even indignation, at least on the part o some, about what are seen as the grotesque and decadent celebrations o the present. This underlying ambivalence, or better, ambiguity, I am convinced, is essential to an understanding o the Brazilian sexual universe—as well as to an understanding o Brazilian lie more generally. It can be approached, however, only by moving beyond these particular readings o Brazilian existence to the other rames o reerence that we have described, and to the complex social and cultural structures that build them up and make them meaningul. The ambiguity that one nds at the heart o both the myths o srcin and the symbolism o carnaval must be understood through the undamental contradictions that emerge as part o the dierent perspectives, the diverse logics, that structure the sexual universe in Brazil: the ideology o the erotic, with its emphasis on bodies and pleasures; the discourses o sexuality, with their rationalized, andSituated, the hierarchical system o gender, with its calculus oreproductive activity and ocus; passivity. both historically and socially, each in relation to the others, these rames o reerence oer prooundly dierent readings o sexual reality. With its transgressive logic, the ideology o the erotic, the world o sacanagem, or example, seems to be most closely tied to the world ocarnaval—indeed, it might well be described as a carnivalization, however brie, o daily lie. It reads sexual practices in terms o the possibilities or pleasure that they oer, and through this reading, it invents and reinvents notions o excitement and desire, the sensuality o the body, and even the experience o pleasure. Focusing on satisaction and totality, it opens up a whole range o otherwise unimaginable possibilities and builds itsel up in clear contrast to the rules o normal lie that seek to divide, to categorize, to regulate, and to repress the potential or sexual pleasure. Most sharply opposed to the ideology o the erotic is the highly rationalized interrogation o sexuality. Whether in the debates o the sexologists,
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the studies o the doctors and hygienists, or the doctrines o the Church, sexual lie is examined and questioned. The truth o the sel is sought in its deepest, darkest sexual secrets, and the eld o possible sexual practices is mapped out in terms o a hierarchy o values that establishes norms while at the same time producing perversions that serve, nally, to reconrm and reproduce the structure they are said to threaten. Dening procreation as the ultimate goal o sexual interactions, this hierarchy oers a reading o sexual lie that has relatively little place or erotic pleasures or the excesses o carnaval. Yet while it may be limited in its impact, this too is Brazil, a undamental part o the wider cultural reality in which Brazilians live. Through the structures o government, the institutions o law and medicine, the technologies o mass communications, and the like, this system impinges upon the lives o individuals in ways that they may be completely unaware o, and that they are oten powerless to avoid or resist. As much as the rhythms o samba, these discourses o sexuality mark out the sexual eld in contemporary Brazil, and it is in the ace o the classications that they encode, as well, that sexual lie must be lived. I the hierarchy o sex denes Brazilian sexual experience, however, it is surely no more central than what we described as the ideology o gender and the gender hierarchy that it constructs. Focused less on the sexual sel or the logic o reproduction than on the notions o activity and passivity, this ideology is probably the most deeply rooted in Brazilian lie. Nowhere are the meanings o sexual lie more immediate, or more widespread, than in this system or subsystem that builds up notions o masculinity and emininity and them in relation to one aanother. the discourses o sexuality, this orders rame o reerence articulates range oLike categories that simultaneously threaten and reconrm it and that structure the drama o Brazilian sexual lie. Yet just as the ends o the discourses o sexuality are prooundly dierent rom those o erotic ideology, the ocus o this ideology o gender is clearly unique. It, too, oers its own reading o sexual reality—a reading which, perhaps more than any other, must be taken into account i we are to make sense o the sexual universe as it is lived in Brazil today. I each o these perspectives must be situated in relation to the others within the wider structure o a system o sexual meanings in Brazil, it is essential to remember that the various relations between them are at once structural and historical. Indeed, as I have tried to suggest throughout this discussion, each o these systems can be situated historically in relation to certain developments and transormations that have taken place in Brazilian society more generally. Because sexual meanings exist only in relation to a wider historical reality, they continue to change in relation to the broader
Conclusion
sets o changes taking place in that society. And even i we wished to minimize the importance o changes such as the processes o modernization or urbanization, the mere mention o an epidemic like AIDS, with all o the immensely complicated transormations that it inevitably entails, should be enough to remind us that the picture o sexual culture that has emerged rom this analysis could look very dierent only a ew years rom now. Indeed, the emerging AIDS epidemic in Brazil oers an especially vivid example o how powerully sexual culture can shape even the most apparently biological dimensions o sexual lie, and, at the same time, how undamentally historical the patterns o culture in act are. First reported in Brazil, as elsewhere, in the early 1980s, within less than a decade AIDS had cut a path across Brazilian society and had placed Brazil second only to the United States on the list o countries reporting cases o AIDS to the World Health Organization. In keeping with the most basic patterns o Brazilian sexual culture, HIV inection quickly escaped the boundaries o denable “risk groups,” and the predominantly homosexual transmission that dominated the epidemiology o AIDS in the early part o the decade gave way to heterosexual contact as the most rapidly expanding mode o HIV transmission by the end o the 1980s (see Parker 1987, 1990). Yet just as the AIDS epidemic in Brazil has been shaped by the systems o sexual meaning that we have discussed here (with the particular construction o bisexual behavior, the emphasis on anal intercourse, polymorphous erotic pleasures, and the like), it has simultaneously played back into these systems, and has itsel prooundly infuenced the changes taking place in them Never have questions related sexuality beenthat raised as vividlyinasthe in present. the discussion o AIDS, and there aretoalready signs issues raised by HIV transmission have begun to reshape the sexual landscape in contemporary Brazilian lie. While AIDS has reopened old wounds and given rise, once again, to the condemnations that have requently dened the politics o sexuality in Brazil, it has also provided a ocus or social activism, or the expression o demands or greater social justice and more eective medical and social services, and a range o related debates. How, ultimately, Brazilian sexual culture and Brazilian society as a whole will respond to the challenges raised by AIDS is o course a question that remains to be answered, but at least some hope can be ound in the act that the fuidity and fexibility that have contributed to the spread o HIV inection within the Brazilian population may also lead to a more eective response to the AIDS epidemic in the uture (see Parker 1987, 1988, 1990). Ultimately, this entire system o sexual meanings, with all o its complexity, its ambiguity, and its internal contradictions, can be situated within
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the wider context o Brazilian social history. For some time now, the most insightul interpretations o Brazilian society have consistently ocused on the ragmented, multiaceted nature o reality in contemporary Brazilian lie. Writers as dierent as Roger Bastide, Roberto Da Matta, Peter Fry, Gilberto Velho, and Charles Wagley have all emphasized the extent to which, in a society like Brazil, where tradition and modernity seem to coexist, double or multiple ethics take shape and structure the experience o daily lie (see, or example, Bastide 1978, Da Matta 1978, Fry 1982, Velho 1981, Wagley 1971). Brazil has been described as a land o contrasts or extremes, and the simultaneous existence o seemingly contradictory systems o thought has been well documented, both rom region to region and rom class to class (see, or example, Bastide 1978, Wagley 1971). What has been harder to understand and interpret, yet what is absolutely central to a ull appreciation o Brazilian reality, is the degree to which these contrasting systems are complementary (Da Matta 1978). Because o the multiaceted nature o social lie, multiple ethics can coexist—at times, even in the minds and experiences o specic individuals—without producing the kinds o internal conficts that would be inevitable in a dierent setting (Da Matta 1978, Fry 1982, Velho 1981). While the existence o multiple ethics or systems o thought in Brazil is most obvious in more well-documented and amiliar elds such as politics (patrimonialism as opposed to democracy; hierarchy as opposed to equality) or religion (Catholicism as opposed to Protestantism; ecstatic trance as opposed to prayer), it is no less real in the world o sexual meanings (see, or example, Fry 1982; Parker 1985b, 1987). Like the world generally, the sexual universe is divided, segmented, andsocial crosscut by more various ethics, by what I have described as diverse perspectives or multiple rames o reerence, that are distinct yet complementary—that are, at one level, opposed, yet at a dierent level, make sense only through their relations with one another. Indeed, none o the systems, or subsystems, that we have examined can be considered in and o itsel; each takes shape through its relations with the others as part o a more complicated whole. Together they shape the experience o sexual lie in contemporary Brazil, not by creating a unied whole, but by opening up any number o diverse possibilities. And it is only within the terms o these possibilities that the sexual experiences and realities o specic individuals, or even groups, can be constituted in the ongoing process o social lie. In short, the remarkable diversity o the Brazilian sexual universe refects the complicated structure o social lie in contemporary Brazil. Because o the structured nature o such diversity, however, the ways in which
Conclusion
