Pelo vaso traseiro: Sodomy and Sodomites in Luso-Brazilian History (review)

Despite recent interdisciplinary contributions to GLBT and queer studies in scholarship on Luso-Brazilian culture, the field has still received relatively little attention when compared with queer-themed research in other area studies, notably published histories on queer Spain and Spanish America. Pelo vaso traseiro is a much-needed addition to the field, featuring work by nine recognized cultural historians from North America, Brazil, and Europe. The voluminous publication contains thirteen chapters in addition to an index and a comprehensive Glossary of terms in both Portuguese and English pertaining to sexual culture, legal codes, and regionalisms of the Luso-Brazilian world. Given that almost all the essays have appeared previously in peer-reviewed journals, there is little that is "fresh" or innovative about this volume. It seems, however, that the significance of the contribution resides in the successful compilation of these manuscripts so that they appear together in a single useful volume, and where the researcher benefits by seeing the threads between and among them. Another important merit of the collection is that eight of the essays, while previously published, appear in English for the first time in this volume, making the text accessible to scholars of Luso-Brazilian or comparative history who may not be proficient in Portuguese.

One may criticize the collection for its lack of research on lesbianism, but in so doing, such a critique would no doubt extend, in general, to available scholarship in the field. Like so much of historical discourse, women's voices are often silenced or marginalized at best. Still, the disclaimer appearing in the Introduction "that studies of Portuguese lesbianism are few and far between" and the subsequent wish "that when more work has been done on the subject, both for Portugal as well as Brazil, another collection can be produced to tackle the topic" (2) sets up an unfortunate self-fulfilling prophecy that perpetuates the absence of scholarship on women's sexuality in Luso-Brazilian history. The excuse, while well-founded, stating that references on lesbianism are severely limited, unfortunately leads to the total neglect of the subject altogether, serving perhaps inadvertently to actually increase the invisibility of women as subjects in such scholarship, present and future. The justification is not a good one, particularly given the fact that the editors themselves mention in a later footnote that "travelers' accounts suggest that lesbianism was quite common, at least in eighteenth-century Portugal" (17). A responsible scholar of sexuality studies in the Luso-Brazilian world is thus forced to ponder the question of why the marginalization of herstory and should strategize on how to stop perpetuating it. The guilty conscience of essentially eliminating women from a 500-page study on sexuality in the Luso-Brazilian world is betrayed in the Introduction, where the editors seemingly propose a sort of compensation for the lack of such material, even though such a substitution is not quite satisfactory. The editors admit that "given the paucity of studies of Lusitanian female homosexuality, we decided to concentrate on gay males, but to complement the Portuguese side with the addition of Brazilian material" (2). The volume, therefore, makes for an excellent trans-Atlantic study, but still does not address the absence of women as subjects and as victims of repressive sexual codes.

Despite the fact that this historically informed text maintains, for the most part, solid academic objectivity, the editors sometimes present bold generalizations as affirmations of truth, and I found certain passages to be particularly problematic in their allusions to Luso-Brazilian sexuality. For example, the following statement is objectionable and seems to portray the Portuguese as especially sex-starved and sex-crazed, serving to mystify and romanticize this region of the world: "Although the Portuguese—as anyone who has lived there for any length of time can testify—have few, if any, inhibitions in practice with regard to sex in all its many varieties . . ." and then goes on to comment on the repression that silences...