Etnográfica, vol. 19 (2) - OpenEdition Journals

EtnográficaRevista do Centro em Rede de Investigação emAntropologia

vol. 19 (2) | 2015Inclui dossiê "Masculinities in times of uncertaintyand change"

Edição electrónicaURL: http://journals.openedition.org/etnografica/3981DOI: 10.4000/etnografica.3981ISSN: 2182-2891

EditoraCentro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia

Edição impressaData de publição: 1 junho 2015ISSN: 0873-6561

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SUMÁRIO

Artigos

“These days, it’s hell to have boys in France!”: emotion management in a French adolescentcenterIsabelle Coutant e Jean-Sébastien Eideliman

Prazeres perigosos: o contrato e a erotização de corpos em cenários sadomasoquistasMaria Filomena Gregori

Das nomeações às representações: os palavrões numa interpretação inspirada por H.LefebvreJosé Machado Pais

Dossiê: "Masculinities in times of uncertainty and change"

Masculinities in times of uncertainty and change: introductionAdriana Piscitelli e Valerio Simoni

Porous masculinities: agential political bodies among male Hamas youthMaria Frederika Malmström

The Pentecostal reworking of male identities in Brussels: producing moral masculinitiesMaïté Maskens

Masculinity in crisis: effeminate men, loss of manhood, and the nation-state in postsocialistChinaTiantian Zheng

Negotiating desirability and material resources: changing expectations on men in post-Soviet HavanaHeidi Härkönen

Breadwinners, sex machines and romantic lovers: entangling masculinities, moralities, andpragmatic concerns in touristic CubaValerio Simoni

Etnográfica, vol. 19 (2) | 2015

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Artigos


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“These days, it’s hell to have boys inFrance!”: emotion management in aFrench adolescent center“Hoje é um inferno ter rapazes em França!”: gestão da emoção num centrofrancês para adolescentes

Isabelle Coutant and Jean-Sébastien Eideliman

Introduction

1 The 2005 riots in France drew worldwide media attention and provoked a wide range ofdiscourse.1 Sparked by the deaths of two teenage boys who took refuge from the policeinside an electrical transformer, the riots were a link in the chain of recurring urbanviolence in the peripheries of large cities since the early 1990s but were more strikingin their scale, both geographically in how they spread across the country, andtemporally in terms of how long they lasted. Although the rioters were not all ofimmigrant descent, cartography of the riots shows that they occurred inneighborhoods sheltering the most recent waves of migrants, where large families ofsub-Saharan African origin were over-represented (Lagrange and Oberti 2006). InFrance as elsewhere, commentators blamed the failure of the French model ofintegration, accused of being rigidly stuck on a republican conception of the nationthat, by denying differences, hid discrimination (Jobard and Névanen 2009). Someobservers noted that there was relatively little vandalism and that, with the exceptionof burned cars, rioters targeted symbols of the State in all its forms – in addition tolocal National Police headquarters, rioters damaged schools, municipal gyms, andlibraries (Lagrange and Oberti 2006) – as if the youth engaged in these events hadsimultaneously wanted to express their anger at being the target of incessant policecontrols as well as the educational system’s unkept promise of integration.

2 And so, like in the late 19th century, the “social question” returns to prominence,renewing Durkheimian concerns for the quality of social relations and the risks of


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dissociating populations whose oppositions seem increasingly irreducible: poor andrich, young and old, Catholic and Muslim, French and foreigner. One of the specialfeatures of this new social question is that it specifically concerns youth from working-class neighborhoods peripheral to city centers (the banlieues). The most visible reactioncame from the legal front, with increasing criminalization of juvenile delinquency(Bailleau 2009), but in social and educational institutions the issue takes other forms.Fears that troubled teens might become violent prompted incentives for openinglistening spaces. Specifically moral issues (the unacceptability of teen suicide) thus gotblended with more specifically political issues (the management of public order), whichrelate back to socially differentiated populations: behavioral problems (always thoughtto lead to delinquency) for the most part affect lower-income boys, while suicideattempts are mostly made by girls from a range of social backgrounds. The divisionbetween victims and perpetrators that has been promoted by the repressive policies ofthe last decade has allowed for the surreptitious reintroduction of distinctions ofgender and class, with boys from the banlieues increasingly being cast in the role ofperpetrator (Coutant and Eideliman 2013).

3 The psychiatric sector has seen some particular developments that provide goodexamples of the ambivalent qualities of policies trying to combine benevolent listeningwith social control. As so many have shown (notably Foucault 2006 [1961], and Barrett1996), contemporary psychiatry as a site of work on individual normality is in a state ofmajor and uncertain upheaval, its range of application being broadened as its expertiseis diluted when it fades into a grey area shared with other professions on the edges ofthe medical and social fields (Ehrenberg and Lovell 2001). Absorbed into the new fieldof mental health, psychiatry saw its patients transformed into “clients” and itsobjectives go from healing mental illnesses to the improvement of nearly everyone’spsychic well-being. Hereafter integrated into a great variety of institutions, psychiatryis present, for example, in the new adolescent centers (Maisons des adolescents) that wechose for our research. These are public institutions created in the early 2000s at theintersection of social work and psychiatry. Between January 2010 and March 2011 weconducted observations of counseling sessions and team meetings twice a week andinterviewed professionals, adolescent clients, and members of their families allassociated with one adolescent center, located in an underprivileged town inmetropolitan Paris. Given its geographical location, the center we studied servespredominantly working-class families, most of them immigrants.

4 A significant portion of the work done in this center consisted of making adolescents,and even more so parents, acknowledge affects (anger, sadness, shame…). Manyinstitutions have seized upon the notion that speech heals and self-knowledgeemancipates, making it common ground and the basis for how they intervene. In thestudied adolescent center, professionals find this “pedagogy of reflexivity” (Coutant2012) especially useful because their young clients tend to accumulate attributesdistinctive to dominated categories of people (their young age, working-classbackgrounds, and immigrant backgrounds), making them less predisposed to takethemselves this reflexive approach to their difficulties, let alone their emotions. Thelast of these attributes is given particular attention because the center relies heavily onthe ethno-psychiatric approach that holds that migration produces trauma by causingruptures in familial transmissions that should be put into words.


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5 Psychologists (Lewis 1971) and sociologists (Scheff 2000) have been interested in theacknowledgement of emotions, especially its beneficial effects for the individual andsociety at large. We propose building on and enhancing their work by showing howthese effects vary and take on different meanings depending on the social processesaround them. We hypothesize that patients’ characteristics (gender, social background,social trajectories, and migratory paths) have a significant influence on their reactionsto the injunction to express their emotions.

6 We will start by describing the workings of the studied organization, which is facedwith situations where social and psychic difficulties are often intimately intertwined.Certain social and migratory trajectories, which we will explore more deeply in thefollowing section, produce particular sentiments of shame and humiliation themselves.In conclusion, we will see that the handling of these situations leads to differingconsequences depending on the gender and life course of the adolescents coming to thecenter.

An institution under tension

7 Formed in response to new injunctions for professionals to work in networks andprovide a place for expressing individual suffering, adolescent centers appear to beecho chambers of problems encountered by the other institutions (like schools andchild protection organizations) that turn to them in desperation. Their objectives are toguide and comfort the adolescents they take in, as well as to reassure and support otherinstitutions struggling with difficult or distressed adolescents. Like the mental healthsector as a whole, adolescent-center professionals are increasingly faced withsituations where social and psychic problems overlap, to the point of having difficultybuilding therapeutic alliances based on anything other than a request for socialassistance.

Missions that are difficult to reconcile

8 The youth center we studied, headed by a psychiatrist, was created in the early 2000sand served young people aged 12 to 21. It was intended for adolescents “withpsychological or psychiatric problems, or who are at risk,” excluding acute crises orpsychiatric emergencies. A variety of “pathologies” are listed in the intern handbook:attempted suicide, depression, speech disorders, eating disorders, nervous disorders,school phobias, family crisis situations, difficulties related to immigration status,dropping out of school, drug addiction. The center begins counseling with some initialinterviews (three on average) during which a team (often comprised of a psychologistor psychiatrist and a social worker) assesses the situation. More detailed follow-up maythen be offered – individual counseling, family counseling, workshops, relaxation – in adynamic favoring a psychoanalytic and / or cross-cultural psychiatric approach in thesignificant number of cases where clients come from immigrant families.

9 The youth center professionals are charged with untangling complex situations inwhich family conflict, social (and sometimes legal) instability, cultural distance, andacademic underachievement may all blend together. A social worker we met felt that itis often adolescents’ living conditions that make them “go nuts.” She spoke of families“torn apart by insecurity.” According to INSEE data, over 50% of housing is public


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housing in the city where we conducted our study. In 1999, 33% of its population camefrom countries other than France, 30% had not graduated from high school, 22% livedin single-parent families, and 38% were under the age of 25. According to income taxrecords, in 2004, half of the city’s households did not earn enough to be subject totaxation. In 2006, the unemployment rate hovered around 20%.

10 Referrals often come from other institutions under pressure, usually the school systemand, to a lesser extent, child welfare. Even when teenagers or parents contact thecenter themselves, it is frequently because they had been referred by someone fromone of these institutions. Professionals at the center sometimes felt that adolescentsmainly suffered from institutional mistreatment, be it the “failure” of social andeducational services or the “brutality” of the school system. The psychiatrist in chargeof the facility we studied claimed to be mindful of the risk that schools might exploithis service, which would only reinforce the stigma that the child already carries. As anAlgerian immigrant who had fled the violence in his country in the 1990s anddescended from marabouts in a small Kabyle village, he was trained in cross-culturalpsychiatry and was particularly attuned to the backgrounds and situations ofimmigrant families. He believed that the whole point of the institution was,paradoxically, to “de-medicalize this period of life.” To avoid further stigmatizingadolescents, he saw his work as partly resisting other institutions’ demands wheneverthey seemed inappropriate.

11 Consequently, comforting both adolescents and the institutions that sent them to thecenter could sometimes prove contradictory, because the center’s professionals feelthat responding to institutional demands may sometimes go counter to pursuingadolescents’ improved well-being. A surprisingly easy research process

12 After some initial reservations, our proposal to conduct research in the adolescentcenter was ultimately well received. We were not only able to conduct observation andinterviews as we intended, we were even partially integrated into the care team duringfamily counseling. We will detail the material that these research methods allowed usto collect, but first of all we wish to discuss the relative ease with which we were able tooperate and what we might learn from it.

13 There are three main arguments that might explain our being so well accepted by thecenter. The first is its wide multi-disciplinary mix (social workers, psychologists,nurses, pediatricians, and psychiatrists collaborate on a daily basis) and thepredominance of psychoanalytic and ethno-psychiatric theoretical approaches. Avariety of professionals thus seemed to forget their particular professionalspecialization regularly, positioning themselves on psychotherapeutic analysis. Thepresence of sociologists is not incongruous in such a setting, and given the considerableconnections between the social sciences and ethno-psychiatry we were expected tocontribute to group discussions. Secondly, the center’s doctors were also university-affiliated researchers, and as such saw themselves as colleagues comprehensive of theconstraints of conducting research and even eager for scientific discussion with us.Lastly, this center was in a particular moment in its history, going through aninstitutional crisis after a period being a pioneer in its domain. In the years leading upto our study it had become overshadowed by the adolescent center of Paris, which had


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become much more prestigious and drew considerable media coverage and for whichthis center’s previous director had left shortly before we began our study. Our studycould certainly have been perceived as a threat during difficult times, but it seemsinstead to have been seen as a way to give new luster and visibility to the work carriedout there.

14 This ready access to our research site seems revealing of both developments in themental health field and the particular position held by institutions such as theadolescent center we studied. Sociologists may be seen as experts and allies in suchinstitutions, which are dominated within their field both because they are situated inmarginal geographical and social zones and because they treat difficulties that arechallenging to classify in psychiatric nosology, since they combine psychological andsocial problems. Sociologists are allies because they reveal the mechanisms ofdomination to which these institutions’ professionals are victim (Bourdieu et al. 1999[1993]) and because they seem to have the potential to support their legitimacy andraise recognition with their description of professional practices. This alliance between“psych” professionals and representatives of the social sciences is likely facilitated bythe recent development of the field of mental health, which altered the balancebetween the disciplines of reference (Elias 1969). The declining influence ofpsychoanalysis and some psychodynamic approaches in favor of cognitive andbiological sciences may lead the former to see the social sciences as allies that, likethem, find the environment and life histories determinant in behaviors and feelings.

15 Over the course of the study, we followed the experience of a selection of families fromthe consulting room to their homes, via the offices of implicated professionals, theadolescents’ secondary schools, and other institutions involved in keeping track oftheir situations. This allows us to back up this article’s analysis with some detailed casestudies, which are obviously only a small part of the findings used in the overallanalysis. Our material consists of observations of approximately forty familycounseling sessions, twenty-odd team meetings and as many interviews withadolescents and / or their families conducted outside the centre (usually at their home),besides twenty interviews with various professionals in contact with the adolescentswe met. This data was supplemented by the study of medical files.

16 This research protocol raises some important deontological issues. Naturally werequested and received numerous authorizations (from the people we met, theinstitutions we visited, and ethics committees internal to the world of research), but wealso gave considerable thought, jointly with the person in charge of the adolescentcenter, to how we might best proceed to minimally disrupt therapeutic relationships.We were thus unable to attend individual counseling sessions, and were limited tofamily counseling where we joined the panel of co-therapists greeting families. It wasagreed that we could not be pure observers, because families might be unsettled by thepresence of people who never speak or participate, and in fact we had little troublecontributing during sessions because discussions were conducted in a way notdissimilar from sociological interviews: the adolescent’s parents were asked to describetheir life-courses and how their relationship with their child had developed throughthe years. These transcultural family counseling sessions are essentially designed to getthe adolescent to hear their parents’ migration story from their own mouths, tointroduce continuity into the adolescent’s own history, and to shed light on grey areas.We will now use an observed session to illustrate how center professionals work,


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especially how they give such importance to the expression and acknowledgement ofemotions, which might seem overwhelmed by materially difficult living conditions. Foraging for emotions

17 Mrs. Orélien 2 comes to her family’s first transcultural counseling session with two ofher daughters, Gladys, born in 1990, and Elaine, born in 1993 (her four other childrenlive in the United States and Haiti). Guided by the psychiatrist’s questions, she tells thestory of their illegal migration from Haiti (where she had been a vendor) to France in2006. After her husband abandoned her, worried about her daughters’ health, she hadseized an opportunity to go to France on a short-stay visa. She had Elaine come over assoon as possible, paying 6,000 euros to a man who passed her off as one of his owndaughters, two years younger; an acquaintance helped her bring Gladys over with asimilar strategy, making her out to be four years younger. Lodged in insecureconditions with the people that had helped them migrate, educated under assumedidentities and ages, both girls develop problems that end up attracting the attention ofschool employees: Gladys falls into depression, and Elaine threatens suicide.

18 At the debriefing following their first session, the therapist is uncomfortable. Thesocio-economic problems, he believes, are too significant for a real “therapeuticalliance” to be put in place. Mrs. Orélien incessantly asks them to help with theirmaterial situation. The therapist interprets the invoked psychological problems moreas the somatization of their socio-economic insecurity than as genuine psychicdisturbances that a psychotherapist could treat. The second session provides anotheropportunity to further explore the women’s material and social problems, and as usualthe therapist cites the affects he observes, evoking the mother’s sadness, but also hercourage. In reaction, instead of replying Mrs. Orélien intones a Haitian resistance song,then explains its meaning to the transfixed team. After the session, the psychiatristbrings up this episode with a smile, concluding, visibly comforted, “It works well, in theend!” To take up the terminology he used in our first interview with him, “foraging”finally allowed them to get to emotions: “In all psychotherapy, obviously the basic, ifnot indispensible, ferment, the essential, it’s emotions. When there’s no access to them,you can’t do much, but it’s also case-by-case. Yes, it’s our fuel, but you have to find it.Sometimes, even when you’re trying to forage for a long time, and you’re trying to gofurther, it doesn’t work, you don’t feel anything at all.” Indeed Mrs. Orélien’s song hasthe ring of a sort of therapeutic ideal: the transfigured expression, charged with affects,of suffering and will.

19 Adolescent centers are thus institutions in a difficult position, torn between a missionof social control and a therapeutic ideal, itself often inspired by psychoanalysis, that isdifficult to implement given the limited time and means at their disposal. When, on topof that, they are faced with publics combining psychic and social problems, their taskonly becomes more arduous.

Trajectories of shame

20 Among the emotions family counseling “works on,” shame holds a significant place. Anumber of factors may provoke this particular feeling, which some consider to be themost social of emotions (Scheff 2000). Over the course of our study, it seemed to us that


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the handling of shame was particularly revealing of the entanglement between psychicand social processes that the adolescent center professionals tried to separate fromeach other as much as possible.

Humiliated parents

21 During a transcultural counseling session, Hamidou’s father tells of the humiliation hefelt when he was called to the middle school because of his 12-year-old son’s “behaviorproblems.” He had the impression of finding himself in “court,” and he felt demeaned:“they were spitting on me,” “I was on the ground,” he says. The terms “humiliated,”“humiliation,” and “honor” appear again and again in this session: “It’s as if I was goodfor nothing.” The family has lived in a public housing project for a short time and thefather dreads his children “falling in with the wrong crowd.” He is also worried aboutjuvenile norms for relations between the sexes: “I’d rather die than see my son caughtup in some sex situation, it’s dishonorable.” He is quite fearful his son will “lose hishonor.” He straight out admits to the center’s professionals that he had envisagedsending his son to Guinea to protect him from a potential fall into delinquency. Then,seizing the opportunity all the questions provide, he comes back to his life story,recounting that he had been educated up through high school in his country. He saidthat he would have liked to have continued his studies if he hadn’t been hindered bythe need to help out with his father’s business. He confides all the hopes placed on hisonly son, who disappoints him terribly, while his six daughters cause no problems anddo well in school.

22 Although immigrant parents express their distress in terms of their children, they mayalso feel humiliated by French institutions due to some aspects of their children’sbehavior, as Hamidou’s father describes. Immigrant fathers base the legitimacy of theirpresence in France on work and submission to the norms of the host society. They donot necessarily see themselves in these “children of France,” “these children who don’tcarry on the parents” (Sayad 1979a, 1979b), because of the children’s acculturation intotheir host society. This explains the nagging anguish when they find themselves unableto give credible meaning to their immigration. This may happen after a work-relatedaccident, for example: French professionals of the psyche have long used the category “sinistrose” to designate the psychic disturbance prompted by these situations of forcedinactivity (Sayad 2004), referring to a fall into abject hopelessness. One mighthypothesize that for immigrant parents, this might also occur when a child’s devianceat least partially cancels out the family’s plans for ascension that motivated itsmigration, all the more so as its reputation in its community is quickly tarnished by achild’s deviance. Families usually have high expectations for their children’s success inFrance. If in theory educational democratization offers identical prospects for allstudents, in practice, socio-cultural handicaps weigh on individual fates. Boys inparticular struggle to satisfy family expectations, and those who are socialized in streetculture deal with institutions other than schools: the police, the justice system, socialwork (Fassin et al. 2013). But these parents fear that in using their traditional child-rearing methods, which include physical violence, they will be pulled into the Frenchjustice system, which promotes other norms of childhood protection. Some fathersexpress their impotence and threaten to return children to the family’s country oforigin as the only solution (Timera 2002). As in the United States (Kane 2011) and other


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western European countries (Bledsoe and Sow 2011), parents see sending boys back“home” as an alternative to legal detention. “Illegitimate” children

23 Shame is found elsewhere on the children’s side of the equation. When social mobilityleads to an imbalanced habitus, it may engender a feeling of shame arising from theimpression of a gap between real and virtual identities (Goffman 1963). This may be thecase in paths of social ascension with or without migration. Annie Ernaux, a Frenchwriter, devoted one of her books to shame: from a working class background, sheevokes her shame at school when in contact with girls from bourgeois milieus (Ernaux1998 [1997]). She says that her feelings of illegitimacy stemmed from her unfamiliaritywith the legitimate culture so valued by the educational institution, and also describesher disgust for certain aspects of the social milieu she came from and the distance thatgradually separated her from her parents. In a chapter of The Weight of the World, PierreBourdieu (1999 [1993]) devoted a short text to these ambivalences that children of theworking classes in social ascension may feel: guilty of disappointment if they fail, guiltyof treason if they succeed. It is in this sense that Bourdieu speaks of “contradictions ofinheritance,” an expression giving title to an article referring to the idea of the “doublebind”: “Do better than me, but stay like me.” This injunction is perhaps even morepointed for children of immigrant backgrounds, especially in post-colonial societies(Probyn 2004). How to reconcile familial attachment and respect for a culture of originwith a juvenile socialization that quite often transmits other norms that may come intoconflict with those of the parents? Parental respect and attachment do not preventyoung people from seeing their parents as “backward,” “out of date,” “like back in thevillage,” whether in juvenile in-group contexts or the intimacy of a therapeutic sessionor interview with counselors or sociologists.

24 When the children do well in school, they grow even farther from their parents andmay find themselves in awkward situations that are conducive to shame. Jennifer, theyoungest in a family of five children (all born in Kabylia except for herself, born inFrance) came to the adolescent center following anxiety crises and suicide attempts.The psychiatrists also mention a “split” functioning in her file, something she seems topick up on when she speaks of herself. Jennifer is a very good student. She hopes topursue higher studies in law, but is as anxious about encountering Parisian students asshe is about leaving her mother alone, since her parents live essentially as a separatedcouple. She is aware of the distance separating her from legitimate culture on one sideand her family on the other, but she does not talk about her gnawing doubts with hersiblings because “they don’t understand.” She feels different. Not only is she the onlyone born in France, she is the only one to have obtained the baccalaureat, anexamination-based degree that caps the end of secondary studies and opens the way tohigher education. Light-skinned and very western in appearance, she contrastsphysically with her mother, who wears traditional clothing and a headscarf, and speaksin Kabyle. Over the course of her counseling, it seems that her troubles are notunrelated to her ascendant trajectory and the geographical and symbolic rupture thatit portends.

25 Conversely, children who disappoint parental expectations and are not up to the rolecast for them in the family’s plans may also feel ashamed, but for the opposite reasons:


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they ought to be more than they really are, and their self-image does not match theirparents’ perceptions or aspirations. The father of Kevin, who is from the ComorosIslands, confides in the adolescent center professionals: “My parents work in sugarcane. Me, I want Kevin to climb to a certain level. If he doesn’t take the right path, Ishould set him straight.” These children are often anguished when the school systemorients them toward paths of study they feel are degrading, even when their parents,unfamiliar with the complexity of the French educational system, do not understandthe significance. This most often means being oriented toward a vocational high schoolinstead of an academically oriented one or having a vocational option imposed withoutbeing given the choice, in an institutional rationale of distribution based on thenumber of places available in various sections. Our observations show that sometimessuch orientational problems alone can bring people to the adolescent center. In thecase of an adolescent named Sarah, her anxiety crises worsened when she was orientedinto a special class for challenged students, which she experienced as demeaning buther parents accepted without understanding what was at stake. She expressed herdistress in multicultural counseling, her shame of being mixed up with handicappedyouths and her anger at her father who, although he had high hopes for her, approvedthe educational team’s proposed orientation. In another case, an adolescent boy,initially in counseling because of parental concern about his video-game addiction,ended up admitting that he had been demotivated by his orientation toward avocational high school when he had wanted to attend a general high school (to whichhe would eventually be reoriented).

26 Shame is thus a particularly complex emotion that easily combines social and psychicdimensions. Adolescent center professionals’ work partly consists of emphasizing thepsychic dimension with adolescents and their families, while minimizing the role ofsocial causes, over which they also have less power.

Healing through acknowledgement

27 Generally speaking, beyond the diversity of cases, the work conducted in adolescentcenters may be analyzed both as an activity of mediation (between parents andchildren, between families and institutions in charge of youth) and one of affect andemotion management (Martin 2000). It is a matter of doing “emotion work” withfamilies (Hochschild 1979). So what are the principles and consequences of this workwith socially heterogeneous populations?

Acknowledging shame

28 In the transcultural counseling we attended (and participated in), the moral worklargely takes place by legitimating the expressed emotions and naming presumedemotions. On these occasions, the therapist regularly reminds those present that“anything can be said” in such a setting: “You can say what you want here,” “it’s veryimportant that you get things out, this is the place for these things to happen,” “this isthe place to dump things that hurt,” and so on. Over the course of the counseling,alongside references and / or expressions of shame, therapists verbalize the underlyinganger they suppose plagues at least the fathers. They are encouraged to acknowledge itin order to escape it: “It’s like a seed, anger – when you bury it…”; “You know that


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anger can hurt the people around you?”; “What can be done to get rid of all thisanger?”

29 The search for the acknowledgement of affects in general, and shame in particular, hasits full place in classic psychotherapeutic practice, especially in the psychoanalyticvein, although the ethno-psychiatric setting gives it a specific connotation here.Psychoanalysts such as Helen Lewis (1971) think it is essential to acknowledge shame sothat it does not turn into frustration, humiliation, or uncontrollable anger. Lewisbelieves that recognizing shame puts a virtuous cycle into motion in counseling; as atherapist she herself believes she under-estimated the importance of these issues for along time before becoming aware of this term’s omnipresence while analyzing recordedinterviews. Psychoanalysts aren’t the only ones to formulate such hypotheses:sociologists (Ryan 1993) and anthropologists have developed very similar theories;Thomas Scheff (2000) is notable among them, basing himself heavily on Lewis’s work tohighlight the importance of the acknowledgement of shame in his own work. Startingfrom an impressive review of the sociological literature, citations spanning GeorgSimmel, Norbert Elias, Richard Sennet and Erving Goffman, he adds the idea that thenon-acknowledgement of shame comes to directly weaken social bonds to which hebelieves it is intimately linked. He consequently believes that non-acknowledgedsentiments of shame bring about violence, going so far as to account for Franco-German relations from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries in such terms, whose dramaticopposition represented a sort of paroxysm in the destruction of social bonds. He thenpleas for acknowledgement of the humiliations that were exercised and suffered, at theindividual as well as State levels.

30 Without wishing to challenge these mechanisms’ psychological and anthropologicalsignificance, from a purely sociological perspective we think it worthwhile to resituatethese theories back into the context that produces them: societies where responsibility,autonomy, and reflexivity have become cardinal values by which we judge adultindividuals. In this context, requiring the acknowledgment of emotions also functionsas an injunction to reflexivity to which some individuals can adapt much better thanothers, depending on whether their socialization prepared them for such reflexivecontemplation of their practices and feelings. Acknowledging shame, or arousing it?

31 The professionals’ challenge is to get families to verbalize their affects, but withoutshaming them by their intrusion. Even if the professionals have the deeply held intentof not judging parents, one of the process’s objectives is to lighten the stigma borne bythe child by shifting the weight of the intervention onto the parents, who are in a waysummoned to explain themselves, or at least to talk about themselves in front of theirchildren. Although the shame parents sometimes feel when in contact with Frenchinstitutions (school, courts, police, social work) may be acknowledged in counseling,the counseling process may in turn produce other uncomfortable feelings that can feedinto a sentiment of humiliation. Case in point, Mme Orelien’s youngest daughter Elaine,whose situation we presented earlier, stopped coming to counseling because it was tooupsetting to lay out family problems in front of strangers, “as if she were ashamed tohear talk about her father, our worries, etc.,” as her mother put it in an interview.Kevin’s mother, an immigrant from the Comoros, was unsettled by family counseling:


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she found herself face to face with her ex-husband, who she had left several yearsearlier. Before being able to give her point of view (about her arranged marriage andher oppression by her in-laws), she had to listen to Kevin’s father’s complaints andaccusations in front of a panel of a dozen people, which ultimately caused her towithhold most of her version of the facts. The processes itself is, if not humiliating, atleast quite intimidating.

32 Hamidou’s parents and Kevin’s mother were not truly ashamed during their visits tothe center, but they did not feel entirely cleansed of the everyday humiliations theysuffer through the school and their insecure living conditions, either. This indicatesthat shame may touch on different issues for participants on either side of counseling.At the individual level (generally the focus of therapists’ attention), shame is theopposite of pride or self-confidence, of psychic well-being. On a collective level, whereit approaches humiliation, it is more in opposition to honor, a structuring category inmany Mediterranean societies (Herzfeld 1980; Peristiany 1965), especially in theworking classes. Seeking to revive an honor thought besmirched, the adolescent centerresponds with a reflexive pedagogy aiming to bring out feelings of shame or anger. Inthis space between shame and humiliation, honor and self-acceptance, tensions andincomprehension may emerge, making the emotional work particularly difficult. Different effects depending on gender and trajectory

33 Overall, the institution indeed seems to have helped the adolescents develop a highersense of worth, for their families and in their own eyes. Girls who are doing well inschool and have plans for social ascension may invest themselves even more in theplace, using it simultaneously as a pretext for this ambition, as a tool to distancethemselves from the family, and as a means to acquire self-management skills. Jenniferfollows the counseling offered at by the adolescent center because she finds it to be aspace “for herself,” and she manifests an interpersonal relational style and a particularrelationship to language coming from the higher classes to which she aspires. Theinstitution in a way offers her the opportunity of doing self-transformation work(Darmon 2009) and allows her to express her emotions at this time of her life. In thesecases, relations with social work and psyche professionals contribute to the acquisitionof emotional skills, a communicational capital (Schwartz 1998). Gladys, Elaine’s sister,took up the counseling process in the same perspective: she would like to become apsychologist. Before coming to the adolescent center, she was suffering from both adownward scholastic slide related to her false identity and from another form of shamebecause her professional goals didn’t match the hopes of her mother, who associatesseeing psychologists with insanity. At the time we met, Gladys seemed to have found acompromise by preparing herself for the nursing school entrance exam while takingadvantage of her individual counseling at the adolescent center to better understandand assume her “difference” and to acculturate herself to the professional culture thatattracts her (Coutant and Eideliman 2013).

34 To the contrary, some boys are reticent to participate and may even reject theadolescent center. When we telephoned an adolescent named Karim to ask if he wouldbe willing to meet with us for a sociological interview following the conclusion of hiscounseling, he replied coldly: “No, I’m not interested, I’m not crazy.” Another boy,Gonzalez, refuses to participate in transcultural counseling. In one meeting he loses his


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temper when the therapist asks his mother about her dreams, denouncing it as anintrusion and an additional form of humiliation that goes against formally declaredintentions. He rises roughly and storms out, slamming the door and leaving theprofessionals ill at ease. The psychiatrist asks whether the boy had been forewarned ofthe collective format of the counseling, aware of the potential violence such aprocedure might have for someone taken unawares.

35 Girls’ and boys’ differing attitudes toward the program give particular resonance to aheartfelt exclamation Hamidou’s father’s made during an interview at their home:“These days, at the dawn of the millennium, it’s hell to have boys in France!” The massof data attesting to the existence of masculine domination (Bourdieu 2002 [1998])seems to prove him wrong. Yet when it comes to scholastic matters, for the last 30years girls have been on par with or even surpassed boys: they pursue educationfurther, even if the most valued programs are still overall dominated by boys (Baudelotand Establet 1992). In general, a number of structural social transformations givingincreasing weight to cultural capital over economic capital in the construction of socialtrajectories have contributed to a new appreciation for attitudes that might bequalified as feminine, in that they are more traditionally associated with women thanmen due to socialization: being a good listener, having relational sense, being able toexpress one’s emotions. From this point of view, might not the policies informing theadolescent center’s actions – talking about oneself, bringing up the past, analyzingrelationships with parents – show over-sensitivity or even weakness? Isn’t it better to“suck it up and deal,” to use a very common masculine expression, and “forge ahead?”Policies of listening – which are moreover deployed in institutions often labeled“homes” (maisons, as in these Maisons des adolescents) in reference to the femininedomain par excellence, the domestic sphere – play on aptitudes that, although notreserved for a particular population category, are more frequently developed andassumed by women, and those of the middle and upper classes in particular. Theemotional work deployed in State-supported institutions sketches out an individualitythat contrasts sharply with the models that guide the socialization of boys in working-class milieus.

Conclusion

36 How do contemporary policies of the intimate (Berrebi-Hoffmann 2009), especiallythose concerning the individual mastery of emotions, weigh on individuals today?From a Foucauldian perspective, one could point to new forms of social control comingfrom institutions at the crossroads of psychic and social works. From a Marxistperspective, one might denounce the hypocrisy of mechanisms that re-enforce theneoliberal order by legitimating it (Sundar 2004). Starting from specific situations andhow they were handled in an adolescent center located in a disadvantaged suburb ofParis, we wanted to take the time to focus on what these admittedly ambivalentmechanisms reveal and what influence they might have on the construction ofindividuality in western societies today. The management of emotions proved to be aprecious vantage point for analyzing the transformation of power over individuals.Such power is ambiguous and complex because, although it doesn’t necessarily workagainst individuals, it can still weigh on them, sometimes with their consent or even


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investment, with different consequences depending on the individual, one’scharacteristics, and the configurations one is embedded in.

37 Even more than weakness in the social bond, the expressions of shame we recountedfrom the adolescent center seem to us to be fundamentally linked to a mismatchbetween virtual and real social identities, themselves caught up in the interplaybetween trajectories and anticipation, which leads to thinking about identities in acollective, especially familial, dimension. Adolescent centers, like so many otherinstitutions based on a pedagogy of reflexivity, try to get clients to admit theiremotions to release tensions and help individuals respond to the injunction to “bethemselves”: the soul-searching and dredging up of the past should allow people toproject themselves more easily into the future and transition from adolescence toadulthood successfully. Yet the consequences of this work are mixed because,depending on their trajectories, individuals may be able to follow these injunctionswith ease, or they may struggle to do so. The most resistant are boys, with the greatestsocial and cultural distance from the dominant (which in this setting are incarnated bypsychiatrists, among others). It must be said that these policies are imbued with morefeminine and intellectual values than the repression-based policies they compensatefor or complement.