dierent individuals encounter this complicated system o sexual meanings are not, o course, simply random. On the contrary, they are themselves structured, both by the system itsel and by the wider constraints imposed by the organization o Brazilian society more generally. Regardless o class, region, or any other circumstance, or example, the possibilities that are open to women throughout Brazil are more limited than those that are open to men. The ideology o gender, which works almost relentlessly to subjugate women, has only been countered in relatively limited ways by the processes o modernization and urbanization, and eminist thought has hardly had any impact beyond a small, elite segment o society. The social, political, and economic institutions that work together to minimize the opportunities or choice and sel-determination on the part o women rom all walks o lie in Brazil continue to unction with ruthless eciency, and the act that some changes have begun to take place among the most privileged sectors o Brazilian society must not be allowed to obscure the degree o oppression that still characterizes the lives o the vast majority o women within a prooundly patriarchal social order. In addition, or both women and men, the possibilities that exist within this system o sexual meanings are clearly conditioned according to divisions o class and dierences in location. As Peter Fry has suggested in examining the meanings associated with homosexuality in Brazil, it is useul to draw on Basil Bernstein’s distinction between “restricted” and “elaborated” vocabularies as a way o conceptualizing how this process works along both o these axes (see Fry 1982, Bernstein 1973). While it would be inaccurate to suggest vocabularies, and conceptual rameworks they open up,that are these somehow inadequate orthe inerior or members o thethat lower sectors, the act remains that they are indeed more restricted. The same structures that limit access to education, economic security, and social mobility simultaneously limit access to systems o sexual meaning that are available to more privileged sectors. Because o this, the vocabularies, and the range o possibilities, that are open to the members o the elite, the middle or upper classes, or the organization and imagination o sexual lie can be more elaborate than those that are open to the popular classes. While members o the middle class continue to draw on the traditional ideology o gender in building up their sexual realities, they are much more likely than members o the lower class to draw, as well, on ormal doctrines o the Church or on the highly rationalized discourses o science and medicine. The world o meanings that is open to members o the elite, then, like the material world that they live in, oers them choices that are largely unavailable to the popular sectors—that are perhaps less careully guarded than the privileges
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o wealth, but that are nonetheless beyond the reach o the vast majority o the Brazilian people. Much o what has been said about the structure o sexual meanings or the members o dierent classes applies to the residents o dierent regions as well. The inhabitants o rural areas, and even o urban areas in less modernized, less industrialized regions such as the Northeast live in a more restricted universe o sexual meanings than do the inhabitants o urban centers in the highly developed areas o the Southeast and, to a lesser extent, the South. As is true or the popular classes in the larger cities o the Southeast, the traditional ideology o gender continues to play a central role in structuring sexual lie or the inhabitants o less urbanized areas, and the discourses o sexuality as well as the ideology o the erotic—linked as they are to the processes o urbanization and modernization—play a considerably less signicant part in structuring sexual conceptions. Changes have o course begun to take place, as in every area o Brazilian society, but the restrictions that structure the day-to-day experience o sexual lie outside the cities are no less evident than those that dene the situation o women or o the popular classes in more urban settings. Even where the possibilities oered by the cultural system seem most limited, however, it would be a mistake to underestimate the extent to which opposing social orces operate to undermine the rigidity o the structures that we have described. As has been apparent, or example, in our examination o both erotic ideology and the popular-estive structures o the carnaval, a whole range o alternatives has been elaborated within popular culture, opening moralities up possibilities thatprivileged would themselves be because “restricted” within the bourgeois o more sectors. And the system o sexual meanings does in act oer a range o options, even in the most apparently infexible situations, there is oten room or movement in a variety o unexpected ways. Indeed, in a society that seems to be as rigid and hierarchical as Brazil, it is oten hard to athom the degree o fexibility in the behavior o its inhabitants. Even in the ace o immense obstacles, there is, in act, movement in any number o directions—rom rural to urban areas and back again, across the boundaries o class, and even, at times, beyond the oppressive structures o gender. Just as the system o sexual meanings is crosscut by conficting ethics, the systems o control that minimize the possibilities o social change are played o against other systems that seem to make change inevitable. And in the larger cities, at least, the understandings and assumptions o dierent classes are constantly orced to conront one another, whether through ace-to-ace interactions or through more impersonal means such as the media or the systems o mass communications.
Conclusion
Indeed, because its hierarchical structures seem to contain within themselves the seeds o their own undoing, there are ew domains where the occasions or movement are as readily available as in the universe o sexual meanings. Characterized not only by multiple ethics, but by a sense that these ethics are in act complementary, this system o sexual meanings is capable o entertaining a degree o fuidity that would seem startling in a setting that was either more absolutely traditional, on the one hand, or more ully rationalized, on the other. Even where one’s choices are most restricted, at least some choices do exist; and as one moves into the larger urban arenas where diering ethics, diering styles o lie, constantly bump into one another in the fow o daily lie, the range o possibilities can be expanded to a remarkable degree. Shiting rom one rame o reerence to another, playing one o against the others, building bridges between them, integrating them as ully as possible: these are all among the processes through which meaningul sexual realities are constructed in contemporary Brazilian lie, and through which the world o sexual meanings is continually recreated in the fow o collective action. The dilemmas acing fesh-and-blood individuals within this world are naturally as oten unconscious as they are conscious, and the ways in which any particular individual responds to the choices that conront him or her is, o course, impossible to predict. But the broader outlines o the cultural systems that structure these choices can be analyzed and interpreted along the lines that I have suggested here, and the kinds o decisions that particular social actors ultimately make can perhaps be understood in relation these This to ocus onsystems. the possibilities and choices that are opened up by social and cultural systems to the women and men who make their way within them is signicantly dierent than the emphasis on uniormity or conormity that has tended to characterize anthropological work on the construction o sexual lie. Perhaps in part because so much o the most important anthropological work on gender and sexuality has been carried out in relatively small-scale settings, or in sharply delimited subpopulations within larger-scale societies, there has been a tendency to emphasize the essential coherence o sexual meanings within the boundaries o any given society or culture (see, or example, Ortner and Whitehead 1981). Many studies have o course emphasized the very dierent sexual universes open to women and men, but even here, little attention has been given to variation and diversity in the possibilities open to dierent women or dierent men within the wider structure o emale or male sexual culture. Indeed, when the question o sexual dierence has been raised at all, it has been largely in terms o a
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dichotomy between conormity and deviance that itsel assumes an essential norm which, or whatever reasons, some individuals ail to live up to (see Plummer 1984). At best, an understanding o human sexual diversity has ocused on cross-cultural variation, with little or no attention paid to intracultural dierences; while at worst, even cross-cultural variations have been explained away as little more than the peculiarities o local custom that can ultimately be reduced to some underlying (usually biological or psychological) level o analysis. Even in much o the best work on the social construction o sexual lie, the notion that sexual meanings are “constructed” has itsel become little more than a more modern and ashionable substitute or earlier concepts such as socialization or enculturation. Analysis has generally ocused on describing what is assumed to be a relatively unied and coherent system o meanings and, in some instances, on analyzing the ways in which this system is transmitted rom one generation to the next. Less attention has been given to the kinds o contradictory variations that may exist within the system o sexual meanings as a whole—to the ways in which the cultural system not only delimits the sexual universe, but simultaneously opens it up. As one turns one’s attention to a context like contemporary Brazil, however, where assumptions about cultural coherence and continuity dissolve in the ace o multiple, oten contradictory, and constantly changing social and cultural structures, it becomes necessary to rethink the whole notion o construction along these lines—to ocus on systems o sexual meanings in terms o their diversities, their contradictions and discontinuities, their underlying ambiguities. Only by approaching the system sexual o meanings as something built up out o multiple subsystems, diverseorames reerence, conficting logics, disparate congurations, and the like, it is possible to begin to understand the experience o the men and women whose particular sexual realities are dened within its terms. These diverse rames o reerence and conficting cultural logics emerge with unusual clarity in a society such as Brazil, where multiple ethics are such an obvious part o all contemporary social lie. Yet their presence here, or all its vividness, is not entirely unique. On the contrary, similar systems o dierence and diversity, existing and interacting within a wider whole, can be ound, i we would look or them, as a part o lie in every large, complex society in the contemporary world—even, I think, in the most ully modernized and rationalized settings (see, in particular, Weeks 1985). And while they may seem more dicult to discover in the smaller, more traditional social settings that have oten been the ocus o anthropological analysis, this may itsel be the illusion o an anthropological perspective that has
Conclusion
