Journal of Lusophone Studies

Transnational and Counternational Queer Agencies in Lusophone Cultures: Introduction

Anna M. Klobucka, César Braga-Pinto — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:06:12 -0700

This special issue of the Journal of Lusophone Studies was devised with the aim of addressing issues of (nonnormative) gender and (queer) sexuality in relation to travel, translation, transnational friendships and relationships, posturing and imitation, contagion, promiscuity, and other related themes across the spectrum of modern Luso-Afro-Brazilian literatures and cultures from the nineteenth century onward. Collectively, the editors and contributors are particularly interested in considering the ways in which queer subjectivities and agencies have counteracted triumphant versions of the nation and nationalism that seek to foreclose any alternatives to patriarchal and heteronormative fictions of progress and homogeneous identity.

Da sátira obscena ao axioma do frei: poesia romântica e homoerotismo no Brasil (1850-1864)

Vagner Camilo — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:06:13 -0700

This paper addresses the emergence of homoerotic themes in the context of Brazilian romanticism, in poetic works obviously outside or on the margins of the official canon. It also examines the changes from the obscene and satirical verses to the lyric voice in the poems attributed to Moniz Barreto, Laurindo Rabelo and, with special emphasis, Junqueira Freire, author of the only lyric love poem about this theme at the time.

Portugal's First Queer Novel: Rediscovering Visconde de Vila-Moura's Nova Safo (1912)

Anna M. Klobucka — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:06:14 -0700

This study seeks to recover the novel Nova Safo (1912) by Visconde de Vila-Moura from the marginal status to which it has been consigned in Portuguese literary history by arguing for its momentous cultural relevance as Portugal’s first queer novel. Given the extremely limited number and scope of existing critical approaches to the text, my reading is oriented by a reparative strategy that aims, first and foremost, to remedy its precarious status as an archival object. I describe the novel's inchoate and cluttered collection of references, images, and storylines as a countercultural scrapbook of queer feeling, ruled by an antiquarian sensibility, whose structures of cohesion belong less to the realm of formal aesthetics than to the sphere of homophilic affective epistemology. Further, I chart Nova Safo's intersecting gestures of transitive embodiment—transnational, transgender, and transracial—by discussing the novel’s mournful evocation of three recently departed icons of fin-de-siècle literary culture: Oscar Wilde, Renée Vivien, and João da Cruz e Sousa.

Mobilidade transnacional, dissidência sexual e hibridismo em A confissão de Lúcio, de Mário de Sá-Carneiro (1914)

Fernando Beleza — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:06:15 -0700

In this essay, I examine the uncanny in Mário de Sá-Carneiro's A confissão de Lúcio (1914). Drawing on Sigmund Freud, Julia Kristeva, and Homi Bhabha, I argue that the uncanny plays a crucial role in Sá-Carneiro's exploration of facets of both the queer experience and transnational mobility. On the one hand, it enables the destabilization of fixed gender identifications and the articulation of dissident sexual identities and politics. On the other hand, it brings into Sá-Carneiro's novella aspects of his own experience as an expatriate in the cosmopolitan urban space of Paris. Finally, Sá-Carneiro's embrace of the experience of the uncanny provides a point of departure to address hybridity within his broader literary production.

Between Christmas Day, 1895, and New Year’s Eve, 1922: Queer Suicide and Brazil's Long Fin de Siècle

César Braga-Pinto — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:06:16 -0700

This essay considers a heterogeneous and often unreadable group of fin-de-siècle Brazilian writers that includes Parnassians, Symbolists, and Decadents. These artists imagined themselves part of a cosmopolitan, transnational movement that posed as extravagant or queer, turning their back on both emerging nationalist sentiments and urgent social issues of their time. This detachment, I argue, points to a queer mode of historicity. I further argue that an affirmative rhetoric of hope and community is insufficient to understand or cope with negative figures, that is, those who turn away from social life, communication, and, ultimately, from futurity. I first focus on two queer fin-de-siècle writers who committed suicide, Raul Pompeia (1863-95) and the playwright Roberto Gomes (1882-1922). I then propose that an archive of Brazilian "suicidals" may provide ways of reading these fin-de-siècle writers, as well as others who resist accommodation in the genealogy of national culture.

A perspectiva canhota de um emigrado russo: expressão homoerótica na poesia de Valério Pereliéchin (1953-1992)

Carlos Cortez Minchillo — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:06:16 -0700

This article examines the poetry of Valério Pereliéchin ("Valerii Pereleshin" in his native Russian), a gay writer and translator who produced a significant collection of homoerotic poems in Portuguese over the second half of the twentieth century. Pereliéchin was born in Russia in 1913 and soon migrated to China, where he lived among other Russian émigrés in the town of Harbin. In 1953, after a failed attempt to go to the United States, he and his mother arrived in Brazil, where he lived–unnoticed by local writers and artists–for almost forty years. A central issue in Pereliéchin's personal life, homosexuality gradually became the core theme of his work. Through the idea of "existential left-handedness," Pereliéchin challenged heteronormativity, especially by refuting what Lee Edelman has called "reproductive futurity." I argue that Pereliéchin's alternative way of tackling the past and future stems from the intersectionality of his experiences as a gay man and an émigré.