38 These results allow us to understand the difficulties some families, especiallyimmigrants and those living in difficult socio-economic conditions, face in satisfactorilyraising their children (especially boys) to an adulthood of autonomy, responsibility,and social recognition. Their child-rearing norms put into question, challenged by thegap between their social ambitions and their living conditions, they are also tested ininstitutions that have a tendency to psychologize and culturalize their difficulties byrapidly removing social determinants from the discussion. This state of affairs certainlyshows the power of the culturalist paradigm, but it is also the product of societieswhere economic difficulties curb structural actions addressing social inequalities.Through their work on emotions, adolescent centers do provide non-negligible supportfor ascendant trajectories, but doubts about their effectiveness in preventing the newuprising against public and moral order called for by many heavily dominated marginalgroups are justified unless people are given the material support needed to set themfree.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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COUTANT, Isabelle, 2012, Troubles en psychiatrie: Enquête dans une unité pour adolescents. Paris, LaDispute.

COUTANT, Isabelle, and Jean-Sébastien EIDELIMAN, 2013, “The moral economy of contemporaryworking-class adolescence: managing symbolic capital in a French public ‘Adolescent Centre’”, British Journal of Sociology, 64 (2): 248-266.

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FASSIN, Didier, et al., 2013, Juger, réprimer, accompagner: Essai sur la morale de l’Etat. Paris, Editionsdu Seuil.

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GOFFMAN, Erving, 1963, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ,Prentice-Hall.

HERZFELD, Michael, 1980, “Honour and shame: problems in the comparative analysis of moralsystems”, Man, 15 (2): 339-351.

HOCHSCHILD, Arlie Russell, 1979, “Emotion work, feeling rules and social structure”, AmericanJournal of Sociology, 85 (3): 551-575.

JOBARD, Fabien, and Sophie NEVANEN, 2009, “Colour-tainted sentencing? Racial discriminationin court sentences concerning offences committed against police officers (1965-2005)”, RevueFrançaise de Sociologie, 50: 243-272.

KANE, Ousmane Oumar, 2011, The Homeland is the Arena: Religion, Transnationalism, and theIntegration of Senegalese Immigrants in America. New York, Oxford University Press.

LAGRANGE, Hugues, and Marco OBERTI (eds.), 2006, Emeutes urbaines et protestations: Unesingularité française. Paris, Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques.

LEWIS, Helen B., 1971, Shame and Guilt in Neurosis. New York, International Universities Press.

MARTIN, Daniel D., 2000, “Organizational approaches to shame: avowal, management, andcontestation”, The Sociological Quarterly, 41 (1): 125-150.

PERISTIANY, Jean G. (ed.), 1965, Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society. London,Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

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RYAN, Michael Timothy, 1993, “Shame and expressed emotion: a case study”, SociologicalPerspectives, 36 (2): 167-183.

SAYAD, Abdelmalek, 1979a, “Les enfants illégitimes (première partie)”, Actes de la Recherche enSciences Sociales, 25: 61-81.

SAYAD, Abdelmalek, 1979b, “Les enfants illégitimes (deuxième partie)”, Actes de la Recherche enSciences Sociales, 26: 117-132.

SAYAD, Abdelmalek, 2004, The Suffering of the Immigrant. Cambridge, Polity Press.

SCHEFF, Thomas J., 2000, “Shame and the social bond: a sociological theory”, Sociological Theory,18 (1): 84-99.

SCHWARTZ, Olivier, 1998, La notion de classes populaires. Saint Quentin-en-Yvelines, Université deVersailles, habilitation for research director, unpublished.

SUNDAR, Nandini, 2004, “Toward an anthropology of culpability”, American Ethnologist, 31 (2):145-163.

TIMERA, Mahamet, 2002, “Righteous or rebellious? Social trajectory of Sahelian youth in France”,in D. Bryceson and U. Vuorela (eds.), The Transnational Family, New European Frontiers and GlobalNetworks. Oxford and New York, Berg, 147-154.

NOTES1. This study was supported by Advanced Grant 230347 funded by the European Council. Thepaper was translated by Juliette Rogers, to whom we are deeply grateful.2. This and other proper names have been changed to help preserve anonymity.

ABSTRACTSHow do contemporary health policies, especially those concerning the mastery of emotions inthe psychiatric sector, weigh on individuals? Based on fieldwork in an Adolescent Center in adisadvantaged Parisian suburb from January 2010 to March 2011, this article analyses what theseinstitutions reveal of and contribute to the fabrication of individuality in western societies. Inthese institutions at the crossroads of psychiatry and social work, the management of emotionsappeared to be a useful tool for analyzing the transformation of power over individuals at thebottom of the social ladder, especially immigrants. Our analysis shows how the effects of thiswork are ambivalent, and vary according to gender and social trajectories.

Como pesam sobre os indivíduos as políticas de saúde, especialmente as relacionadas com odomínio das emoções no setor psiquiátrico? Com base em trabalho de campo realizado de janeirode 2010 a março de 2011 num centro para adolescentes de um bairro desfavorecido nos arredoresde Paris, o artigo analisa o modo como estas instituições revelam e contribuem para a construçãoda individualidade nas sociedades ocidentais. Nestas instituições, situadas na interseção dapsiquiatria e do serviço social, a gestão das emoções parecia ser um instrumento útil paraanalisar a transformação do poder sobre indivíduos nos escalões sociais mais baixos,


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especialmente os imigrantes. Esta análise mostra como os efeitos deste trabalho são ambivalentese variam segundo o género e as trajetórias sociais.

INDEX

Funder http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000781Palavras-chave: psiquiatria, género, imigração, emoções, vergonha, FrançaKeywords: psychiatry, gender, immigration, emotion work, shame, France

AUTHORS

ISABELLE COUTANT

CNRS, Iris, [email protected]

JEAN-SÉBASTIEN EIDELIMAN

University of Lille 3, CeRIES, [email protected]


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mailto:[email protected]


Prazeres perigosos: o contrato e aerotização de corpos em cenáriossadomasoquistasDangerous pleasures: the contract and the body erotization in sadomasochisticsceneries

Maria Filomena Gregori

1 Este artigo propõe um desafio: discutir as articulações entre prazer e perigo emalgumas manifestações do erotismo contemporâneo. O prazer está associado à sensaçãode bem-estar, ao deleite, e indica uma inclinação vital. O perigo sugere umacircunstância que prenuncia um mal a alguém ou a algo. Em vez de confrontar asatisfação ao risco como se fossem expressões excludentes, pretendo tratar dosprazeres perigosos presentes no mercado erótico.

2 A reflexão apresentada a seguir é parte dos resultados colhidos pelo esforço prolongadode pesquisa feita no Brasil sobre novas formas de erotismo, e nelas sobre a consolidaçãode um mercado erótico e de toda a cultura material associada a ele. Uma breve pesquisaem lojas eróticas nos Estados Unidos, em 2001, forneceu perguntas concretas para odesenvolvimento posterior das investigações no Brasil, mostrando a emergência nomercado erótico contemporâneo do que eu chamei de “erotismo politicamentecorreto”, ou seja, as fantasias, imagens e objetos que constituem parte da pornografiaatual valorizam a satisfação da autoestima pessoal, da saúde corporal e da capacidadedos indivíduos para realizar escolhas e estabelecer limites. Tal vertente do erotismo foicriada nos Estados Unidos, a partir dos anos 70 do século XX, por mulheres sensíveis aofeminismo que, dentre variadas iniciativas, atuaram no mercado com a abertura de sexshops como o Good Vibrations de São Francisco. A partir dos anos 90, as ideias eprodutos ligados a essas iniciativas passaram a ser difundidos no universo mais amplode produção, comercialização e consumo eróticos ao redor do mundo.1 As variadasexperiências eróticas contemporâneas mostram – seja nas modalidades de um mercadocada vez mais transnacional, seja nos usos que as pessoas fazem de objetos, técnicas efantasias – que as prescrições de gênero e sexualidade estão sujeitas a deslocamentos e


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ressignificações. Trata-se, inegavelmente, de uma dinâmica viva que supõe a criação ouinvenção de novas normas, bem como idiomas diversificados para velhas e persistentesrestrições. Prazer e perigo permanecem combinados nos erotismos, expressandoassimetrias de poder relacionadas não apenas ao gênero, mas à idade, à raça, etnia ounacionalidade e, também, aquelas que dizem respeito à posição de classe. Hierarquiaspermanecem marcadas pelos mesmos eixos que produzem a desigualdade social,econômica e política. Contudo, tais marcas de diferença são também empregadas demodo a tensionar o que é sancionado, provocar um arremedo, parodiar. O efeito maissignificativo de muitas das experiências investigadas foi o fato de elas submeterem asinscrições normativas à ambivalência. Inscrições fálicas são tornadas sex toys,ampliando o escopo de experimentações sociais e corporais.

3 Diante de novos limites da sexualidade, porém, restam algumas questões: e quando ostoys são chicotes, floggers, palmatórias e cordas? E quando a relação entre passivo eativo sexuais se dá entre pessoas que escolhem posições em um jogo de dominação ehumilhação? Qual lugar simbólico ocupa o mestre e seu submisso (ou escravo) numasociedade que reconhece os direitos sexuais?

4 As práticas sadomasoquistas (SM), sobretudo as que se desenvolvem em meio aomercado erótico contemporâneo, interessam particularmente ao desenvolvimentodessas reflexões. Âmbito estratégico para a investigação antropológica, as variadasexpressões SM introduziram uma retórica, técnicas e rituais sobre o lado “seguro,saudável e consensual” de práticas eróticas que lidam com o risco.

5 No início de minha pesquisa com os sex shops, ainda nos Estados Unidos, eu encontrei,nos catálogos e manuais sobre direitos sexuais e técnicas eróticas, material sobre SM.Ignorante e intrigada, a minha curiosidade foi atiçada ao notar a ênfase a respeitodessas práticas: “In fact, S/M has nothing to do with coercion, either sexual or nonsexual. The common denomination in all S/M play is not a violent exchange of pain buta consensual exchange of power” (Winks e Seamans 1997: 210).

6 Tal definição contesta as noções de senso comum sobre sadomasoquismo, inclusive aconceituação presente no dicionário, que define a prática como uma perversão deordem sexual ou, ainda, como algo que descreve uma dinâmica entre pessoasenvolvidas em comportamento coercitivo ou abusivo (Novo Dicionário Aurélio, ediçãorevista e ampliada, 1986). O contradiscurso fornecido acentua, ao contrário, que SM éum exercício erótico de poder e não um abuso físico ou emocional. Suas expressõesmais antigas podem ser encontradas desde o século XVIII, na Europa, mas ganham aconotação de minorias sexuais a partir dos anos 70 do século XX, nos Estados Unidos:nesse período, passam a ter visibilidade, no cenário político, grupos SM gays e lésbicos,paradoxalmente criados no mesmo momento em que apareceram alguns gruposfeministas contrários à pornografia e ao sadomasoquismo (como o Women AgainstPornography).2 Os estudos a respeito indicam não ser possível entender a retóricadesses grupos SM e suas propostas práticas sem levar em conta os contenciosospolíticos com os conservadores e com os radicais: de um lado, com o movimento emtorno da New Right, de outro, em relação de contraposição ao feminismo radical.3

7 Simultaneamente, é necessário considerar a influência que muitas práticas SMsofreram (tanto nas modalidades heterossexuais, como nas gays e lésbicas) do que abibliografia chama de leather culture. Associada por alguns aos veteranos de guerra daCoreia e, por outros, aos jovens rebeldes e aparentemente sem causa dos anos 50, aLeather Folk começou reunindo gente que gostava de andar de motocicleta, vestida


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com jaquetas e calças de couro e que se encontrava em poucos bares espalhados pelosEstados Unidos. Ao que indicam alguns de seus representantes, o que era umaexpressão localizada organizou um movimento de maior destaque, passando a integrarinteressados em variadas modalidades de radical sex, a partir dos anos 70. Guy Baldwin,psicoterapeuta norte-americano, além de ser adepto do que designa como SM/leather/fetish erotic play desde jovem e de atender gente engajada nessas práticas, escreveu acoluna “Ties that bind”, por toda a década de 1980, na publicação Drummer (importantepublicação leather, cujo aparecimento remete aos anos 70). Suas principais colunasforam publicadas em livro, no qual o autor conta que uma das fortes influênciassimbólicas foi a série de histórias em quadrinhos de Tom of Finland que circulou desde osanos 50, ganhando maior divulgação a partir dos anos 70 (Baldwin 1993). O conteúdoerótico é acentuado nesses desenhos, evocando o que mais tarde foi definido comoradical sex: fist fucking, SM heterossexual, gay e lésbico. Baldwin informa também queparte considerável das lideranças gays e lésbicas participou dos movimentos leather. Hámesmo uma aproximação significativa entre cultura leather e SM (em suas diferentesexpressões).4

8 Além disso, muito do que é praticado nas experiências SM apresenta um diálogo críticoe, em forma de paródia, tendo como referências Freud e, mais precisamente, Richardvon Krafft-Ebing – sexólogo a cunhar, no final do século XIX, o sadismo e o masoquismocomo psicopatologias. Em Psichopathia Sexualis (1886), ele definiu o sadismo comopsicopatia, ou mais precisamente, como uma manifestação aberrante do desejo inato dehumilhar, de machucar, ou ainda de destruir os outros, de modo a produzir prazersexual para si mesmo (Von Krafft-Ebing 1886).

9 Desde os anos 70, alguns grupos organizados de SM escolheram adotar outrasexpressões: jogos de dominação/submissão, sensualidade e “mutualidade”, mágicasexual, sexo radical ou jogo de poder e confiança. Esses grupos têm o cuidado de, emsuas palestras e workshops, divulgar a necessidade de as práticas SM se darem em meio aum contexto de segurança, devendo este ser estruturado a partir da negociação ecomunicação entre as pessoas envolvidas: “you can’t dominate your partner unless heor she allows you to take control, and you can’t submit to your partner unless he or sheaccepts control” (Winks e Seamans 1997: 211).

10 No início do novo século, após intenso e longo combate à epidemia da AIDS e emcontexto de mercado, essas práticas encontram lugar, bastante sintonizadas com algunsaspectos do que chamei de erotismo politicamente correto. Nos catálogos e folders a quetive acesso no Good Vibrations, há o esforço de tornar o sadomasoquismo umaalternativa erótica aceitável, a partir de uma retórica que salienta o jogo consensualentre parceiros que brincam com conteúdos e exercícios, ligados às posições dedominação e de submissão. Os chicotes coloridos e as cenas nos vídeos reforçam essatendência. Tudo parece estar sendo cuidadosamente montado para encenar umasituação que teatraliza a humilhação. A dor parece não fazer parte dessa encenação,assim como a subjugação real ou concreta. E essa simulação vai sendo montada, notexto, a partir da explicitação de algumas fantasias sexuais: de um lado, o desejo de serdominado e subjugado por sequestradores, estupradores, às vezes por aliens; de outro,aquele que posiciona o sujeito no controle de uma relação com uma espécie de escravoamoroso.

11 No limite, os textos dos manuais tentam legitimar o SM, empregando o argumento deque o jogo de poder é central na nossa imaginação erótica. A noção que está por trás de


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tal afirmação é a de que o sexo entre duas pessoas raramente ocorre em meio a umpatamar igualitário ou de satisfação mútua, em um orgasmo simultâneo, sendo maisfrequente que os parceiros se revezem no controle das sensações do outro. Sem dúvida,importa assinalar que esse tipo de sugestão incorre em uma espécie de naturalização doerotismo, como se ele fosse desencarnado de todo um mapeamento simbólico,cuidadosamente tecido em meio a processos históricos e culturais.

12 É interessante notar também que os manuais SM ou o capítulo sobre essa prática nomanual Good Vibrations (Winks e Seamans 1997) apresentam, em contraste com osrelativos a outras práticas, afirmações mais categóricas e toda uma caracterizaçãodetalhada sobre como definir quem está no controle e quem está submetido. Alémdisso, enfatizam a todo instante o fato de ser essa uma das expressões do sexo seguro:assim como os sex toys, os jogos SM não implicam o intercurso genital; e os manuaisaconselham as pessoas a não ingerirem álcool ou drogas quando o praticam. Há umconjunto de normas que o potencial praticante deve seguir: identificar seus desejos efantasias; encontrar o parceiro; negociar a cena; procurar o local adequado paraencená-la; escolher a posição e os personagens; e cuidar da saúde e da segurança.

13 Minha primeira hipótese, sobretudo diante dessa vertente mercadológica, foi a de que opragmatismo que recobre os SM plays seria resultante justamente da premência detorná-lo politicamente correto, afastando-o da violência. Indaguei, inclusive, se todo ocuidado com a segurança, saúde e consentimento não seria decorrente de um esforçode neutralização ou apagamento das desigualdades de gênero que marcam a violência.De fato, os produtos relacionados ao SM nas lojas são cuidadosos a esse respeito.Contudo, foi preciso conhecer melhor as práticas e os praticantes, bem como asreferências simbólicas que estão sendo mobilizadas, de modo a reconhecer que o SMnão se reduz a uma vertente tão politicamente correta e que suas variadasmanifestações trazem elementos para, inclusive, contrastar com a violência, sobretudoquando a consideramos marcada por gênero.

14 Pesquisas etnográficas começam a ser feitas no Brasil, acompanhando a difusão evisibilidade das práticas sadomasoquistas, na última década. Regina Facchini (2008), aoanalisar a sexualidade de mulheres na cidade de São Paulo, apresenta uma ricainvestigação sobre uma rede de adeptas do BDSM (bondage, disciplina, dominação,submissão, sadismo, masoquismo). Essa sigla é empregada pelos sujeitos de suapesquisa como forma de salientar a diversificação de práticas, para além daquelasinscritas nas liturgias e rituais SM. Bondage, por exemplo, é uma atividade de privaçãode movimentos ou sentidos, normalmente utilizando cordas. O importante a remarcaraqui, segundo a autora, é que se trata de um campo complexo que reúne diferentesconcepções de liturgia, de dominação profissional, da relação entre o intercurso sexuale o BDSM e distinções relativas aos temas caros nesse universo, como a consensualidadee o risco compartilhado.

15 A rede de praticantes é formada por pessoas da classe média paulistana que criaram, noinício dos anos 90, o SoMos, uma comunidade de adeptos SM, responsáveis pelasprimeiras reuniões no país e ainda hoje atuante. Naquele período, as pessoasinteressadas nessas práticas se encontravam no clube Valhala – que fechou – e, duranteos primeiros dez anos desse século, se encontraram no clube Dominna, criado há 13anos. Atualmente, esse clube não opera como espaço físico próprio. Contudo, sãorealizadas festas com frequência mensal, com encenações de FemDom (dominação


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feminina), podolatria, bondage e as play parties (momentos mais íntimos da comunidadee que se realizam em espaço separado).

16 O estudo de Facchini aborda experiências observadas e narradas e decifra a formação eos contornos de uma comunidade (ou confraria), a partir das intrincadas relações entreas práticas e escolhas eróticas referentes ao BDSM e aquelas que são vividas nocotidiano, fora do clube e distantes da Internet, qualificadas por seus informantes como“mundo baunilha”. Dessas relações de contraste e oposição saltam intrigantesconsiderações sobre normas de gênero e sexualidade. A autora assinala que, no meioBDSM que investigou, os marcadores de diferença relacionados ao sexo, gênero eorientação sexual são mobilizados de modo bastante flexível, sem que sejamdemarcadores de segmentação entre comunidades SM, como no caso das experiênciasnorte-americanas. Além disso, segundo seus termos,

“a descontinuidade entre desejos, práticas e identidades relacionados à ‘orientaçãosexual’ convive, em intrincados esquemas classificatórios, com distinções entre‘sexo biológico’ e expressões ou ‘identidades de gênero’, mas sobretudo comclassificações que remetem a desejos e práticas BDSM ou fetichistas […], ainda quehaja coincidência entre desejos e práticas, ela não necessariamente leva aidentidades que substantivem condutas em personagens, conduzindo-nos aconsiderar o BDSM como prática ou mesmo arte erótica que, embora tome parte naprodução de subjetividades, não são transpostas, de modo substantivado, como algoque possa descrever os sujeitos” (Facchini 2008: 214).

17 Bruno Zilli (2007) estudou, a partir de sites brasileiros da Internet, o discurso delegitimação do BDSM. Ele mostra como a linguagem e conclusões psiquiátricas doséculo XIX, a respeito das fronteiras entre os comportamentos patológicos e os denatureza moral, ecoam nas reivindicações de direitos às identidades BDSM. O adventoda Internet, inclusive, é um fator decisivo na difusão dessa forma de erotismo em nossopaís, sobretudo nas interações entre adeptos e a criação de suas comunidades. NoBrasil, até a década de 1990, o acesso a informações sobre as técnicas, os objetos e aspossibilidades de encontrar pessoas interessadas nessas práticas era bastante reduzido:na cidade de São Paulo havia um sex shop, no centro, que oferecia produtos e serviçosSM, segundo informação que me foi fornecida por uma informante, atualmenteproprietária de loja e vendedora nos anos 80. Os interessados ainda poderiamestabelecer contatos através de anúncios classificados em jornais ou revistas eróticas(Facchini 2008), seguindo o mesmo padrão dos entusiastas SM dos anos 50 até osanos 70 em cenário norte-americano (Rubin 1991).

18 Chama atenção o fato de que, no Brasil, tais práticas ganharam visibilidaderecentemente, com a expansão do mercado na direção dos produtos e bens eróticos. Talaspecto delimita, entre nós, um universo singular de relações sociais, bem como dereferências, imagens e práticas, se comparado à diversidade de expressões SM nos EUA,visíveis desde os anos 70 do século passado. É preciso lembrar que as variadasalternativas sadomasoquistas em cenário norte-americano tiveram destaque eparticiparam ativamente nos contenciosos políticos de diferentes posições feministas,do movimento lésbico e do movimento gay. No Brasil, como salienta Facchini, osadeptos, a discussão, o debate “BDSM não está inserido na agenda política dos ‘direitossexuais’, também não está no campo de interesses do movimento feminista” (Facchini2008: 196). Aqui, o SM é uma das expressões das novas faces do erotismo,particularmente daquelas alternativas que estão se desenvolvendo e se difundindo nomarco do que tenho chamado de erotismo politicamente correto (Gregori 2003).


23

24/7

19 As pessoas no clube se apresentam com seus nicknames, todos ou a maioria compatíveiscom os apelidos empregados na Internet. São nomes escolhidos que já assinalam aposição ou status que o sujeito tem nas relações SM. Assim, nicks como Mestre K ou Y,Rainha Laura, Domme Virgínia são comuns, bem como nomes dos escravos(as) ousubmissos(as) que são grafados em minúsculo e que incorporam uma letra que fazreferência ao nome do seu senhor(a), como por exemplo, o caso de marYa, esposa doMister Y. As posições de status são eminentemente relacionais: Dominatrix, Dom/Domme, Dono/Dona ou Mestre/Mistress se afiguram em relação aos subs (submissos/as) e escravos. Ainda existem os que se qualificam como sádicos e outros comomasoquistas. Caso especial, me parece, são os switchers: as pessoas que podem ocuparposição de dominação ou submissão, dependendo da relação escolhida.

20 Existem diferenciações estabelecidas nessas posições. Dominatrix é a dominadoraprofissional (a que vende seus serviços na dominação feminina), Dom/Domme é o pardominador dos subs, Mestre/Mistress domina com ênfase no castigo e no sadismo. ARainha é a escolhida pela comunidade e que supera qualquer Mestre ou Dom. Não existeuma distinção muito clara entre ser sub e ser escravo. Masoquista é alguém que estánuma posição de submissão, mas que busca a dor corporal.

21 Facchini (2008) chama atenção que essas relações são produzidas em meio a umacomunidade, como uma espécie de confraria imaginada, definida por contornos(litúrgicos ou normativos) e por controles. Assim, é preciso ter em mente que asrelações não são essencialmente diádicas. Elas podem se estabelecer entre um dono/dona e variados subs ou escravos e, fundamentalmente, são definidas a partir de umconjunto de prescrições partilhado coletivamente. Tal controle comunitário “por outrolado, não deixa de propiciar um campo de conflitos, fazendo com que a comunidade seestruture em um equilíbrio tênue entre vaidades, fofocas, posições isolacionistas,debates de concepções, solidariedade e busca de respeito” (Facchini 2008: 198).

22 Além de termos que contemplar as relações entre as pessoas no marco de umacomunidade, existe outro aspecto que me parece especialmente importante: as posiçõesocupadas pelas pessoas e as interações estabelecidas entre elas não são pautadas pelosexo biológico dos parceiros. Ser mulher ou homem não é critério de dominação ou desubmissão. Também não há uma exigência de que essas posições sejam estipuladas apartir da orientação sexual. É possível que um heterossexual seja sub ou mestre dealguém do mesmo sexo. Também, há a possibilidade de o jogo erótico envolver umarelação sem, necessariamente, haver sexo.

23 Na primeira visita ao Libens, conheci narinha e Mestre Sargitarius. Ela é uma moça deaproximadamente 25 anos, estudante de administração de empresas, morena pardacom os cabelos pintados de dourado. Mestre S, dez anos mais velho, é branco e prestaserviços de informática. Ele se vestia com uma roupa comum de trabalho, calça ecamisa clara de mangas curtas. Narinha, ao contrário, estava arrumada para a “noite”:escarpins altos e estampados, meia arrastão 7/8, um vestido preto curto e justo, cabelocortado reto, frisado, preso por presilhinhas, maquiagem leve. O conjunto sugeria uma“meninota”, uma sedutora Lolita. Já se apresentaram com seus nicks e logo narinhacaracterizou sua posição e relação com Mestre S como sendo D/s (de dominação esubmissão), com componentes de sadismo.


24

24 Ele, calado a princípio e “siderado” nela, que, eloquente, transmitia enorme vivacidade.Ela nos disse que a relação deles é 24/7 (vinte quatro horas por sete dias), o quesignifica: ela é escrava, mas também esposa dele. Mesmo tendo se conhecido há menosde um ano, eles já estão morando juntos. Para narinha, como a relação SM é 24/7, ocasal estabeleceu que ele detivesse o controle e ela presta contas de tudo o que fazdurante o dia. Não só relata como pede permissões. Na hora do almoço, quando está notrabalho, ela o avisa dos horários de saída e pede autorização sobre o que comer. Emcasa, faz a comida para ele, serve, faz toda a limpeza e lhe dá banho.

25 Na narrativa, Mestre S usou imagens que supostamente estariam relacionadas com aescravidão no passado para descrever como vivem. Mesmo sem saber como eraexatamente, o que importa para eles é o que se estabelece como fantasia. O repertórioserve como cenário e inspiração para as práticas. Em dado momento, ao comentaremsobre a distinção entre escrava, submissa e masoquista, narinha explicou: a sub éaquela que deseja servir; a escrava é a que pode ou não servir, e costuma questionar,contestar; e a masoquista vai querer provocar seu dominador para ser punida. O Mestreassinalou tratar-se de um jogo de recompensas e castigos, o que ela completou sereferindo a como se comporta, enquanto escrava, de modo a obter o que quer. Esse “oque quer” foi entoado de modo a demarcar o seu consentimento na subjugação e oprazer que essa relação proporciona.

26 O enlace entre narinha e seu Mestre apresenta uma conotação contratual, como, aliás,está na base da relação masoquista a partir da interpretação de Deleuze (1983) sobre aobra de Sacher-Masoch, indevidamente ignorada em contraste à significativavisibilidade de seu nome, designando uma perversão. É o contrato que exprime nãosimplesmente o consentimento da vítima, mas, sobretudo, a sua habilidade empersuadir, em seduzir e até ensinar o seu algoz. Ele produz uma espécie de efeito detipo jurídico que, segundo Deleuze, diferencia cabalmente a dinâmica erótica domasoquismo em comparação ao efeito institucional provocado pelas cenas de Sade.Enquanto Masoch dá particular importância à forma estética (na arte e no suspense) e àforma jurídica (o contrato e a submissão), Sade acentua o naturalismo, a partir de umsistema movido a um mecanismo de moto perpétuo. O pensamento de Sade se exprimeem termos de instituição: as interações entre libertinos e vítimas são baseadas em umestatuto de longa duração, segundo uma configuração involuntária (a vítima é presa davontade soberana do libertino), sendo os direitos e deveres substituídos por um modelodinâmico de ação, de poder e de potência (Deleuze 1983: 84). A submissão no caso dospersonagens de Masoch não é passiva. Severino apela a tornar-se escravo de sua Deusadas peles, primeiro em sonho, em fantasia, e em seguida em um relacionamento que elepretende eterno. A sua escolhida, Wanda, é a vizinha misteriosa que passa a ser, nanarrativa em forma de suspense, a sua Vênus. Ele a seduz com tempo e calma,convencendo-a a amá-lo e, a partir de então, ensina a ela como submetê-lo e comoprovocar nele a sujeição física.

27 Deleuze acredita que esse romance traz todos os elementos que fornecem a base domasoquismo e que foram desconsiderados pela psicanálise: a presença de umasignificação especial de fantasia, ou melhor, a recorrência de uma forma de fantasmaque aparece nas cenas sonhadas, dramatizadas ou ritualizadas; o emprego frequente doque ele chama de “fator suspensivo” (a espera, o atraso como forma de tensionar oapelo sexual); a recorrência no texto de um traço demonstrativo, ou seja, persuasivo (oescravo ou submisso clama e exibe a humilhação); a provocação, como se, ao demandar


25

a punição, o masoquista aliviasse a angústia de ansiar um prazer proibido; e,finalmente, o contrato que supõe a vontade dos contratantes, estabelecendo direitos edeveres e por um tempo determinado.5

28 No final de uma das edições de Vênus das Peles (Sacher-Masoch 1976 [1870]) sãoapresentados três diferentes contratos estabelecidos pelo próprio Masoch com suasmulheres e amantes.6 O primeiro foi o contrato estabelecido, por ele, na idade de 33anos, com Fanny Pistor Bagdanow, sua amante no período. Reproduzo, a seguir, umpequeno trecho:

“Sob palavra de honra, Leopold de Sacher-Masoch compromete-se a ser o escravode Madame Pistor, e a executar absolutamente todos os seus desejos e ordens, e istodurante seis meses.Por sua parte madame Fanny de Pistor não lhe pedirá nada de desonroso (que possafazer-lhe perder a sua honra de homem e cidadão). Além disso, deverá deixar-lheseis horas diárias para os seus trabalhos e não lhe verá nunca as cartas ou escritos.Por cada infração ou negligência, ou por cada crime de lesa-majestade, a dona(Fanny Pistor) poderá castigar ao seu gosto o escravo (Leopold de Sacher-Masoch).Em resumo, o sujeito obedecerá à sua soberana com uma submissão servil, acolheráos seus favores com um dom encantador, não fará valer nenhuma pretensão deamor nem nenhum direito sobre sua amante. Por seu lado, Fanny Pistorcompromete-se a usar freqüentemente e sempre que possível peles, principalmentequando se mostre cruel” (começado a executar em 8 de dezembro de 1869; Sacher-Masoch 1976 [1870]: 247).

29 Essa dimensão do contrato, mesmo sem a referência explícita feita pelas pessoas queconheci na cena SM, parece estar inteiramente de acordo com a bandeira “são, seguro econsensual” que sustenta as práticas contemporâneas, tanto no Brasil como noexterior. Há um “zelo escrupuloso com a lei” que, segundo a leitura de Deleuze(1983: 96), leva ao absurdo. Voltarei a essa reflexão, a seguir. Trata-se aqui de entenderque, mesmo no caso do autor que dá origem simbólica a essa expressão do erotismo, háa operação de elementos que conferem “agência” aos escravos e uma maiorpermeabilidade entre a cena literária ou encenada, no clube, e a vida cotidiana daspessoas. Nesse sentido, o 24/7 implica uma fronteira tênue com o que está presente naliturgia das cenas praticadas pelos membros das confrarias. A sensação que fica é a deuma dinâmica que certamente terá que ser mais investigada, de que os limites entre avida no mundo SM e no “baunilha” vão esvaindo, mas ao preço de um esforço enormeem ir estabelecendo, até inventando, rotinas ritualizadas. Por mais irônico que possaparecer, não é fácil garantir a experiência do domínio e da servidão, em meio a umavida organizada para a autonomia dos indivíduos. Não se trata, apenas, de evitar oestranhamento público (ou privado) quanto às assimetrias acentuadas presentes nessasrelações. No caso de narinha e Mestre S, foi preciso ir criando um conjunto deprescrições para o dia a dia, o que, certamente, deve ser exaustivo.

30 Provavelmente o senso comum imagina que existam muito mais dominadores(as) doque submissos. Outra das idiossincrasias interessantes dessas experiências é que ocorrejustamente o contrário. É muito comum ouvir, no clube, uma queixa em relação àexiguidade de pessoas que ocupam essas posições. São muitas as atribulações dasRainhas, Mestres ou Mistresses. A eles cabe inventar as punições, criar o materialapropriado, não hesitar no controle às solicitações e provocações dos subs. Além disso,Mestre S alertou que um dos cuidados que um dominador deve ter, em uma relação24/7, é o de estimular que os escravos não parem de estudar, de trabalhar, de teremamigos e que não rompam seus laços familiares. É preciso evitar, segundo ele, a


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dependência relativamente ao Dono quando as relações chegam a termo. A palavra“guiar”, aliás, foi bastante empregada por ele: “o Dono deve guiar sua peça, cuidardela”.