tended to seek out the “unspoiled” and the “authentic” in small-scale societies, while largely ignoring the kinds o social and cultural linkages between these societies and the wider world that are inevitably a part o contemporary lie everywhere in the world today (see Mintz 1985). An understanding o sexual lie, like an understanding o all modern lie, regardless o the specic setting, must ultimately conront these questions o dierence in ways that it has thus ar ailed to explore. Perhaps the rst step along these lines will be to examine not only the ways in which social and cultural systems delimit the possibilities o sexual lie, but the ways in which they create them, the conscious and unconscious choices that they oer, the changing meanings and the multiple realities that they produce. O course, the approach to sexual lie that has been developed here is itsel but one among a number o possibilities, and it leaves unanswered any number o questions that other approaches might respond to. I there are some questions that it ails to answer, however, it allows us to ask others, and to come to certain insights that perhaps no other method would oer. Focusing, above all else, on language, on cultural orms, on the symbolic vehicles that people use to think with and to eel with, we can begin to examine not so much behavior as practice—we can seek to understand the meanings o sexual lie, the construction o meaningul realities in which sexual behavior itsel becomes signicant. We can begin to understand that the experience o sexual lie in dierent settings is shaped as much by the cultural context o words, images, myths, rituals, and antasies as by the physiology or biology o the species as a whole. The ways in which human beings think and eel sex shape the ways in by which they to live and a ull understanding o about this process is possible only turning theit,intersubjective cultural orms that structure the world o subjective meanings (Weeks 1985; Geertz 1973, 1983; Herdt 1981). Focusing on this question o meaning, the anthropological interpretation o sexual lie across cultures becomes a process o translation that is essentially parallel to the interpretation o any other aspect o human experience. Based, as Cliord Geertz, among others, has pointed out, less on some kind o mystical leap o intuition than on the careul interpretation o intersubjective symbolic orms, it becomes a matter o unraveling the webs o meaning that constitute the sexual universe in any given setting. It involves nding a way to transorm “experience-near” concepts such as tesão, sacanagem, or malandragem into the “experience-distant” language o anthropological description (Geertz 1983, p. 57). It is an opening up o the meaningul universe o other human beings that is in act no dierent than opening up the belie system o a distinct religion or the values implied in
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a particular political ideology. Like the interpretation o these more traditional subjects, the anthropological interpretation o sexual meanings is an exercise in close reading that is aimed, ultimately, at elucidating the readings that other men and women have built up in order to make sense out o their own experience. As Geertz has suggested, this exercise is surely valuable in and o itsel, as part o the scientic understanding o human experience—as a contribution to the “consultable record” o the human species in all o its remarkable variety (Geertz 1973, p. 30). Yet it is just as important, I believe, as part o what might be described as a particular kind o cultural politics—a politics that is implicit in the whole anthropological enterprise and that is based on the conviction that understanding the realities o others allows us to see our own in new and dierent ways, that it enables us to raise questions about the givenness o our own traditions, our own ways o being (Parker 1985a, pp. 65–66). Even today, there are ew certainties in our own society that continue to be more taken or granted, or more deeply invested with ears and prejudices, than the assumptions that map out our sexual realities. In the ace o these certainties, the anthropological interpretation o a world o meanings dierent rom our own can help to make possible a process o relativizing in which we might begin to imagine the plausibility o other assumptions, other realities—assumptions and realities that may, at some points, intersect with our own, but that nonetheless remain uniquely dierent. To the extent that this makes us less sel-assured about the superiority o our own way o being, to the extent that it allows us to conceive o other possibilities, and,served one would hope, that to respect them those thataslive then it will have a purpose is every bit and as important its them, more strictly scientic mission.
Appendix 1 Notes on Field Research
Like much contemporary work on a range o dierent issues, this book is a mixture o many dierent things—a case, no doubt, o what Cliord Geertz has described as “blurred genres” (Geertz 1983, pp. 19–35). Clearly, it cuts across the lines that might, or some, divide social history rom cultural anthropology. Yet it took shape as the result o my own training as a social/cultural anthropologist, and through the process o many years o anthropological eld research in Brazil, where I currently live and work. In order to situate much o the text, then, it is worth briefy outlining the development o my eld research as well as some o the problems I aced in carrying out research on sexual experience in a context as diverse as contemporary Brazil (a brieer discussion o some o these same issues can also be ound in Parker 1987). Originally, I hadbeen no intention o ocusinginmy on the question o sexual lie. Having trained principally theattention eld o symbolic or interpretive anthropology, I was primarily interested in the question o ritual, and in particular, in carnaval , which I hoped to examine in a historical perspective. This ocus gradually began to shit, however, during my initial trip to Brazil in July and August o 1982, when I traveled to Rio de Janeiro to study Portuguese and to make arrangements or more extensive eldwork the ollowing year. Quite by chance, I lived in a rather run-down section o central Rio where lowerclass emale and transvestite prostitutes operated. I still remember the vivid impressions, walking back to my hotel in the evenings, o the drama taking place around me—theater in the ullest sense o the word, with elaborate presentations and complicated dialogues that I was only partially able to ollow. Even in the necessarily limited relationships that I was able to establish during this rst stay, I began to ask a ew tentative questions about this particular underworld, and to come away with a sense that it was very dierent, in a number o ways,
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rom anything comparable in my own society. I elt a bit like Dorothy, I suppose, upon realizing that she and Toto had come a long way rom Kansas. When I returned to Rio or a longer stay in August o 1983, I still intended to ocus on a historical and political examination o carnaval rather than on a study o sexuality. But as I began to carry out archival research on the estival, I ound mysel returning, almost unavoidably, to the question o sex. This continued as I began to make contacts with inormants, and to talk about the meanings linked to the carnaval. The extent to which sexual symbolism seemed to dominate not merely the estival itsel, but the Brazilian interpretation o its meaning or signicance, was impossible to ignore, and I ound mysel turning, increasingly, to the wider system o sexual belies and customs in Brazilian culture. Within a matter o months, I realized that the estival had become but one aspect o a more extensive project—an analysis o the Brazilian sexual universe. This change o direction was made possible not only because o the logical ties between the two subjects, but also because o the kinds o inormant networks that I had begun to develop. During the rst months o my stay, I had lived in Catete, a middle- to lower-middle-class neighborhood located just south o the center o Rio, and aterward I moved to an apartment in the more well-to-do area o Copacabana. I had not ocused my attention on the lie o any particular community or neighborhood, however, but concentrated instead on making contacts with men and women involved in preparations or carnaval . Through the complex social networks built up around the estival, I had come into contact with a airly wide range o individuals—with avelados (shantytown dwellers) andmiddle other members o the the lower middle and classes, and evenlower withclass, a ewwith quiteindividuals well-to-dorom women and men rom throughout the city. As the ocus o my research began to shit, these people served as my initial inormants not only about carnaval, but also about the shape o Brazilian sexual culture. At rst, I concentrated my activity on both ormal and inormal interviewing o the women and men that I had met through these various networks. My inormants were nearly equally divided along the lines o gender—though, or a range o dierent reasons that would be almost impossible to avoid in a society so sharply divided along the lines o gender, the handul o my closest inormants included perhaps twice as many men as women. As a whole, though, they included most, i not all, o the sexual subtypes that we, in our own tradition, would be inclined to classiy: heterosexually identied men and women, both single and married; couples, with and without children; sel-identied lesbians, male homosexuals, and bisexuals; both emale and male prostitutes as well as their clients, and so on. These inormants were relatively young, as well—al-
Appendix 1: Notes on Field Research
most all between eighteen or nineteen and thirty-ve or orty years o age. And my work with them was almost entirely qualitative; I made no attempt to gather detailed statistical inormation or to conduct quantitative surveys. Indeed, given the sensitive nature o the subject matter, there is no doubt that whatever insights I might have gained were heavily dependent, or better or worse, on the quality o the relationships that I was able to develop with my inormants—as in any ethnographic work, I think, on whatever mutual trust and riendship we were able to build up. By March o 1984, these varied contacts throughout metropolitan Rio had enabled me to orm at least some notion o the sexual universe as it seemed to exist there—as well as o the class and status distinctions which seemed to aect it. In an attempt to broaden this view in a number o dierent directions, I made short trips to São Paulo, Brasília, Salvador, and Maceió, as well as to Recie, where I was able to spend time with the relatives o a number o my inormants in Rio. Between March and July o 1984, I split my time and activities between my base in Rio and a predominantly lower-class community situated on the outskirts o a smaller city in the state o Rio de Janeiro, where I lived with the amily o one o my closest inormants in Rio. Here, within the context o a more clearly dened community, my riends and inormants ranged rom children o nine or ten to older individuals in their sixties and seventies, and I was able to get a view o amily lie that was ar more intimate and more detailed than anything I had been exposed to in Rio. While Rio would continue to provide the central ocus or my work, I sought to situate my ndings there in relation to at least some more general understanding o urban lie in contemporary Brazil. On the basis o these various experiences, then, I have sought to examine the sometimes contradictory cultural patterns, the ideological constructs, and the value systems that work to shape and structure the sexual universe in contemporary Brazilian lie. I have tried to extrapolate the underlying, and oten unconscious, rules that organize sexual lie there—a kind o cultural grammar, i you will, in which, I think, most Brazilians (and especially most urban Brazilians) are more or less competent, but which individuals clearly draw on in a variety o ways in generating their own unique perormances. Transorming contacts with individual inormants into an understanding o this grammar was by no means a simple task, because o the elaborate structure o taboos and prohibitions, repressions and silences, surrounding the subject o sex itsel. At the same time, though, the emotional or symbolic danger o the project may have worked to my advantage. Having passed a set o initial barriers, I ound that inormants oten seemed to take a certain pleasure in being part o a project which seemed to break the rules o proper social decorum (a act which would