Masculinidades debaixo de fogo: homossocialidade e homossexualidade na guerra colonial (1961-1974)

António Fernando Cascais — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:06:17 -0700

The experience of homosexuality among Portuguese troops engaged in the colonial wars in Africa (1961-1974) appears primarily in those rare works that do not defend the colonial conflict nor shy away from crises of masculinity. Conversely, works apologetic of Portuguese colonialism are almost exclusively homophobic. In texts that narrate the colonial experience of openly gay writers, such references arise indirectly and in the background. Generally focused on the conflicts and traumas of young soldiers, allusions to homosexual experience negotiate a tension between surrender and self-defensive resistance. That this tension is normally resolved in favor of the latter shows how resistance was not a subversion of heteronormative masculinity; rather, it contributed to the repression of its crisis. The result is a reinforcement of the open homophobia encoded in the revolutionary ideals that led to the events of April 25, 1974.

Selfish Mysticism, Queer Utopias: 'Homo-ness' in Carlos Hugo Christensen's O menino e o vento

James Hodgson — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:06:18 -0700

This article considers Carlos Hugo Christensen's film O menino e o vento (1968) through the work of queer theorist Leo Bersani. It argues that Christensen’s depiction of same-sex desire makes a fundamental challenge to social organization by reconfiguring the basic unit of interpersonal relations (self and other). Against the well-disciplined homosexual subject, the film presents homosexuality as an impersonal, quasi-mystical, homoerotic force that breaks down and transcends the barriers between individuals, shattering all efforts to name and so to control it. This article addresses specifically the question of queer utopias, sketching out what one might look like in Lusophone cinema. It contributes to the current scholarship on Christensen while examining how ideas about homosexuality are formulated in Lusophone cultures more generally, and how they might be politically useful.

Challenging Lusofonia: Transnationality, Translationality, and Appropriation in Tulio Carella’s Orgía/Orgia and Hermilo Borba Filho's Deus no pasto

Severino J. Albuquerque — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:06:19 -0700

During his 1960-61 stint as theater professor in Recife, Argentinian playwright and critic Tulio Carella (1912-1979) kept a diary that disappeared during Argentina’s Dirty War. Before its disappearance, Carella’s colleague and friend Hermilo Borba Filho (1917-1976) translated the text into Portuguese and published it in Brazil as Orgia (1968). Four years later, Hermilo inserted much of his translation of Carella's text into his own novel, Deus no pasto. This unusual translation flow highlights issues such as the displacement of the original, the validity of adaptive transformation, and the challenging of normative fonias. I explore the transnationality of Carella's diary, asking whether a text extant only in Portuguese can form part of the Hispanophone canon and whether a text not originally written in Portuguese can be considered part of the Lusophone canon.

Black Mothers and Black Boats: Queer, Indigenous, and Afro-Brazilian Intersections in Ney Matogrosso's "Mãe preta (Barco negro)"

Daniel da Silva — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:06:20 -0700

As part of his 1975 solo debut album, Água do céu-pássaro, Ney Matogrosso recorded a cover of "Barco negro," a Portuguese fado made famous by Amália Rodrigues and based on an earlier Brazilian song, "Mãe-preta," written by Caco Velho and Piratini and recorded by Os Tocantins in 1943. Matogrosso conflates the two versions, titling the track, "Mãe preta (Barco negro)." This article marks Matogrosso’s recording as an iteration of transgender voice and locates—in his performance and album artwork—queer, indigenous, and Afro-Brazilian intersections that rework the mãe preta figure central to Brazil’s foundational narrative. Making use of Hortense Spiller’s theorization of the trans-Atlantic slave trade as "body-theft," I argue that Matogrosso’s referents and trans voice reembody the Luso-Afro-Brazilian black mother in ways that unsettle Lusotropicalism and haunt Portuguese nationalist tropes.

Cassandra Rios e a lésbica genuína em Eu sou uma lésbica (1980)

Carolina Castellanos Gonella — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:06:21 -0700

In this article, I analyze the novel, Eu sou uma lésbica (1980), by Brazilian author Cassandra Rios (1932-2002). I examine how Rios's text discusses the lesbianism and sexuality of Flávia, the protagonist of the novel, as well as the sexual and love relationship that the seven-year-old Flávia has with an adult woman. The work of authors such as Judith Butler, Marilyn R. Farwell, Teresa De Lauretis, Adrianne Rich, Gayle Rubin, and Jeffrey Weeks informs my theoretical framework. I propose that the novel presents Flávia's sexuality as natural and genuine in order to challenge traditional discourses surrounding lesbianism and children’s sexuality. While the representation of lesbian sexuality in children is transgressive and empowering, as it establishes same-sex desire among women as natural and dating back to infancy, I contend however that the novel’s treatment of adult lesbian sexuality perpetuates traditional corporal, racial, and class hierarchies.