31 Patrick Califia (1991), fundador do Samois e uma das maiores referências do cenário SMnorte-americano, discute os aspectos paradoxais da relação top/bottom.7 A partir de suaposição como top, ele indaga sobre as razões da significativa escassez de dominadoresnesse campo e argumenta que a fantasia de dominação, com o paradigma da dissimetriade status (idade, classe, educação), é pouco vivenciada. Tal disparidade é ainda maisintrigante pela natureza consensual que caracteriza o processo de negociação entreparceiros. De modo levemente irônico, ele reclama que, ao ser basicamente um sádico,não tem interesse em roupas ou no comportamento submisso do que diz serem asempregadas francesas ou em bondages. Diz que as subs que conhece não acreditam nele.Aliás, pontua: elas escolhem não acreditar nele. De um lado, tal fato tem a ver com apouca experiência da maioria dos parceiros e o parco conhecimento disponível sobre avariedade de dominadores e de subs. De outro, ele já se sentiu, em inúmeras ocasiões,como se fosse um objeto na mão de suas escravas ou submissos, sendo demasiadamentesolicitado. Os subs não precisam ter habilidades ou competências, não são desafiados enão precisam ter energia. Além de a comunidade não oferecer treinamento aos Donos –o que exige deles imenso esforço –, ele afirma que, nas discussões sobre segurança econsentimento, o foco de atenção está inteiramente direcionado para a proteção dosub, quanto aos eventuais danos físicos ou psicológicos. O top que apresenta seuslimites, inclusive, nem é considerado como um verdadeiro dominador.

32 Ainda que os marcadores de diferença sexual não possam ser considerados comocritério para posicionar o dominante ou o submisso nessas relações, é preciso admitirque as tensões de gênero permanecem atuantes. Não se trata de uma operação deinversão que irá garantir a transgressão, como erroneamente imaginou Deleuze aoacentuar que a posição de dominação deveria ser ocupada por uma mulher. Esse não é oelemento inovador, até porque no cenário SM não existe sequer a preponderância deum dos sexos no lugar da submissão. Me parece relevante atentar é no caráter marcado,até exagerado, dos gestos e sinais que indicam o mando ou a obediência. Assim, o quemarca em termos de gênero as assimetrias de poder é acionado, produzindo um efeitoquase caricatural. As tensões são escrupulosamente ativadas como para afastar averosimilhança, expondo a armação contingente que trama o poder. De fato, o ladocontestador dessas iniciativas quanto às normas de gênero está nessa espécie deritualística que expõe as posições de mando e controle, que ainda marcam as relaçõesde gênero, de um modo extrapolado e causando uma sensação de algo inapropriado.

Quando a pele vira carne

33 Deleuze afirma que os textos de Masoch (e também os de Sade) não constituempropriamente pornografia. Ele cria o neologismo “pornologia”, de modo a definir essegênero de linguagem erótica, cujo traço marcante não é o do mero comando edescrição, mas da demonstração (em Justine, por exemplo, há toda a discussão com avítima) ou da persuasão (no modelo literário de Masoch, ele é um educador da mulherdéspota). Assim, a fórmula “faça isso – faça aquilo” seguida por obscenidades ésubstituída pela abundância de palavras que passam a agir sobre a sensualidade. A


27

ênfase na linguagem literária, me parece, deve ser acrescida de outro elementofundamental para a compreensão do SM: a encenação da prática do flagelo.

34 A encenação começa pela atenção aos objetos e, em particular, pela invenção deaparatos que são criados e cuidados com enorme zelo. O fetiche pertenceessencialmente à dinâmica erótica do masoquismo, daí a exuberância das peles, o rigore altura dos saltos dos sapatos e, em particular, o gosto pelos chicotes.8 Mestre S enarinha mostraram seu arsenal, guardado em um estojo especialmente escolhido paraabrigá-lo. Havia uma chibata de cabo fino, leve e de ponta macia. Narinha explicou queela servia para aquecer a pele para receber o spanking. Havia floggers, um de tirasplásticas, como cerdas grossas de uma vassoura, e outro era um chicote artesanal feitopor um amigo Mestre, de cabo curto de borracha e com tiras de couro sintético, umpouco mais duras e pesadas do que as feitas de camurça. Havia nozinhos na ponta deboa parte dos fios, o que provoca muito mais dor quando do contato com a pele. Haviatambém um conjunto de canes: uma era praticamente uma vara de marmelo e outrasmoldadas em madeira ou látex. Segundo narinha, as canes são os instrumentos que maisferem. É preciso saber usá-los, esperar passar a dor de uma pancada para dar outra,senão a pessoa passa a não sentir mais nada. Uma das canes tinha quatro pontas soltas,como se fosse um flogger. Essa, disse a submissa, era a escolhida para o castigo: asvarinhas se abrem quando batem e é como se quatro canes batessem ao mesmo tempo.Havia ainda um relho de couro cru.

35 Causou impressão, não apenas a descrição detalhada de cada chicote e seu uso, mas obrilho no olhar dela ao manusear, esticar e torcer, movimentando o ar com um chiadopeculiar. A cada peça, uma demonstração, experimentando as texturas e o volumesobre as mãos espalmadas. Este modo de lidar com os objetos não é muito diferente darelação das pessoas com os dildos e vibradores. O chicote é também um acessórioerótico. Porém, um objeto a produzir hematomas.

36 Não que a dor seja menor em função de um corpo já calejado. Dor é dor, ainda que atolerância a ela possa ser expandida. Para o casal, não se trata de prazer com a dor, emsi, pois essas são sensações discerníveis. Eles contextualizam o espancamento em meioa um jogo erótico que envolve recompensas e castigos, de modo a envolver a dor emoutros elementos da fantasia. Além disso, lembram que ela, provocada dessa maneira,ativa a produção de endorfina, elevando a pessoa ao que eles chamaram de subspace,espaço no qual o martírio físico fica submerso numa situação de prazer. Umadesignação própria, porém não muito distinta da noção de êxtase de Georges Bataille(1987): algo que evoca imergir em um plano não tangível, liminar e, simultaneamente,mágico.

37 Elaine Scarry (1985), em seu The Body in Pain, diz que a resistência à linguagem é algoessencial à dor: ela é inefável, ainda que não possa ser negada. O que se objetiva emdiscurso diz respeito muito mais às reações que ela enseja. Ela não é contabilizável e ascaracterizações não especificam tipos, além de aproximações como a “dor profunda” oua “dor ardida”. O que essa abordagem ensina é que, ao lidarmos com a dor, evitemosreificações. Portanto, a qualidade de, a partir dela, alçar à transcendência ou àpurificação – presente no repertório de variados rituais de expiação –, no caso do casalSM aparece como retórica a traduzir, me parece, pele em carne.

“Quando fomos ao Libens, assisti a uma encenação. Sentada em uma das cadeiras, viMister Y, vestido de jeans e camiseta, espancar marYa que vestia apenas a roupa debaixo preta e portava uma coleira. Ele é um rapaz grande e ela, bem branca, tem o


28

corpo opulento. A brancura do corpo seminu parecia trazer luz àquele espaçoescuro. Bem devagar e concentrada, ela se ajoelhou sobre um suporte que permitiaapoiar o tronco, de barriga para baixo. O movimento lento fez revelar as nádegas,arrebitadas e expostas. Ele acendeu duas velas grossas uma contra a outra,produzindo gotas gordas de cera que, ainda quentes, foram derrubadas sobre odorso dela. Na medida em que caíam, a pele parecia enrugar, criando um segundovolume, para além do corpo. Um a um, os pingos azuis foram ocupando a superfície,descendo em direção às coxas. Ela sequer murmurou. Toda a operação lenta,olhares ao redor, silêncio absoluto. Com os dedos, ele tirou a cera, apertando a pelecomo carícia. Depois, ele escolheu um único chicote usado durante toda a cena: umflogger de camurça. Deu a primeira chibatada abaixo da asa esquerda dela e, a pelebranca, antes pontuada de pingos azuis, foi avermelhando. Cada batida pareciaestudada. A força dele no chicote estalava a pele, entoando um som, acompanhadode perto pelo gemido dela. Não era grito. O chicote parecia mole e pesado ao tocar aparte dura das costas. Os músculos contraíam. Eventualmente ela levantava a mão eele parava imediatamente, ia até perto do seu rosto, ouvia algo e acariciava o lugarbatido. Esperava a pele rubra acalmar. Voltava a chicotear, dirigindo cada batidapara as partes mais baixas do corpo. Comecei a notar um encadeamento sonoro: osom do couro no corpo, cadenciando o gemido, como uma percussão estranha. Maso corpo não era tratado como tambor. A cada movimento do flogger a lisura dasuperfície ia dando lugar a reentrâncias, ondulações, volumes moles. A pele sendotornada carne. Como se o chicote pudesse produzir orifícios e penetrar. Terminadaa cena, ela se levantou e beijou os pés dele.” [Caderno de campo da autora]

38 A encenação é uma operação de erotização dos corpos. São gestos, sons, cores e luzes e,também, chicote, volumes de corpo e olhos. Todos articulados em uma combinaçãomaterial, carnal e simbólica. Não me pareceu ocorrer a preponderância de um elementosobre os demais. Entrecruzamento é a expressão mais próxima do que vi. Meus alunosme contaram que nunca viram uma cena de sexo num dungeon de clube SM:normalmente, não é proibido, mas as pessoas não o fazem. Eu acho que fazem sim, poistestemunhei um intercurso sexual sem o advento dos genitais.

A performance do risco

39 A literatura sobre sadomasoquismo é bastante vasta, especialmente nas abordagens noâmbito da psicanálise e dos estudos sobre sexualidade, no marco da tradição aberta pelasexologia. Também não é possível desprezar as perspectivas vindas do campo da críticaliterária e dos estudos filosóficos.

40 Além dessas contribuições inspiradoras, sobretudo pela sua riqueza, existe um debatesobre o sadomasoquismo no marco das identidades e das minorias sexuais, relevantepara os propósitos antropológicos.

41 Anne McClintock (1994) e Lynda Hart (1998) trabalham o sadomasoquismo no registrodos exercícios simbólicos mobilizados, seja como manifestações subculturais(McClintock), seja como performances (Hart). Seus estudos operam no registro doteatro e na análise de várias expressões SM como escolhas e práticas sexuais que sópodem ser inteligíveis como encenações, colocando em suas cenas, nos cenários epersonagens, aspectos que fazem parte das contradições que emergem no interior dasdinâmicas do poder social. Menos do que ver no sadomasoquismo uma cópia oureprodução do que constitui o cerne da sexualidade heterossexual, modulada comonorma pelo patriarcalismo – principal crítica apontada pelas feministasantissadomasoquismo –, as autoras sugerem que consideremos o seu lado contestatório.


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Seguindo tal perspectiva, o SM comercial, o lesbianismo SM e as manifestações SMentre gays masculinos constituem alternativas que, no limite, problematizam osmodelos que supõem naturalidade e normalidade entre as fronteiras que delimitamhomens e mulheres e, mais particularmente, o comportamento sexual masculino comosendo ativo e o feminino como sendo passivo, além de esfumaçarem os limites queseparam o prazer da dor, o comando e a submissão.

42 Essas são experiências que ousam lidar com o risco social, ou melhor, com aquelesconteúdos e inscrições presentes nas relações entre a sexualidade e as suas assimetriasem termos de gênero, de idade, de classe e de raça. McClintock (1994) chega até aafirmar que o SM performa o poder social como um script, de modo que as assimetriasque constituem tal poder passam a ser encenadas, teatralizadas, tratadas comocontingentes e sujeitas a mudanças e novas inflexões.

43 Lynda Hart (1998) estuda os casos SM entre lésbicas, experiências que ameaçam certasnoções das teorias feministas, principalmente desenvolvidas sobre as relações mulher/mulher, que alimentam a ideia da igualdade ou de um “não poder” como estratégia delibertação. Segundo a autora, tal forma de SM, ao trazer nos plays as piores cenasheterossexistas, desafia a definição ética e política envolvida no lesbianismo, sobretudoa noção de irmandade. Seguindo a orientação de Deleuze em que também me baseio, elachama atenção para o fato de que o componente crucial da relação masoquista é ocontrato, um acordo sempre formalizado que pressupõe o consentimento, areciprocidade e que não afeta os indivíduos fora dos limites de cada encenação.

44 Além disso, como Deleuze também já havia formulado, o cuidado extremoso comliturgias ou com a “lei” pode ser interpretado como um movimento que, ao serintensificado, provoca o efeito oposto: “toma-se a lei ao pé da letra; não se contesta oseu caráter último ou primeiro; faz-se como se, em virtude desse caráter, a leireservasse para si os prazeres que ela nos interdita”; a lei é “reviradahumoristicamente, obliquamente, pelo aprofundamento das consequências” (Deleuze1983: 96).

45 Contudo, é preciso ponderar que esse lado do contrato não deve nos levar adesconsiderar que as experiências constituem um empreendimento de risco, a partir deatos que implicam negociações delicadas. Os riscos, bem como as operações deprodução de consensualidade e segurança das várias modalidades de SM, indicam que épreciso empreender esforços para analisar detalhadamente os vários contextos em queelas se apresentam, bem como as relações sociais e pessoais envolvidas. A preocupaçãocom a segurança e com a consensualidade funciona como uma espécie de ideal.Nenhum desses termos é facilmente acessível ou garantido.

46 Outro elemento a considerar sobre os riscos está relacionado ao fato de serem práticasque implicam uma tríplice relação: a entrega da pessoa que se submete – e essa entrega,como, por exemplo, a amorosa, indica uma confiança cultivada em relação ao parceiro;o cuidado da pessoa que domina que, como já indicado, exige um aprendizadoconstante; e, finalmente, o controle da comunidade ao propiciar atividades pedagógicase uma atenção singular diante de casos que venham a extrapolar o “são, seguro econsensual”. Facchini e Machado (2013) descrevem a ocorrência de um contencioso naspáginas de discussão da Internet em 2007, a partir de um caso de abuso que envolveuparticipantes de uma das cenas BDSM. A profusão de posicionamentos de membros dacomunidade revela o controle estrito de problemas desse tipo, tendo como soluçãoprovável o isolamento ou ainda a expulsão de quem apresente uma conduta


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inadequada. De modo arguto, as autoras analisam esse debate na comunidade,assinalando que houve nessa crise uma tendência – que até então, no Brasil, nuncaestabeleceu vínculo de tipo político – para falar na organização de campanhas públicasde esclarecimento, acalentando certo desejo de se constituir enquanto um movimento.Assim, a violência é controlada, dando espaço para uma atuação que legitima práticasque avizinham o prazer da dor.

47 Se no marco das experiências SM essa tríplice relação indica a neutralização de abusos erelações violentas, o problema do risco não pode ser inteiramente abandonado. MargotWeiss (2011), a partir de uma etnografia recente e bastante completa sobre BDSM emSão Francisco (EUA), sugere que é preciso considerar os incômodos efeitos do mercadoe, em particular, o que a bibliografia norte-americana atual assinala comoneoliberalismo, de modo a apreender em que medida o SM corre o perigo de alimentardesigualdades, inclusive as baseadas em gênero e sexualidade. Basicamente, oargumento elaborado é que o neoliberalismo deve ser tratado como uma formaçãocultural que articula ideias como as de liberação e liberdade individual com o direito àpropriedade privada, livre mercado e livre comércio. No limite, é um modo de governoe racionalidade que supõe uma disjunção entre um mundo público e social “real” e, deoutra parte, um mundo privado, individualizado, constituído por escolhas livres e noqual as fantasias de raça e gênero, por exemplo, não teriam nada a ver com “sexismo” eo “racismo” do mundo real. Do ponto de vista da autora, o capitalismo contemporâneoe sua forma cultural (o neoliberalismo) produziram um sentido de transgressão sexualbaseado na ideia da fantasia das cenas como espaços seguros para os desejos privadosque justificam e reforçam desigualdades.

48 Ainda que as articulações entre mercado e práticas eróticas mereçam um esforçoanalítico para empreender uma teorização crítica, essa argumentação peca pelomecanicismo. Além de reduzir o neoliberalismo a ser uma forma cultural,descontextualizando os processos sociais, econômicos e políticos que nele estãotramados, trata-se de uma abordagem que elimina qualquer indagação mais sofisticadasobre os deslocamentos normativos gerados por essas práticas, a partir das paródias edas desnaturalizações que elas provocam. O interesse em investigá-las reside,precisamente, no fato de elas mobilizarem e mostrarem com força dramática, a partirde todo um repertório de convenções culturais e sociais disponíveis, as assimetrias depoder, as materializações e corporificações de normas de gênero, de sexualidade, bemcomo de outros marcadores de diferença, como classe, raça e idade. Para além da ideiapresente no senso comum de que o teatro não é a vida, tratar essas práticas e decifrarseus enredos, cenas e cenários permite entender – até por seus intrincados paradoxos –as convenções que organizam, também de modo idiossincrático, as relações entreviolência, gênero e erotismo.


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BIBLIOGRAFIA

BALDWIN, Guy, 1993, Ties That Bind: SM/ Leather/ Fetish Erotic Style. Los Angeles, DeadalusPublishing Company.

BATAILLE, Georges, 1987, O Erotismo. Porto Alegre, L&PM.

BRAZ, Camilo, 2010, À Meia-Luz… Uma Etnografia Imprópria sobre Clubes de Sexo Masculinos.Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas da Universidade Estadual de Campinas(Unicamp), tese de doutorado em Ciências Sociais.

CALIFIA, Patrick, 1991, “The limits of the S/M relationship, or Mr. Benson doesn’t live hereanymore”, em Mark Thompson (org.), Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics, and Practice. Boston,Alyson Publications, 221-232.

DELEUZE, Gilles, 1983, “Apresentação de Sacher-Masoch: o frio e o cruel”, em Leopold Sacher-Masoch, Vênus das Peles. Rio de Janeiro, Taurus, 7-143.

FACCHINI, Regina, 2008, Entre Umas e Outras: Mulheres, (Homo)Sexualidades e Diferenças na Cidade deSão Paulo. Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas da Universidade Estadual deCampinas (Unicamp), tese de doutorado em Ciências Sociais.

FACCHINI, Regina, e Sarah MACHADO, 2013, “Praticamos SM, repudiamos agressão: classificações,redes e organização comunitária em torno do BDSM no contexto brasileiro”, Sexualidad, Salud ySociedad: Revista Latinoamericana, 14: 195-228.

GREGORI, Maria Filomena, 2003, “Relações de violência e erotismo”, Cadernos Pagu, 20 (1): 87-120.

GREGORI, Maria Filomena, 2011, “Usos de sex toys: a circulação erótica entre objetos e pessoas”, Mana, 17: 313-336.

GREGORI, Maria Filomena, 2012, “Erotismo, mercado e gênero: uma etnografia dos sex shops deSão Paulo”, Cadernos Pagu, 38: 53-97.

GREGORI, Maria Filomena, 2014, “Práticas eróticas e limites da sexualidade: contribuições deestudos recentes”, Cadernos Pagu, 42: 47-74.

HART, Lynda, 1998, Between the Body and the Flesh: Performing Sadomasochism. Nova Iorque,Columbia University Press.

LINDEN, Robin R., et al., 1982, Against Sadomasoquism: A Radical Feminist Analysis. Palo Alto, Frog inthe Well.

McCLINTOCK, Anne, 1994, “Maid to order: commercial S/M and gender power”, em PamelaGibson e Roma Gibson (orgs.), Dirty Looks. Londres, British Film Institute, 207-233.

RUBIN, Gayle, 1991, “The catacombs: a temple of the butthole”, em Mark Thompson (org.), Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics and Practice. Boston, Alyson Publications, 119-141.

RUBIN, Gayle, 1993, “The leather menace: comments on politics and S/M”, em Samois (org.), Coming to Power: Writings and Graphics on Lesbian S/M. Boston, Alyson Publications.

SACHER-MASOCH, Léopold, 1976 [1870], A Vénus das Peles. Lisboa, Edição Livros do Brasil.

SCARRY, Elaine, 1985, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Nova Iorque eOxford, Oxford University Press.

VON KRAFFT-EBING, Richard, 1886, Psichopathia Sexualis. Paris, Georges Carré Editeur.


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WEISS, Margot, 2011, Techniques or Pleasure: BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality. Durham, DukeUniversity Press.

WINKS, Cathy, e Anne SEAMANS, 1997, The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex: The Most Complete SexManual Ever Written. San Francisco, Cleis Press.

ZILLI, Bruno Dallacort, 2007, A Perversão Domesticada: Estudo do Discurso de Legitimação do BDSM naInternet e Seu Diálogo com a Psiquiatria. Rio de Janeiro, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro,dissertação de mestrado em Medicina Social.

NOTAS1. Além do mapeamento do mercado erótico e da pesquisa em sex shops em São Paulo, no Brasil,eu entrevistei usuários de produtos eróticos e investiguei um dos nichos desse mercado, orelativo às práticas sadomasoquistas, em clubs, festas e eventos. Para maior detalhamento,consultar Gregori (2003, 2011, 2012, 2014).2. As primeiras organizações explicitamente SM foram criadas nos anos 70: os gruposheterossexuais The Eulenspiegel Society e Society of Janus foram criados, respetivamente, em1971 em Nova Iorque e em São Francisco em 1974, e o Samois – grupo S/M lésbico – foi fundadoem 1978 (Rubin 1991).3. Para maiores explicações sobre feminismo radical e New Right, consultar Gregori (2003). Valeconsiderar a bibliografia sobre lesbianismo e, em particular, as análises e abordagens críticas emrelação ao sadomasoquismo. Bom exemplar nessa direção é a coletânea editada por Robin R.Linden et al. (1982), Against Sadomasochism: A Radical Feminist Analysis.4. As afinidades entre essas diferentes modalidades de práticas gays e lésbicas estão analisadascom requinte por Gayle Rubin (1991, 1993) e inteligentemente sintetizadas por Camilo Braz(2010), de modo a pensar seus efeitos sobre homossexualidades masculinas e como as convençõesleather viajaram dos Estados Unidos para outros países. A pesquisa de Braz contemplouexperiências de “sexo duro” entre homens, em São Paulo e em Madrid.5. Deleuze critica na psicanálise, sobretudo, a ausência de um exame mais depurado da formanarrativa presente na origem literária que deu base ao masoquismo e, consequentemente, não teridentificado a centralidade do elemento de contrato.6. Essa edição de Vênus das Peles foi publicada pela Livros do Brasil, de Lisboa, em conjunto com anovela Diderot e Catarina II e traz em anexo, com o subtítulo “Fragmento de PsychopathiaSexualis”, três contratos, segundo Von Krafft-Ebing (1886) coletados por Schlichtegroll (Sacher-Masoch 1976 [1870]: 246-247).7. Califia nasceu mulher e assumiu identidade lésbica nos anos 70. Escritora de inúmeros livros deficção e ensaios sobre sexualidade, ela foi uma das fundadoras do Samois (e no grupo, assinalouos elementos da leather culture), participou das sex wars ao lado das feministas e lésbicas pró-sexo,contrárias à lei antipornografia de coautoria de Catherine MacKinnon. Um dos seus livros maispopulares é Macho Sluts, publicado no final da década de 1980. Em meados dos anos 90, Califiadecidiu-se pela transição de gênero e adotou o nome Patrick. Hoje se autodefine como umapessoa transgênero bissexual.8. O fetichismo, definido por Freud, implica a presença de um objeto – substituto do falo feminino– que é a imagem imediatamente posterior à descoberta de que a mãe não possui pênis. Deleuzelembra que o fetichismo é, nessa perspectiva teórica, inicialmente denegação (não, à mulher nãofalta o pênis); em seguida, neutralização defensiva (mesmo sabendo que ela, na realidade, nãopossui o pênis, esse conhecimento fica em suspenso); e, finalmente, neutralização protetora (ofalo feminino se põe à prova, fazendo valer os direitos do ideal contra o real). Para Deleuze, “ofetichismo, assim definido pelo processo de denegação e do suspense, pertence essencialmente ao


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masoquismo” (Deleuze 1983: 35). Importante grifar que o relevante, no seu caso, não é a definiçãoem termos psicanalíticos, mas sim a sua rentabilidade para demarcar uma qualidade estética.

RESUMOSExperiências sadomasoquistas são examinadas neste artigo de modo a descortinar articulaçõesentre gênero e sexualidade. Como novas expressões do mercado erótico contemporâneo, taispráticas permitem refinar a análise sobre processos sociais complexos relativos à ampliação ourestrição de normatividades sexuais, em particular sobre a criação de âmbitos de maiortolerância e novas normas que vão sendo impostas, bem como situações em que aquilo que éconsiderado abusivo passa a ser qualificado como normal.

Sadomasochistic experiences are examined in this article in order to uncover links betweengender and sexuality. As new expressions of the contemporary erotic market, such practicesallow the refinement of the analysis of complex social processes related to the expansion orrestriction of sexual normativities. In particular, it enables further knowledge on the creation ofgreater tolerance spheres, on the new rules being imposed, and on situations in which what isconsidered abusive becomes qualified as normal.

ÍNDICE

Keywords: gender and sexuality studies, erotism, sadomasochismPalavras-chave: estudos de sexualidade e gênero, erotismo, sadomasoquismo

AUTOR

MARIA FILOMENA GREGORI

Departamento de Antropologia da Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp), Núcleo deEstudos de Gênero (Pagu/Unicamp), [email protected]


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Das nomeações às representações:os palavrões numa interpretaçãoinspirada por H. LefebvreFrom namings to representations: swear words in an interpretation inspired byH. Lefebvre

José Machado Pais

1 Quando, em sua conhecida obra La présence et l’absence, Henri Lefebvre (1983 [1980])se propôs abordar as representações, matutou consigo mesmo: que diriam as pessoas selhes perguntássemos como representariam a sexualidade ou o sexo? Uma boa parte dosinterrogados, suspeitou Lefebvre, responderia com gracejos, ironias ou subterfúgios – oque não deixaria de ser significativo, pois os sentidos da linguagem também se revelamatravés de subentendidos ou conteúdos obscuros. Contudo, para Lefebvre, uma talabordagem, com perguntas e respostas, correria o risco de um duplo desconhecimento.Por um lado, o das representações ocultas, não diretamente questionadas. Por exemplo,haverá diferenças de género nas representações do sexo feminino? Por outro lado,correríamos o risco de negligenciar as situações concretas (o vivido) em que seproduzem ou circulam as representações (Robinson 2003). É aqui que Lefebvre levantauma hipótese teórica e estratégica: o mesmo não pode representar-se a si mesmo, jáque a identidade só se realiza através da diferença. Vejamos, no exemplo sugerido, ondenos levaria essa mesma hipótese. Desde logo, ao reconhecimento de que “o masculinotende a representar-se no, por e através do feminino” (Lefebvre 1983 [1980]: 168), aindaque o feminino apareça representado por uma ausência. Como chegamos a perceber osistema de relações entre estes trâmites? Lefebvre aponta-nos um caminho, o dasmediações, alertando-nos, contudo, para o facto de a representação não se poderreduzir a uma imagem espelhada, a um simples reflexo, muito pelo contrário. Eis aquium vasto campo muito pouco explorado no domínio das ciências sociais: o dasmediações na análise das representações. Uma investida por estes domínios de pesquisarequer uma metodologia orientada pela busca oblíqua de presenças na ausência. Essametodologia, pioneiramente desenvolvida por Henri Lefebvre,1 é retomada e discutidano presente artigo, em diálogo com outros contributos teóricos vindos sobretudo da


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antropologia, da sociologia e da sociolinguística.2 Para o efeito toma-se por objeto deestudo o enigma dos palavrões. Como interpretar o pudor social no uso dos palavrões?Por que se calam tais palavras quando saem do mundo do calão? Que sentidos estranhosas transformam em palavras obscenas?

2 Não de todo apartados do universo da gíria e do calão, os estudos sobre os palavrõestêm explorado inevitáveis interconexões entre linguagem, sexualidade e sociedade(Mattiello 2008; Cameron e Kulick 2003). Aspetos relacionados com ofensas verbais ecódigos de honra no uso dos palavrões têm também merecido a atenção daantropologia (Blok 1981) e da sociolinguística (Sandmann 1993). Os interditos àcirculação dos palavrões, frequentemente associados aos tabus sexuais, também têmatraído um crescente interesse de cientistas sociais de diferentes quadrantesdisciplinares – não apenas da antropologia, com pioneiros contributos neste campo deanálise (Leach 1973 [1964]), mas também da psicologia (Jay 2009), da psicanálise(Arango 1996) ou da sociolinguística (Anderson e Trudgill 1990). No entanto, faltaaprofundar o diálogo entre estes diferentes contributos disciplinares. Este repto é tidoem conta na proposta de análise sobre os palavrões que adiante se ensaia, ainda que ométodo regressivo-progressivo de Lefebvre adquira uma relativa centralidade teórica.

3 Embora nunca o tenha sistematizado, o método regressivo-progressivo estáimplicitamente presente em grande parte da obra de Lefebvre. O descritivo, o histórico-genético e o analítico regressivo (Lefebvre 1953, 1989 [1959]) constituem oscomponentes essenciais do método que logo mereceu uma calorosa recetividade porparte de Sartre (2002 [1960]). As teorias da presença-ausência (Lefebvre 1983 [1980]) –levando em linha de conta o descritivo (no caso em estudo: os palavrões explícitos ouque implicitamente se afirmam em sua ausência quando invocados por outras palavrasou expressões) e o histórico genético (a descoberta dos meandros históricos e sociais nagénese dos palavrões) – permitem-nos dar conta de um importante achado, num registoanalítico-regressivo: as significações que saltam à vista encobrem outros sentidos, nãoapenas em profundidade, mas frequentemente em extensão, isto é, quer nahistoricidade do que se passa à superfície da vida quotidiana, quer na mutabilidade dovivido. As mediações propostas entre o vivido, o percebido e o concebido mostram-nosque, por detrás do limbo das palavras e dos palavrões, encontramos um amplo campode análise social. Por isso mesmo, os achados da linguística não passaram despercebidosà antropologia desde a pioneira obra de Marcel Mauss (Karsenti 1997).

O método regressivo-progressivo aplicado àlinguagem

4 Aplicado aos fenómenos da linguagem, o método regressivo-progressivo, ancorando asfalas do presente aos enlaces sociais da historicidade e mutabilidade do vivido, aparececomo uma estratégia orientada para a busca de sentido. Mas não onde supostamenteesse sentido poderia parecer mais evidente, na significação: “A significação é literal. Osentido remete-se de todos os lados para outra coisa: para o passado, para o adquirido,para a atualidade, para a memória, por um lado – e, por outro lado, para o virtual, paraos possíveis, para a diversidade dos campos percetíveis carregados de sentido”(Lefebvre 1968 [1966]: 215). Ao mesmo tempo cintilante e fugidio, o sentido acabariapor surgir de uma espécie de opacidade. Estamos num campo de debate semiológicoque – como viria a ser reconhecido por Melandri (1968) – abre portas a uma


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hermenêutica tensional entre a sintomatologia (onde o signo aparece numa relação decausalidade com o designado) e a simbologia (onde essa relação de causalidade não fazsentido). Melandri (1968) sugere, aliás, uma isomorfia entre a distinção freudiana quecoloca o consciente ante o inconsciente e a distinção semiológica que coloca frente afrente a historiografia e a história real (a que tem de ser resgatada). Então, a históriacrítica, a que promove o resgate, assemelhar-se-ia a uma espécie de terapia cujoobjetivo seria o de recuperar o inconsciente, entendido como o histórico removido. Nocampo aberto por esta rutura epistemológica podemos situar o método regressivo-progressivo de Lefebvre, a arqueologia do saber de Foucault (1966, 1969, 1971) e ométodo regressivo-arqueológico de Melandri (1968). Em qualquer dos casos há umrastreio da genealogia real dos acontecimentos até se chegar a uma bifurcação deregistos do fenómeno indagado – como a que opõe, no caso da psicanálise, o conscienteao inconsciente. Segundo Melandri, não se trata de chegar ao inconsciente enquantotal, mas de desvendar os fatores, circunstâncias ou processos que fizeram doinconsciente o que ele é, no sentido dialético de removido. O procedimento regressivotem esse objetivo: o de lidar com o removido. A história crítica é aquela que é capaz derecuperar o alienado, o excluído, o removido, através da contraposição dialética entreracionalização e sublimação.

5 Essa preocupação em fazer pulsar o removido encontra-se bem presente no métodoregressivo-progressivo de Lefebvre, dada a sua valorização das temporalidades dahistória (Martins 2003). Nos seus estudos sobre linguagem e sociedade, o que Lefebvre(1968 [1966]) nos mostra é que a palavra tem uma inscrição temporal que lhe dá umvalor mutável. Essa variabilidade decorre da mobilidade dos significados das palavras,pois elas são andantes (Galeano 2004), aladas (do latim alatus: “que tem asas”). Mas essacapacidade de voo pressupõe um espaço de aterragem, um lugar de circulação ou depouso (Nichols 1992) – seja ele um espaço de escrita (uma folha de papel, uma lousa, umecrã de computador) ou de interação, onde a palavra possibilita a comunicação. Éprecisamente esta relação entre tempo e espaço que o método regressivo-progressivo explora, permitindo que a linguagem deixe de ser considerada um saco de palavras, istoé, uma língua-nomenclatura, com significação e sentidos precisos, inquestionáveis. Nosaco de palavras, cada palavra designa uma coisa, um objeto, um ser. Com Lefebvre, àboleia de Saussure (1997 [1916]), abalou-se esta estabilidade. Porém, Lefebvre esquiva-se à tendência saussuriana de fetichização da linguagem (Arrivé 2007), posicionamentoque deixaria escapar o sentido mais profundo do que se nomeia: “A representaçãodissolve-se no signo, unidade de dois termos e duas caras, o significante e o significado,o representante e o representado. Mas que sucede com o sentido?” (Lefebvre 1983[1980]: 23). É essa busca de sentido que mobiliza Lefebvre para o estudo da linguagem,ao considerá-la um “tesouro do conhecimento”.