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itsel become symptomatic o a wider pattern in Brazilian culture)—that while they oten resisted, understandably, speaking too directly about their own sexual lives, they seemed to enjoy (and, at times, to take a positive delight in) the opportunity to speak reely about the question o sex more generally. The content o my discussions with them thus increasingly ocused not simply on their own personal experiences, but on their subjective interpretations o intersubjective cultural orms—o stories, proverbs, and jokes, o socially sanctioned as well as prohibited practices, and perhaps above all else, o the linguistic terms and usages which they drew on in describing such practices. Treated as texts, these bits and pieces o popular culture which emerged rom my contact with particular inormants could then be gradually combined with and at times juxtaposed to a wider set o cultural documents which seemed in one way or another to touch on the sphere o sexual meanings and to oer various insights into its complexity and constitution: the images o lm and photography, the work o poets and novelists, the writings o journalists, o sociologists, psychologists, and medical doctors, to name but a ew o the sources which I ound most useul. Not entirely unlike my Brazilian inormants beore me, I ound mysel conronted less by a ready-made totality waiting to be adopted and internalized than by an immensely varied set o problems and possibilities oered up by the cultural system as a whole to its social actors. Drawing on these bits and pieces, these multiple texts and textual ragments, whose interrelationships were not always immediately apparent, I tried to lay out the systems o meaning that would become the subject o my own text. As I have tried to emphasize, this is o course only one o the possible ways o examining thecourse experience o sexual acutely in aware o this over the o a number o lie. yearsIndeed, now, asI have I havebecome been involved ongoing research (an outgrowth, really, o the project that led to this book) on the relationship between sexual culture and AIDS in contemporary Brazilian society (Parker 1987, 1988, 1990), and have continued to examine sexual experience in a variety o ways that dier signicantly rom the methods used in this initial eldwork. Having lived ull-time in Brazil now since June o 1988, however, and having spent almost all o my time on issues linked to questions o sexual meaning and behavior, I have ound little to call into question my srcinal sense o the ways in which Brazilian society and culture open up possibilities or sexual diversity and dierence. It is this, I suppose, that made possible, and continues to sustain, my own seduction and my own respect or the Brazilian people as a whole as well as or the particular Brazilians who people the pages o this text, many o whom have become my closest riends.
Appendix 2 Inormants Cited in the Text
Inormants are briefy identied the rst time that they are cited in the text. In subsequent citations, however, only their name is given, and this Appendix has been included with an alphabetical list o all inormants or reerence. In order to protect inormant anonymity, all o the names are pseudonyms and the biographical inormation has intentionally been limited to key issues such as age, class, sexual identity (when available), and the like. Alexandre: A twenty-seven-year-old homosexual male rom a lower-middle-class
background. He grew up in Niterói, across the bay rom Rio. Currently unemployed, he studies on and o in Rio. Angela: A orty-eight-year-old housewie rom Rio. From a lower-middle- to middle-class children. amily, she married at the age o seventeen and has raised three Antônio: A twenty-nine-year-old gay male rom the middle class. He grew up in a smaller city in the state o Rio de Janeiro. Ater studying history at the university level, he moved to Rio, where he works as a unctionary in a large business. Carlos: A twenty-seven-year-old bisexual male rom a lower-class background. He was born in a small town in the state o Rio, and moved to the city at the age o seventeen, in order to look or work. He has led a somewhat nomadic existence and is currently working in downtown Rio. Cristina: A twenty-nine-year-old heterosexual emale rom a middle-class
background. Dora: A twenty-two-year-old emale university student rom a middle-class amily in Rio. Dulce: A orty-ve-year-old heterosexual woman, and the mother o three children. She comes rom a relatively poor background, and she and her husband would
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Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions be dened as working class today. She has had virtually no ormal education, and was married by the age o ourteen. Francisco: An eighteen-year-old heterosexual male, currently a student in the state university, rom a middle-class amily in Rio. João: A twenty-six-year-old bisexual male rom a lower-middle-class background, who was born and raised in the state o Rio de Janeiro. He currently lives and works in the city o Rio. Jorge: A orty-ve-year-old attorney srcinally rom the Northeast. His amily was quite well o, and he was able to travel and study abroad beore moving to Rio more than twenty years ago. José: A thirty-two-year-old bisexual male rom a working-class background. He works in the record industry in Rio. José Carlos: A thirty-two-year-old heterosexual male who works as a writer in Rio. Kátia: A twenty-three-year-old heterosexual woman rom Porto Alegre in south Brazil. From an upper-middle-class amily, she moved to Rio at the age o twenty-one in order to study and is completing a university degree. Lílian: A twenty-nine-year-old emale rom a lower-middle-class amily rom São Paulo. Luís: A thirty-ve-year-old heterosexual male rom a relatively poor amily. He worked hard to achieve an education and currently works as a teacher in Rio. Maria: A twenty-seven-year-old woman rom a poor amily in Rio. She attended school or a number o years as a young girl, but by the time she was a teenager, she needed to begin to work as a cleaning woman. Miriam: A twenty-six-year-old lesbian, rom a lower-middle-class background, who was born and raised in Rio.
Nelson: A thirty-our-year-old heterosexual male. Néstor: A twenty-eight-year-old heterosexual male rom a working-class back-
ground. He grew up in Rio, lived or a short time in São Paulo, but returned to Rio, where he currently works as a store clerk. Oscar: A orty-nine-year-old heterosexual male who works as a carpenter. He is a veteran o the samba schools. Paulo: A twenty-six-year-old heterosexual male who is currently a student in Rio. Rose: A twenty-ve-year-old heterosexual emale rom a lower-middle-class amily in Rio. She had worked as a salesperson in a number o dierent stores beore taking her current job as a secretary.
Roberto: A twenty-two-year-old gay male, currently attending the university in
Rio. Both parents have proessional careers, and his upbringing was generally quite liberal. Rubens: A twenty-our-year-old heterosexual male, rom an upper-middle-class amily, who is currently studying at a university in Rio.
Appendix 2: Inormants in the Text Sandra: A thirty-six-year-old housewie rom an upper-middle-class background. Sérgio: A twenty-nine-year-old heterosexual male rom a lower-middle- to work-
ing-class background in Rio. His amily went through periods o extreme hardship, but he managed to nish high school and to spend a number o years at the university beore going on to work in a variety o dierent jobs. Telma: A twenty-year-old heterosexual emale rom a very poor background. She was born in a rural area; her amily subsequently moved to the city o São Paulo. Since the age o seventeen, she has divided her time between Rio and São Paulo and has worked in a variety o service jobs. Tereza: A twenty-year-old lesbian rom São Paulo. Vera: A twenty-our-year-old woman rom a very poor amily in rural Minas Gerais. Her amily moved to Rio when she was a teenager, and she has worked or nearly a decade, rst in domestic service, and later as a cashier. Vilma: A thirty-two-year-old emale rom a working-class background. She is married, and has had two children. Wilson: A ty-two-year-old heterosexual male, a jack-o-all-trades.
201
Notes
Preface
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Ater the book was published in the United States (Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions: Sexual Culture in Contemporary Brazil, Boston: Beacon Press, 1991), the rights or a Portuguese-language edition were purchased almost immediately by a Brazilian publisher, and the book appeared during the same year in Brazil (Corpos, Prazeres e Paixões: Cultura Sexual no Brasil Contemporâneo, São Paulo: Editora Best Seller, 1991). See, or example, the important studies by Rebhun 1999, Goldstein 2003, and Gregg 2003. While not ocused exclusively on women’s sexualities, some o the most important research oering insights into the relationship between gender and sexuality in Brazil in recent years has been ocused on young people—see, in particular, Paiva 2000 and Heilborn et al. 2006. Some sense o this can perhaps be ound in the interest that the Portugueselanguage publication o the book generated when it was published in Brazil. I was interviewed at the time by nearly every major print and televised media venue in the country, and had to live through my own teen minutes o ame as an American anthropologist living in Brazil and exploring the contours o Brazilian sexual culture. While this body o work is ar too extensive to summarize here, readers interested in ollowing up on some o the issues that it has addressed might want to start with Lancaster 1992; Herdt 1992, 1997, 1999; Kennedy and Davis 1993; Carrier 1995; Parker and Gagnon 1995; Dowsett 1996; Manderson and Jolly 1997; Kulick 1998; Prieur 1998; Blackwood and Wieringa 1999; and Parker 1999. For collections that provide a useul overview to this literature, see, or example, Abelove, Barale, and Halperin 1993; Lancaster and di Leonardo 1997; and Parker and Aggleton 1999. As a point o departure or exploring this rapidly growing literature, see,
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Notes to Pages 8–17 or example, Lyttleton 2000, Paiva 2000, Altman 2001, Amuchástegui 2001, Carrillo 2002, Tolman 2002, Man alansan 2003, Brennan 2004, Boellstor 2005, Reddy 2005, Padilla 2007, and Roel 2007. For an overview o many o these issues, see Parker and Aggleton 2007; and Corrêa, Petchesky, and Parker 2008. Chapter 1
1.