Pés vivos in "El queso del quechua" by Glauco Mattoso

Alejandro Castro — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:06:22 -0700

This paper approaches "El queso del quechua," the Spanish-language translation of Brazilian writer Glauco Mattoso’s short story "O quitute do quíchua," on the basis of certain central concepts: fetishism, anthropophagy, blindness, coprophagy, and sadomasochist entelechy. It intends to analyze the book itself, released by an Argentine cartonera publishing house, as an object, as well as the story contained within it. Cecilia Palmeiro translated the work, having already published research on the relationship between Mattoso’s work and the consumption of waste. This paper explores the relation between the academy and the cultural field, as well as the presence of a living, acting, mutable, and performative element in Mattoso’s literature.

Maria Boa: Women, Prostitution, and the Queer Subject in Northeastern Brazil

Sarah Nicholus — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:06:23 -0700

Known as "Maria Boa," the renowned cabaré owner and sex worker of Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Maria de Oliveira Barros emerges in many local cultural productions. This article follows her navigation and negotiation of a complex nexus of race, class, gender, and sexual relations in the mid-twentieth century Brazilian Northeast. I utilize three examples—a contemporary cordel poem, the space of the Cabaré Maria Boa, and a quadrilha dance performance—to explore how queerness is expressed through traditional, rural culture that has also traveled to cities with migration. I argue that Maria Boa serves a prism for understanding articulations of queerness in the region. Her intersectional identity negotiation is at once traditional and subversive and her story paradigmatic of the complexities of queer identity in the Brazilian Northeast.

Anthropocentrism and Taxidermy in Santiago Nazarian's Neve negra

Fernando Varela — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:06:24 -0700

In the present essay, I argue that taxidermy is a fundamental element in Brazilian novelist Santiago Nazarian’s Neve negra (2017). To do so, I frame my argument by using studies on anthropocentrism and the relationship between the human and the non-human through taxidermy. The first part of the essay examines recent studies on taxidermy and primary sources from the nineteenth century that center on the art and science of skinning, preparing, and mounting dead specimens. The second part focuses on a close reading of Nazarian’s novel by studying the narrator’s patriarchal and masculine anxieties in conjunction with taxidermy and the non-human characters that appear in the novel.

Cagle, Hugh. Assembling the Tropics: Science and Medicine in Portugal's Empire, 1450-1700. Cambridge UP, 2018

Josiah Blackmore — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:06:25 -0700

Assembling the Tropics studies the creation of the idea of the "tropics" as a coherent global region in early modern Portuguese empire, using writings on fever, medicine, natural history, plants and drugs, and disease as the basis of analysis.

Shellhorse, Adam Joseph. Anti-Literature: The Politics and Limits of Representation in Modern Brazil and Argentina. U of Pittsburgh P, 2017

Odile Cisneros — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:06:25 -0700

This volume's ambition is to respond to major interpretations of Latin American literature—such as Ángel Rama's Transculturación narrativa en América Latina (1982), John Beverley’s Against Literature (1993) and Testimonio (2004), Alberto Moreiras's Tercer espacio (1999), and Brett Levinson's The Ends of Literature (2001)—and to define the contours of this counter-tradition conceived as "a multidisciplinary, minoritarian, and multimedial 'body' of writing that produces affects and new modes of perception" (7).

Granja, Lúcia. Machado de Assis—antes do livro, o jornal: suporte, mídia e ficção. U Estadual Paulista, 2018

Mariana da Silva Lima — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:06:26 -0700

Talvez uma das maiores interrogações que inquietam os leitores de Machado de Assis seja descobrir o que, afinal de contas, o diferencia tanto de todos os demais escritores—sejam brasileiros ou estrangeiros—, bem como de si próprio a partir de determinado ponto de sua carreira. Este questionamento subjaz ao livro de Lúcia Granja, que situa na intensa atuação jornalística de Machado de Assis ao longo da vida sua hipótese de leitura quanto à originalidade do autor.

Furtado, Gustavo Procopio. Documentary Filmmaking in Contemporary Brazil: Cinematic Archives of the Present. Oxford UP, 2019

Andrew C. Rajca — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:06:26 -0700

In Documentary Filmmaking in Contemporary Brazil: Cinematic Archives of the Present, film and media studies scholar Gustavo Procopio Furtado makes an impressive contribution to the study of documentary films in Brazil. Consisting of three interrelated sections with two chapters each, the book engages with the concepts of documentary and archive from a variety of perspectives—combining socio-political and theoretical discussion with close analysis of a well-chosen selection of contemporary documentaries.

Tavares, Maria. No Country for Nonconforming Women: Feminine Conceptions of Lusophone Africa. Legenda, 2018

Sandra I. Sousa — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 16:06:27 -0700

Maria Tavares's first monograph poses an immediate question: Are nonconforming women dispossessed from a country, any country? The provocative title sets in motion a study based on the comparative analysis of three female authors from Lusophone Africa, namely Dina Salústio from Cape Verde, Paulina Chiziane from Mozambique, and the Angolan Rosária da Silva. Tavares takes as her point of departure the fact that, despite their differences, all three were the first female writers to publish in the context of their respective independent nations.