6 Para chegar a esse tesouro há que explorar e deslindar o vínculo entre linguagem esociedade. Manifestando-se crítico em relação aos que defendem que a significação sedefine pela denotação (o conteúdo, o significado), Lefebvre sugere que, pelo contrário, oque se consegue exprimir empobrece frequentemente o sentido. O que se exprime éapenas vibração do sentido. Daí o desafio de passar do expressivo (descrição) para osignificativo (interpretação), tendo em vista o tesouro da linguagem. Tesouro porquê?Porque a linguagem é um núcleo central de descobertas, uma “metáfora cheia depromessas” (Lefebvre 1968 [1966]: 15). É aqui que o procedimento regressivo, tão caro àpsicanálise, representa para Lefebvre um verdadeiro desafio metodológico. Aliás, o


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próprio acaba por reconhecer que a psicanálise abriu caminho para a descoberta dessetesouro ao promover o questionamento da linguagem e ao incitar a descoberta detensões, simultaneamente reveladas e dissimuladas, de necessidades e desejos,“normalidades” e “desvios” (Lefebvre 1968 [1966]: 15). O método analítico-regressivo deLefebvre projeta-se nesse campo de tensões que se cruzam entre a superfície doobservável e a sua subterraneidade, entre o que se dissimula e o que se descobre que é,no fundo, o social.

7 Esta aposta nas estruturas da ausência é uma estratégia de busca de sentido naobscuridade das conotações. Elas arrastam as denotações para um mundo de outrassignificações: “o número treze tem uma denotação clara (treze convidados, treze ovos)e uma conotação obscura para as pessoas supersticiosas” (Lefebvre 1968 [1966]: 107). Ouseja, surgem frequentes desdobramentos da conotação, através das aberturas que seproduzem entre significante e significado. O desafio não é propriamente o deprivilegiar o oculto sob o aparente – o que se dissimula ou oculta – em detrimento doevidente. É a relação entre o evidente e o oculto (Pais 2002: 65-68) que interessa ter emmira para rasgar os véus que as representações tecem à sua volta, obnubilando osentido emaranhado numa outra relação: a que se estabelece entre representado,representante e representação. Como desvendar esta relação e chegar ao sentido queencerra? Só há um caminho. O sentido de qualquer enunciado pressupõe a consideraçãode um contexto não somente linguístico mas também prático e social (Jourdan e Tuite2006): “O problema é o de descobrir a relação da linguagem com a ‘vida real’, isto é, coma praxis” (Lefebvre 1968 [1966]: 85), por outras palavras: “a passagem da língua para avida e da vida para a língua”; ou ainda, “das estruturas linguísticas para as estruturassociais e reciprocamente” (1968 [1966]: 85). Para tanto, há que situar no espaço e notempo os processos de comunicação através dos quais se veiculam as representações(Jodelet 1989). Daí a valorização que o método regressivo-progressivo dá ao vivido e aohistórico. De facto, o vivido não pode ser desprovido da sua historicidade, o mesmo sepodendo dizer em relação à linguagem. Dando um exemplo, não é por acaso que oshistoriadores têm dado uma especial atenção à relação entre movimentos migratórios eantroponímia (Salinero e Testón Núñez 2010).3 Nas roturas biográficas associadas aosprocessos de migração encontramos frequentes mudanças de nome entre os migrantes.Na Época Moderna, podia-se emigrar com o nome de um primo, adotar o nome daclientela de um protetor, eleger um pseudónimo que camuflasse uma trajetória de vidasuspeita. Havia emigrantes que deixavam na terra de origem a sua identidade real,viajando com uma identidade fingida (Testón Núñez e Sánchez Rubio 2010). E porquenem sempre é fácil descobrir as identidades que sob os nomes se escondem, estespodem ser peças de um jogo de enganos.

8 Em suma, é no vivido que a linguagem ganha sentido: “A linguagem permite descrevere dizer situações […]. O sentido provém de situações e regressa às situações” (Lefebvre1968 [1966]: 295). Numa trama de mediações, o percebido desempenha o papel deintermediário (mediação) entre o vivido e o concebido (entre a vida e a reflexão). É aanálise dialética (Martins 1996; Hess 1988) entre as dimensões do vivido, do concebido edo percebido que permite a esta última dimensão um lugar de evidência pela densidadee força que adquire nesse jogo de mediações. Através destas mediações descobrimosque no vivido a linguagem assume uma mais-valia, um valor distinto. É por isso que osentido das palavras é mais difícil de atingir que o seu significado – já que este imobilizao signo, não sendo por acaso que o signo fica inerte no significado. Ou seja, por detrásdo limbo das palavras encontramos um amplo campo de análise social. Como decifrar os


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enigmas da linguagem? É esse desafio que nos move na busca do sentido de algunspalavrões.

Um estudo de caso: o enigma do chá misterioso

9 Há cerca de uma década realizei várias incursões etnográficas por Trás-os-Montes, naalçada do movimento das “Mães de Bragança”.4 As “mães” pretendiam expulsar dacidade as trabalhadoras de sexo brasileiras, por elas apelidadas “putas” e “cabras”.Durante a pesquisa (Pais 2011) fiquei surpreendido por as Mães acusarem “asbrasileiras” de seduzirem os maridos com feitiços e macumbas. Falaram-me de um chácom o poder de “amarrar” os maridos. Nunca me revelaram o nome do misterioso chá.Questionado sobre o assunto, o proprietário de uma das mais conhecidas casas dealterne da cidade – então em prisão domiciliária – corroborou, sorridentemente, ospoderes do chá. Logo que me revelou o nome, anotei-o, pois nunca ouvira falar daespécie revelada. Pensei tratar-se de um chá importado do Brasil, qualquer variedadeexótica das muitas que El-Rei D. João VI de Portugal mandara cultivar, em 1811, noJardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro.

10 Quando, despreocupadamente, revelei o nome do chá a dois colegas brasileiros – umantropólogo e uma socióloga que me acompanharam no trabalho de campo5 –arregalaram os olhos e, levando ambos a mão à boca, sustiveram uma gargalhada. Asocióloga, assomada de pânico, advertiu-me: “Oi, Machado! Você não vai falar disso,não! Viu?! Por favor, Machado!” O antropólogo, buscando argumentos maisconvincentes de dissuasão, advertiu-me que, numa universidade brasileira, umestudante que fizera uso do termo numa tese de mestrado tinha sido convidado aeliminá-lo, sob pena de poder vir a ser reprovado por ofensa à dignidade dos membrosdo júri. Liberta do termo incómodo, a tese saiu incólume do embaraço, aprovada comdistinção e louvor. Apesar de, em Casa-Grande & Senzala, Gilberto Freyre (1995 [1933]:251) opinar que “a maior delícia do brasileiro é conversar safadeza”, tudo tem os seuslimites. Acontece que a palavra que lavra mistério, de uso tão problemático no Brasil, éem Portugal uma palavra desusada e inócua, tendo o mesmo significado com queMachado de Assis a usou em Dom Casmurro (1899): o de uma simples caixa. Para não ferirsuscetibilidades, ocorre-me ocultar o nome original do chá, imitando as personagensdos célebres livros de Harry Potter quando, por temor de referirem o nome tétrico deum tenebroso feiticeiro (Voldemort), a ele aludiam com uma insuspeita designação: oQuem Nós Sabemos. Seguindo a mesma estratégia, a entidade que dá nome ao milagrosochá poderá ser designada Quem Nós Sabemos. Inspirado em Lefebvre, apresento deseguida algumas hipóteses de investigação sobre o imbróglio que envolve o nome dochá. À frente delas uma ideia, um princípio orientador que desde já anuncio. Se nãofizermos uma distinção entre as palavras “nuas e cruas” e os sentidos (literais ouobscuros) com que se vestem quando se cozinham umas com as outras, não fará sentidorealizar análise de discurso e muito menos tomá-lo como um facto social. Bastariaenunciar as palavras, uma a uma, amarradas aos seus significados isolados e diretos. Ochá de Quem Nós Sabemos é uma mistela que dá que pensar, não tanto por seuspretensos efeitos mágicos mas, sobretudo, por seus impactos semióticos esocioantropológicos.


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Palavrões: o que mostram sob o que escondem

11 Uma vez que a nomeação de Quem Nós Sabemos é problemática quando dita nopalavrão que dá nome ao misterioso chá, sobrevêm muitas outras nomeações que tenhovindo a reunir numa extensa base de dados que já ultrapassou o meio milhar deregistos. Muitos destes nomes correspondem a designações que apenas identificam nabase do subentendido, como se correspondessem a códigos cifrados que impedem denomear diretamente o que, possivelmente, já terão suspeitado o que seja, mesmoquando ao abrigo de expressões redundantes como: a Inominável, Aquela, A Própria, AQue É, A Estranha, A Dita Cuja, Fulana, Ela, Elazinha, Toda-Toda. Apelidos que, desdelogo, nos desvelam o género feminino da coisa nomeada. No fundo, são nomeações queenvolvem um secretismo disfarçado, um falso anonimato, um incentivo ao burburinho,sinal de que Quem Nós Sabemos pode envolver-se em atividades clandestinas ouilegítimas, daí que também ganhe o apelido de Não-Conta-Pra-Ninguém. O curioso éque o indizível termo recobre uma realidade à qual se diz que devemos a nossaexistência. Um poeta popular brasileiro (Briguet), questiona-se: “O que seria de mimsem ela? Nem sequer eu nasceria […], somos todos filhos dela”. E no entanto,arrastando uma dupla personalidade, Quem Nós Sabemos acaba por ser nomeada dePerseguidora e Perseguida, neste último caso podendo estar sujeita a humilhações ecominações. Num livro sobre A Medicina na Voz do Povo, um médico português (Costa2007) revelou que uma sua doente, ao mesmo tempo que se lamentava da maleita que atrazia à consulta, logo pressagiou a causa: “Tenho esta comichão na Perseguida porqueo meu marido tem uma infeção na ponta da natureza.”6 Não se pense que os nomesintegram um sistema arbitrário. Produzem-se no mundo de que fazem parte, no vivido.Eles escondem e revelam enigmas que deslizam dos atos de nomeação para as coisasnomeadas, e vice-versa.

12 Ao guerrearem-se entre si, os nomes acabam por gerar verdades que se relativizam aocontradizerem-se. Como sugere Barthes (1977: 39), “a linguagem é um topos guerreiro”– lugar de significados que se desprendem de signos, num deslizamento de sentidos emetáforas, dicções e contradições, significados que se pelejam por incapacidade dealcançarem o significante. Enquanto identificadores de afeto e intimidade, osdiminutivos dados a Quem Nós Sabemos são abundantes, mas também surgemmodalidades de tratamento formais, respeitosas ou distanciadas, do tipo Dona Pepa,Dona Felisbina ou Dona Vera. O nome personifica a existência, dá-lhe um cunho deindividualidade. Porém, o que mais interessa na relação do nome com a coisa nomeadaé o que está para além dessa relação. Os nomes funcionam como cartões de visita que,sobretudo, indicam quem é quem aos olhos de quem nomeia. Por isso mesmo, o espaçomítico constituído pela rapsódia de nomeações dadas a Quem Nós Sabemos é um espaçode códigos cujas significações conflituam entre si, não apenas em função do que podemrepresentar mas, sobretudo, por corresponderem a construções intencionais, expressãode divisões sociais (Halliday 1978). Alguns repentistas brasileiros dão conta dessarealidade, sinalizando a possibilidade de o palavrão associado a Quem Nós Sabemosequivaler a uma contralinguagem demarcada do universo linguístico de classesabastadas: “O rico toca piano / O pobre toca corneta / O rico é que se masturba / Opobre bate punheta/ Xana de rica é vagina / Xana de pobre é [Quem Nós Sabemos]”.

13 A criação imaginária ultrapassa os limites da representação na medida em queamplifica as simbolizações do que representa (Legros 1996). É o caso dos referenciais


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lúdicos associados a Quem Nós Sabemos quando é apelidada de Barbie, Bibelot, Bonecaou Ioiô. Podemos procurar paradigmas onomásticos que nos levem do nome à essênciada coisa nomeada, mas esbarramos sempre em nomeações que descarrilam, ora comosemantemas (noções ou categorias relativas à realidade), ora como morfemas(categorias de pensamento). A ordem do discurso converge frequentemente pararepresentações estereotipadas e, quando assim acontece, muitas nomeações de QuemNós Sabemos surgem como veículos de afirmação de um indisfarçável machismo.Estamos perante metaforizações que nos permitem compreender a realidade de umacoisa em função de imagens associadas a outra, incluindo a compreensão de identidadessociais a partir dos imaginários em que essas mesmas identidades se projetam. O que sesugere é que, frequentemente, os nomes dados a Quem Nós Sabemos simbolizam,metaforicamente, uma dominação masculina (Bourdieu 1998). Ou seja, os registossemânticos inventariados dão conta de uma dominação de género que estrutura o quese diz e o modo como se diz, um dizer que se afirma para além do que é dito (Guiraud1978). No entanto, representações elogiosas coexistem com as temerosas, indiciandouma masculinidade ameaçada, ainda que ironicamente. Num tal registo, e numa épocaem que as redes terroristas proliferam, Quem Nós Sabemos aparece associada a enredosconspiratórios. Há quem não hesite em a apelidar de Talibã ou Bin Laden ou a descrevacomo um agente malfeitor: Perdição, Perigosa, Calamidade, Escraviza Homens,Desgraça de Macho. Outros apelidos sinalizam tendências macabras: Assassina dePalhaço, Bicho Que Mata o Homem, Cova do Defunto, Ali Onde Eu Me Acabo. Enfim,estamos perante nomeações que emergem, seguramente, de uma “comunidadediscursiva” (Maingueneau 1984) – masculina, no caso –, evidência que não pode serdesprezada.

Poderes ocultos

14 A indizível é também apelidada arma de agressão, podendo o motejo ir de uma simplesMachadada a um poderoso Canhão, passando por uma trivial Pistoleira. Ela é tambémvista como uma lutadora – Princesa Guerreira –, reunindo ainda predicados dedomadora: Amansa Macho, Devoradora, ou Superpoderosa. Este último atributo pareceser reivindicado por algumas mulheres. Num livro, editado em Portugal, da brasileiraNelma Penteado, sugestivamente intitulado Os Segredos das Mulheres Brasileiras paraManter os Homens Loucamente Apaixonados, é dado às mulheres o conselho: “Use o termopoderosa […]. Além do mais é um nome bonito que já deixa um homem ansioso paraconhecer ‘tal poder’” (2010: 116). O badalado poder de Quem Nós Sabemos foi tambémtestemunhado por Pina-Cabral (2003: 55-86) quando, no Noroeste de Portugal,descobriu que negociantes e caçadores ficavam atemorizados sempre que se cruzavamcom uma jovem viúva. Mau presságio para negócios e caçadas. Os negociantesqueixavam-se de que os ganhos iam por água abaixo e os caçadores lamentavam-se deque as espingardas perdiam a pontaria, por isso friccionavam o cano das mesmas entreas pernas, contra os genitais, para corrigirem a pontaria.7 Como quer que seja, ospoderes para gerar o mal também podem gerar o bem. Com efeito, se Quem NósSabemos tem sido considerada um Portal do Inferno, fonte de desgraças e sofrimentos,também aparece como um ícone: sagrada, venerada, possuidora da capacidade única de“dar à luz”. A incompatibilidade dogmática entre o bem e o mal desestrutura-se porquea realidade nomeada alberga forças contrárias, forçando-as à convivência. Em suma, no


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imaginário – principalmente no masculino, onde mais fervilham estas representações –há uma união de opostos: tese e antítese, ao mesmo tempo que síntese.

15 Ainda em relação aos poderes ocultos de Quem Nós Sabemos, na Catalunha havia ocostume de as mulheres dos pescadores exporem os genitais ao mar antes de osmaridos embarcarem. Acreditavam que, desse modo, o mar se acalmava – ao contráriodo que sucederia se nele urinassem. A exposição dos genitais femininos é um recursoque tem sido usado, ao longo da História, para expulsar demónios, afugentar espíritosmalignos, impedir que vários tipos de males aconteçam. Quando os perigos espreitamou as adversidades ameaçam, a sabedoria popular de algumas culturas dita que amelhor opção de uma mulher é erguer as saias (Blackledge 2006 [2003]: 17-76). O mesmorecurso é usado em discussões e zaragatas públicas no Norte de Portugal. Numa delasobservei que o levantamento das saias era acompanhado de fortes batimentos numa dasnádegas pela mão oposta à que levantava a saia. Não é fácil explicar esta exposiçãodeliberada ou insinuada dos genitais femininos, de que existem abundantes referênciasno folclore e na literatura. Tentativa de humilhar os adversários? De os seduzir? De osatarantar? Mera superstição?8 Uma coisa é certa, Quem Nós Sabemos arrasta um mitode poder e um poder mítico.

16 O mito do poder resvala para a incapacidade de o representar ou até mesmo de onomear de uma forma unívoca. Daí a pluralidade contraditória das nomeações erepresentações de Quem Nós Sabemos. Esta ambivalência, de quem pode ser uma coisa eo avesso da mesma, ocorre também quando passamos em revista as suas representaçõesreligiosas. Ela é Deusa, Peregrina, Santinha, Irmã Maria, Imaculada, Dona Anja; ou entãoé vista como Paraíso, Vale Sagrado, Portal do Céu, Abençoada, Aba de Estrelas, Cricritados Céus, Estrela Guia, Luz no Fim do Mundo, Sino de Igreja, Milagrosa, Acolhedora dosSantos. Mas, lá está, os apodos vilipendiosos retratam-na também como Profana,Libertina, Fatal, Libidinosa, Sinistra, Pecado, Pecaminosa, Sem-Vergonha, Tentação doDiabo. O método regressivo-progressivo de Lefebvre ajuda-nos a compreender estadiabolização, onde as palavras se convertem num mito de arquipotência que, no casoem estudo, afirma o ser e o acontecer de uma idealizada essência feminina. Com efeito,nos tempos da Inquisição, a mulher era vista como um ser que facilmente se deixavacair em tentação, dada a suposta debilidade da sua fé na palavra de Deus (Cawthorne2004). Como quer que seja, embora imaginariamente convertida em artesã demoníaca,Quem Nós Sabemos é capaz de destilar amor do mesmo modo que sortilégio. Ela éreversível porque polivalente. Divina e diabo. Mágica porque vista como tendo poderessobrenaturais, por intervenção de Deus ou do Demónio. E uma vez que um dos atributosda magia é o de criar imagens (Mauss 2003 [1902-1938]), ela própria é ela mais asimagens a que dá lugar. Em suma, por ser uma realidade sulcada em todas as direçõesno imaginário do desejo ou do temor, ela pode assumir múltiplos nomes, saturando-sede analogias, metaforizações, alusões. O volumoso caudal de tão exóticas nomeaçõesprova a incapacidade de acoitar sob um único nome realidades plurais em suassignificações. A menos que esse nome se exceda de sentidos permitindo pensar-se oindizível, numa espécie de “síntese criativa” – expressão que Weber (1993 [1922]: 38-45)usava para dar conta de diversos tipos de conexões (psíquicas ou culturais). Esse nomeexiste, ainda que indizível. O pudor em o verbalizar esconde um enigma por desvendar.


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Linguagem e pudor

17 Como interpretar o pudor social que se projeta no uso dos palavrões? Qual a razão pelaqual o nome que é dado ao chá misterioso é uma palavra maldita? Como bem o sugereLeach (1973 [1964]), a compreensão dos tabus linguísticos passa pela valorização do nãodito, do interdito, do que socialmente produz a obscenidade. Quem Nós Sabemospoderia denominar-se “Órgão Sexual da Mulher” ou mesmo “Vagina”, mas estasdesignações assépticas escondem o tabu que o palavrão denuncia às escancaradas, daíque o tétrico termo se tenha transformado num interdito linguístico, sucumbindo arumores reverenciais, a uma decência social. Porém, o tabu continua presente em suaausência. No lugar do palavrão surgem imensas designações substitutivas ousucedâneas, que o tornam presente em sua ausência. Por outras palavras, os controlesrepressivos sobre a sexualidade libertam a imaginação na criatividade da linguagem.Não podemos menosprezar os mecanismos sociais que geram o processo detransformação simbólica de uma simples palavra num palavrão ou num prenúncio domesmo. No caso em estudo, o tesouro da linguagem é um reservatório de imagináriosque se alimentam de um cozinhado aparentemente incongruente, onde a ficção seentrelaça com o vivido na antecipação de um retorno imaginado a lugares de memóriaou na projeção de desejos fantasiados ou reprimidos.

18 Dito isto, os corpos – representados no sexo e na sexualidade – ganham sentidocultural, na medida em que as palavras os habitam. Nos atos de nomeação, as palavrastatuam culturalmente os corpos. Essas tatuagens – entendidas como mediações – sãoformas de ler o social. Assim sendo, há que levar a sério os palavrões, deixando de ladoa “autoridade etnográfica” arrogante (Clifford 1991) que desvaloriza as categoriasnativas como chaves de interpretação do vivido. As metaforizações e tropismos(Fernandez 1991) que giram em torno de Quem Nós Sabemos permitem dar visibilidadeao indizível, em jogos de nomeação cujo encanto recrudesce com o vínculo deparentesco da ilusão com o mito (Lefebvre 1962; Lévi-Strauss 1978; Durand 1981). JorgeLuís Borges (1983: 178) caracterizou a literatura alegórica como uma fábula deabstrações, embora personificadas. O mesmo se passa com as nomeações alegóricasdirigidas a Quem Nós Sabemos. Elas acentuam aparentes singularidades que todavia semovem para um ideal – porque em mira não estão propriamente singularidades massim uma espécie; não as espécies mas sim um género; não os géneros mas sim umadivindade; não o múltiplo mas o uno: o “universal triunfante” sobre o “particularirredutível” (Appadurai 1996: 64). De qualquer forma, dá-se também uma simbioseentre duas realidades intrínsecas: uma material (substantiva) e outra formal (idealista).Num caso, Quem Nós Sabemos é um agente produtor de desejos, sensações eexperiências a partir de sua existência singular e material. Noutro caso, ela é aquilo quefaz de si o que é, a forma em que se encaixam todas as singularidades, pois o universalapenas é alcançável por mediação das partes. Ou seja: se existir é diferir, a diferença é,de certo modo, o lado substancial das coisas: o que elas têm de mais próprio e comum,apesar das qualidades que as singularizam, umas em relação às outras, como Tarde(1999 [1895]) bem o demonstrou em sua monadologia. Nesta dialética, o vivido (registodo experienciado) e o imaginado (registo do idealizado) convergem para o discurso(registo do significado). Os nomes vinculam-se a vidas vividas de coisas reais(Rosenstock-Huessy 2002 [1981]). Por isso mesmo, Quem Nós Sabemos é um lugar decirculação de sentidos, de condensação de imaginários e fantasias, um centro que é


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também lugar de topofilias e topofobias, uma territorialidade de medos e anseios,desejos e equívocos, excitações e proibições. Todos estes imaginários são mais do quemeras imagens refletidas de uma qualquer realidade. São também criações incessantesde imagens que criam a sua própria realidade (Castoriadis 1975). Nela se enfileiramsignificações que remetem para distintas ordens de representações, ao convocarem opercebido, o vivido e o concebido. Uma outra questão é a de se saber por que razão háque buscar no imaginário um complemento necessário da ordem social. De uma ordemque suscita identidades imaginárias com roupagens simbólicas.

Deslizes e tresmalhações

19 O método regressivo-progressivo permite-nos compreender por que razão ailegitimidade de se dizer o que, por decoro moral, é indizível ganha novos sentidos apartir da articulação do vivido com o percebido e o concebido. Vejamos, mais emdetalhe, um outro controverso nome que é dado a Quem Nós Sabemos – o de Cabra. Oseu significado linguístico remete para um mamífero ruminante, fêmea do bode. Noentanto, o sentido que a palavra desponta escapa-nos se não levamos em conta o seucontexto de uso, na alçada de uma historicidade que nos permita uma aproximação aosrefluxos de significação do nome. Até há cerca de três ou quatro décadas, ainda existiano Norte de Portugal um rito denominado “pagamento da cabrita”. Qual o sentido queaqui tem o termo cabrita? Usando o método regressivo-progressivo e resgatando agénese histórica da significação do termo, descobre-se que o antigo rito se projeta numuniverso de significações onde impera a ideia de uma ordem ocultamente prescrita. Osrapazes consideravam as moças de suas aldeias como propriedade interdita aosforasteiros. Nalguns casos, exerciam uma espécie de direito sobre as moças da terra queconsistia em as apalpar quando circulavam pelas ruas (Fontes 1974: 106). E queacontecia se algum rapaz forasteiro pretendesse namorar como uma moça da aldeia? Odireito somente era concedido mediante uma penalização, o pagamento da cabrita. Aodescobrirem que uma moça se deixava ir pelo “arrastar de asa” de um forasteiro, osrapazes da aldeia invadiam a casa dos pais da moça, quando o noivo lá estava, para oobrigar a sair e pagar as inevitáveis rodadas de vinho à rapaziada. Em caso deresistência ou insubmissão, era amarrado a uma corda e mergulhado numa fonte, numpoço ou num rio. Convencido o noivo, rumavam todos para a primeira taberna queencontrassem, o noivo à frente e os rapazes da aldeia atrás, a cantar. Lá chegados, onoivo pagava vinho, pão e bacalhau para todos. Depois peregrinavam por outrastabernas da aldeia, comendo e bebericando (Lages 1983).

20 O pagamento da cabrita é, certamente, um rito integrativo. Porém, arrasta também asimbolização de um status quo. Por isso, o rito faz sentido porque ordena a desordem,conferindo meios para a controlar. Mas o rito não assegura uma integração plena.Mesmo tendo pago a cabrita, o noivo de terra alheia continua a ser olhado como “defora”. Se um rapaz que tivesse pago a cabrita por namorar uma moça de aldeia vizinhaviesse a namorar com outra da mesma aldeia, de novo era sujeito ao pagamento dacabrita. A questão problemática é a de saber por que razão é que o noivo que vem defora namorar ou casar com uma moça de uma dada aldeia se vê obrigado a umapunição. Para o efeito importa questionar o sentido oculto do termo cabra ou cabrita,no ritual que leva o seu nome. A hipótese de que uma pequena cabra (no sentidolinguístico do termo) poderia ser “partilhada pelos convivas de um banquete” (Lages


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1983: 660) levanta dúvidas. Recentemente, mobilizado por uma etnografia dacomunicação (Saville-Troike 1989), visitei algumas aldeias do distrito de Viseu, ondetambém existia o rito do pagamento da cabrita. Questionei então alguns aldeãos sobre osignificado do termo “cabrita”: Era uma cabra que o noivo tinha de pagar? Em risadasnegaram-me convictamente a hipótese, tendo-me alguns sugerido que a cabra era uma“ovelha tresmalhada”, ou seja, a moça que tinha rejeitado os rapazes da aldeia para sejuntar com um de fora. Também no Brasil colonial eram popularmente designados“cabras” todos os indivíduos que resultassem de indesejáveis misturas sociais. Oatributo de cabra, por esse motivo, era depreciativo (Furtado 2003: 49). A cabra, tal quala moça que se deixa levar por um rapaz de fora, caracteriza-se por uma rebeldia àdomesticidade. Embora presas nos fundos das casas (as cabras) ou, em sentidoalegórico, nas próprias casas (as moças que têm noivo de fora), o que parececaracterizar umas e outras é o risco de evasão que exige uma contrapartida, uma pena,uma multa ou mesmo uma retaliação: o pagamento da cabrita. Mais uma vez, o que onome Cabra encobre é uma relação de poder em que a denominação masculina confinaa mulher à esfera doméstica, realidade que aparece refletida em muitos adágiospopulares (por exemplo: “do homem a praça, da mulher a casa”).

21 Aqui chegados, que representa, afinal, a cabrita? Desde logo, o termo parece apontarpara uma necessidade social de simbolização das relações sociais. Neste sentido, acabrita parece assumir uma dupla valência: quer como valor de transação (equivalentegeral de trocas), quer como objeto transacionável (associado a um valor de uso). Orabem, se a cabra, em termos simbólicos, representa a moça que saltou a cerca da suacomunidade de origem, então justifica-se a relação contratual entre os rapazes daaldeia (que perdem a cabrita) e o noivo (que a ganha) através de um pagamento querepresenta nem mais nem menos que o preço da cabra. Esta hipótese – vou chamar-lhehipótese de tresmalhação – faz algum sentido, até na medida em que sabemos que ospastores que guardam rebanhos consideram as cabras muito mais ariscas do que, porexemplo, as ovelhas. Por isso mesmo, a designação de cabra também é dada a umamulher de comportamento duvidoso, suspeito, indigno. Aliás, “puta” e “cabra” sãopalavras frequentemente usadas como sinónimos (Millet 2001). Neste registo analítico,o apelido de Cabra que é dado a Quem Nós Sabemos pode ser sintoma de umasuspeitada ameaça de “dor de corno” – para usar outro palavrão popular, também cheiode sentido.

22 O simbolismo dos cornos tem sido bastante estudado na antropologia. A suainterpretação não pode dissociar-se dos contextos sociais de uso que lhe dão sentido eque remetem para a um código de honra baseado na força e na virilidade. Um homemcornudo é um cabrão, sendo os cornos atributo de um marido ou amante enganado –devido à sua passividade, como acontece com o bode, por ser condescendente com oacesso de outros machos às fêmeas do seu domínio (Leach 1973 [1964]; Blok 1981). Por asexualidade das mulheres ameaçar a honra dos homens, estes defendem-se procurandoprotegê-las do assédio por parte de outros homens. A defesa da honra e reputaçãojustifica as ameaças de violência aos que se esquivam ao pagamento da cabrita: omergulho numa fonte ou num poço. No fundo, os forasteiros são obrigados a submeter-se à força do rito, ou melhor, ao domínio dos que reivindicam a “imunidade do seudomínio” (Blok 1981: 17). Se o não fizessem passariam por “panhonhas” ou, pior ainda,por “bois mansos”, sem os “tomates” no lugar.


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23 A hostilidade entre aldeias, por efeito de ameaça aos casamentos endogâmicos, ligadosa interesses patrimoniais, justifica não só a existência do rito do pagamento da cabritacomo muitos dos apelidos que os nativos de aldeias vizinhas jogam entre si.Frequentemente, há uma tendência para se desvalorizar o status das mulheres que nãosão da terra. Por isso, no Alentejo surgem ditos do tipo: “As do Campinho são bruxas; deSão Marcos, feiticeiras; da Cumeada, manhosas; de Reguengos, borracheiras” (Morais2006: 53). As mulheres da freguesia de Nossa Senhora de Machede (concelho de Évora)são alvo de troça pois delas se diz que “não têm calcanhares” porque “caem facilmentede costas”, isto é, manifestam-se disponíveis para prazeres de cama. Para defenderem areputação dos homens da sua terra, as mulheres atingidas costumam replicar que oshomens “de fora”, por virilidade duvidosa, “não têm biqueiras” (Morais 2006: 77-78).Também se diz que os habitantes da referida aldeia recusaram a edificação de umaescola (“não precisamos dela que nós cá somos todos analfabetos”) mas, apregoavam osdas aldeias rivais, reivindicavam a construção de uma praça de touros, dada aabundância de “cornos”. Há pois uma clara oposição entre “os de cá” e “os de fora”,“nós” e “eles”, oposição presente quer em adágios (Pais 1985), quer em muitos ritos etradições populares de Portugal, como nos festejos de São João, onde há umenfrentamento entre grupos rivais, designados Bugios (representando cristãos) eMourisqueiros (representando forasteiros), ambos os grupos compostos por rapazessolteiros (Ferreira e Perdigão 2003: 14). Esta oposição manifesta-se em alguns ditospopulares que envolvem aldeias vizinhas, desencorajando os casamentos exolocais. Porexemplo: “Eu casei-me na Mutela com uma moça de feição; de bonita não tinha nada,pobre sim, honrada não” (Dias 1984: 293). A tresmalhação é alvo de crítica social naconvicção de que “quem fora vai casar ou foi enganado ou vai enganar”, embora sejaminteresses patrimoniais – não confessos mas reais – que determinem estarepresentação, também presente nas loas das festas dos rapazes em Trás-os-Montes(Godinho 2006a, 2006b).

24 O ritual é um domínio privilegiado para desvendar cristalizações sociais de umacultura, assim como suas transformações. Atualmente, já não são denominadas cabrasas moças que saem de uma aldeia para namorar ou casar com rapazes de terra alheia.Em contrapartida, as Mães de Bragança que recentemente se revoltaram contra astrabalhadoras de sexo brasileiras, para além de as acusarem de enfeitiçar os maridoscom o misterioso chá, também as apelidam cabras. Ou seja, as chamadas cabras vêmagora de fora, sendo alvo de múltiplas discriminações: enquanto mulheres,estrangeiras, imigrantes e prostitutas. A sua representação, de ameaçadoras intrusas,resulta da constatação de uma outridade como perigosa, caótica, indutora de desordeme insegurança. Por isso são apodadas de cabras, tendo desencadeado, no auge domovimento das Mães de Bragança, fervores patrióticos, nacionalistas, chauvinistas,xenófobos (Pais 2011). As apelidadas cabras aparecem como bode expiatório de umadesordem social. A casa de família é o lugar da mulher recatada e casta; os bordéis são,em contrapartida, o território da maldade erotizada. No universo feminino, o confrontoentre “estabelecidos” e “outsiders” (Elias e Scotson (1994 [1965]) pode ser lido comodecorrente de uma oposição entre ordem e desordem. Umas reivindicam o papel demães, outras são simplesmente olhadas como cabras. Em contrapartida, quando oapodo de Cabra se refere a Quem Nós Sabemos, partindo das hostes masculinas, o queestá em causa, a nível do inconsciente, é um possível temor de desordem, por efeito depoderes ameaçados por uma crescente emancipação feminina (Romaine 1999):suspeitas, ciumeiras ou desconfianças de possíveis ou imaginadas traições que acabam


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por se transformar em obsessão entre homens que teimam em defender que “em casamanda ela, mas nela mando eu”. A alienação encontra-se também nas representaçõesdo vivido enquanto formas de consciência mitificada. A cabra aparece como umsímbolo, mas são as analogias que dão razão de ser ao símbolo: “A comparação, aanalogia, a identidade parcial (fictícia ou real) entram na consciência do símbolo. Osimbolismo assim considerado supõe sempre dois termos, condensados num só por umtropo (elipse, metáfora)” (Lefebvre 1968 [1966]: 225). O sentido cai frequentemente nosimbolismo. Porém, o símbolo reveste-se de sentido na medida em que subentende umimaginário social (distinto da imaginação individual) historicamente resgatável.