2.
The literature is o course ar too extensive to review here. See, or example, Foucault 1978; Gagnon and Simon 1973; Padgug 1979; Plummer 1981, 1984; Ross and Rapp 1983; Rubin 1984; Vance 1984; Weeks 1977, 1981, 1985. On symbolic analysis and interpretive anthropology, see in particular Geertz 1973, 1983. On the analysis o sexual meanings, see, or example, Caplan 1987, Gregor 1985, Herdt 1981, Newton 1972, Ortner and Whitehead 1981.
Chapter 2
1. 2.
3.
4.
5. 6.
7.
On the notion o brasilidade (Brazilianness) generally, see, or example, Burns 1968, Putnam 1948. The reading o cultural orms as stories that people tell themselves about themselves is o course developed most ully in Geertz 1973, pp. 412–53. See also Parker 1985a. Technically, myth is perhaps best dened as a “sacred narrative.” For a uller discussion o this notion, see Dundes 1984. As should be obvious, I am using the term “myth” here not in this technical sense, but as a kind o metaphor connoting stories whichomay or may be based in historical but which are important because the ways in not which they structure the act, perceptions o their believers. On the vision o an earthly paradise during the age o discovery, see Baudet 1965. For a detailed discussion o this theme, and o the “Edenic” motives or the exploration and colonization o Brazil, see Buarque de Holanda 1969. On the vision o the noble savage and its relation to images o native Brazilians, see Mello Franco 1937 and Hemming 1978. See, or example, Cardim 1939, Léry 1941, Staden 1955, Thevet 1944. The reporting o cannibalistic practices has, it is worth noting, long been questioned (see, or example, Arens 1979). My concern here, o course, is clearly not the empirical presence or absence o cannibalism but the representation o it, its evocative power, both or early Europeans and later Brazilians. Again, my use o the term “myth” is perhaps somewhat unusual. It is not uncommon in anthropol ogy to speak o the srcin myths o a particular
Notes to Pages 31–51 people. But the term has generally been reserved or use in the context o relatively small-scale societies which are perceived to live somehow outside o history. Myth—and, in particular, srcin myths—have thus generally been opposed to “history” in anthropological discourse. This tendency has begun to change over the course o recent years, as we have become increasingly aware
8.
9.
o the act that historical processes are themselves oten prooundly shaped by cultural meanings, and that history itsel is interpreted in specic ways depending upon the cultural rameworks within which it is contextualized (see Sahlins 1981, 1985). In the present context, what particularly interests me is the extent to which historical processes can take on almost mythical qualities because o the ways in which they are culturally elaborated—in what might be described as the mythologization o history itsel. Freyre’s views on slavery have been extensively debated, and it seems clear that his view o slavery in Brazil as relatively benign is ounded less in reality than in his own ideological position. For an especially helpul discussion o slavery in Brazil, and o the scholarly debate concerning its character, see Degler 1971. Milk, and by extension, ood more generally, play important roles in the semiotic construction o Casa-Grande e Senzala. Freyre pays a great deal o attention to the culinary contributi ons o both the A merindian as well as t he Arican in Brazilian culture, and he seems to view these contributions almost as symbols o the dark-skinned woman. This semiotic is rooted in a deeper set o cultural constructs that will be discussed in greater detail below.
Chapter 3
1.
2. 3. 4. 5.
This examination Brazilian is especiallyoappropriate as a point o departure givenothe act thathistory the construction gender in Brazil is deeply rooted in ar more widespread cultural patterns ound throughout the Mediterranean and Latin worlds. For an overview o these patterns, see Saunders 1981. For a discussion o regional patterns o gender and sexuality, see also Davis and Whitten 1987. Again, this conguration is clearly part o a broader Latin pattern. See, or example, Brandes 1980, Peristiany 1966, Pitt-Rivers 1977. On the distinction between the “penis” and the “phallus,” see Lacan 1977, 1981; Mitchell 1974; Rubin 1975. On the cross-cultural association o pollution and emininity, see Douglas 1966, MacCormack and Strathern 1980, Ortner 1974. At least one indication o just how highly charged this area o the sexual domain has traditionally been is the degree o cultural elaboration which it has received. While terms such as maricas, viado, and bicha are among the most commonly used in contemporary speech, they vie with an extensive
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Notes to Pages 53–57 number o possible synonyms in oering Brazilians a variety o ways to comment upon and interpret the passivity o homens through the discourse o daily lie. Indeed, they can be used quite interchangeably with terms such as boneca (doll), coisinha (little thing), eeminado (eeminate), enxuto (literally, “dried, without tears or rain, slim”), forzinha (little fower), resco (resh),
6.
7.
8.
ronha (pillowcase), rouxo (limp, cowardly, impotent), ruta (ruit), passivo (passive), puto (dened by inormants as a masculine orm o puta, or “whore,” when used as a noun, but meaning “angry” or “enraged” when used as an adjective), or vinte e quatro (literally, “twenty-our”—the number assigned to the veado in the popular Brazilian numbers game known as the jogo do bicho, or “animal game”). In virtually every case, however, this otherwise wide array o terms seems to draw attention to one quality: the apparent eeminação (eeminacy) o the pederasta passivo (passive pederast). The cultural emphasis on “active” and “passive” roles in same-sex interactions is, o course, widespread, and can be ound not only in Brazil (Fry 1982, 1985; Fry and MacRae 1983; Hutchinson 1957, pp. 140–41; Parker 1985b, 1987, 1989b), but also in other parts o Latin America (see Carrier 1985, Taylor 1985, Lancaster 1988), as well as in any number o other, quite distant, settings (see, or example, Dover 1978, Herdt 1981, Veyne 1985). On the notion o phallic attack, see Brandes 1981; Dundes, Leach, and Özkök 1970; Vanggaard 1972. The Brazilian case would certainly seem to parallel that described by Brandes or Andalusia. Taking issue with Pitt-Rivers, Brandes has argued that the cuckold’s horns are placed upon his head by the woman who betrays him rather than by the man who sleeps with her. This is, without question, the position that my Brazilian inormants took on the matter in their society. See Brandes 1980,salience 1981; Pitt-Rivers 1966.or puta can be grasped simply in the The cultural o the piranha vocabulary that Brazilians can draw on in speaking o her. Terms as diverse as aranha (spider), ave (bird), bicha (again, a emale animal, used particularly in northeastern Brazil), borboleta (butterfy), dama (dame or matron), dama da noite (matron o the night) or dama da madrugada (matron o the early morning), égua (mare), galinha (chicken or chick), loba (she-wol), mariposa (moth or butterfy, associated particularly with the night), meretriz (prostitute), mulher-da-rua (woman o the street or streetwalker), mulher-davida (woman in the lie), mulher-da-zona (woman o the red-light district), mulher perdida (lost woman), mulher proana (proane woman), mulher pública (public woman), pistoleira (gunwoman), prostituta (prostitute), and vaca (cow) can all be used to reer to women either as prostitutes, in the strict sense, as women who sell their sexual avors, or more simply, as loose women, women who give o themselves indiscriminately and who thus dele the honra o their amilies and betray their husbands. In either case, the epithet is
Notes to Pages 60–76
9.
clearly among the most serious condemnations in all o Brazilian culture, as its repercussions are elt not merely by the puta hersel, but by the men whose lives she touches. The distinction between sapatão and sapatilha unctions much like the dierentiation between “butch” and “em” in the lesbian communities o many
North American and European societies. See, or example, Nestle 1981. 10. Without wanting to overstate the value o an overly ormal schematization, a number o insights can be obtained rom examining the structural relationships between the categories in some detail. The homem and the mulher can clearly be opposed as “positive” and “negative” gures within a wider system o values. Both male and emale sides o this opposition can be urther broken down in positive and negative terms as well. The positive machão and pai, representing virility and potency, can be opposed to the negative corno and bicha, who seem to represent impotence and passivity: the machão controls his women, while the corno ails to do so; the pai athers children, while the bicha ails to reproduce and pass on his amily name. In much the same ashion, the positive virgem and mãe can be opposed to the negative puta and sapatão: the virgem denies unauthorized sexual access and protects her amily name, while the puta invites transgression and brings ruin on her amily; the mãe produces children, while the sapatão does not. 11. On the question o masculinization and the construction o male gender identities, see Chodorow 1974, 1978; Herdt 1981, 1987; Stoller and Herdt 1982. 12. While cultural analysis is especially well suited to laying out the symbolic structures that articulate the gender hierarchy in any given context, it seems clear that both sociological and psychological analyses are also imperative i we hope to understand the complex processes through which structures are internalized and reproduced. Nancy Chodorow’s work oerssuch some sense o the many complicated questions that must be addressed (see Chodorow 1974, 1978). 13. One way o putting this might be to draw on Chomsky’s distinction between communicative competence and perormance, and to suggest that even those who do not draw on such a language in their concrete perormances are nonetheless competent in its particular grammar. Chapter 4
1.
