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4. Norms and Perversions
- Vanderbilt University Press
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76 4 Norms and Perversions As influential as the ideology of gender has been, it is but one among a number of possible perspectives available today for the organization of sexual life in Brazil. Throughout Brazilian history, and perhaps most clearly in the contemporary period, this relatively informal cultural system has consistently functioned alongside a set of more formal, rationalized discourses that have simultaneously confirmed it, extended it, and in some instances, transformed it. Whether in the early doctrines of organized religion, the slightly later discourses of social hygiene and medicine, or the more recent language of modern science, the sexual realm has also been the object of even more specialized interrogations and interdictions. While themselves characterized by certain fundamental differences in perspective, these interrogations nonetheless seem to offer a shift of emphasis from the question of gender to what would more accurately be described as sexuality (Rubin 1984). They are typified by a new preoccupation with sexual practices as external expressions of a distinct (and deeper) internal truth. The conceptualization of this truth has itself taken a number of different forms and has changed with the passage of time. In all of its guises, however, it has been focused on sexual experience not merely as a way of differentiating men from women and organizing them into a hierarchy of gender, but as somehow central to the meaning of individual existence, to the definition of the self (Foucault 1978). As subtle as this shift in emphasis might at first glance appear, it has nonetheless offered Brazilians a radically different frame of reference for organizing and understanding their sexual universe, and for constituting their own sexual realities within it.1 Norms and Perversions 77 Sins of the Flesh As was implicit in the discussion of gender, the Brazilian understanding of sexual reality can hardly be approached without reference to some form of Catholicism. The division of the sexes, the structure of male domination, the importance of female virginity, and so on, can all be linked to a set of religious values that act both to legitimate and to reproduce the accepted order of the sexual universe. Within that frame of reference, however, such values are rarely stated explicitly. Drawn, as they are, from a kind of folk Catholicism rooted less in official doctrines than in the ideological structures of popular culture, they function informally, providing a backdrop for the sexual drama as it has traditionally been played out in Brazilian life. Throughout Brazilian history, however, this relatively informal, uncodified, religious backdrop has coexisted with a far more explicit and formal set of beliefs—the official doctrines of the Catholic Church, with all its authority and institutional legitimacy—which, while perhaps less immediate in the course of daily life, have nonetheless exerted a profound influence on the nature of Brazilian reality. At least since the early writings of Gilberto Freyre, it has been customary to emphasize the “sensual” character of the Catholic tradition inherited from Portugal—its festivals and village feasts in honor of the saints who protected the harvest and offered assistance in matters of love, its baroque processions marked by firecrackers and rockets, its remarkably relaxed sexual morality (see Bastide 1951, pp. 334–35). This “softer” or “more human” Catholicism has been taken, by Brazilians themselves, both as an explanation for the success of the early Portuguese colonists in Brazil and as a key source for the unusual degree of sensuality that marks Brazilian life even today: To the advantages already pointed out that the Portuguese of the fifteenth 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 of the reformed countries of the north, or even the dramatic Catholicism of Castile itself; theirs was a liturgy social rather than religious, a softened, lyric Christianity with many phallic and animistic reminiscences of the pagan cults. The only thing that was lacking was for the saints and angels to take on fleshly form and step down from the altars on feast [18.190.156.80] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 23:28 GMT) 78 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...