25 Para enfatizar a importância dos códigos de variabilidade dos nomes, seja tomado oexemplo de um outro palavrão que remete para uma entidade que frequentemente serelaciona com Quem Nós Sabemos. Poderia reproduzir o palavrão, mas, em seu lugar,limito-me a usar um termo corrente no Brasil para designar qualquer entidade: o“cara”. Façamos então uma reflexão sobre os códigos de variabilidade do significado docara a partir de um contexto concreto de comunicação. O caso aconteceu,recentemente, no Norte de Portugal.9 Um cabo da Guarda Nacional Republicana,irritado por não ter conseguido uma troca na escala de serviço, virou-se para o sargentoresponsável do escalonamento e desabafou, num misto de frustração e resignação: “nãodá p’ra trocar, então pró cara…!” Sentindo-se atingido na sua honra e consideração, osuperior hierárquico acusou-o de crime de insubordinação. Nos tribunais, os juízestiveram de se enfrentar não propriamente com o significado denotativo do Cara, queninguém contesta, mas com o valor moral do cara, determinado pelo contexto de uso.Dependendo deste, talvez o palavrão não fosse assim tão injurioso ou ofensivo. Por aquivemos que, dependendo do contexto de comunicação, há palavras que podem promoverou abalar hierarquias sociais. O guarda salvou-se da condenação porque, comoGarfinkel (2006 [1968]) bem o demostrou em seus estudos etnometodológicos, nas suasdecisões os juízes respeitam, geralmente, as características rotineiras da ordem social.De facto, no Norte de Portugal o Cara aparece como uma verdadeira muleta oratória,para além de ser uma expressão popular de impaciência ou espanto. Aliás, em suasorigens, o cara tinha uma significação inócua. Derivando do latim caraculus designavauma simples estaca e, talvez por isso, no tempo das descobertas marítimas, o termocara era usado pelos marinheiros portugueses para designar o mastro principal dascaravelas. Por aqui vemos que as palavras têm uma “génese histórica” (Lefebvre 1953),pois em cada época há modos legítimos de argumentar, narrar, persuadir, provar(Angenot 2010). Como também vimos na tentativa de interpretação do ritual dopagamento da cabrita, a génese não exclui “a análise das relações mais ocultas, defiliações perdidas” (Lefebvre 1983 [1980]: 17), mas também não impede o ganho denovos sentidos. É aqui que emerge a componente “histórico-genética” do métodoregressivo-progressivo. Se, como bem disse Galeano (2004: 21), “o nome é a coisa que onome chama”, ideia que aparece no seu livro As Palavras Andantes, também é verdadeque uma mesma palavra pode significar muitas coisas diferentes, dependendo de poronde ela circule. Pergunta Lefebvre (1968 [1966]: 71): “Donde, como, de que coisa vem osentido?” Não vem apenas da significação das palavras isoladas. Vem, sobretudo, dosseus contextos de uso e de suas ressonâncias culturais, das representações quearrastam. Como bem nos ensinou Lefebvre (1968 [1966]: 94, 1983 [1980]: 199-200), asrepresentações sociais não são simples efeitos: são factos de palavras e, sobretudo, depráticas e lugares (Pink 2012).


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Notas conclusivas

26 Na carta escrita a Octavio Paz – que não lhe chegou a endereçar – e que abre La présenceet l’absence, Lefebvre colocava a descoberto os ardis da linguagem, isto é, a sua naturezaenigmática, por efeito das “dependências e poderes ocultos sob as palavras e os gestos”(1983 [1980]: 10-11). Daí o largo passo em frente que Lefebvre dá em relação à filosofiada linguagem, que a toma como um mero saco de palavras, a cada palavra se associandouma coisa ou uma ideia. Os poderes ocultos que transformam uma palavra numpalavrão foram aqui pesquisados a partir de um termo indizível na língua portuguesafalada no Brasil, fora dos circuitos da clandestinidade ou do calão. O facto de, emPortugal, essa palavra arcaica ter um significado que nada tem de obsceno, dadosignificar uma “pequena caixa”, mostra bem como as palavras têm uma história de vidae ganham um poder (Fairclough 1989) dependente dos contextos de uso: “A significaçãoparece clara e bem definida; mas muda com o valor […]. O contexto torna-sedeterminante” (Lefebvre 1968 [1966]: 94-95). As próprias onomatopeias só significam oque exprimem quando reportadas a um contexto de uso (Newmeyer 1989; Chambers2003). Só o contexto comunica o valor da palavra. É também o que se passa com aspalavras polissémicas, onde a relação entre significante e significado apareceobscurecida. Mesmo as palavras que parecem ter um significado indiscutível sãoportadoras de histórias de vida que alojam outros sentidos, dependendo do contexto deuso, como verificámos com as metaforizações de “cabra” ou do polivalente “cara”. Ouseja, os nomes são mais do que cortinas que ocultam o movimento da linguagem, maisdo que palavras amortalhadas em significados (Foley 1997). São códigos devariabilidade social que refletem e produzem o social e, por isso mesmo, ajudam apercebê-lo. Como qualquer mercadoria, a linguagem possui um valor na medida em quenão se pode nomear sem representar. Por isso mesmo, pela sua natureza comunicativa,a linguagem concretiza-se como uma mediação entre o individual e o social (Lutfi 2003).

27 No estudo de caso aprofundado vimos que o palavrão indizível – que neste textoganhou a alcunha de Quem Nós Sabemos – denuncia uma ausência que se enche depresenças ficcionadas, ao representar-se através de múltiplas imagens e propriedades.Sem estas, estaríamos perante uma abstração oca, uma sombra, um vazio em busca deseu próprio ser. É certo que o corpo apenas se representa através de investimentosabstratos: os signos corporais. No entanto, no intervalo que desune o corpo das suasrepresentações primárias emerge uma outra realidade: um poder de nomeação. Elegera-se a partir do vivido, palco de ebulição e circulação das representações sociais. Eporque assim é, Quem Nós Sabemos acaba por não extravasar as representações triviaisque a representam, pela simples razão que, como nos ensinou Lefebvre, o individualapenas se representa no social, pelo social e para o social. Todos os nomes que QuemNós Sabemos ganha apenas a representam indiretamente, tornando-a presente em suaausência através de múltiplas alusões, metáforas e simbolizações.

28 Nas mediações entre as nomeações e representações, o método regressivo-progressivofez-nos descobrir uma tensão entre coação e libertação, tabu e remissão, alienação oobsessão. O interdito – a nomeação do palavrão – gera o prazer do contradito, umaforma de contornar o interdito a partir de outros ditos, ficando assim superada, decerta forma, a coerção que impede a circulação do palavrão. Esse prazer de rebeldia éclaramente sinalizado pela natureza jocosa dos apelidos. Podemos mesmo falar de um“prazer de disparatar”, usando uma expressão que é grata a Freud (2000 [1905]) quando


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analisa a relação do chiste com o inconsciente. A psicogénese do chiste, desenvolvidapor Freud, mostra bem como o prazer de disparatar se pode interpretar como uma fugaà coercividade (psíquica ou social) que procede de um jogo criativo de palavras queprocura “proteger o prazer contra a sua supressão” (Freud 2000 [1905]: 131). De facto,os apelidos atribuídos a Quem Nós Sabemos dão claros sinais de corresponderem a umaliberdade de jogar com ideias, representações e analogias que produzem o chiste. Oprazer de disparatar parece também corresponder a uma fonte de prestígio, casocontrário os apelidos não circulariam, ou seja, não sobreviveriam. É como se acapacidade de nomear fosse equivalente a um poder de exibição quando a comunicaçãosobre a sexualidade se faz de forma jocosa. É nestas circunstâncias que desponta apossibilidade de toda esta criatividade antroponímica se associar a desejos reprimidosou intensificados por razões desconhecidas da consciência. Aliás, uma grande parte dosapelidos atribuídos a Quem Nós Sabemos correspondem a elaborações oníricas, comoacontece nos sonhos (Freud 1999 [1899]).

29 Muitos dos nomes que afugentam o palavrão sugerem a hipótese de os desejosreprimidos suscitarem múltiplas representações que alimentam imaginários sociais(Harvey e Shalom 1997). Estes, por sua vez, parecem dar sustentabilidade a umahipótese levantada por Lefebvre: a transformação do sexual em obsessão e ficção. Etudo isto porque o sexual (a coisa que o palavrão designa) se converteu numa figura deausência, por efeito de sua presença obsessiva: “Mesmo a desnudez, em vez dedescobrir uma presença (como na arte clássica) divulga-se como imagem, comoausência” (Lefebvre 1983 [1980]: 182). Finalmente, quanto aos poderes ocultos quetransformam uma palavra num palavrão, o estudo de caso sobre Quem Nós Sabemos sugere a existência de importantes processos de mediação simbólica entre diferentessexos. Algumas pesquisas têm mostrado como a linguagem se associa a identidades degénero (Bergvall, Bing e Freed 1996; Cameron 1995; Mills 1995), mas raramente se têmdiscutido as dimensões de alienação na forma como essas identidades se jogam nospalavrões. Para o efeito, há que valorizar o poder semiológico das nomeações. Comoacontece com os mitos, os palavrões vestem-se de roupagens simbólicas que alinguagem projeta no pensamento e nos imaginários sociais.

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HESS, Rémi, 1988, Henri Lefebvre et l’aventure du siècle. Paris, Métaillié.

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LAGES, Mário, 1983, “O casamento exolocal numa aldeia da Beira Alta”, Análise Social, XIX (77-79):645-665.

LEACH, Edmund, 1973 [1964], “Anthropological aspects of language: animal categories and verbalabuse”, em Eric H. Lenneberg (org.), New Directions in the Study of Language. Cambridge, MA, TheMIT Press, 23-63.

LEFEBVRE, Henri, 1953, “Perspectives de sociologie rurale”, Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie,XIV: 122-140.

LEFEBVRE, Henri, 1962, “Les mythes de la vie quotidienne”, Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie,XXXIII: 67-74.

LEFEBVRE, Henri, 1968 [1966], A Linguagem e a Sociedade. Lisboa, Ulisseia.

LEFEBVRE, Henri, 1983 [1980], La Presencia y la Ausencia: Contribución a la Teoría de lasRepresentaciones. México, Fondo de Cultura Económica.

LEFEBVRE, Henri, 1989 [1959], La somme et le reste. Paris, Méridiens Klincksieck.


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LEGROS, Patrick, 1996, Introduction à une sociologie de la création imaginaire. Paris, L’Harmattan.

LÉVI-STRAUSS, Claude, 1978, Mito y Significado. Madrid, Alianza Editorial.

LUTFI, Eulina Pacheco, 2003, “Lefebvre et les fondements théoriques des représentations”, LaSomme et le Reste, 2: 13-17.

MAINGUENEAU, Dominique, 1984, Genèses du discours. Liège, Mardaga.

MARTINS, José de Souza (org.), 1996, Henri Lefebvre e o Retorno à Dialética. São Paulo, Hucitec.

MARTINS, José de Souza, 2003, “Les temporalités de l’histoire dans la dialectique de Lefebvre”, LaSomme et le Reste, 2: 6-12.

MATTIELLO, Elisa, 2008, An Introduction to English Slang: A Description of its Morphology, Semanticsand Sociology. Milano, Polimetrica.

MAUSS, Marcel, 2003 [1902-1938], “Esboço de uma teoria geral da magia”, em M. Mauss, Sociologiae Antropologia. São Paulo, Cosac & Naify, 48-181.

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PAIS, José Machado, 2002, Sociologia da Vida Quotidiana: Teorias, Métodos e Estudos de Caso. Lisboa,Imprensa de Ciências Sociais [edição brasileira: Vida Cotidiana: Enigmas e Revelações. São Paulo,Cortez Editora, 2003].

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ROMAINE, Suzanne, 1999, Communicating Gender. Mahwah, NJ, Erlbaum.

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NOTAS1. Com uma vastíssima obra que reúne mais de meia centena de livros, e apesar ou justamentepor causa de sua formação filosófica, Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991) não deixou de se afirmar emdomínios como os da sociolinguística, da história ou da sociologia. A sua sensibilidadeantropológica em muito se deve à sua experiência de vida quando, depois de ter cumprido oserviço militar no Norte de África, regressa a Paris para trabalhar como operário na Citroën e,posteriormente, como taxista. Com efeito, uma boa parte da sua produção teórica centra-se nacrítica da vida quotidiana, na produção do espaço e na alienação social. Em 1970, Henri Lefebvrefundou com Anatole Hopp a revista Espace et Société que, após a sua morte, lhe consagrou umnúmero de homenagem (n.º 76, 1994). A obra de Henri Lefebvre tem sido recentemente alvo deum recrudescido interesse (Shields 1999; Elden 2004; Stanek 2011; Butler 2012).2. Num esforço que procura confluências disciplinares, como também se verifica no clássicoestudo de Paul Rabinow (1986) sobre representações sociais.3. A necessidade de cruzamento de estratégias de comparação etnográfica e histórica é tambémreivindicada por Pina-Cabral (2008) e ilustrada por Harris (2008) quando clarifica a influênciaportuguesa na prática de atribuição de nomes na história do Pará, confrontando os períodoscolonial, imperial e contemporâneo.4. Em Bragança, o trabalho de campo mais intensivo decorreu entre 2003 e 2008, período em queefetuei duas a três deslocações por ano, com estadias de uma a duas semanas. Posteriormente asvisitas tornaram-se mais esporádicas. Para além de Bragança, deambulei por outras regiões deTrás-os-Montes, como Mirandela, Macedo de Cavaleiros e Vinhais. Quando as rusgas policiais àscasas de alterne se intensificaram (Pais 2011), tendo muitas das trabalhadoras de alterne rumadopara Espanha, realizei algumas incursões por Alcanices, Verin e Zamora. Dados maisaprofundados desta minha pesquisa etnográfica serão publicados num futuro livro.


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5. Refiro-me a Ismael Pordeus Jr. (da Universidade Federal do Ceará) e Roselane Bezerra (bolseirade pós-doutoramento no Centro de Estudos Sociais da Universidade de Coimbra).6. No seu livro, o médico dá conta de outras designações que se referem à Perseguida, como:Montadeira, Parreca ou Pardalona.7. No Rio Grande do Sul (Brasil) a má pontaria das espingardas poderia ser retratada com aexpressão “embucetar” (Fisher 2004: 107).8. A superstição (do latim superstitio) significava, originariamente, “o que persiste de épocasantigas”. É neste sentido que – à luz do método regressivo-progressivo, proposto por Lefebvre(1968, 1983) – se pode tomar a superstição como uma sobrevivência, embora reelaborada, datradição.9. O caso ocorreu em agosto de 2009, tendo a denúncia seguido para o DIAP (Departamento deInvestigação e Ação Penal) de Lisboa, seguindo depois para o Tribunal de Instrução Criminal, atéchegar, finalmente, ao Tribunal da Relação de Lisboa, em outubro de 2010.

RESUMOSAo ganharem o estatuto de palavrões, por que razão algumas palavras se tornam interditas ouapenas evocadas através da mediação de alegorias e metáforas sugeridas por outras palavras?Para responder a este enigma, convocam-se as teorias da presença-ausência, propostas porLefebvre, abordando-se dimensões de análise – o inconsciente, o imaginário, a cultura –frequentemente desconsideradas quando oscilamos entre o representante e o representado,desprezando a representação. Na esteira do método regressivo-progressivo, a análise dospalavrões evidencia a ordem caótica de significações que faz sobreviver o enigma darepresentação. As mediações entre o vivido, o percebido e o concebido mostram-nos que, pordetrás do limbo das palavras e dos palavrões, encontramos um amplo campo de análise social.

In acquiring the status of swear words, why do some words become prohibited or are only evokedthrough the mediation of allegories and metaphors suggested by other words? In order to answerthis riddle, Lefebvre’s theories of presence-absence are called on, addressing dimensions ofanalysis – the unconscious, imagination, culture – often disregarded when we swing between therepresentative and the represented, ignoring representation. In line with the regressive-progressive method, the analysis of swear words highlights the chaotic order of meanings whichcauses the riddle of representation to survive. Mediations between what is lived, perceived andconceived show us that behind the literal meaning of words and swear words we may find amplescope for social analysis.

ÍNDICE

Keywords: imagination, Lefebvre, language, swear words, representations, sexualityPalavras-chave: imaginários, Lefebvre, linguagem, palavrões, representações, sexualidade


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AUTOR

JOSÉ MACHADO PAIS

Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa (ULisboa), [email protected]


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Valerio Simoni and Adriana Piscitelli (dir.)

Dossiê: "Masculinities in times ofuncertainty and change"


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Masculinities in times ofuncertainty and change:introductionMasculinidades em tempos de incerteza e mudanças

Adriana Piscitelli and Valerio Simoni

1 In July 2014, during two bright spring days a group of scholars gathered for a livelySymposium at the University of Sussex.1 Their aim was to celebrate the 20th anniversaryof Dislocating Masculinity (Cornwall and Lindisfarne 1994), one of the ground-breakingbooks that marked research on the topic of masculinity, and to explore the majorchanges in the field of masculinity studies since the appearance of the publication. Inthe mid 1990s, an effervescent intellectual moment for gender studies, several authorsconverged in the effort of theorizing masculinities, questioning the widespreadequation between gender and women studies but also challenging the vindictiveness ofmen’s studies (Almeida 1996, 2000 [1996]; Connell 1995, 1996).

2 In those days diverse sociological and anthropological perspectives came to considerthat examining men as engendered and engendering was not so much a complement tothe study of women, but rather integral to understanding the ambiguities of genderdifferences (Gutmann 1997: 833). These perspectives problematized accounts of genderbased on the theory of sex roles and on the “classificatory theory” that treats womenand men as pre-formed categories (Connell 1996: 158; Strathern 1988). They also tendedto converge in analytical approaches that scrutinized how power works in theproduction of gender orders, in considering masculinity as a configuration of practicein everyday interactions, and in paying attention both to culturally authoritative orhegemonic patterns of masculinity and to subordinated/marginalized masculinities(Almeida 1995, 2000 [1996]; Connell 1995, 1996; Cornwall and Lindisfarne 1994).

3 In this context, anthropological approaches arguing that the premises and methods ofsocial anthropology were particularly suited to the study of men and masculinitiesoffered a unique contribution to the field. Following Strathern’s (1988) formulations,these perspectives perceived gender as fluid and contingent. They considered that the


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conflation of the notions male/men/masculinity and female/women/femininity inconstructions of difference ought to become an object of scrutiny, since the three termsin each cluster did not necessarily overlap and could have multiple referents thatblurred and created the possibility of ambiguous interpretations in any particularsetting. Finally, these perspectives considered gender as a potent metaphor fordifference and power whose import should be understood in relation to historical andethnographic specificities. A key idea was that there were no fixed ways in which thesemetaphors were employed in social life: they could permeate a diversity of dimensions,which were not always nor directly connected with sex and gender (Almeida 1995, 2000[1996]; Cornwall and Lindisfarne 1994).

4 As Vale de Almeida (1996) highlighted, this analysis was based on a critique of diverseaspects of a constructionist approach that left the dichotomic categories of men andwomen intact. Such perspectives failed to question how apparently unitary persons areconstituted, assumed that there is a single way of “being a man” – that being masculineis an exclusive identity – and neglected the analysis of how bodies are gendered. Alongsimilar lines of thought, in Dislocating Masculinity Cornwall and Lindisfarne (1994: 3)observed that if notions of masculinity, like the notion of gender itself, are fluid andsituational, we must then consider the various ways people understand masculinity inany particular setting, and explore how various masculinities are defined and redefinedin social interaction. The main questions that should therefore be addressed are: howdo individuals present and negotiate a gendered identity? How and why are particularimages and behaviors given gender labels? Who benefits from such labeling? And howdo such labels assume different meanings and connotations for different audiences andin different settings?

5 Twenty years after Cornwall and Lindisfarne’s publication, masculinity studies havedisseminated widely, as exemplified by the array of academic journals and books on thesubject published in different regions of the world. Several of the ideas formulated byCornwall and Lindisfarne and by Vale de Almeida in the mid 1990s have beenincorporated in feminist and queer analyses of a variety of topics – women’smasculinities, masculine hybrids, transnational analyses that allow us to perceive howgender operates as a language for alluding to inequalities of social class and “race,” toregional inequalities and relationships between countries of the “North” and the“South,” to differentiated degrees of civilization or of “Westernization” (Halberstam2008; Archetti 2003; González Pagés 2010; Piscitelli 2014).

6 Paying close attention to an array of recent studies of masculinities, the scholarsgathered at the University of Sussex’s meeting reached the conclusion that the mainanthropological insights about gender analysis of the mid 1990s are still significant.The methods of anthropology are still seen as a privileged asset for studyingmasculinities, given their potential to dismantle “conventional” categories of analysis.The comparative nature of anthropology continues to be seen as highly relevant andproductive in that it encourages us to challenge the existence of any universalcategory, and raises key questions about the social contexts in which such categoriesare used. Finally, ethnographic studies continue to be considered fundamental also inorder to unveil and problematize anthropologists’ own preconceptions. Yet, scholars inthe meeting also perceived that a variety of emerging contexts, particularly insituations of radical change and/or crisis, pose a series of new questions for theanalysis of masculinities.


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7 The articles in this dossier interrogate precisely these situations, considering howintense transformations associated with economic and political change affect notionsof masculinity and the ways these are deployed, negotiated, and eventually modified.During the last decades, political turmoils and a range of crises have impinged on manyregions of the world, including European countries. As Narotzky and Besnier (2014)observe, crises are processes beyond individual control that force change in traditionalmodes of livelihood, and that simultaneously express people’s breach of confidence inthe elements that provided relative systemic stability and reasonable expectations forthe future.

8 According to Narotzky and Besnier (2014), crises reconfigure values and reshuffleframeworks of moral obligation. As a result, the imagining of possible futures and howto make them happen also changes. In times of crisis, people deploy coping strategiesthat enable them to locate and access increasingly elusive resources. These strategiesmay include relations of trust and care, economies of affect, networks of reciprocityencompassing both tangible and intangible resources, and material and emotionaltransfers that are supported by moral obligations. But these strategies can also havethe effect of defining and marginalizing categories of people whose access to resourceswill be hampered and curtailed. These authors consider that while some institutionsthat regulate moral and political frameworks of responsibility and support the transferof resources are being undermined in various ways, other institutional frameworks(e.g., religious, ethnic, nationalistic) for guiding human behavior and channeling goodsare being created or reconfigured. This creativity, however, may involve exclusionarypractices that create and demonize an Other (in terms of race, gender, ethnicity,nationality, or other lines of differentiation), making it a target of violence in strugglesover access to resources and respect.

9 In this dossier, which is an outcome of a workshop that took place in 2012 at theBiannual Meeting of the European Association of Social Anthropologists in Nanterre,the authors consider situations of radical change and/or crisis, exploring what theproduction of multiple and shifting notions of masculinities tells us about diversepolitical and economic frames and their transformations, and analyzing in turn howthese conjunctures shed light on transformations of masculinity. Considering that insituations of economic and social turmoil gender relationships tend to be volatile andunsteady, leading to shifts and alterations in the balance of power, the authors analyzehow masculinities are re-enacted, reworked and reshaped to cope with conditions of(continuous) crisis and rapid transformation.

10 The situations considered in this dossier are extremely diverse in terms of the political,economic and social pressure bearing upon the agents involved: the Special Period inTime of Peace in Cuba that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union (Simoni;Härkönen); the migratory contexts of Pentecostal converts of African or Latin-American origin in Brussels (Maskens); the post-socialist Chinese state in contemporaryglobalizing China (Zheng) and the militant organization of Hamas in the Palestinian/Israeli struggle (Malmström). In relation to these varied contextual frames, the articlesexplore the tensions between global imaginaries of “maleness” and the models/stylesof masculinity on which people draw to cope with changes and uncertainties,uncovering their transnational diffusion and local translations and appropriations.

11 In shedding light on how masculinities incorporate new defining elements andreformulate ideals and normativities, the articles offer substantive contributions for


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the theorizing of masculinities. One of the innovative aspects relates to theproblematization of analyses that have largely approached masculinity from a“Western” perspective and attended to peripheral masculinities such as “gay” or“black” (Zheng). Discussing the case of contemporary China, Zheng analysis shows howgender hybridity, in the form of effeminate men, comes to be seen as a peril to thesecurity of the nation once it reflects powerlessness, inferiority, feminized passivity,and social deterioration reminiscent of the colonial past when China was defeated bythe colonizing West and plagued by its image as the Sick Man of East Asia. The articlesalso allow us to perceive how styles of masculinity can operate as expressions of a“non-Western modernity.” Suggesting that the politics of Hamas and Islamization arepart of a global system and expressions of globalization, Malmström’s analysis ofPalestinian male youth’s identities shows how such identities are part of the process bywhich these young men cast themselves as subjects of modernity. Yet, and in contrastwith Western notions of modernity that emphasize secularization, what emerges hereis a modern project embedded in religious faith. Within this frame, the analysis of howbodies are gendered, in an interplay of political violence, suffering, resistance andIslamization, acquires particular significance.

12 A second aspect that deserves attention is the consideration of how competing andcontradictory models of masculinity are enacted according to situational dimensions incontexts of intense change, which leads the articles in this dossier to uncover theactualization, production, and transformation of different styles of masculinesubjectification (see Maskens, Härkönen, Simoni). Depicting different relationalpossibilities and expressions of masculinity, and analyzing what they tell us about thetransformations that tourism engenders in present-day Cuba, Simoni shows how, in acontext in which sexual economies are central for the survival strategies of manyCubans and where dispassionate macho attitudes are common, it is also important torecognize Cuban men’s aspiration to love and pay attention, more generally, to thecompeting emotional, moral, and pragmatic concerns that their different enactmentsof masculinity responded to. Touristic encounters are thus shown to provide newvenues for subjectification and self-stylization, leading for instance people to (re)alignmasculinities to global circulating romantic ideals of love and romance. Looking at thePentecostal reworking of masculinities among converts of African or Latin-Americanorigin in Brussels, Maskens shows that ambiguity remains at the heart of suchtransformations of gender identity. Uncovering the competing, gender-relateddemands and transformations that impinge on migrants, the analysis shows howreligious ideology and normativity can provide ways to channel and express maleresistance and adaptation, while still leaving the door open for a multiplicity ofdiscourses on masculinity that vary situationally and are also indexed to people’sbiographic trajectories. Focusing on the gendered consequences of the large-scaletransformations and economic crisis that have affected Cuba since the 1990s, Härkönenshows how Cuban men cope with women’s intensified demands by embracing distinctcultural notions of masculinity. Expressions of “responsible masculinity” and ofmachismo, each with its own affordances and challenges, are actualized in precariousattempts to respond to changing expectations. By paying attention to thesenegotiations, the article illustrates how distinct aspects of local conceptualizations ofhow to be a man are situationally deployed and worked over.

13 A third aspect to be considered relates to how notions of power are addressed in thearticles that compose this dossier. Twenty years ago, Cornwall and Lindisfarne (1994)


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debated whether conceptualizations such as “patriarchy” or male dominance wereappropriate tools for analysis, and a number of authors converged in accordingrelevance to the notion of “hegemonic masculinity.” While not absent (see Maskens’scontribution), this conceptualization appears relatively diluted in the analysespresented here. The idea of “hegemonic masculinity” as a model that prescribes theimage of the “real man” in a given society, produced throughout the daily socializationof boys and girls as well as the subordination of other forms of masculinity, seems to beproblematic and encounter several challenges in contexts of crisis. Ultimately, theanalytical fruitfulness of this notion comes into question in situations where force,instead of consensus, acquires the utmost visibility.

14 The articles in the dossier address these situations and help us reflect more broadly, inan ethnographically grounded manner, on how the profound transformationsassociated with economic and political change affect notions of masculinity and theways they are enacted, negotiated, and modified.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ALMEIDA, Miguel Vale de, 1996, “Género, masculinidade e poder: revendo um caso do Sul dePortugal”, Anuário Antropológico, 95: 161-190.

ALMEIDA, Miguel Vale de, 2000 [1996], Senhores de Si: Uma Interpretação Antropológica daMasculinidade. Lisbon, Fim de Século (2th edition).

ARCHETTI, Eduardo, 2003, Masculinidades: Fútbol, Tango y Polo en la Argentina. Buenos Aires,Editorial Antropofagia.

CONNELL, Ryan, 1995, Masculinities. Cambridge, Polity Press.

CONNELL, Ryan, 1996, “New directions in gender theory: masculinity research, and genderpolitics”, Ethnos, 61 (3-4): 157-176.

CORNWALL, Andrea, and Nancy LINDISFARNE (eds.), 1994, Dislocating Masculinity: ComparativeEthnographies. London, Routledge.

GONZÁLEZ PAGÉS, Julio César, 2010, Macho, Varón, Masculino: Estudios de Masculinidades en Cuba.Habana, Editorial de la Mujer.

GUTMANN, Matthew C., 1997, “The ethnographic (g)ambit: women and the negotiation ofmasculinity in Mexico City”, American Ethnologist, 24 (4): 833-855.

HALBERSTAM, Judith, 2008, Female Masculinity. Durham, Duke University Press.

NAROTZKY, Suzana, and Niko BESNIER, 2014, “Crisis, value, and hope: rethinking the economy”, Current Anthropology, 55 (9): S4-S16.

PISCITELLI, Adriana, 2014, “Windsurfers, capoeiristas and musicians: Brazilian masculinities intransnational sceneries”, paper presented at the “Dislocating Masculinity Revisited” Symposium,University of Sussex, July 4-5.

STRATHERN, Marilyn, 1988, The Gender of the Gift. Manchester, University of Manchester Press.


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NOTES1. “Dislocating Masculinity Revisited” Symposium, University of Sussex, July 4-5, 2014.

ABSTRACTSThis text introduces the articles in the dossier considering the contributions of studies of genderand masculinities for anthropological theory in the last two decades. Taking into account thescholarship of authors that marked these studies in the mid-1990s, we explore continuities andadvances in the field. We show how current debates on gender and masculinity suggest that themain insights developed during this period are still relevant. The methods of anthropology areconsidered particularly suited for the study of masculinities, given their potential to destabilize“conventional” categories of analysis. The comparative nature of anthropology is seen asextremely productive in that it enables to challenge universal categories and raises key questionson the social contexts in which these categories are employed. At the same time, such variety ofcontexts, especially in situations of radical change and/or crisis, brings new questions to the forefor the analysis of masculinities. Among them the question of the analytical fruitfulness of thenotion of hegemonic masculinity in situations in which force, rather than consensus, appears toacquire more salience.

Neste texto apresentamos os artigos que compõem o dossiê, considerando as contribuições dosestudos sobre gênero e masculinidades para a teoria antropológica durante as duas últimasdécadas. Levando em conta as formulações de diversos autores que marcaram esses estudos nametade da década de 1990, exploramos as permanências e os avanços nesse campo. Mostramoscomo o debate sobre essa problemática sugere que os principais insights antropológicosalcançados nesse período ainda são significativos. Os métodos da antropologia continuam sendoconsiderados privilegiados para o estudo das masculinidades, por seu potencial paradesestabilizar categorias “convencionais” de análise. A natureza comparativa da antropologiaainda é percebida como altamente produtiva por possibilitar desafiar a ideia da existência decategorias universais e levantar questões chave sobre os contextos sociais nos quais sãoutilizadas. No entanto, a variedade de novos contextos, particularmente em situações demudança radical e/ou de crises, coloca novas perguntas em termos das análises dasmasculinidades. Entre elas adquire destaque a questão da fertilidade analítica da noção demasculinidade hegemônica em situações nas quais a força, no lugar do consenso, se tornaparticularmente relevante.

INDEX

Palavras-chave: masculinidades, gênero, crise, poder, agênciaKeywords: masculinities, gender, crisis, power, agency


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AUTHORS

ADRIANA PISCITELLI

Núcleo de Estudos de Gênero – Pagu, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, [email protected]

VALERIO SIMONI

Department of Anthropology and Sociology of Development, Graduate Institute of Internationaland Development Studies, [email protected]


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Porous masculinities: agentialpolitical bodies among male HamasyouthMasculinidades porosas: corpos políticos com agência entre jovens do Hamas

Maria Frederika Malmström

1 Why and how young men choose to join violent terrorist/military organisations – oftenusing their bodies as deadly weapons – is a matter that continues to puzzle socialscientists and the policy world, as well as society at large.1 This enduring question,which is ultimately about humanity and the allure of violence, has become particularlysalient given the changing nature of the global landscape concerning securitydevelopment. The character of contemporary danger, threat, uncertainty andbelonging; the prevalence of terrorism as a seemingly viable political response toinjustice; and the (US-led) global War on Terror that is being waged upon the personallives of peoples in disparate sites all over the world – all render imperativereaddressing this question in distinct and varied ways. However, despite a generalconsensus that understanding the call to violence is vital to mitigating its effects, thereis surprisingly little research that explores the intimate and complex production ofviolent (male) subjects in militant organisations. This article discusses this overarchingquestion in relation to young male Hamas members and the appeal of becomingsoldiers in the context of the Hamas in the Palestinian-Israeli struggle. Yet the bodydoes not always cope with inculcations of bodily violence and social expectations offearless manhood. Therefore, this article explores constructions of masculinities in acomplex interplay of violence, political Islam, suffering and loss. My account highlightsthe importance of analysing the body in such processes – both as agential and asvictimised. To be able to move away from the sensationalist Western media that oftenportray Middle Eastern Muslim men as “violent,” and as terrorists, we need tounderstand the motivations and the meanings of violence.