As will be apparent, my understanding o this rame o reerence has been infuenced most directly by Michel Foucault’s work on the history o sexuality (Foucault 1978; see also Plummer 1981, Rubin 1984, Weeks 1985). Many o the same issues that have marked Foucault’s work have been raised, as well, in a growing literature on the history o sexuality in Brazil that has been extremely
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Notes to Pages 110–38
2.
important in grounding my own understanding o the ways in which diverse discourses ocusing on sexuality have taken shape in Brazilian culture (see, or example, Costa 1979; Engel 1988; Machado et al. 1978; Mott 1988; Trevisan 1986; Vainas 1986, 1989). It is this kind o debate that most clearly marks the discourses o sexuality. As Foucault has pointed out in analyzing the history o sexuality in Western Europe, it is here that the elaboration o discourse takes shape, that sex most obviously speaks its name, and t hat sexuality is constituted within this speech.
Chapter 5
1. 2.
3.
4. 5.
6.
On the notion o eroticism see, or example, Bataille 1962. For a helpul psychoanalytic perspective, see Stoller 1979, 1985. The variations on this expression are in act so numerous that it is impossible to indicate how oten it came up in work with inormants. My avorite was during a conversation with Lílian, a twenty-nine-year-old rom a the lower-middle-working-class background in São Paulo. Shewoman was describing discussion about sexuality that traditionally precedes marriage in the Catholic Church. The priest who conducted the session beore her own marriage was very good, she said. None o the expected moralizing. On the contrary, as long as it was with her husband, he had told her, anything that might happen “within our walls” was alright. In short, while the emphasis on marriage and monogamy was maintained, the emphasis on procreation was dissolved into a rather dierent understanding o erotic practice. The link between sexual excitement and heat is, o course, quite widespread cross-culturally, and it just as present in contemporary American culture as it is in Brazil. The useis o “hot” and “cold” as sexual metaphors is no less common, however, in very dierent social and cultural contexts, such as the small-scale groups o New Guinea (see, or example, Lewis 1980, pp. 125–27). For a particularly helpul discussion developing a psychoanalytic theory o antasy, see Laplanche and Pontalis 1968. This transormation o the parts o the body into mental images or symbols has been addressed most directly in psychoanalysis. While it only gradually seems to enter into Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory o Sexuality (Freud 1962b) in the later revisions, it is more clearly at issue in The Complete Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (Freud 1966) as well as in the essays collected in Sexuality and the Psychology o Love (Freud 1962a). The discussion o this process has generally ocused on the specic symbolisms o particular individuals, and the collective representations o the body have received relatively less attention. The notion o sexual (and, by extension, erotic) scripts has been most useully
Notes to Pages 150–60
7.
developed in the work o Gagnon and Simon. See, in particular, Gagnon 1977, Gagnon and Simon 1973, Simon 1973, Simon and Gagnon 1984. For a discussion linking their emphasis on conscious scripting to the dynamics o the unconscious, see Stoller 1979. Since the argument that I am making here might easily lead to some conusion, it is worth underlining the act that I am exploring an ideological system rather than empirical behaviors. This system serves as a kind o backdrop or behavior, making behavior meaningul—in short, transorming it into practice or conduct. While it enables particular individuals to imagine the range o possible sexual practices open to them, it does not in any direct sense determine which o these practices they will in act integrate into their own individual perormances. On the contrary, such individual perormances emerge rom a complicated calculus o both conscious and unconscious choices—choices that are themselves both possible and necessary because individuals live in a sexual universe with conficting prescriptions. In short, the act that the ideology o the erotic places high value, or example, on anal intercourse does not mean that all individuals will practice anal intercourse; it simply means that the culture oers at least one very important erotic script in which anal intercourse plays a key role. Other scripts exist, in the same cultural context, which no less clearly have absolutely no place or such a practice. Because o this, the transition ro m the imaginary to the real, rom the cultural system o meanings to the actual practices that individuals are engaged in, must be negotiated within highly specic circumstances and contexts, and an ana lysis o the cultural sys tem cannot be taken as an analysis o behavioral requencies.
Chapter 6
1. 2.
3.
The complete lyrics to this song are available on Chico Buarque’s website at www.chicobuarque.com.br/construcao/mestre.asp?pg=naoexist_72.htm. For a discussion o the “tropicalist” movement o the late 1960s and the early 1970s, and o its relation to the modernist movement o the 1920s, see Tavaretto 1979. “100 Anos de Carnaval,” Polydor Records, 1974. As one example o the carnivalesque play with language, it is worth noting the joking reinvention o this song. In the carnaval o 1989, or example, groups o young heterosexual males could be ound parading through the streets, singing “Mamãe Eu Quero,” but substituting the term boceta (cunt) or chupeta (pacier): “Mommy I want, Mommy I want, Mommy I want to suck, give me a cunt, give me a cunt, give me a cunt so that your baby won’t cry.” At the same time, groups o young gay men substituted caceta (prick) or chupeta: “Mommy I
209
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Notes to Pages 164–82
4.
5.
6.
7.
8. 9.
want, Mommy I want, Mommy I want to suck, give me a prick, give me a prick, give me a prick so that your baby won’t cry.” The allusion here, o course, is to Geertz’s analysis o the ways in which the Balinese cockght plays with hierarchical notions o rank and status. Clearly, this emphasis on gender classications is only one possible reading o the meaning o transvestism. Another obvious possibility might be the symbolic expression o male hostility toward women—or even, perhaps at a deeper level, male envy o women. Because o the multivocal nature o all carnivalesque symbolism, I do not think that the reading oered here in any way precludes these other interpretations. For an interpretation developed along rather dierent lines, see Counihan 1985. For a useul interpretation linking the symbolism o transvestism to a more general emphasis on ambiguidade (ambiguity) in the symbolism o Brazilian carnaval, see Da Matta 1981. Like tristeza, the notion o esperança is an especially powerul metaphor in Brazilian culture more generally, and could itsel be the ocus or an extended study. However, while the symbolism o tristeza generally ocuses, as we saw in chapter 2, on the past or the present, the symbolism o esperança o course ocuses on the uture. These dierent orientations, and the interrelations between them, will be examined in somewhat greater detail below. In the same way, more recent developments in Brazilian dance and popular culture, such as the lambada, can be understood as extensions o this same tradition and situated within the same system o meanings. On the importance o the malandro and o malandragem in contemporary Brazilian culture, see in particular Da Matta 1978. For a somewhat dierent, but equally insightul, analysis, see Oliven 1983, pp. 29–60. On the notion oin“carnivalization,” see Bakhtin carnavalização Brazil, see Da Matta 1978. 1968. On the importance o The number o studies that have been published in Brazil interpreting the carnaval is an obvious sign o its incredible wealth o meanings. I hope that by now it will be evident that my own reading is but one among many, and does not seek to claim some kind o privileged or denitive status. At the same time, it should also be noted that even i developed in a somewhat dierent direction, my own analysis o the carnaval as a complex symbol or Brazil as a whole links up, in a number o ways, with other discussions o the appropriation o popular cultural orms as national symbols. See in particular Fry 1982, pp. 47–53; Oliven 1983, pp. 61–73.
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Index
abortion, 4, 104, 110 activity and passivity, 185; as criteria or sexual classication, 48, 51, 52, 53, 54–55, 60, 93; and gender hierarchy, 46–48, 73, 74, 108–9, 186; and sexual socialization, 62, 63, 67 Arican infuences, 24–25; and carnaval, 161–62, 166–68, 174. See also racial mixture Aro-Brazilian religious cults, 161, 167, 168 AIDS epidemic, 4, 107, 187
anthropological perspective, 1–2, 191–94 anthropophagy. See cannibalism Azevedo, Aluízio, 17
Alencar, Joséinfuences, de, 17 Amerindian 174; and carnaval, 161–62, 166–67. See also racial mixture anal intercourse, 81, 93; and AIDS epidemic, 187; as alternative to vaginal intercour se, 145–46; and early sexual play, 144–45; and erotic ideology, 132–35, 138, 144–46, 150; language used to describe, 47; and modernization o sexual lie, 105– 8; and sexual classication system, 51, 52, 53 Anchieta, Joseph de, 17 Andrade, Mário de, 18, 31 Andrade, Oswald de, 18, 23, 31, 155 androgynes, 162
practice, 138, 140 blocos de sujos , 162–63 Boas, Frank, 24 Bourdieu, Pierre, 42 Brazilian carnaval. See carnaval Brazilian sadness, concept o, 16–23, 27, 31 breasts, symbolism o, 62, 128–29, 130, 131 brincar, 158–59 brothel, 70, 92. See also prostitution Buarque de Hollanda, Chico, 155 bunda, 128, 131–35. See also anal intercourse
Barlaeus, Gaspar von, 153, 154 –55 Bastide, Roger, 188 Bernstein, Basil, 189 bicha, 49, 51–53, 58, 60, 67, 141, 180 birth control pill, 103 bisexuality, 94; and AIDS epidemic, 187; and modernization o sexual lie, 105–8; and structuring o erotic
Cabral, Pedro Álvares, 10, 12, 19 Caminha, Adolo, 17
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Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions Caminha, Pero Vaz de, 10–13, 15, 19, 32, 153 Cândido, Antônio, 35, 37, 39 cannibalism, 13–14, 15–16; symbolism o, 18, 162, 166–67, 168 carnaval, 32, 152, 185–86, 190; and celebrations o the fesh, 156– 66; costumes o, 161–63, 167, 170, 174; and hidden traditions o Brazil, 153–56, 157; as metaphor, 181–83; nature o sexual lie refected in, 173–81; proound ambivalence toward, 173–74, 185; and the wheel o samba, 166–73 Catholicism, Brazilian, 188; declining infuence o, 111–12, 150; and erotic ideology, 111–12; and medical/
desire and excitement, 116–26, 136–37, 151, 185 domination and submission, 46–47, 48, 49, 60, 73, 74, 101, 125, 145, 147. See also activity and passivity double standard o sexual morality, 71–72; and gender hierarchy, 36–37, 73. See also patriarchal tradition eating, imagery o, 58, 129–31, 132, 143, 167 entrudo, 158, 174 erotic ideology, 158–59, 160, 185–86, 190; and carnaval, 164– 65; and concept o transgression , 4–5, 112–13, 123–24, 135–36, 144, 146; excitement and desire within,
scientic view, o 87–89, and99– modernization sexual94;lie, 100, 103–4; and organization o sexual lie, 76–85, 108–9, 111–12; and sexual classication system, 52; and social class, 189 coee plantations, 86 coitus interruptus, 103 colonial era, 88; decentralization characteristic o, 85 –86; and gold rush, 86; and heightened sensuality o Brazilian lie, 28; and infuence o Catholicism, 77, 78–79; and patriarchal system, 35– 40, 85–86; and racial mixture in Brazil, 21–23; and writings o early explorers, 10– 16, 18–23, 25, 28, 31 concubines, 35, 36–37, 39 contraception, 103–4, 110 costumes, carnaval, 161–64, 167, 170, 174, 177, 178, 180 courting, 65–66, 67 cuckold, 49, 50, 53–55, 112
116–26; and 126, gender system, 111– 12, 116–17, 127–37, 138, 147, 150–52; human body as interpreted in, 126–37; impact o, 150–52; and structures o erotic practice, 137–50 European explorers, writings o, 9, 10– 16, 18–23, 25, 28, 31 European Renaissance, 19 excitement and desire, 116–26, 136–37, 151, 185 excretion, 133–34, 135 exhibitionism, 105, 165
cunnilingus, 105 Da Matta, Roberto, 114, 152, 188 dance: music and, 166–73; samba, 166– 73, 175–81, 186 de Medici, Lorenzo, 12
emale and male domains. See gender system eminist movement, 97–98, 107, 189 etishism, 105 re, symbolism o, 120–21 oliões, 158, 174
amily, 34–35; declining infuence o, 111–12, 150; and nineteenthcentury regulation o sexual lie, 91, 93, 94; and urbanization, 97. See also patriarchal tradition amily honor. See honor antasy: and carnaval, 161, 168, 173, 180–81; and erotic ideology, 124– 26, 139– 40; and masturbation, 139 ellatio, 105
Index ood, imagery o, 119, 130–31, 132, 143 Foucault, Michel, 82, 110 Freud, Sigmund, 44, 118, 129, 137 Freyre, Gilberto, 23–33, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 74, 77, 78–79, 89, 91, 114, 151, 171, 176, 182 Fry, Peter, 188, 189 gay liberation movement, 98, 107 Geertz, Cliord, 193–94 gender system, 172, 185–86; and Brazilian Catholicism, 77, 85– 86; cultural denition o, 2–4; hierarchy within, 72–75; and ideology o the erotic, 111–12, 116– 17, 126–37, 138, 147, 148–49, 150– 52; and modernization o sexual lie, 97–98,34–40; 105; and patriarchal tradition, refected in language or sexual anatomy, 40– 48; and sexual categories, 48– 61; and sexuality, 108–10; and sexual socialization, 63–72; and social class, 189; and subjugation o women, 189 genitals: erotic meanings associated with, 126–28, 131; terms or, 40–46, 122–23, 126–28 gold rush, 86 Graça Aranha, José Pereira da, 17 health issues: AIDS, 3, 107, 187; and social conditions, 85–96; syphilis, 27–28, 31, 89, 91, 107 heat, symbolism o, 120–21 homosexuality, 14–15, 189; and carnaval traditions, 163, 165, 180; and concept o sacanagem, 115; and erotic ideology, 130, 138, 140, 143, 150; and Inquisition in Brazil, 81; medical/scientic view o, 89, 93–94; and modernization o sexual lie, 105–7; and regulation o sexual practices, 109–10; and sexual classication system as a whole, 49, 51–53, 54–55, 57, 59–61; and sexual
experimentation or initiation, 140– 41, 143–45; and social activism, 98, 107; terms used or, 49–61 homosexual movement, 98, 107 honor: and the machão, 50; and patriarchal tradition, 38, 50; and sexual socialization o women, 63; virginity linked to, 38, 56–57, 63 hunger, symbolism o, 119–20, 121, 122, 130 hymen, 56–57, 145 ideology o gender. See gender system ideology o the erotic. See erotic ideology illegitimate children, 35, 37 incest taboo, 14 indigenous peoples, 10–15, 16, 17, 20– 21, 161–62, 166–67 industrialization, 87, 111 inheritance, lines o, 37–38 Inquisition in Brazil, 79–82, 8 3, 85 Ivo, Lêdo, 154, 155 Jews, 79, 81 Lent, 156, 166 Léry, Jean de, 12, 14, 15, 153 lesbians, 81, 165; as dened by maledominated context, 59– 60; and sexual classication system as a whole, 49, 55; social status o, 60– 61; terms used or, 59–60, 109. See also homosexuality libertinism, 89, 91–93
machão: and sexual classication system, 49–50, 53, 55, 58; values associated with, 49–50 malandro, 170–71, 172, 173, 175, 193 malesystem and emale domains. See gender marriage: arranged, 38; and double standard o sexual morality, 71– 72; and organization o sexual expression, 83– 85, 109; and
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Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions marriage cont. patriarchal order, 36–39; and sexual classication syste m, 48– 49 mass media, 3, 190; and modernization o sexual lie, 98, 107 masturbation, 109–10, 123; and erotic ideology, 138–42, 143–45, 146, 148, 150; and anta sy, 139– 40; as learned practice, 139–41; medical/ scientic view o, 89–91, 93; and modernization o sexual lie, 101–3; and same-sex practices, 140–41, 143– 45; and structuring o erotic practice, 138–42, 144– 45 medicine, 3–4, 76, 85; and regulation o sexual lie, 88–96, 97, 99–100, 107, 109–10; and social class, 189–90
New-Christians, 79, 81 Nobrega, Manoel da, 17