2 The theoretical perspective combines generative theories of gender,2 embodiment andagency theory (McNay 2000, 2003; Mahmood 2001, 2005; Ortner 2006a, 2006b). I also


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draw upon earlier research on the constructions of violent militant masculinities(Eriksson Baaz and Stern 2008, 2009, 2010; Whitworth 2004; Enloe 1990; Higate andHopton 2005).3 Theoretically, this approach means inquiring into lived experiences (cf.Bruner 1986) and embodied agency that offers a way to a better understanding of thecomplexity and appeal of violence. In order to grasp constructions of masculinities in acomplex interplay of several factors, I specifically combine experience withrepresentation through phenomenology and ethnography. Thus, I use a discourse-centred approach and an experience-near ethnography that begins with men’s ownpractices and attends to how they understand themselves, how their bodies areinvolved in this process, and how they live out norms and ideologies in their everydaylives. Thereby we are able to grasp how men’s realities and identities are interpreted,negotiated and constructed, and how the body is actively involved in these processes.This approach is relevant since it enables analysis of the singularity of experience, notonly as a form of social interaction, but as linked to social structures and discourses,which implies negotiations of tensions, conflicts and uncertainties.

Why young men in Hamas?

3 Hamas is particularly interesting because of its unique positioning as a legal,democratic, legitimate political actor, as a terrorist organisation, as a paramilitaryforce, and as a social association. Hamas has used both suicide bombings and rocketattacks as part of its political struggle against Israelis, and has been classified as aterrorist organisation by the EU and the US, as well as by Russia, Israel, Japan andCanada. However, the Arabic “Islamist” party democratically won the 2006 PalestinianLegislative Council elections, with a political platform that underlines Shari’a as thebasis of the law. Thereafter Hamas has reduced their “terrorist” activity. Additionally,Hamas plays an important role in providing social services in the area of health,education and welfare, all based on religious education and guidance from Islam. Themain goal of Hamas, as a national and religious political movement, is to liberatePalestine, but also to Islamise Palestinian society (cf. Hroub 2006). The “Islamism” ofHamas is part of the larger Islamic revival of the Muslim world since the 1970s (cf.Malmström 2009b). Hamas developed as the first branch of the Muslim Brotherhood,the major Islamist movement, outside the Egyptian borders.

4 The politics of Hamas and their proposition of social change promise their followers asense of security, belonging and moral order, and this, arguably, helps restore people’ssense of confidence in the Palestinian nation. After the overwhelming victory thatcaused shockwaves not only in the region but also across the Western world, Hamas hasexperienced internal tensions as it tries to “balance the art of politics and the power ofthe gun” (Milton-Edwards 2008: 1598).

5 The weakening of political moderates within Hamas and the strengthening of moremilitant factions of the movement can be seen as a direct result of the EU/internationalboycott of Hamas (e. g. Hovdenak 2009). Hamas can thus be seen as an integral productof or actor in the global(ised) War on Terror, at the same time as it is an organisationthat aims at state building through “legitimate” modern state mechanisms.


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Mohammed and the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades4

6 Mohammed was the first member of the militant wing of Hamas that I met, who openlytold me about his former Qassam identity. Already he had been in prison for manyyears as a Qassam soldier and subsequently he had been forced to be passive and non-active by the Palestinian authority and Israel. I had conscious and unconsciouspresumptions about militants as explicitly tough, non-emotional, fearless andsometimes aggressive. I was therefore surprised to meet someone who was explicitlyshy, warm hearted, well educated and well mannered, and who later on expressed agood sense of humour. Mohammed was very attentive in relation to my questions. Hewas courteous, even chivalrous. This young man was always respectful and he was alsoprotective towards me when we walked around in the public area.

7 A lot of times thereafter, with him and with other Hamas men, I asked myself whetherit was possible that I had been manipulated by the men’s engaging manners andpersonalities. Was I, then, an inexperienced and easily influenced researcher? Thesemen willingly use violence and they legitimise it as political resistance. They resistedtalking about their actions as acts of violence. Additionally, they had all killed in thename of God. And as Mohammed told me, “Of course, some of the men you have metare carrying weapons, but you will never know when, and who they are.” No, I do notthink I was naïve; rather, I experienced the complexity of trying to understand violenceon several levels at the same time. In the case of Mohammed, he had done what wasexpected of him by the local community, as a man, as a freedom fighter, and not leastas a national hero. He was held in great respect in his neighbourhood, not only byHamas members, but also by political actors living in other parts of the West Bank. Iunderstood Mohammed as very proud of his Qassam soldier identity and of hisexperiences of prison. But I also read him as if he was relieved from duty. He explainedthat he could not actively work against the occupation in the same way today, but thathe did it in other ways. It was now time for him to continue with his civil life: to findemployment, to marry, to have children and to live as peacefully as he could. Heunderscored that his future children were to be part of the resistance. Mohammed wasnow able to accentuate other vital aspects of manhood, father and husband, which isnecessary to be locally perceived as a proper adult male. Nonetheless, he was very clearthat in his heart he was a member of the military wing of Hamas. Forever.

8 When Mohammed informed me about his experiences, including actions and livedexperiences of violence, or resistance as he entitled it, he talked with pride about howthe society around him respected him after his imprisonment. I understood that he wasperceived as a hero in the local community, but he never showed off. He expressed thathe was surprised that almost everybody in the West Bank had the knowledge of hisQassam identity and of his many years in jail, which must have felt strange comparedto his secret years before prison as a Qassam soldier. Qassam men, as the chosensoldiers of Hamas’s independent militancy wing, maintain secret identities andpositions in the group and operate on a model of independent cells. However, in linewith the ideology of Hamas, warring includes activities not usually associated withviolence: a high standard of education and the good health of the people are consideredintegral to the armed resistance. Therefore, being a Qassam soldier also may implyreceiving an education. Qassam soldiers are renowned for carrying out complex attacksas well as for how they regenerate new cells after members’ deaths or incarceration.


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Locally, they enjoy the status of ultimate “manhood.” However, Qassam youthscultivate a hidden space for “forbidden” actions, including dating girls, whileoutwardly expressing seemingly progressive ideas in order to keep their secretidentity. This means that young men are able to act independently of what isprescribed (and against local norms of morality and Islam) if they do so in order toprotect their identity as soldiers. Through inhabiting and enacting Qassam identity,these men thus also destabilise ideologies of gender, family, faith, and even nation.

9 Mohammed talked in long narratives about his double identities, as a civil person inpublic and as a Qassam soldier underground, and about his experiences in jail. Heunderscored with respect the amount he had learnt from other older “high-status”prisoners, the intellectual fellowship and spirit of community, the friends he had metfor life, but also the outstanding quality of the secular and religious education he hadreceived in prison.

10 Nevertheless, at the same time as Mohammed claimed that he did not regret anything,his body language expressed that he had difficulties coping with his experiences ofviolence and imprisonment. He did not mention any severe symptoms, as many othermen did, but he appeared very tired, stressed and drained, and unhealthy. He had darkrings under his eyes and his legs were constantly shaking. Could it be that Mohammedrelated one story while his body reported another?

Fear, fight and fieldwork in the West Bank

11 Before digging deeper into the ways in which these young West Bank men’ssubjectivities and agency are informed by, and animated through, their desire toinhabit specific manhood, I would like to highlight some of the limitations encounteredfor this research as well as a number of reflections on the fieldwork and the politicalcontext. Fieldwork in the West Bank was carried out during the winter of 2009.Conducting research locally is not easy, in relation to ethics, access and security ondifferent levels. I had many preconceptions of the difficulties involved.

12 Carrying out research among women and men as a Swedish woman and researcher hadclearly affected my earlier research in Egypt. My own gender role did not permit me tospeak to men about topics such as sexuality, body or femininities. In Palestine,however, my concerns that being identified as a “woman from the West” would inhibitmy interaction turned out to be totally inapt. The interviewees, despite the risks ormaybe also because of the risks we took, spoke willingly and at great length aboutpolitical issues. However, we never touched on forbidden topics, such as sexuality orother gender-related inappropriate themes.

13 Naturally, due to the political situation in the West Bank in 2009, it was extremelydangerous for the individual to admit their Hamas membership. During my stay, I wasexpected to meet several men who had recently been released from Israeli prison. Butbefore we had the chance to speak, several of the men were detained again by thePalestinian authorities. I was told that these men were imprisoned only because oftheir political affiliation to Hamas. Several men talked about the huge differencebetween how Fatah5 and Hamas members were treated in modern Palestinian jails. Themen referred to the prison in Ramallah as the slaughterhouse, explaining that Hamasmen were constantly killed inside, a story confirmed by others. They also pointed outthat the situation in the West Bank was increasingly difficult for the faithful Muslim


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population. Religious men were the main target for suspicion. Men who went to themosque for the morning prayers were considered too religious by the Palestinianauthorities and were taken into custody. It was a Hamas “witch-hunt,” theyemphasised. The men expressed that it had never been worse in the West Bank. Peoplewere afraid to talk to anybody. Hence, people often began their conversations bycommunicating not only the danger, but also the fear and the many risks they took byspeaking with me about Hamas politics, such as withdrawing of licences, blacklists,beatings and detentions. One cold afternoon downtown in Hebron, I met Karim, whounderlined that it was increasingly unsafe to speak about your political affiliation inthe West Bank. In line with many other voices, he expressed that no one discussed theirpolitical affiliation anymore, since you would be put in prison if you expressed yourpolitical membership of Hamas. I never met him again, but he concluded our meetingwith these words:

“I have a good job, no black points. It is dangerous for me and for you. We have tomeet in different places. I am doing this for my people. If you talk you will beimprisoned. Thereafter […] your career is over and then it will be problems if youneed any juridical document. Black points […]. You will lose everything.”

14 Clearly, to conduct research about Hamas members in the West Bank is intricate interms of ethics. Moreover, it is extraordinarily unsafe for the interviewees, since theresearcher actually exposes the respondent to danger. During my limited field period,as mentioned, several of the men I was expected to interview were detained orimprisoned before we even had the chance to meet. I tried to take every precaution Icould, and instead of focusing on one place I travelled around in every city of the WestBank. I interviewed mostly men and I met them in public and private spaces, in citiesand in refugee camps. I was given the opportunity to meet them through variouscontacts. These initial persons had been contacted through different unknownindividuals, who in turn had received their information through other persons, who didnot know one another. The particular situation in the West Bank also meant that I hadto stay alert, to constantly be on “stand by,” as well as ensuring I was prepared formeetings to be postponed on the spot or for several interviews to be held in a row. Inthe end, I completed 35 interviews, including focus-group interviews, along with casualconversations as well as observations concerning the surroundings.

15 The interviewees used different strategies to cope with the current political situation inthe West Bank. Some expressed explicitly that they were Hamas members, whileseveral did so implicitly. Other men began their narratives with taking up a standagainst any membership, but admitted a positive response towards Hamas politics,despite their own political standpoints. A number of men had already been in prison asIzz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades (Qassam soldiers) and they could be more open becausethey were already known by the authorities and therefore were no longer able toperform as soldiers. These “former” or non-active Qassam men told me that bothPalestinian and Israeli authorities had their eyes on them and they were forced to actpassively. I met some men who claimed they had been imprisoned when they were onlyin their early teens. Many had been in prison between fifteen and twenty years.Additionally, a limited number told me that they were against Hamas politics. Some ofthe men said that it was impossible to be actively political in today’s West Bank.


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Creating proper men

16 In the West Bank idealised masculinity (rujulah) is closely linked to themes of braveactions, resistance, risk taking, assertiveness, toughness, virility, potency, sacrifice,self-control, paternity, generosity, sociality, respect, dignity and honour, the latteroften used with respect to men’s duty to protect their family honour (sharaf) and face(wajh) (cf. Gren 2009; Hart 2008; Peteet 1994; Kanaaneh 2005). In the daily constructionof a proper male self, taking risks seems to be a significant act. From my fieldexperiences I could see that young men not yet imprisoned, especially if their brothersor father had been in jail, were more assertive and took many more risks than theformer prisoners. One unmarried man in his thirties told me that his older brother –who had been imprisoned for several years, as had his deceased father – forbade himfrom going out after dark, because of the risk of detention and beatings, an order thathe constantly disobeyed. Peteet, an anthropologist and author of the classic article“Male gender and rituals of resistance in the Palestinian intifada: a cultural politics ofviolence,” points out in another article that “violence does index masculinity […] but[masculinity] refer[s] more to the ability to protect, defend and sustain home andfamily, whether this protection demands militancy” (Peteet 1997: 107). Of course,identity is always a process of becoming and being, and in the Middle East region aselsewhere, masculinities diverge and are in constant transformation (Ouzgane 2006;Ghoussoub and Sinclair-Webb 2002; Massad 2007; Murray and Roscoe 1997; Peteet2007).

17 As in many other parts of the Middle East and North Africa, “personhood” in Palestineis often defined in collective and relational terms. A person is always responsible forher or his actions in relation to collectivities, such as the family, the neighbourhood orthe state. Although the socio-centric self is accentuated in the Arab world, this does notpreclude people from acting individually too. Therefore, I distinguish analyticallybetween the private self and the public honourable self as these are defined by thefamily, the group and the state. Constructions of personhood are related to honour andshame, though not in the way that these terms have formerly been understood in socialscience literature (e.g. Gilmore 1987). Honour ideologies have to do with appropriateconduct and they shape interactions between men and women with various identitiesand selves – that is, they embrace both individual and collective selves. Honour mayalso be analysed at the national level, where the group sharing in honour is not thefamily but the whole nation, which is of particular importance in relation to externalaggression by the occupying power and global political boycotts. However, an honourcode is not a uniform scheme of rules and guidelines but is dynamic and multi-stranded(Baxter 2007). Notions of honour are always in flux and they are influenced byhistorical, political, economic and socio-cultural change. Viewing honour from thisperspective expands earlier, more static viewpoints. It makes room for understandingagency by taking into consideration the power, vulnerabilities, rights andresponsibilities of both women and men (Malmström 2009a, 2009b, 2012; Baxter 2007).Additionally, what must be understood concerning the current situation of the WestBank is that these young men live in a specific setting of Israeli occupation, Palestiniandisruption, and escalation of political violence, where they continually seek outdifferent strategies to cope with the unpredictable demands of life.


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Imagining the icon? Imagining the terrorist?

18 Colonial thoughts have through rhetoric played an active role in constructing violenceas part of manhood in the Middle East (Peteet 2005). Today’s changing politicallandscape, including the aftermath of 9/11 and the US-led global War on Terror,implies a continuation and acceleration of this discursive production of an aggressiveMuslim male subject. The prevalent image of a terrorist today is someone with a violentextremist ideology (of Islam) who, as the UK government posits, “follow(s) a broadlysimilar ideology as Al Qa’ida but [who may] have their own identity and regionalagenda” (HM Government 2009: 12). This image is rarely nuanced or contextualised,despite the widespread recognition that “identity” and “agendas” may be distinct andimportant (cf. Stern 2003; Lutz and Lutz 2008). Appadurai suggests that the intensity oftoday’s global processes produces a world of social uncertainty and incompleteness. Hesuggests that, when these forms of uncertainties “come into play, violence can create amacabre form of certainty” (Appadurai 2006: 6). This must be understood in relation toconstructions of male identity, including aspects of dignity. Following Appadurai, thesePalestinian male youths also respond to the global politics of insecurity. However, thepolitics of Hamas and Islamisation in general are of course not only a reaction tonational and global politics. Islamic movements are also part of the global system andof globalisation (cf. Beyer 2007).6 The religious identification of many young men formspart of a process in which they are making themselves subjects of modernity. Thisreligious modernity is not a “false version” of the Western modern project. Rather, itrepresents a modernisation with other moral signatures. Hamas offers alternativeapproaches of coping with global dynamics. Thus, the interpretations of whatmodernity entails are diverse and exist simultaneously with other alternatives. Hamasis part of the modernisation process in Palestine and part of the global order. Itsdiscourse proposes a modern project embedded in its religious faith, in contrast withWestern notions of modernity with its emphasis on secularisation (cf. Malmström2009b).

19 For Palestinians, Israelis and the global community, the acts of violence are closelylinked to especially young men but in different ways. For many Israelis, “the youngmale is a metonym for Palestinian opposition and struggle against domination, the ideaand symbols of which must be rooted out and silenced” (Peteet 1994: 36).7 For powerfulactors of the global community, the image of a terrorist is most often that of the youngviolent dedicated Muslim man. On the other hand, during my fieldwork, I discoveredthat the young men were seen as the actors in whom the local society had their onlyconfidence – where young Qassam soldiers were, by many, perceived as the “icon” ofstruggle.8 The trust in the military wing of Hamas was something that children inrefugee camps expressed also, through particular role plays. The boys acted out asQassam soldiers against Israeli soldiers on the streets (cf. Wiles 2010). However, thenegotiations of manhood occur among adult men filled with ambivalences andambiguities that affect the cultivation of a proper modern manhood among youngermen. Common and frequent for several young Hamas men was the feeling of solitude,which of course affected the men and their well-being in many ways. One man I met,who was extremely nervous and in bad health, described to me the great lonelinessthat he constantly felt. He explained that he could not tell anybody, not even his ownfamily, about his activities (and about his true identity as an active Hamas member). It


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was too dangerous for them and for him. He had to protect them from this knowledge.The result was that he felt totally dissociated from the people he loved. He lived twolives at the same time, as he said, as so many other Hamas members in the West Bankwere forced to do. The eventual agential space these men receive through politicalmembership of Hamas had a very high price.

20 Another difference between Palestinians and Israelis is that they have differentconcepts of violence, which also imply different meanings. The men whom Iinterviewed referred to “violence” only when speaking about domestic violence,scuffles amid the upbringing of children. In fact, the Palestinian men I talked withnever ever used the term “violence,” but argued that such actions formed resistance tooccupation against a colonial power and a well-armed state. “Acts of violence” as wellas “endurance of violence” are in this sense locally encouraged and interpreted aspolitical resistance and as a struggle for independence. Mohammed underscored thatviolence should in any context be used only as the last resort. However, resistance, byway of contrast, he expressed, is the right of every Palestinian citizen. To resist is to bepolitical, which (I was often told) is a must for a proper Palestinian man. The totalopposite is a non-political man. These men are perceived by the men I talked with astotal failures, as frail creatures, as “faggots,” as one young man, Nawal, expressed. Heexplained that these men did not care about anything. These non-political men wereeven perceived as having a particular look: “long hair and sickly-sweet style ofdressing.” Nuur told me about one of his neighbours. He had made a journey – from a“gay” to a real man. He had changed his mind and life after what had happened withhis older brother, who had been killed by the occupation’s destruction of his house. Atlast, Nuur concluded, the neighbour had eventually joined the political and violentstruggle. For the government of Israel, all these actions are probably perceived asterrorism and nothing else. In order to understand how the male subject is formed inthe West Bank, one must pay much more attention to the complicity and dynamics ofglobal forces in the making of Palestinian masculinities, even in the creation of suicidebombers or martyrs (cf. Massad 2006; Araj 2008; Linos 2010). Knowledge of the body andof embodied memories is crucial in the ongoing making of the male subject.

Lived and embodied experiences of violence

21 The understanding of the Palestinian male body is manifested in local discourses ofmanhood. It suggests and signifies, among other things, as mentioned earlier,generosity, fearlessness and self-control. However, it is not enough to examine thebody as a sign: we need also to explore the experiences of the body in relation to thecurrent dynamics and the ambivalent cultural meanings of violence. For a deeper andmore complex analysis, it is vital to grasp how the men’s bodies are involved inprocesses of becoming a subject and how they live out norms and ideologies in theireveryday lives. The political occupation in Palestine is intensively embodied. As Pitcher(1998) in her research about the practice of martyrdom in Palestine points out, thePalestinian body is written on by others, while at the same time the Palestinian bodystrives to speak. Furthermore, violence seems to be naturalised in the occupiedterritories, probably due to the daily repeated various experiences of war, wherepeople try to make an everyday life (cf. Gren 2009). Often it has been very difficult forme to listen to people’s experiences of violence. Many of the narratives and testimonies


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about attacks, sudden deaths and explosions (including bodies of relatives, neighboursand friends) were for me horrifying and overwhelming, but were retold as part of theeveryday by my respondents.

22 However, lived experiences of beatings and imprisonment in the West Bank are, in myunderstanding, not rites of passage into manhood, as Peteet (1994) suggests in her well-known article about masculinity and agency in the West Bank. My argument is thatthese experiences are life-long, embodied processes rather than a ritual and a singleevent. The experiences of jail and its suffering obtain meaning and legitimacy throughmutual effort and shared imagination (cf. Malmström 2009a). Even painful sensoryexperiences may become meaningful a long time after jail, when shared repeatedly andinterpreted as purposeful. During the focus-group interviews, the men articulated mostfrequently the experiences of imprisonment: even if I did not ask them, they talkedabout jail experiences together or with my male field assistants. The men spoke abouttheir prison experiences with dignity and pride. Many men spoke about the prison asthe university, including both religious and secular education. As Peteet (1994) pointsout too, the men emerged from the prisons as academics, with stature to lead and withpower to resist – and, as the men told me, with increased religious knowledge andconfidence. The men I spoke to told me that there is a strict spatial separation betweenthe different political factions inside the jails, where they met friends, mentors andbrothers for life. Several men expressed that it is in prison a man will transform into atrue Hamas (cf. Wiles 2010). The individual experience of suffering may here betransformed into a social meaning and social memory (cf. Davis 1992). Daily life in theWest Bank is infused with references to violence/resistance through which its meaningis communicated and it is confirmed as unavoidable. The meaning of violence shouldtherefore be analysed as an integral part of the daily making of masculinity, where thesubject is moulded and gendered through the lived experience of violence, both asvictims and as actors (cf. Dahl 2009).

23 In the case under study, in the daily construction of an adult moral male self in theoccupied territories, not only being imprisoned, but enduring of beatings seems to becentral (cf. Peteet 1994). However, body marking is only one moment in an incompleteprocess of learning how to be a person. Male gender identity is also continually createdand re-created through a number of other everyday practices. Yet the body clearlylearns the lessons of pain, lessons that are reiterated. It is also a strategy to approachresistance to domination. Peteet suggests that the male Palestinian body in factsignifies contradictions. The body in this specific context both reaffirms andtransforms internal Palestinian forms of domination. The Palestinian body may havethe power to reverse power structures, in the sense that “political agency [is] designed[through acts of endurance] to reverse relations of domination between occupied andoccupier” (Peteet 1994: 31). She suggests that enduring torture (and being imprisoned)is a strategy to approach resistance to domination and in fact inscribes power on thebody. Furthermore, the occupation, the political belonging of Hamas, the internalstruggle between Hamas and Fatah, by the use of violence, sculpts the individual bodyat the same time as it regulates the social body (Linos 2010). Men learn, but they alsoactively and consciously develop and maintain proper masculinity, through the livedexperiences of both violence and captivity. In this way, if they endure, these menbecome respectable Muslim men. Stoicism and self-control are key values for


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developing a proper male identity, especially among Hamas, and they are essential forendurance and the control of emotions.

24 My informants talked about the daily humiliation at the checkpoints as one of manydifficult everyday experiences where self-control and endurance were crucial; this wassomething I could see also through personal observation during my stay in the WestBank.9 I provide the following short account as an example of what men oftenexperience. One young man had been on his way to his final exams at the university. Atthe first checkpoint (of several checkpoints on his way to the school), he had beencaught by the young soldiers. At last, after several hours, after forcing him to climb upon a stone in the sun, in a body position of standing on one leg, and after singingchildren’s songs, he could continue to walk to the university, but way too late for thescheduled exams. These common experiences in young men’s lives are of course activesteps in the ongoing process of attaining manhood.

25 Detention, prison and occupation, as part of the apparatus of domination, imply manysorts of violence, both physical and psychological beatings (including torture – also bythe Palestinian Fatah authorities, according to the men). As one of many examples, oneman retold his experiences of detention. In the middle of the night, the soldiers forcedhim out of his cell, put him in a car and drove him to the highway. They told him tothoroughly clean the highway with the help of a toothbrush. He was scrubbing forhours. In this case, we can use Linos’s (2010) analysis of biopower violence in theoccupation of Palestine and see how the individual Palestinian is psychologicallytortured simultaneously as all Palestinians are disgraced by the same act.

26 The experiences of beatings, torture and daily humiliations are all part of “theeducation of endurance,” important within (political) Islam. Furthermore, their ownviolent military actions in their resistance against occupation, as Hamas soldiers, are atthe same time part of “the education of fearlessness and self-control.” As soldiersespecially, these men use their collective self for national identity and sacrifice theirindividual identity, which is – currently – expected and as part of the route tobecoming an appropriate man in the local community as well as on the political level ofHamas. As both Massad (1995) and Kanaaneh (2005) point out, Palestinian nationalmasculinity is a new type of masculinity. Kanaaneh underscores that the agency ofPalestinian men in Israel, for example, must be understood within the limits set by theIsraeli state and the colonial powers: “The experiences of these soldiers, how theynegotiate their relationships to their communities and to the state, and the ways inwhich they are accepted, integrated, and marginalized form a powerful vantage pointfrom which to view the workings of citizenship and gender in Israel” (2005: 261).

27 Moreover, men are taught morality through the endurance of pain and through thebody’s capacity to feel; the body actively experiences and remembers how to be a moralman in daily life, in accordance with the norms of manhood. The norms and culturalmodels of pain are embodied (cf. Talle 2007). These men are moulded into men via thesenses and within the local framework of meaning; they learn through the body how tobe masculine. Men’s embodied memories of endured ordeals are compulsory in thecreation of the fearless Muslim subject, since endurance is a key virtue within Islam (cf.Malmström 2009a, 2009b). The body feels God. Intense painful experience producesself-awareness and teaches lessons that are unforgettable (Morinis 1985).

28 In the worst-case scenario, these men sacrifice and use the most intimate tool – theirown body – as martyrs (shaheed). Martyrdom has since the first (1987-1993) and the


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second (2000-2005) Al-Aqsa intifada increasingly been associated with manhood andpolitical agency (cf. Linos 2010; Abufarha 2009; Asad 2007; Reuter 2002).10 Based on myfieldwork experiences, I recognised the need and the importance of a sensitisedunderstanding of the concept on different levels. What is considered “terrorism” forsomeone is deemed “resistance” for somebody else. In the West Bank, the notion ofviolence is linked to the domestic/local sphere. However, the fight against what isconsidered Israeli occupation is seen as resistance. Understanding the appeal ofviolence entails grasping the ways in which violence is understood, experienced. In thisarticle, I have tried to highlight some aspects of how violence applies from myinterviews and observations. Yet additional research will be needed to further theseinsights on how violence in relation to manhood is learnt and how its values play out inthe everyday lives of boys and young men in the West Bank. Acts of sacrifice may alsobe emically understood, as Linos (2010) in her work of terrorism and embodimentsuggests, not as an act of self-destruction, but actually as an act of construction withpolitical significance for both the individual and the wider Palestinian community. Sheargues, “when political and structural violence threatens the identity of both individualand group, suicide violence may be considered an extreme form of reclaiming theviolated body – a force that ultimately rejects oppression and allows the individual toreclaim the body through self-directed violence” (Linos 2010: 8). She points out, “if thediscipline of the body can be both externally imposed (in the way Foucault mightsuggest) and also self-inflicted in an effort to effect autonomy, then similarly, whenviolence on the body is used by an external power to claim authority over theindividual’s life, self-directed violence may be used as a symbolic reclaiming of thebody” (2010: 10). In other words, according to Linos, these men reclaim the physicalspace through actions of self-destruction by the help of the polluting power of theirbodies. Abufarha (2009) discusses the performances of martyrdom as forms of socialresistance, where the martyr turns into an agent, but never acts as an individual, onlyas a social person – that is to say, as the Palestinian people. He puts forward also thatmartyrdom simultaneously may be understood as an alternative life, since it “becomesa form of living in and by the death” (2009: 233). Both Abufarha’s and Linos’s analysesare “good to think with” in trying to understand not only the young men’s actions, butalso the expectations from the local community that these young Palestinian men faceevery single day.11 A former Qassam soldier, Ahmed, confessed to me that some mencould not handle the actual military operations, including martyrdom, as Qassamsoldiers. These men had to give up their duties as soldiers immediately, since theyexposed the other men in the military cell for futile missions and immediate danger.According to Ahmed, there were no other consequences. However, to be forced to giveup one’s identity as a member of the military wing of Hamas because of lack of couragemust be the ultimate failure and indeed a punishment in itself.

29 To conclude, my argument in this section is that the violation of the body, on differentlevels, is vital in the making of a moral agential masculine self. The body is acted uponby others and by a conscious self, through the techniques and practices of learning howto be a man. Thus, the body is formed through experiences. In the context of Hamasyouths, the body senses God through enduring bodily violence. Endurance givesreligious merits (cf. Meyer 2012). This article has shown some examples of suchprocesses. I am referring firstly to the unreflected, sensory memories and responsesgenerated by the various ordeals and subsequent painful bodily procedures enactedupon men’s bodies that cannot be recalled; I discuss these below against discourses of


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proper masculinity, for example through torture from detention and prisonexperiences or from beatings at checkpoints, and furthermore, concerning theunreflective way in which men learn about manhood and re-create themselves as menthrough sight, hearing, touch, scent and flavour. Secondly, I am referring to how thebody is acted upon by a conscious self. Mahmood’s (2005) notion of embodied agency asintention and desire is fruitful in this regard.12 In contrast with Bourdieu’s (1990) focuson the unconscious power of habitus, Mahmood uses the concept to cover theformation of self as a conscious process and the bodily procedures whereby a moral selfis shaped. This notion of embodied agency is useful in exploring the ways young menconsciously cultivate themselves (intention and desire) to be proper militant Hamasmen – that is, enduring torture, prison and humiliation.

30 However, even if the male Palestinian body is taught and normatively expected to bearhardship and to show uncomplaining patience and endurance, my findings reveal thatthe body is not always capable of fulfilling these demands. All the men I talked toshowed symptoms of illness. Many men had bodily symptoms such as constant pain,stomach problems, balance disturbance and impaired hearing, while some men spokeof plethoric faeces. Several of the young men talked openly about tiredness, feebleness,despair and depression. During the interviews, I observed that the bodies of the menwere never relaxed and their legs were constantly moving, bounding, vibrating, whilethe air was thick with stress and with smoke from the constant chain-smoking. Theillness symptoms, stress and psychological lack of balance of those I interviewed maybe bodily responses to what they have experienced. The body speaks, but it is alsomarked. Linos (2010) asserts that, since the skin is the most visible of all organs, it hasthe ability to act. The skin tells a larger story; it can comprise evidence, while as thefirst layer of our bodies it has the ability to be both de-formed and re-formed.Additionally, the skin has the ability to resist (cf. Scheper-Hughes 2004). Johansen(2002) and Talle (2007) have also discussed the body’s ability to act in relation to thepain of infibulation, and Good (1992) in relation to chronic pain. Talle claims thatextreme, intense and unbearable pain is the body’s indirect way of protesting againstcultural hegemony through physical agency and intentionality. The agency of the bodyin relation to intolerable pain has, as Johansen (2002) suggests, the potential to“explode” the cultural universe. The body makes sense of the various acts of violencethrough a conscious self, but it also reacts against overwhelming and traumaticexperiences. The body in the occupied West Bank continuously experiences thephysical and psychological beatings and humiliations. Furthermore, the body senseseveryday stress, anxiety, anger, frustration, uncertainty and suspicion in relation toother political factions, eventual collaborators in the home community, the occupationpower and the global community. I have argued that the body is acted upon by theunconscious and the conscious self. However, when the body resists norms of violence,because the sufferings are unendurable, and rejects them as part of becomingappropriate Palestinian Muslim Hamas man, and where the meaningful becomesmeaningless, the reactions work against an idealised male gender identity. Experiencesof violence that is devoid of meaning will not be part of the process of becoming arespectable Muslim man in contrast to lived experiences of violence that the body canbear. Instead, violence inscribes the body and self with illness, incompleteness, loss andmaybe also with chronic disease. Good suggests in his analysis of chronic pain that, “aslocus of pain, the body takes on agency over and against the self” (Good 1992: 39).Hence, the body of pain becomes distinct from the self.


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Conclusion: layers of agencies

31 This article has dealt with particular aspects of making masculinity. I have given somebrief examples of how men are taught to conduct themselves and their bodies, aprocess in which values and norms are incorporated through the reiteration of bodilyand verbal practices. The text has also exposed men’s conscious struggle for a malerespectable identity, but also in relation to existential matters – being in the world. Inline with Eriksson Baaz and Stern (2008, 2009, 2010; cf. Nordstrom 1998, Enloe 2000),who point out in their research into constructions of violent militant masculinities thevery importance of attention to the complex interplay between individuals and thediscourses that (in part) produce them, this helps us to see how very fragile evenseemingly solid constructions of subjectivity are.

32 I have shown also that the male Palestinian body is both agential and victimised – itdoes not always cope with the inscription of bodily violence and social expectations ofmanhood. Values and norms are incorporated through the recurrence of bodily andverbal practices, but the body sometimes resists and sometimes reacts in various waysagainst dominant discourses and inculcations of norms. Instead of merely discussingthe notions of agent and victim, we may analyse them as different sorts of agency, atthe same time as this latter kind of agency is victimised since the masculinising part isabsent. The first agency resonates with Mahmood’s embodied agency – where thesubject consciously uses the bodily practices whereby the moral self is created. Theother agency refers to the agency of the body – where the body is not submissive, butclearly protests against intolerable pain and suffering, and thereby also against thenorms and discourses of violence and masculinity. As we can see, it is impossible to talkexclusively about agency or victimhood or to draw rigid lines between these categories– they are blurred. To bring back victimhood into the analysis of gender is alsoimportant on an analytical and a political level (cf. Dahl 2009). A more fruitful analysisof Hamas youth is possible if we try to understand the production of masculinities as aprocess of making uncertain masculinities, where aspects of both agency andvictimhood are active parts.