melancholy 27, 31 (Brazilian sadness), 16–23, menstruation: language used to describe, 44– 46; and sexual socialization o emales, 63–6 4, 65 miscegenation, 15, 21. See also racial mixture mistresses, 35, 36 –37 modernist movement, 17–18, 166 monogamy, 37, 39, 109; and organization o sexual lie, 83– 85 mouth, eroticization o, 128, 129–30, 131, 138, 142–45 mulatto woman, in symbolic universe o carnaval, 168, 169, 170, 171–72, 173, 179 music and dance, 166–73; songs, 155, 160 myths o srcin, 111, 155–56, 173, 184– 85; and Brazilian sadness, 16–23, 24; and carnaval, 182–83, 185; and Edenic metaphor, 10–16; literary themes related to, 16–31; and sel-
and o honor,o38, 49–50; and concept decentralization colonial era, 85–86; decline o, 86, 87, 97; and erotic ideology, 112, 114; and gender system, 34–40; a s ideological construct, 34 –35, 39; oppression o women within, 189–90; and sexual classication system, 49–51; and sexual socialization, 61–72; and slavery, 21, 34–36, 38–39, 171; violence linked with, 35– 36 pederasty, 52, 115 pedophilia, 110 penis, terms or, 40–43, 44, 122, 127–28 piranha or puta, 65, 109, 163, 172; and sexual classication system, 49, 55, 57–59, 61. See also prostitution plantation lie, 27, 35, 37–39, 78, 112, 167–68. See also colonial era; slavery police, 109, 168, 175
interpretations, 8–9, 22, 31–33; and writings o early European explorers, 10–16, 18, 19–20, 21–25, 31 national identity, 86–87, 182; and racial mixture in Brazil, 16–17, 23–25
onanism. See masturbation oral eroticism, 105, 138, 142–45, 146, 150 oral symbolism: and carnaval, 160, 167; related to eating, 58, 129–31, 132, 143, 167 orgasm, 149–50 orgy, 165 srcin myths. See myths o srcin pacier, 160 passive role. See activity and passivity patriarchal tradition, 2, 89, 171–72; and Brazilian Catholicism, 78;
polygyny, 14, 22; tradition, 37, and 39 patriarchal polymorphous erotic pleasures, 129, 137, 146–47, 165, 187 pornography, 68–70, 116, 141 Portuguese infuences, 25–26, 77–78, 86–87
Index Prado, Paulo, 17, 18–23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 78, 79, 91, 96, 151, 182 pregnancy, 64; and contraception, 103– 4, 110; sexual practices to avoid, 141, 145 procreation. See reproduction prostitution, 15, 27, 57, 58, 163, 168, 172; and erotic ideology, 150; language used to describe, 49, 55, 57–59, 61; medical/scientic view o, 89, 91–93; and regulation o sexual lie, 109–10; and sexual initiation, 70–71 public and private realms o sexual experience, 4–5, 113–115, 164–65 public discourse, 98–100, 107–8 puta. See piranha or puta
carnaval, 157, 159, 164, 185; as complex cultural category, 115–17, 119, 121, 122, 124, 125, 126, 149 sadomasochism, 95, 105, 106, 110 samba, 166–73, 175–81, 186 “samba plots,” 32 samba schools, 158, 175–80 sapatão, 49, 55, 59–61, 109 Sardinha, António, 18 Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, 157 science, 27–28, 76, 85; and modernization, 3– 4; and regulation o sexual lie, 87–96, 105, 106; and social class, 189 scientic racism, 17 seduction, 125 –26 sensuality, 170, 171, 185; and Catholic
racial mixture, 33; and Brazilian sadness, 16–17, 21–23; and carnaval traditions, 166–67, 171, 172–73, 182–83; as literary theme, 23– 31; and national identity, 16–17, 23–25; nineteenth-century preoccupation with, 87; and patriarchal tradition, 36–37; and sexual ethic linked to slavery, 28–31 religion, 4, 188; and carnaval traditions, 156, 161, 167–68; and gender system, 2–3; and modernization o sexual lie, 107; and urbanization, 97. See also Catholicism, Brazilian reproduction, 108–9, 110; cultural emphasis on, 3; and modernization o sexual lie, 103–4; and nineteenth-century regulation o sexual practices, 88–89, 91, 93, 94; and organization o sexual expression, 83– 84; and patriarchal tradition, 37–38
traditions romoPortugal, 77–78; andinherited construction erotic meaning, 135–37; and myths o srcin, 31–33 sex education, 99–101, 107–8, 110 sexology, 100, 110, 185; and modernization o sexual lie, 97, 99, 105, 107–8 sexual arousal, 116, 121–23 sexual categories: context and characteristics o, 48–61; infuence o science and medicine on, 88, 89, 93–94; passive or active role as criteria or, 48, 51, 52, 53, 54–55, 59–60, 93 sexual deviance, 3; and concept o sacanagem, 115–17; and Inquisition in Brazil, 79–82; medical/scientic view o, 89, 104– 5; and modernization o sexual lie, 105–8. See also sexual practices by name sexual initiation: and ideology o
Ribeiro, Julio, 17 See Catholicism, Roman Catholicism. Brazilian Rubin, Gayle, 108, 109
sacanagem, 127, 128, 135–36, 138, 141, 145, 147, 148, 152, 193; and
the erotic, 139–41, 142–46; patriarchal tradition, 38; andand plantation lie in slaveholding Brazil, 29–30, 31–32; and same-sex practices, 140–41, 143, 144; and socialization o emales, 63– 66; and socialization o males, 66–72
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Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions sexuality: and Brazilian Catholicism, 77–85; and denition o sel, 76, 110; and gender, 108–10; and health issues, 85– 96; medical/scientic view o, 88–96; modernization o, 96–108; and structures o erotic practice, 137–50. See also erotic ideology sexually transmitted diseases, 45, 91– 92, 95; AIDS, 3, 107, 187; syphilis, 27–28, 31, 89, 91, 107 sexual socialization: and gender system, 61–72; and patriarchal tradition, 35, 38–39 sexual terminology, 40–48 , 122–23, 127 shoe, as symbol, 59–60 sickness, notion o, 89, 94–95, 102–3,
songs, 155, 160 sorcery, 168 Staden, Hans, 12, 15, 153 submission and domination, 46–47, 48, 49, 60, 73, 74, 101, 125, 145, 147. See also activity and passivity sugar plantations, 85–8 6. See also colonial era; slavery sujeira, symbolism o, 135–36 syphilis, 27–28, 31, 89, 91, 93, 107
tesão, 116, 121–23, 124, 126, 136, 147, 193 Thevet, André, 12, 14, 15, 153 transando, 147–48 transgression, concept o, 4–5, 112–17, 120, 123, 124, 137–38, 139, 144–45,
107, sin, 105, notion o,112 77–85, 89–90, 105, 107, 146 slavery, 73, 86; and intimacy o the casa-grande, 29–32; and nineteenth-century Brazilian thought, 86, 87; and patriarchal tradition, 21, 35–37, 38, 171–72; and racial mixture in Brazil, 21; and ravages o syphilis, 27; sexual ethic linked with, 29– 31 Soares da Sousa, Gabriel, 12, 14–15, 153 social change, 86–87, 186–87, 189; and gender hierarchy, 73; and ideology o the erotic, 111–12; and modernization o sexual lie, 96–108 social class, 151, 188; and carnaval traditions, 165, 170, 173, 174–81, 182; and ideology o gender, 189– 90; and modernization o sexual lie, 98, 100, 108; and nineteenthcentury Brazilian thought, 85– 86,
146 transvestism, 109–10; and carnaval traditions, 162–64, 172, 180; and modernization o sexual lie, 105–7 Trevisan, João Silvério, 80, 81 tubal ligation, 103
vagina, terms or, 43–46, 122, 127–128 Vargas, Getulio, 175 vasectomy, 103 Velho, Gilberto, 188 venereal inection, 45. See also sexually transmitted diseases Vespucci, Amerigo, 12–14, 15, 19, 153 viado, 49, 50–51, 52, 53, 54–55, 57, 58, 59, 60, 67, 93, 109 Vianna, Oliveira, 35
87, 96; and options within the cultural system, 190–91 social hygiene, 76, 85, 88–96, 97, 103, 109, 186 socialization. See sexual socialization sodomy, 52, 93, 109
carnaval violence: andideology 74; and o traditions, the erotic, 173– 127– 28, 131; machão associated with, 49–50; and patriarchal system, 35– 36; and sexual categories, 48 virginity: and erotic ideology, 145–46;
urbanization, 86, 87, 150; and erotic ideology, 111; impact o, 186–87, 189, 190, 191; and modernization o sexual lie, 96 –98; and prostitution, 92
Index amily honor linked to, 38, 56–57, 63; and masturbatory practices, 141, 145; and modernization o sexual lie, 101; and patriarchal system, 38–39; and sexual classication system, 49, 55–57, 59; and sexual socialization, 38–39, 55–57, 59, 71
Wagley, Charles, 188 wetnurses, 30, 31–32 Willems, Emílio, 71 witchcrat, 168 women, subjugation o, 189. See also gender system; patriarchal tradition Zéro, Carlos, 69
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