33 My contribution to the analysis of violence in relation to agency, victimhood andconstructions of gender is to affirm the role of embodiment. By doing this, I highlightthe role of bodies in subjective and intersubjective meaning-making of violence.Understanding the appeal of violence also entails grasping the ways in which violenceis understood, experienced, as well as what it does for and to us. Therefore, theanthropology of violence has a lot to offer the research field, since it explores violenceas a meaningful relational social act (see e. g. Das 2007; Coulter 2006; Nordstrom 2010). Ihave shown how experiences of violence are intensely embodied. Violence shapes andmakes the male body in a complex way. In this specific context of the West Bank, themaking of masculinities is in a constant dialogue with violence, pain and suffering.

34 Finally, the production and reproduction of discourses of violence and agency inrelation to moral masculinities must be understood against the backdrop of the globalWar on Terror and post-colonial politics that may also transform ideals of gender. AsLinos suggests, “The body can thus be seen as a stage upon which local and globalconflicts are played out, and where agency over the body is contested” (2010: 9).Consequently, the continual process of becoming a male subject in the West Bank


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results from a complex interplay between the phenomenal immediacy of livedexperience and social structures/discourses of power and inequality (McNay 2003,2004; cf. Malmström 2009a, 2009b, 2013).

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NOTES1. After being accepted for publication in Etnográfica as part of the dossier “Masculinities in timesof uncertainty and change,” a complementary version of this article was included in Frerks, Ypeijand König (2014).2. I base my framing of these questions in the conceptualisation of subjectivity as a process ofbecoming – through relations of difference and power and in line with Butler’s (1990) notion ofreiteration as a means of constructing identity. See also Hall (1996).3. For an overview of the literature on the military and the reproduction of violent masculinities,see Ackerly, Stern and True (2006); Stern and Nystrand (2006); Stern and Zalewski (2009).4. Or the abbreviation Qassam (Brigades), the military wing of Palestinian socio-politicalorganisation Hamas. The soldiers cannot choose to be soldiers on a voluntary basis but arecarefully selected by Hamas after their “secret” assessments of the individual.5. Fatah, the left wing of Palestinian politics, is the largest faction of the Palestine LiberationOrganization (PLO). Fatah retains control of the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank,even since Fatah lost its majority in the Palestinian parliament to Hamas in the 2006parliamentary election. For further reading about the Palestinian authorities (PA), politics andhistory, see e.g. Beinin and Stein (2006) or Pappe (2004).6. See also Meyer’s (2011) article about media, religion and senses within a Ghanaian setting,where she argues that the negotiation of newly available media technologies is key to thetransformation of religion.7. See Kanaaneh (2005) for an analysis of Palestinian soldiers in the Israeli military, where shediscusses two sorts of masculinities: the family-centered provider masculinity, and theimmature, pubescent masculinity in relation to nationalism and agency.8. For further reading about gender and nationalism, see Katz (2003), who discusses Jewish andPalestinian early nationalism as linked to images of masculinity that excluded or marginalisedwomen. See also Kanafani (2008) for a discussion of mutual dependency between nationalism andhegemonic Palestinian masculinity (cf. Amireh 2003; Massad 2006; and Hart 2008). See Bowman(2003) for a discussion of imagined violence of a national enemy and nationalism.9. See Sasson-Levy (2008) for a discussion on how the individualised body and senses of theIsraeli soldiers reinforce hegemonic masculinity and Israeli militarism and thereby, at the sametime, serve the state.


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10. Female martyrs inserted themselves into the political arena in 2002. Thereby, these womenchallenged the earlier male political space and links to proper manhood (Hasso 2005; cf. Ness2008; Berko and Erez 2007; Schweitzer 2006; Naaman 2007; Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2009). Hasso(2005) argues that the female martyrs both reproduce and undermine local discourses of genderin relation to violence and politics. The Palestinian female martyrs represent national identityand honour. However, Palestinian men continue to be perceived as the subjects and agents of thestruggle. On the other hand, the women gain attributes of Arab masculinity.11. Inculcation of the local society’s discourses concerning ideal manhood is naturally createdand re-created daily through various actors and institutions. One of the key groups of actors hereis the mothers, according to both the men and the mothers I spoke to. The mothers teach corevalues of stoicism and resistance. However, mothers’ ambivalence towards their duty of creatingbrave and fearless sons seems to be common as well. As one mother respondent expressed, evenif it was the Palestinian mothers who were the most important actors in educating the youngmen to be good soldiers, she did not want her own sons to be a Qassam soldier. She told me thatof course she did not want her sons to die, and being a Qassam soldier “is the highway to death.”The majority of men verbally underscored the importance of strong mothers in the process ofbecoming fearless, but they also expressed that women were not as political as men, since womenstayed in their homes all day long and did not have the same access to political life. Many menperceived women as more afraid and therefore in need of protection. At the same time, thesegender ideologies are ambivalent, and other images of women as political actors were oftengiven. One male interviewee told me that, when he and his brother were sent to prison, hismother had told the whole neighbourhood that God had given her many gifts in life. She hadbrought up her sons to be warriors. The prison was proof that she had succeeded with her hardwork. This same informant expressed that his mother was extraordinarily strong. He had neverseen her cry.12. Mahmood (2005) followed the women’s mosque movement in Cairo from 1995 to 1997,focusing on how female agency is formed by the conscious subject in a specific historical contextwith the help of bodily practices.

ABSTRACTSConstructions of gender, embodiment and agency among male Hamas youths in the West Bankare discussed in this article through the prism of violence. It focuses on the constructions ofuncertain masculinities in a complex interplay of violence, political Islam, suffering and loss, andthe importance of analyzing the body in such processes – both as agential and as victimized – ishighlighted. To be able to move away from the sensationalist Western media that often portrayMiddle Eastern Muslim men as “violent,” and as terrorists, we need to understand themotivations and the meanings of violence. The method of analysis is to use a discourse-centeredapproach and to use experience-near ethnography that begins with men’s own practices andattends to how they understand themselves, how their bodies are involved, and how they live outnorms and ideologies in their everyday lives. Thereby we are able to understand how men’srealities and identities are interpreted, negotiated and constructed and how the body is activelyinvolved in these processes. This approach is relevant since it is possible to analyze thesingularity of experience, not only as a form of social interaction, but as linked to socialstructures and discourses, which implies negotiations of tensions, conflicts, and uncertainties.


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O artigo trata as construções de género, encorporamento (embodiment) e agência entre jovens desexo masculino do Hamas da Cisjordânia, através do prisma da violência. A construção demasculinidades incertas numa articulação complexa de violência, Islão político, sofrimento eperda é analisada destacando a importância do corpo nesses processos, como veículo de agência ecomo alvo de vitimização. Para nos distanciarmos do sensacionalismo mediático do Ocidente, quefrequentemente retrata os homens muçulmanos do Médio Oriente como “violentos” e terroristas,é preciso compreender as motivações e os significados da violência. A abordagem centra-se nodiscurso e numa etnografia próxima da experiência, que começa com as próprias práticas doshomens e leva em conta a maneira como eles se compreendem a si mesmos, como o corpoparticipa e como as normas e ideologias são elaboradas nas suas vivências quotidianas. Assim secompreende como são interpretadas, negociadas e construídas as realidades e identidades desteshomens, e como o corpo é ativamente envolvido nesses processos. Esta abordagem permiteanalisar a singularidade da experiência, não apenas como forma de interação social, mas na suarelação com discursos e estruturas sociais, o que implica a negociação de tensões, conflitos eincertezas.

INDEX

Palavras-chave: violência, género, masculinidades, agência, encorporamento, Médio OrienteKeywords: violence, gender, masculinities, agency, embodiment, Middle East

AUTHOR

MARIA FREDERIKA MALMSTRÖM

Nordic Africa Institute, Sweden; Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, [email protected]


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The Pentecostal reworking of maleidentities in Brussels: producingmoral masculinitiesReconfigurações pentecostais de identidades masculinas em Bruxelas: aprodução de masculinidades morais

Maïté Maskens

Introduction

1 Over the past 30 years, Pentecostal churches, mostly composed by followers fromSubsaharan Africa and Latin America, have blossomed in Brussels.1 Their presence andgrowing success have gone hand in hand with the intensification of the migratoryflows, in the last three decades, from these two continents. In my work, I investigatethe relationship between the religious experience and the migratory route of the Euro-African and Euro-Latin-American Pentecostal actors in Brussels (Maskens 2012, 2013).My fieldwork consisted of spending time with followers of mainly (but not exclusively)two different Pentecostals churches in Brussels. The first, La Parole Vivante, is afoothold in a big US transnational Pentecostal denomination (the Church of God, ofCleveland) and gathers around 3000 followers in Brussels. The majority are Congolesebut there is also a wide range of other Africans, Latin-Americans and Europeannationalities (cults are mostly given in French); the second is the Centro Jesús, a localchurch of the Assemblies of God which gathers around 60 believers from differentcountries of South and Central America and is located near the South Station inBrussels; their cults are given in Spanish.

2 In these meeting spaces, the converts work collectively to realize the transformationprocess encouraged by this religious scenario, which consists of applying the “perfectplan of God” to their lives. Carriers of missionary ambitions, the believers give newcontents to their position by redefining the place that is assigned to them in thecontext of post-colonial Belgium. The religious membership operates as a marker of


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distinction, a process particularly striking in the field of gender and sexuality withinthe assemblies.

3 Conversion to Pentecostalism may also lead to gender conversions. Gender isunderstood here according to the definition of the American historian Joan WallachScott (1988: 42), as “a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceiveddifferences between sexes.” The historian adds that “gender is a primary way ofsignifying relationships of power,” as the specific ground of Pentecostals masculinitieswill testify. Ideologies and religious practices contribute to, define, and morespecifically produce particular sexual identities.

4 During my immersion in these religious settings, my attention was first drawn towomen’s experiences and their social status in churches. The large female presence atthese congregations – even if women’s submission to men, as called for by Saint Paul,continues today – could be surprising. This has led me to ask what advantagesPentecostal affiliation brings to the women of the assembly given the apparentlyoppressive and patriarchal character of this religious ideology. Moreover, this“emotional” Protestantism is often associated with a feminine religiosity, characterizedby concepts still thought of in the contemporary western secular world as typicallyfeminine: spontaneity and the expression of one’s emotions.

5 This interest in the condition of women in churches falls within the scope of therupture with the “triple marginalities” these women generally suffer as described byNancy Eiesland (1997). First, women are commonly excluded from leadership inreligious spaces. Moreover, until recently in the scientific field, women have often beenabsent from analyses which consider men’s experience as illustrative of the wholereligious experience. Finally, these pious women are excluded from feminist studies.Indeed, feminists suggest that they are “mystified” by themselves, in other words, theyhave a “false consciousness” (Eiesland 1997: 100). Absent or marginalized, viewed asvulnerable or eternal victims of men, women have been “saved” in socio-anthropological research by the concept of agency, a notion born in the wake offeminist and gender studies to theorize the way women resist, subvert, negotiate orstill inhabit the patriarchal gender norms (Butler 1993; McNay 2000; Hollywood 2004;Mahmood 2005; Bracke 2008). As Adriaan Van Klinken (2011: 123) put it, men, asgendered beings, were excluded of the analytical benefits of the concept of agencybecause of the trajectory at first “feminist” of the term.

6 When examining the abundant literature on gender and religion (Campiche 1996; Voyé1996; Eiesland 1997; Lawless 2003; Mate 2002; Hallum 2003; Fancello 2005; Sackey 2006),I realize that, in the studies focusing on religious women’s experiences, men appear notso much as dynamic subjects but as a given, an unchanged and independent variablealways holding the same role in different gender scenarios, in particular that of theoppressor. It is precisely this fixed, reductive aspect of this description of religiousmasculinities that fostered me to investigate this field. I concur here with Adriaan VanKlinken (2011) on the fact that male power is simply assumed and contested ratherthan explored. This attention to religious men’s agency also matches with BjörnKrondorfer’s (2009) work, where he investigates “critical men’s studies in religion” andstates the existing risk of reverting to a “long tradition” of repetition of maledominance in the field of religion.

7 My own interaction with male followers through what is commonly called “fieldwork”also prompts me to question forms of masculinity in these religious spaces. As time


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passes, I realize followers engage with me according to their own gender conception.Ethnographic relations are hybrid, an experience that doesn’t fit very well with theform of interaction in these religious spaces, especially as a female meeting with maleindividuals. Some men clearly shun my company, apparently uneasy by my inquisitiveor even adventurous behaviour. Indeed, I didn’t have any male referents (a father,brother or husband) during my visits at these religious gatherings. I share this verysame situation with other female followers but, unlike them, my scientific approachforces me to adopt a proactive posture. My conduct deviates radically from the waywomen are supposed to behave in this religious setting: as a discrete, modest anddevoted agent, although some degree of feminine exuberance is tolerated if the womanhas a high charismatic capital.

8 Barbara Rose Lange, American anthropologist and violinist, lived through a similarexperience when she tried to integrate into a group of gypsy musicians in a HungarianPentecostal church in the 1990s. Within the framework of the musical performance ofthe cult, her attempts at participation were ignored. The musicians even expressedtheir tension through specific physical movements. These marks of resistance informthe anthropologist that her presence as a woman in the group of male musicians wasnot welcome. Indeed, in a general way, the public exchanges between men and women(married or not members of the same family) in these cults are seen in a suspiciouslight, entering rather quickly into the category of “fornication” (Lange 1996: 68). In abroad sense, religious believers see themselves as the last bastion of morality in aEurope viewed as “decadent.” The domain of sexual practices is then the object ofprofound criticism. Setting the scene as such, faithful Pentecostals construct theirdifferences in the register of sexuality. Attempting to make order out of transformationand pursuing an ideal of distinction, these religious actors (mainly women) needtherefore to be unlike the locals, whom pastors have denounced for theirpermissiveness and “lax” sexual practices (partially legal prostitution, lack of public“decency,” legality of same-sex marriage, pornography accessible to young people, STDprevention campaigns in the schools…) (Maskens 2011).

9 This paper is guided by the desire to answer two questions. The first one is articulatedaround the specificity of male experience in the church: what is the definition thesemen give to their masculinity? What I mean here is masculinity as a range of “norms,values and behavioural patterns expressing explicit and implicit expectations of howmen should act and represent themselves to others” (Miescher and Lindsay 2003: 4).The second question deals with the normative religious injunction to “live in thedifference,” and how this translates at the level of masculine identities; in other words,I want to understand why these men perceive themselves as different from those theydeem to be non-religious men.

From “old man” to “new man” narratives

10 Conversion in Pentecostal Churches is a central and structural theme of religiousthought and concrete organization. As such, the concepts of transformation, changeand rupture are crucial in understanding the Pentecostal work on gender identities.Indeed, conversion is thought as a moment of rupture between a past life and a “new”life. Specific narrative tools are used in order to ritualize this religious change. Topublicly and regularly testify to this change is at the heart of the religious missionary


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apparatus and constitutes a keystone in the worldwide diffusion of the movement.Religious models guide the performance of sexual identities. For the men, thistransformation implies a behavioural change.2

11 For Jean-Jacques, a Congolese pastor responsible for a small assembly of about 50people situated in a precarious neighbourhood of Brussels (Molenbeek), this imperativefor transformation requires a phase of “breaking.” He warns his believers during thecult: “The seed that God puts in you does not avoid that your personality remains!”

12 His expression is testimony to the effort of self-development that new male convertsmust do; far from the presumed spontaneity of the transformations assumed in mostconversion narratives. It is thus necessary to fight, by means of prayers, to tame themale chauvinist or rebel character of some believers (“philanderers”/“womanizers,”“fighters,” “disobedient”). The discourse of Jean-Jacques calls for certain adjustmentsof the personality of male converts. He explains how to sort out diverse features of theChristian personality:

“Because when the Bible says ‘it is necessary to crush the flesh,’ the first thingwhich it is necessary to crush, is the character that you have. If you are aphilanderer, a womanizer, it is necessary to break it because that is a part of youremotional features. If you are a disobedient person, who does not yet accept theobedience due to your own parents, there is a problem. Because to serve the Lorddoes not exclude this propensity of the character to rebel. Thus, often, we say that agood pastor has to pass by the stage of breaking; that means he has to break with allthe education he received which is opposite to the ethics and the morality. Becausethere are always people who support the idea that it is good to hurt somebody. Inour Congolese societies for example, we tell you: ‘fetch this child and hit him hard’and it is normal, that doesn’t shock anybody. But to serve the Lord, if you are afighter for example, or emotionally disturbed, or if at every slightest problem youare going to dash into the fight, it is necessary to avoid all these behaviours by theprayer, we will break that.” [Jean-Jacques, pastor in Molenbeek.]

13 This quote illustrates the ideal figure of Christian men: male converts must swap theirseductive ambitions for the cultivation of peace and dialogue. The male believers areencouraged to “fight” against what is sometimes presented as their deeper “nature,” orin other words, to work on their behaviour and actions so that these start resonatingwith the peaceful figure of Christ. In this religious context, the “strong man” is quiet,moderate, and obedient; he never gets angry, masters his physical strength and showsa constant loyalty to his wife. The “stage of breaking,” this “crushing of the flesh”involves the repression of certain features of the “hegemonic masculinity” that arecontrary to the Christian ethos.

14 In another assembly, the Spanish-speaking Centro Jesús, a couple from Ecuador whowere carrying out missionary work in Europe were received by pastor Diego in theautumn of 2007 in Brussels to testify, in front of the Assembly, God’s action in theirlives:

“Wednesday, 7:12 pm. The Peruvian pastor thanks the members of the assembly forbeing there and numerous this evening for the ‘special worship for families.’Without transition, he intones a song entitled To Jump as Kids, accompanied by anelectric guitar and drums. In every chorus, the believers jump up as if they werechildren to express, according to the words of the song, ‘the enjoyment of the Lord.’Pastor Diego then asks us to welcome a couple of ‘children of God,’ Hugo andAlfonsina, who have specially come to give their testimony for us this evening inBrussels. He asks the Lord to bless them and to bless the ‘words that will come fromtheir mouths.’ The Ecuadorian couple rise then to the altar. Their four daughters sit


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in the front row; the youngest gives the full room a sweeping glance and she seemssatisfied. Pastor Hugo speaks by presenting his wife: ‘I present you my wife,Alfonsina, she is the woman who stole my heart.’ He hands us over to her, and shepursues this by preaching in two voices, asking the assembly ‘to fasten theirseatbelts,’ to get ready to receive words ‘which are nothing but God’s words.’ Shecontinues by warning the assembly: ‘Good intentions alone are not God’s will.’ Thatis why, according to her, it is urgent ‘to cut family ties because dependence on yourfamily prevents you from being a member of God’s family.’ The woman pastor thenillustrates her comment with the lives of a series of biblical characters and gives akind of tree points recipe to insure a successful and ‘harmonious’ family life. Then,Pastor Hugo adds a fourth point to those expressed by his wife; it is, he says, ‘aboutsomething which has already stolen many blessings from families! It is [about] thelack of forgiveness. When we do not forgive, on both sides [he mimes a pyramid ofconflicts growing with his hands], it is the higher sin, I am going to give you atechnique, a thermometer, to know if we forgave the other one: if things thatpreviously made us angry, we do not speak about them anymore, then we knowthat forgiveness is in the home.’ He addresses then the assembly and asks: ‘Who hasnever had problems in his marriage? The one who gets up, pray for him, for he is aliar!’ [The believers laugh]. He continues: ‘The victory is in the management of theconflicts.’ He turns to elements in his personal life: ‘Before, my life was a life of vice,of lust. I drank a lot, I liked parties, I went out. In the village, I had severalgirlfriends and my wife knew it, but she did not want to see, so she closed her eyes.[His wife, who is held next to him, agrees sadly]. Then we accepted Jesus and in twonights, all our defects were erased. At first, the first night, I apologized to her,several times. I approached her to speak to her, but my wife was irritated, becauseshe did not want to speak to me anymore. She rejected me. I, for my part, wasresigned to losing the woman of my life. I wanted to become better. When you lookfor God, he changes even the tone of your voice. Then, the next day, my wife cameto apologize to me. She had a dream and she had seen Jesus writing my name in abook, like that, in the hand, he wrote ‘Hugo’ in his book. Then she knew and sheforgave me.’ The South American pastor moves on to the necessity of changing ourhomes, since ‘we live [during] the ultimate time, the evil increases in the world… Ifwe look around, we see how the enemy is inclined to destroy our families. Eight outof ten classmates of our daughters have divorced parents. Figures are alarming andpeople find it normal. But we are not going to let go, by means of God, we canachieve everything!’ He concludes his preaching by recalling the main qualities ofthe Christian husband: loving, affectionate, attentive, generous and responsible. Hereminds those wives who walk in ‘the steps of Jesus.’ Then he asks the couplespresent in the room to come to the front of the assembly. The couples get up andstand in front of the stage. He asks them to hold hands and to embrace. The pastorencourages them: ‘Go, you can make it. Don’t be afraid of being ridiculous, we nevermiss a little romanticism in this world!’ And he asks the husbands to pronounce asentence to their wives: ‘My love, I apologize to you.’ Then he suggests changing theroles and it is women’s turn to apologize to their husbands. The believers arelooking straight in each other’s eyes. Some cry openly, others are very discreet. Thechildren, the teenagers and the single members of the assembly contemplate thisspectacle from the audience.” [Author’s fieldnotes.]

15 In this rhetorical account, the conversion is presented as a radical rupture with an“old” macho way of life with its specific virile behaviours, geographies andtemporalities. Hugo multiplies “guilty” experiences in the village, his wife knowingabout his infidelities. The encounter with God changes his masculinity. God changeshim even to the “tone” of his voice. The new Hugo realizes that he is losing the “womanof his life” and in his narrative, he becomes faithful, loyal, attentive and affectionate.He encourages believers to connect with their “romantic partner.” From a mujeriego,3

Hugo becomes an affectionate husband. Seduction has no more “power” over his life.


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His preoccupations have been refocused into the domestic sphere. His life is no longeroutside but inside the home, close to his family.

16 The figure of the “macho man,” because of the Mexican origin of the term, has aparticular relevance in the Latin-American religious context.4 In the Churchescomposed by followers from African sub-Saharan countries, this figure is not soprominent. What seems obvious, in these transnational universes which bring togetherpeople from different backgrounds, is that there is a plurality of masculinity modelscoexisting in these assemblies. Indeed, these religious spaces are dense with peoplefrom diverse ethno-national origins implying great diversity. If we were to focus onlyon the story of African masculinity, which has been called by some commentators a“patchwork of patriarchies” (Bozzoli 1983), we would have to analyze in detail themasculinity models integrated by each follower according to their socialization in aparticular African socio-historical context. We would also have to look at the colonialsituation in which the West, by imposing its masculinity norms, has caused disruptionsin the varieties of gender regimes in current use.5 As a matter of fact, it would also beuseful to sort out the continuities, to describe the contradictions, to search forconcordances, conflicts or resonance of these different norms.

17 Masculinity studies show that there is not one model of masculinity, but a lot ofmasculinities, a multiplicity of forms of “being a man” in a society and at a givenhistorical moment. This masculinity is multiple, historic and contingent but alsorelational and contradictory (Hodgson 2001). The male actors are thus confronted withseveral competitive or contradictory alternatives and their way of being a man isconstituted by their commitment to, their resistance against, or their subversion of thevarious male models proposed by their social worlds. It is in this space of negotiatedgender standards that Adriaan Van Klinken (2011) sees the possibility of reading maleagency. These various models don’t have the same weight in a social setting, since theyare not valued in the same way, and this is what permits the distinction of a dominantmodel, which Bob Connell called the “hegemonic masculinity.” This is the form ofmasculinity which prescribes the image of the “real man” in a given society. Thishegemonic form stands out as a model throughout the daily socialization of boys andgirls, and other forms of masculinities are subordinated, collusive or marginal to it. Thedominant model does not exclude the existence of alternatives but it distinguishesitself because it enjoys a wide social adhesion. The author takes then the hegemonicnorth-American masculinity as an example: “Few men are Bogarts or Stallones, manycollaborate in sustaining those images” (Connell 2002: 61).

18 This complex heterogeneity constitutes the major reason for largely focusing on malecontemporary religious experience, given such a diachronic view of the phenomenon:the process of religious homogenization of masculinities and the implications of these“transformations” on the process of “being men” in the assembly. What then does thePentecostal reworking of masculinities consist of? What are the possibilities ofredefining the ways of being a man in the assembly? How do men understand andappropriate these new gender norms? We will see that it is again ambiguity that is atthe heart of Pentecostal transformations of gender identities.

19 On the one hand, the religious discourse on masculinity comes to strengthen, tosupport, to consolidate, to biblically legitimize male domination, the ascendancy ofmen over women, patriarchy, the primary power of the men in and outside theassembly. I resume those processes by the emic expression of “strong men,” this


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strengthening taking quite a particular acceptance in the migratory context as we willsee in what follows. On the other hand, the Pentecostal work on masculinities alsobreaks with the dominant cultural model of masculinity, the local “hegemonic”masculinity. The Pentecostal man distinguishes himself from the “ordinary” manbecause he is projecting himself as sensitive, communicative and responsible, anexemplary father, whose concerns are concentrated on the well-being of his family.Collectively such attributes are for “men of heart.”

20 After all, the Pentecostal work of masculinity such as it is practiced in Brussels (but alsoin other European capitals and in other continents) is characterized by the polarizedand paradoxical power to challenge and to adapt itself at the same time – to be both“strong men” and “men of heart” –, to produce breaks in continuity (Willaime 1999).

Religious “strong men”

21 Christendom, as a view of the world, contributes generally to the definition of agendered morality. This sexual ideology draws upon, in the discourses of thePentecostal pastors, frequently quoted biblical references. One of them, concerning thelegitimate form of the relations between men and women, is Saint Paul’s famous orderwhich encourages Christian women to be subjected to their husbands (Ephesians, 5:22-24). Such references justify ways in which inequality between the sexes structuresgender interaction, and this encouragement is representative of a kind of patriarchalheteronormativity which is present in religious writing (Delaney 1998). This onepatriarchal norm is put into practice during religious activities through a preferentialassociation between the men of the assembly and positions of power. The idea of“gender justice” is absent here in the religious ideology of male transformation. AsCucchiari (1990: 691) showed, the Pentecostal experience follows differentiatedoutlines: the women are more inclined to live religious experiences in connection withthe Holy Spirit, while the religious experience of the men of the assembly is moreassociated with the words, writings and the formal power of definition.

22 However, contrary to the Catholic model which automatically excludes women fromMinistry (Voyé 1996), the Protestant churches eventually admitted women pastorsduring the second half of the 20th century for the Reformed and Lutheran Churches(Willaime 1996: 30). This evolution has been the result of a series of social-culturalchanges to which Protestantism was not insensitive. In the Pentecostal worlds, it thushappens that women speak and step upon the altar or become pastors even if theseevents are rare. Whatever their status, their voice is more conditioned than that of themen. When women take the floor, their discourse is full of oral cautions and they haveto refer to God ceaselessly to guarantee their legitimacy. This entity appears as anindispensable part of women’s religious agency (Hollywood 2004). When women rise tothe altar, it is sometimes to remind their sisters of the imperative of intrinsicsubmission in gender relations, as did “Maman” Jessica, a Congolese representative ofthe group of the women, in a presentation where she performed a public act ofsubmission during a convention, April 15th, 2006:

“I want to speak to my sisters. The church begins at home, there is no use to cometo the church if we leave the house in a mess. To me, my husband is my witness,before coming to church, I take care of the house, cook, I must be subjected to Dad,Roger, [everybody applauds and shows approval by chanting ‘Alleluias!’ ‘Amen!’] Imust be subjected to my mother-in-law. God said, ‘If you want that I use you, you


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have to be subjected.’ I regret, my sisters. I preach God’s word. My sisters, juveniledelinquency begins at home. In this country, we have to respect husbands. Applaudthe brothers! You the dads, pastors, you are leaders. Take your responsibilities![The assembly applauds] God does not need omelettes.” 6

23 In this extract, “Maman” Jessica recalls the major principle valorising certain forms ofgender relations in these religious spaces. She recalls the imperatives of submissionand the domestic role of women (the house as their kingdom) and, correlatively, therole of men as heads of family. This message, carried by “Maman” Jessica’s femininevoice, is one of male precedence. It is the domination of women by men that ishighlighted here in spite of the “regrets” expressed.

Weakened migrant men

24 In the migratory context that has seen the emergence of these churches, the discourseof strengthening the male power, illustrated through its biblical roots, takes particularmeaning.

25 First, for the vast majority of the followers, masculinity seems to have been shatteredduring diverse migratory experiences. As Abdelmayek Sayad (1999) has shown for thecase of three generations of Algerian men migrating to France, the social cost ofmigration is considerable. In his exploration of the dimensions of suffering broughtabout by migration, the uneasiness takes on various forms and intensities: fromculpability generated by a sentiment of abandon to the problem of absence or oblivion,in the country of origin, towards different pathologies of exile (melancholia, excessivepessimism or mutism). For the French-Algerian sociologist, the capacity of the migrantto counter this social cost of migration resides in his ability to give a deep meaning tohis existence marked by mobility. In this context, a strong religious affiliation canprovide migrants with a particular perspective on the meaning of their lives as thiscontribution exemplifies. Pentecostal affiliation seems to temper the difficulties facedby migrant men. At the beginning, the resettlement of migrant men often constitutes aself-reflexive starting point – by effect of contrast – on the appropriate forms of genderrelations. In this Western European country where these men try to settle, genderstandards are different and sometimes contrast with the norms they have incorporatedduring their former periods of socialization, the form that appears “normal” to them.Often, taken aback by the type of relationship between men and women in this newcontext, male followers refer to the religious message to criticize this specificconfiguration. Similarly, other researches, such that of Sharon Suh (2003), show howKorean Buddhists in America use religion to understand the relationship to thehomeland which happens, in part, in gendered ways. Men assert an identity throughreligious activities that construct distinctively male spaces in the temple, in response tothe degrading aspects of the male immigrant experience (Suh 2003).

26 The discourse of many current believers in Brussels is close to a reaction againstvarious “modern” changes in the sexual field, as a result of several years of the feministstruggle that has contributed to “erode masculine authority in the household” (Illouz2012: 125). In a certain sense, Pentecostal churches in Brussels are keeping with abroader movement of protest against a universal tendency of women participating inthe “globalized” world and market economy (Brouwer, Gifford and Rose 1996: 219).


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27 Therefore, in this context, a lot of male followers take up arms against gender relationsas they are represented in Belgium. The issue of equality and leadership arequestioned. According to Félix, a follower of about 30 years from the DRC, women’s rolein Belgian society is not appropriate: “When I get together with white people here,there is some stuff I cannot tolerate, or I cannot accept. When [in quotation marks]‘women take up authority over men and decide everything,’ I find it hard. I can’t helpthinking something is wrong!”

28 The migratory situation and the resulting new economic order influences gender to agreat extent. The loss of economic status changes gender interaction. Various scholarshave underlined the challenge to men’s authority in migratory contexts (Hirsch 2007;Kibria 1993; Pessar 1995). In Belgium, this loss of masculine privilege is expressed alsothrough the denunciation by men of the “favouring” of women in the local economy.Men say they suffer from this preferential treatment given to women in which theirown professional opportunities are fewer. Speaking about job opportunities in Belgium,Martin, a young Congolese-Belgian explains that, “women find work more easily herebecause Belgium favours women.” According to him, this situation is “unbalanced”because women are the only breadwinners and this seems to germinate futureconflicts. Indeed, the differential status these men mostly suffer from in a migratorycontext deprives them, in some cases, from part of the functions and responsibilitiesthey used to have, such as providing food, or more generally taking financial care ofthe family. In such cases, economic dependence of these men upon their spouses bringstheir power into question. Some men confess they feel that their identity is at stake,that they are no longer able to control their wives as they did in their native country.This is maybe why a great emphasis is put on the spiritual responsibility of men in thefamily.

29 The contestation of power in gender relations and the tensions which ensue from it inthe migratory context resonate with other debates and challenges to patriarchy thatare taking place in Africa. Here also, numerous women assume an economic role withinthe family unit. Indeed, in the case of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the role ofbreadwinner associated with the Congolese masculinities (Jewsiewicki 2004; KuyuMwissa 2008) is more and more assumed by the women because of the delicate andgeneralized socioeconomic condition. In her study of the God of Maman Olangi inCongo-Kinshasa and in the Congolese diaspora, Bénédicte Meiers (2013) shows howtransformations and economic crises made women’s money a necessity to householdsurvival, a change men found hard to accept and thus at the root of a lot of gendertensions. The association between the breadwinner and male skill becomes the objectof a competition between men, women and children. In light of this, Meiers explainshow the religious ideology of the Church of Maman Olangi contributes – as in the caseof Pentecostal churches – to the recovery of male authority.

30 In Belgium, when men of the assembly do not complain of being victims ofdiscrimination in the hiring process, and when they have access to the realm of work,they regret very often that their occupation is below their skill set. These workexperiences are lived as degrading ones (which is very often also the case for theirwives). This disqualification in the professional world is not without consequences forthe way they think about themselves as men. The migratory context is a continuationof colonial history (Bancel et al. 2010), since the racism of that time contributed to thedenigration of the power of African men (Fanon 1967). The religious sphere constitutes


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a place in the margins of this daily depreciation where the power of men is reaffirmedand celebrated. Pentecostal affiliation seems to temper the difficulties of migrant menby formally claiming the precedence of men over women and by recognizing in thesame discursive movement the quality and importance of the “female workers of theLord.”

31 These spaces also constitute places of debate, contest, negotiation around the moralityor lack thereof of local practices, and sites of evaluation of recent sexual evolutions. Ina very general way, the western laxness in terms of customs and sexual practices is theobject of deep criticisms during religious meetings. The image or, in certain cases, thecaricature of the sexual practices of others serves then to consolidate the sexualorthodoxy of the members of the assembly. The religious condemnation ofhomosexuality and the legislative advances with regard to these sexual minorities isrecurring (in particular, same-sex marriage which has been permitted in Belgium since2003). Pastors warn their flock in the following terms: these illegitimate practices bringonly the destruction of the individual. The transgression of the moral standards has aprice. They quote then the first letter to the Corinthians: “Do not you know that theinequitable will not inherit from the Kingdom of God? Do not get lost. Distracted,admirers of statuettes, adulteries, liabilities, sodomites, thieves, grasping, drunkards,insulters, birds of prey will not inherit from God’s reign” (Corinthians I, 6: 9-10).

32 Certain ministers qualify homosexual practices as ignominies. They use metaphorsstructured around the nature/culture dichotomy in order to relegate these practices tothe animal kingdom, to savagery, to bestiality.

33 For a pastor native of DRC, homosexual practice is comparable to the act of eating one’sown excrement. One pastor admitted to having already dealt with homosexuals in hischurch, where he proceeded to organize sessions of special prayers to free them fromthis vice. He concluded by narrating a story with a “happy ending” as he said, in whichone of these believers, by means of prayer, was stopped from being homosexual. Thisway, the masculinity valued in these spaces joins the hegemonic masculinity in thesense of privileging the virility of men to the detriment of homosexual identities,perceived as deviant.

Producing men of heart

34 If male dominance is confirmed by this religious reading, other processes in themargins of this valorisation come to moderate the strictly patriarchal aspect ofgendered relations. Indeed, the Pentecostal reworking of masculinity also implies asubversion of the hegemonic masculinity. Male domination is thus established, yet thisis limited and redirected towards a model of masculinity that we could qualify asalternative. Indeed, Pentecostal affiliation proposes to break with certain dominantcultural values.

35 Two processes contribute to new directions for religious masculinity: on the one hand,men are “domesticated,” to use the expression of Elisabeth Brusco (1995), and on theother hand, we observe the “feminization of masculinity” in these spaces (MansillaAgüero 2007).


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The male domestication

36 As I expand upon below, gender is a game played by both male and female individuals;masculinity and femininity as structural patterns are “worked on” by the samereligious principles. The first process being summed up is the one of domesticity.Indeed, this concept is not exclusively meant as a study of women’s issues! If thedomestic sphere is, above all, the “kingdom” of women, and if this sphere is extendedto the religious space by taking care of children and housekeeping, men are also“domesticated” in a way. They have to be ideal husbands, caring and loving fathers:faithful, loyal and responsible like the model of Jesus.

37 Their concerns are refocused within the household, the domestic unit. In this sphere,the man has a position of head but his aspirations have changed to correspond closer tothose of his wife (Brusco 1995: 148). If we re-examine the speech of “Maman” Jessicaabove, we can see that after having exhorted her “sisters in Christ” to submit to theirhusbands, Jessica orders the men, those whom she describes as the “leaders,” to taketheir “responsibilities.” “We do not want omelettes” she ends with a touch of humour. Ifthe incitement of submission for the women is very clear, it does not go without thecounterpoint for the men of the assembly, whom the women expressly ask to shouldertheir responsibilities.

38 It is as if the compensation for the repetitive call for female submission is that womenexpect a certain type of masculinity. To a certain extent, women say: “OK, we willsubmit to you men but you will have to live up to our requirements.” As Melanie Heathputs it: “by helping ‘men to be men,’ the wives promote a hegemonic masculinity thatallows men to be involved husbands and fathers while maintaining their privilege asmen” (2003: 436). This gender configuration is confirmed by other studies aboutevangelicals that have shown how women restore the precedence of men to sustain theharmony of the domestic unit (Gallagher and Smith 1999; Stacey and Gerard 1990).

39 In this context, women do not aim to directly oppose the current patriarchy; theyrather hope that God will moderate the hearts of the men of the assembly (Mate 2002:566). Their Pentecostal affiliation allows them to formulate, in a specific biblicallanguage, certain requirements about the way to be men. The contents of thismasculinity are thus redefined according to a new structure of power. As explained byone of the Zimbabwean Pentecostal interlocutors of Rekopantswe Mate, the maleauthority rests on the bible: “male headship is ordained in the Scriptures and […] it isnot about tyranny because a man who follows the Bible knows better than to bedictatorial, abusive or otherwise ‘unfair’ to his wife and children” (2002: 554).

40 What this means is that the man has to show an enlightened usage of his power basedon the consultation with those for whom he is responsible. Submission, power andresponsibility are invested with particular meanings in these spaces: they constitutethe trio of normative orders in the heart of the relations between Pentecostal men andwomen. It is the reason for which Bernice Martin (2001) asserts that these movements,qualified as “regressive,” “patriarchal,” or as “fundamentalists,” have neverthelesscontributed to the emancipation of millions of women in or from “the South.” Theauthor adds that the signs of emancipation are difficult to perceive for the westernobservers influenced by the Age of Enlightenments for whom Pentecostalism is aboveall marked by a lack of intellectual sophistication (2001: 57).


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41 This domestication also extends to sexual issues. Pentecostal men and women want todistance themselves from the rest of the world by a sexual moral order. Women have tobe calm and thoughtful of their husbands’ desires, and the assembly expects them to bebeyond reproach as far as being a vehicle of temptation. Sensuality in Pentecostalrhetoric is understood as a tool of Satan, a trap inscribed in women’s bodies, oftenwithout her knowing it, set to ensnare men. The result of this association is that greatattention is paid to the sexuality of young girls. As mentioned elsewhere (Maskens2011), young girls constitute the purity “potential” of a congregation. Pastors areconcerned with female sexuality in the everyday life of their church. Young women arethe real target of concerned sermons. Young men are generally spared such sermonsbecause of the shared common assumption about their sexuality, understood asindomitable, uncontrollable. For young men, masculinity is an aggressive one, a “virile”masculinity. So, without entering into more detail here, this leads us to this point: if wecan notice the coexistence of a plurality of masculinities, reworked by the samereligious process and differently inhabited by the sexes, there is also a kind oftemporality affecting the authorized definition of masculinities. There are differentmasculinities embedded in different stages of the life cycle. The feminization of masculinity

42 The second process at the heart of the Pentecostal reworking of the masculinity,namely the “feminization of masculinity,” also breaks with the dominant culturalvalues. Indeed, as Almeida admirably showed in his study of a village in SouthernEurope, the hegemonic masculinity, as an ideal cultural model, exercises control overall the men by incorporating a specific sociability to the everyday life and throughdiscourses which exclude the emotional dimension of existence by its identification asfeminine (Almeida 1995: 17). The men build themselves then in opposition to thisfeminine counterpart. The expression of feelings, to cry for example, is reserved for thewomen only. The religious spaces take the opposite view of this gender standard andthe emotion and its manifestations are not only the privilege of women.

43 The domestication of male followers goes hand in hand with the shaping of theirpersonality. Men are encouraged to “be connected” with their nuclear and spiritualcircle – they must try every day to be connected with God. Men have to feed the familyliterally as well as morally by bringing peace and serenity to the household. Gentlenessand affection in these spaces become masculine attributes. Demonstrating thisattribute, Mario, a Guatemalan follower for more than 40 years, living in Belgium forabout 12 years and attending the biggest Congolese Church in Brussels, said, after along prayer during which tears were running down his face: “Society says you cannotcry, you cannot be sensitive otherwise you are considered gay. But for God, men cancry, be sensitive, love […]. You’re also told that you have to fuck to be a man otherwisewe say you’re homosexual, but it is wrong too.”

44 If, in the majority of social worlds, a man crying or showing his fragility doesn’t fit withwhat is generally expected of the “stronger sex” and such men run the risk of seeingtheir masculinity disqualified, in religious spaces men can “be connected” safely. Thiskind of alternative masculinity rejects some patterns of a “virile” masculinity, thosethat don’t fit with their role as good fathers, for example, but stays in touch with this


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model on questions such as authority, heterosexuality, and the evidence of “natural”dissimilarities between men and women.

45 To illustrate this alternative masculinity, the comments of Octave are relevant. He is ayoung Belgo-Congolese man under 30, who described himself as “born in the church”and with whom I had an enlivened conversation at his home about what it is to be aChristian man in the twenty-first century:

“Well, we have to put things in their context. It’s true that in the Bible, it’s like that:a woman is submissive to her husband. But, if you’re a gallant man and you knowthat there is a woman God has given to you, you have to do everything possible totake care of her and she too has to do everything to treat you well. And if she has toprepare meals and so on to treat you well, she will do it but only if she has enoughtime. Because you should not be fooled… we are in Europe in 2006! I have somefemale friends that have little kids: it’s killing them! If you have four, you have ahead like that. You have to have a heart: if men have to take a vacuum cleaner tohelp cleaning, they should do it! You see, it’s you and your wife that know and itwill stay in the family circle. My father, he has vacuumed before because mymother’s back was hurting or whatever… Or to do the washing-up for example, myfather has also done the washing-up.”

46 During this discussion, Octave mentions gallantry, common sense and compassion, allqualities that men of the Lord have to demonstrate towards their spouses. A Christianman could develop his sensitivity – without running the risk of emasculation becausehis status as head of the family household is guaranteed – and as such, they are able toadopt behaviours suitable for the context (“we are in Europe,” “we are in 2006”) andcall for compassion. Similar discourses emerge from the analyses of JacintheMazzocchetti in her study on the students of Ouagadougou, in Burkina Faso, thecountry of origin of certain pastors and other Pentecostal believers in Brussels. Theanthropologist describes two believers in the Assemblies of God, a young couple calledMichel and Christine who also testify to the tendency of a more egalitarianreformulation of the strict distribution of housework. Indeed, the couple agrees toassume a distribution of the tasks less centred on the work of women. Michel speaksabout the fact that he is not hampered by the outsiders’ opinions because he iscommitted to showing a good attitude. Christine denounces the negative view of widersociety which places a man in flagrante delicto of domestic cleaning, and Mazzocchetticoncludes: “if the relationships of domination are reaffirmed within these Churches,relations between men and women in the Protestant couples distance themselves frompresent observed norms” (2009: 215).

47 In our example above, Octave doesn’t question the model of strict separation of tasks:it’s clear that women take charge of domestic and child-care tasks (they are the onesthat “naturally” prepare meals, vacuum and do the washing-up), but men have torelieve them if they are suffering. His revelation concerning the cleaning actions of hisfather reinforces the exceptional nature of such acts and consolidates the idea of astrict separation of tasks. This ambiguity is thus at the heart of the Pentecostalredefinition of masculinity. There is a duality of detachment and proximity. Malefollowers try to distance themselves from the culturally dominant form of masculinityas formulated by society but, at the same time, they reinforce and consolidate somepatterns of it by using its religious legitimacy.


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Failed domestication

48 If this article deals first and foremost with the discursive production of normativity andconsequently authority, it is not to be said that the concrete and daily transformationof masculinity is beyond its scope. Indeed, the young men who do not show a change ofbehaviour expected in the religious space can be the objects of closer control by thepastoral authorities. The figure of the “seducer” does not enter within the frameworkof Pentecostal masculinity and is thus deeply “disputed.” Anything resembling sexualpredation is firmly repressed in these spaces. In certain cases, it happens that thereligious authorities of the church intervene directly during the hook-up scene ofcertain believers. This is particularly the case when a male believer’s attempts toapproach girls or women are made in a visible way within the cult, in front of othermembers of the assembly. This was the case with a young faithful Peruvian, whosystematically sat next to me during the cults and suggested that we participatetogether in diverse activities. The pastor of this Hispanic Church came regularly tointerrupt him and to present me to the other persons of the church, especially thewomen, and by doing so showed me the procedure. During a conversation, the Peruvianpastor shared his disapproval regarding the behaviour of the same believer towardsme, referring to the latter as a “philanderer.” Obviously irritated, the pastor explainedto me: “Certain believers look at all the new persons who arrive at the church and tryto seduce them. They ‘declare’ themselves to all new believers, then the girls do notgive them importance. They are not mature, nor responsible, they are not persevering,they are not sincere. We have to fight against it.”

49 In Latin American spaces, the figure of the “macho man” – part of the hegemonicmasculinity par excellence of this continent – is more thematised and fought for thanin the church composed for the greater part of native of Sub-Saharan Africans. TheMexican origin and the history of the term explain this ascendancy. In the literature onthe South-American Pentecostalism, there are many authors who bring to light howmuch the religious affiliation breaks with this crucial character in the history ofmasculinities (see e. g. Hallum 2003; Austin-Broos 1997; Chesnut 1997; Brusco 1995).

50 It is also worth noting that male interlocutors, according to their own perception of myposition in the church (as a member for some, as a non-member for others) constructedtheir desire differently.7 For Ernest, a male in his thirties, recently arrived from Nigerand frequenting La Parole Vivante, the fact that I was part of the church was somethingreally valuable. So, additionally to the fact that I was Belgian, young, and unmarried, heperceived me as a Christian. When I explained that I already had a boyfriend, heresponded: “It’s a pity because I have feelings for you and furthermore, somebody likeyou who live in prayers…” In contrast, in my encounter with the young Belgo-Congolese Octave, in his late twenties, it was precisely my position of externality to thechurch that made me desirable. Two weeks after having done a formal and recordedinterview, he called me so that I could give him the audio tape back because he wasuneasy with such comments and wanted to destroy the evidence. I accepted and hecame to my home to pick me up in his car and took me to a park in the neighbourhood.He stopped the car and grabbed the beers hidden beneath the back seat. Then he beganto talk about the difficulties in a relationship with a girl from the church. They wereliving together but the parents of his girlfriend were really upset with such relationsoutside marriage. He proposed then to have sex in an almost unveiled way and justified


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himself in this way: “because you know, a young Christian girl cannot anymore, it’s achore, while you…” He associated non-Christian women as readily available womensexually speaking.

51 Such situations highlight the tacit dimension of masculinity, far from the discursiveperformance of cults, public testimonies or formal presentation of the Pentecostal selfto non-converted people. Sometimes I could witness how those churches’ messageswere put into practice. After a cult where the pastor had talked again about the factthat women have to be submitted to men, giving concrete examples, Paul, theRwandese guitarist of the assembly, asked to Simone, a single Congolese in her thirties,to clean up the table in the hall and he added “you are a women, you have to submit!”Simone accomplished this task without flinching. In this scene of power, we can seehow the practical application of being a man in the church depends strongly on thecontext and could follow multiple lines and intensities of power.

Conclusion

52 The Pentecostal reworking of masculinity takes place as a rupture or transformationfrom the “old man” to the “new man” through a non-linear process of purification. Theman is domesticated: his concerns are refocused around the needs and well-being ofthe household. He is also feminized in a way. These normative processes are articulatedalongside notions of change, but it should not allow us to forget the weight ofindividual appropriation in these phenomena. The process of transformation will notbe imprinted in the same way on every believer who conducts a sorting of themultiplicity of discourses on masculinities according to his or her biographic echoes.The religious proposition constitutes one possibility among other available stocks.

53 In a dialectic which associates distance and closeness, men of the assembly appear as“new” by distancing themselves from the dominant cultural hegemonic form ofmasculinity, so answering the imperative of distinction of the religious gathering, andyet, by dressing in the “new clothes of the male domination” (De Singly 1993), theystrengthen certain dominant tendencies – the precedence of the male component inthe social organization – by leaning on the legitimacy of the religious register.

54 The ambiguity is thus at the heart of the Pentecostal redefining of masculinity. Themen of the assembly, particularly those in the age bracket of 35-50 years, seem to feeltheir privileges threatened, and this feeling exceeds the borders of the religious ormigratory spaces because it is shared by numerous non-migrant western and non-western men (Welzer-Lang and Filiod 1992). However, the threats pressing on theprivilege of men seem to become intensified in the migration towards Europe. Migrantmen experience greater challenges to their capacity as providers, and are at the sametime confronted with other gender ideologies. This potential destabilization of theirstatus finds an answer in the religious affiliation to Pentecostalism(s). This religiousideology, which redefines the male role by establishing a “biblical” male precedence isthus one way, among others, to understand male resistance in the contemporarytransformations affecting gendered norms.


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NOTES1. I would like to warmly thank Ruy Blanes, Annelin Eriksen and Rijk Van Dijk for their insightfuland generous comments on a previous presentation of this text in Bergen, Norway, in March2014. I thank also Kate Nialla Fayers-Kerr for her support.2. The religious speech has no monopoly of the imperative of men’s transformation – we thinkhere of the feminist movements, the speech of certain NGO or still some masculinist movements,for example.3. Mujeriego is a pejorative Spanish terms that means “womaniser.”4. The term “macho man” emerges during the Mexican revolution of 1910 and will know its peakthanks to the cinema and to the nationalist literature of the 1930s. Afterwards, this term will takenegative connotations which will concentrate in the figure of the “male chauvinist” (Machillot2011).5. Numerous historians underlined the gender dimension of colonialism and of imperialism morebroadly. They observe how masculinities of the colonized were weakened by its loser’s status.This loss of power moves the colonized man closer to the world of the women according to thedefinitions imposed by the colonizer (see Mackenzie 1989; Sinha 1995; Joly 2011).6. In this French-speaking context, the use of omelette takes a particular significance. Frenchspeakers use the suffix -ette to form nouns with an idea of smallness (example: camion is a truckand camionette is a small truck). In the preaching of “Maman” Jessica, the use of the expressionomelette is a pun to refer to “reduced” men.7. For a discussion of the erotic subjectivity of the anthropologist, see Kulick (1995).

ABSTRACTSAddressing the paradoxes of gender in Pentecostal churches attended by converts of African orLatin-American origin in Brussels, it is argued that religious and migratory experiences areintimately intermingled in these spaces and that, in most cases, the geographical shiftexperienced by male believers has led to questions regarding their “traditional” masculinity.Their capacity to hold the role of breadwinner has often been undermined and they experience akind of vulnerability against which religious gendered ideology often provides assurance andself-esteem by affirming men as heads of the religious space and chiefs of the household unit.Pentecostal masculinity, although adhering to a model of hegemonic patriarchal masculinityregarding the sexual division of domestic tasks, the recognition of men’s formal authority, andan exclusive focus on young women as the purity “capital” of churches, also reveals significantruptures with that model: religious discourse values domestic involvement, sensibility andgentleness, encouraged and valorised as masculine characteristics. This hybrid posture ofPentecostal masculinity appears as a contrasted gender repertoire allowing men of the church tooscillate between various identifications and social locations according to specific situations anddifferent contexts of enunciation.


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O artigo trata os paradoxos de género nas igrejas pentecostais com fiéis africanos e latino-americanos em Bruxelas, argumentando que as experiências migratória e religiosa estãointimamente ligadas nestes espaços e que, na maioria dos casos, a mudança geográfica vividapelos homens crentes conduziu a que questionassem a sua masculinidade “tradicional”. Esteshomens veem muitas vezes ameaçada a sua capacidade para assegurar o sustento da família eexperimentam por isso alguma vulnerabilidade, que a ideologia de género da sua religiãocontraria dando-lhes maior segurança e autoestima, ao afirmá-los como dirigentes do espaçoreligioso e chefes de família. Se bem que a masculinidade pentecostal adira a um modelo demasculinidade patriarcal hegemónica no que respeita à divisão sexual das tarefas domésticas, aoreconhecimento da autoridade formal dos homens e à visão das jovens mulheres como detendo aexclusividade do capital de “pureza” destas igrejas, ela revela também ruturas significativasrelativamente a esse modelo: o discurso religioso valoriza o envolvimento doméstico, asensibilidade e a brandura, encorajados como características masculinas. A masculinidadepentecostal torna-se assim um repertório de género variado, permitindo aos homens a oscilaçãoentre várias identificações e posicionamentos sociais em função das situações específicas e dosdiferentes contextos de enunciação.

INDEX

Keywords: masculinity, Pentecostal churches, migration, agency, gender, hegemonicmasculinityPalavras-chave: masculinidade, igrejas pentecostais, migração, agência, género, masculinidadehegemónica

AUTHOR

MAÏTÉ MASKENS

Université Libre de Bruxelles, [email protected]


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Masculinity in crisis: effeminatemen, loss of manhood, and thenation-state in postsocialist ChinaMasculinidade em crise: homens efeminados, a perda de virilidade e o Estado-nação na China pós-socialista

Tiantian Zheng

1 In the 2010 National Happy Men’s Singing Contest in China, Liu Zhu – a teenage boydressed as a woman – participated in the event.1 Wearing a rainbow blouse and blueskinny jeans, Liu appeared as a beautiful woman. Due to his strikingly feminine voiceand his own stylish long hair, Liu’s performance was interrupted three times by thejudges who questioned his gender and even threatened him with a strip search. In spiteof the setbacks, Liu’s performance of the song he had composed conquered theaudience and made him famous overnight. Pictures of him as a woman abound in theonline media.

2 This “phenomenon of fake women” (weiniangxianxiang) – effeminate men who lookmore feminine and alluring than real women – sparked indignant discourses chastisingit as an epitome of the loss of Chinese manhood and a threat to the nation-state.2

Experts, counselors, and educators called for “saving boys” through revamping theeducation system and underscoring gender-difference education in schools andfamilies. As I will show in this paper, effeminate men have become a scapegoat uponwhich anxiety over the current social problems such as dissolved marriages isdisplaced. While a dissolved family is pinpointed as one of the key factors that can leadto a child’s effeminacy and gender misrecognition, the media also portrays the lack ofmanhood not only as a public menace and a threat to the family, but also as a metaphorfor passive masculinity and national crisis.

3 Studies on man and masculinity have grown ever since the early 1980s. These studieshave largely approached masculinity from a Western perspective and attended toperipheral masculinities such as gay or black (see Kimmel 2005; Connell 2001, 2009;Bordo 1999). David Gilmore’s (1990) cross-cultural study of various masculinities and


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Connell’s (2001) call for both international and local approaches to the study ofmasculinity have generated much interest in research on a wide array of masculinitiesacross different cultures and geographic regions (see Louie 2002).

4 In China studies, little research was conducted to shed light on the contemporary issueof effeminacy or crisis of masculinity and its intrinsic link to the Chinese state. Chinascholars Xueping Zhong (2000) and Kam Louie (2002) have examined masculinitythrough in-depth readings and intricate analysis of Chinese films and literary worksproduced throughout the crucial historical junctures in China. While Xueping Zhongutilizes a feminist psychoanalytic lens that Chinese men feel “besieged” in post-MaoChina and attempt to negotiate an image of strong men vis-à-vis women and the stateas a part of the effort to create a geopolitically strong Chinese nation, Kam Louie tracesthe historical changes of the dyad wen / wu (cultural attainment / martial valor) andargues that this dyad is an analytical tool and theoretical construct facilitating theconceptualization of the Chinese masculinities. Also, Brownell and Wasserstrom’s(2002) edited book takes an anthropological and historical approach to evoke howfemininity and masculinity in China are mutually constructed and have changed overtime. As such, previous researchers approached the issue of masculinity through ahistorical analysis, but to date, no research has been conducted to illuminate theintersection between a crisis of manhood and the postsocialist Chinese state incontemporary globalizing China.

5 Drawing on my research of online websites, newspaper and magazine articles, TV andelectronic media in current China, this paper seeks to fill this lacuna and enlighten theinextricably intertwined relationships between a lack of manhood and the strength ofthe state in the globalizing era of China. I argue that the crisis of masculinity ineffeminate men is considered a peril to the security of the nation because it reflectspowerlessness, inferiority, feminized passivity, and social deterioration, reminiscent ofthe colonial past when China was defeated by the colonizing West and plagued by itsimage as the “sick man” of East Asia. A multitude of agents and experts are determinedto revive and strengthen the nation through building a strong manhood andsharpening proper male gender roles.3

6 This paper comprises five sections. In the first section, I will historicize masculinities inChina and provide a historical context for this paper. In the second section, I willdiscuss the issue of effeminate men in the media. I will then explore the intersectionbetween masculinity in crisis and the nation-state. In the fourth section, I will analyzethe ways in which experts and educators depict the root causes of the lack of manhoodin effeminate men. In the fifth section, I will explore the devised solutions to theproblem of masculinity in crisis. Finally, I will conclude with insights and illuminationsabout masculinity, gender roles, rising professionals, and the nation-state in thechanging era of postsocialist China.

Historicizing masculinities in China

7 The meanings of masculinity evolved throughout Chinese history. Before the MayFourth Movement in 1919, the courtesan house was a site that produced an elitemasculinity of self-control and cool demeanor. Elite masculinities had to be validatedby the courtesans, the arbiters of their masculinity, as worldly, urbane, knowledgeable,sophisticated, and refined (Henriot 2001; Van Gulik 2003). 4


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8 Concerns about masculine identity at this secure time of “culturalism” (Fitzgerald 1996)have to do with social class. “Culturalism” entailed a universal superiority that Chinesepeople felt at that time, considering themselves the “Middle Kingdom” – the center ofthe world and universal superiority. Fairbank (1973: 178) states that China embraced anattitude of being the large ethnocentric universe which “remained quite sure of itscultural superiority even when relatively inferior in military power to fringe elementsof its universe.”

9 With the Western intrusion into China, Chinese male insecurity was linked to theperceived decline of China and contributed to the growth of Chinese nationalism. Elitemasculinity was attacked because it was identified with the elite cultural tradition(Larson 2002). Nationalism produced a new model of masculinity. For the first time inChinese history, the sexual ability of Chinese men was not measured internally as ameans to establish social class but came to be measured against the outside predatorswhose military prowess identified them as more sexually potent (see Brownell 2000).

10 Later on, the Maoist state, with its emphasis on gender equality, attempted to controlmen’s sexuality by suppressing female sexuality (T. Zheng 2009).5 Many menremembered this era as an era of male emasculation. In the 1990s, masculinity andmarital stability were seen as dependent on women’s enjoyment of sex. This radicalnotion that women should enjoy sex was not out of a concern for the happiness ofwomen, but rather reflected the new competitive capitalist economic model where menproved themselves through entrepreneurial activity. Chinese entrepreneurs, instead oftaking offense against the Taiwanese and Japanese businessmen who had taken Chinesemistresses, simply emulated them and took mistresses themselves (Brownell 2000).While young entrepreneurial men recovered their economic and sexual potency, olderretired cadres were faced with impotence (Brownell 2000). So devastated was thisgroup that there was an upsurge in the market for tonics to reinvigorate their sexuallife. Here, the link between politics, economics, and sexuality is drawn. Men witheconomic and political power become sexually potent, whereas men who have lost suchpower feel emasculated by the market reforms.

11 Entrepreneurial masculinity has been analyzed as inextricably linked to economic andstate power (see Connell 2001; Gilmore 1990; Louie 2002; X. Zhong 2000; Brownell 1999;Brownell and Wasserstrom 2002; Chen 2002; Jankowiak 2002; T. Zheng 2006, 2009). Menwere judged not by birth status or even education but by their competitive abilities.“Masculinity is related to state power, nationalist ideology, the free market, and themarriage / sex markets. The current situation has unleashed an entrepreneurialmasculinity that is apparently proceeding hand in hand with the return of maleprivilege and female disadvantage” (Brownell 2000: 230). Their subjugation of womenrepresented the recovery of their manhood in postsocialist China.

“Effeminate men” in the media in postsocialist China

12 Effeminate men, contrary to the ideal entrepreneurial masculinity in postsocialistChina, were given the name “fake women” in the media. The expression “fake women”stemmed from roles created in Japanese animation and comic games, where maleactors displayed feminine beauty, and after extensive use of make-up, possibly equaledor at times exceeded feminine beauty (Xia 2010).6 News reports portrayed these


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effeminate men not only appearing in outlandish, ostentatious clothes, but alsoharboring feminine personalities (Ying 2009; Ju 2009; Ony 2007; Ai 2007; D. Qiao 2005).

13 Effeminate men became a comic spectacle in the media portrayal. For instance, in avisit to a bar, a reporter categorized the effeminate male clients as ecstatic when youcalled them “sisters” (Ying 2009). The report called them “female customers” anddepicted them as slender “fake women,” wearing make-up and women’s clothes,speaking in a feminine voice, having undergone cosmetic surgeries, addressing eachother as “sisters,” and extolling each other as “beautiful” (Ying 2009).

14 Another newspaper reporter also paid a visit to this kind of a bar and described thesemen as effeminate “fake women” who either underwent or pursued breastaugmentation surgery and “looked more beautiful than ordinary women” (Ai 2007).These men, according to the report, appeared as men during the daytime but as womenat night. As the reporter wrote, “MengMeng who had had breast augmentation surgerywore a low-cut dress to show off her cleavage. Xiao Yu was tall, slender, white-skinned,with long and beautiful hair. I would have never believed that he was a man” (Ai 2007).A host of other media reports also focused on how these effeminate men utilized thickfacial powder and make-up to make them look like women (D. Qiao 2005).

15 Effeminate men’s feminine personalities were also underscored in addition to theirexterior (Lan 2008). It was reported that effeminate men’s energy level was lower than“ordinary men” and they rarely liked outdoor activities or body building, probablybecause “they tried to protect their skin” (Lan 2008). It was said that they only relishedsinging songs and playing musical instruments, and that they were more emotionalthan “ordinary men” but they rarely displayed their true emotions (Lan 2008).7 Likewomen, as reports denoted, they also enjoyed eating snacks (Sheng 2009).

16 One report was written by a female college student who was in dismay that malestudents in her college liked eating snacks. One summer when she was riding the trainhome, two male students sat opposite to her, carrying two huge paper bags. They tookout a huge amount of snacks from the bags and were eating them for one hour straightwithout rest. She exclaimed: “How womanly these male students have become! Mennowadays – why are you all turning into women?” (Sheng 2009) Due to their “femininetraits and personalities,” media reports stated that it was not surprising that theirtypical work was as hair stylists and make-up specialists (Ju 2009; Xia 2010), althoughmany were not able to land a job due to their effeminate persona (Zhuang 2008).8

17 Demeaning and mocking commentaries about effeminate men proliferated in themedia (Bao 2008; Da 2008; C. Qiao 2005; D. Qiao 2005; Lan 2008). Juxtaposed to “normalmen,” effeminate men were described as “despicable,” “whining,” and “swinging hipswhile walking (yiniuyiniu)” (Bao 2008). A reporter wrote that he was so petrified that hishair stood up when he saw an effeminate man dressed up like a woman, raising hispinky finger, and calling another man “husband” with a coquettish voice (Da 2008).

“Masculinity in crisis” and the national State

18 While the phenomenon of “fake women” was utilized by special interest groups to sellproducts (Liu 2012; Xia 2010), worries about the loss of manhood abound in the media.The anti-feminized men discourse represented a serious issue and suggested a crisis ofmanhood and a crisis of the nation-state. “A China with too many ‘fake women’ is in


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peril,” as the discourse bellowed (Yue 2012). Feminization of men was castigated as asymptom of social degeneration, ultimately a trope denoting a nation-state in dangerbecause of a dysfunctional Chinese manhood. Experts, educators, and counselorsargued that the feminization of males in the past had led to the colonial domination ofChina.

19 The lack of manhood was repeatedly linked to the crisis of the nation-state. “The futureof our nation is worrisome with the disappearance of manly heroism and masculinespirit,” as the discourse lamented (Yue 2012). Authors contended that a harmoniousnation should have men who behave like men and women who behave like women,otherwise the nation would cease to be harmonious (Zhang 2012). To save the nation,men’s gender-appropriate code of conduct was underscored and reasserted.

20 The ideal code of conduct for men was defined as fearless, heroic, and militaristic – avital component of the national spirit. Yuan Luo, General of the Chinese MilitaryCouncil, published an article that was posted, cited, and expanded throughout theinternet (Luo 2010). For China to become the strongest nation in the world, hecontended, men’s militaristic, fearless, heroic spirit was imperative. Luo traced theproblem back to China’s humiliating past when military backwardness caused China todescend into a semi-colonized nation after losing the Opium War and being forced topay war debts to colonial nations. Military power, according to Luo, reflected nationalintegration and economic power. Now that China’s dream to become a strong nationwas finally realized, it had to be supported by a strong military (Luo 2010).

21 The “bad phenomenon” of effeminate men according to Luo was an imminent disasterto the nation-state (guonanlintou), especially when China was still not unified andseparatists constituted a threat (Luo 2010).9 He lamented that this phenomenon of “yinwaxing and yang waning” (ascending female role and descending male role) woulddestroy national integration and vitality (Luo 2010). “A nation that does not valorizeheroes will have no heroes” (Luo 2010).

22 Luo’s indignant diatribe about the phenomenon of feminized men was shared by many(Chong 2010). They articulated men’s proper code of conduct: “A man should be like aman. A man needs to be strong and resilient. Men are born to protect and care forwomen” (Bao 2008; Sheng 2009). “The true meaning of masculinity lies in the spirit ofexploring nature, challenging physical limits, and having an unyielding will, ratherthan sissy clothing and outlook” (Yue 2012). Many people formed anti-“fake-women”groups. A C-block (sissy-block) group appeared at the 2010 Happy Men’s SingingContest, waving a flag that read “Protect pure men. Eliminate fake-women folks”(Chong 2010). An online Anti Fake-Women League with the banner of “Real ChineseMen” was also formed (Chong 2010).10

23 “When the youth are strong, the country is strong. When the youth dominate the earth,the country dominates the earth” (Chong 2010). Invoking the self-strengtheningmovement at the turn of the twentieth century, the initiator of the Anti Fake-WomenLeague castigated fake women for damaging the image of Chinese men in his articletitled “Protect Our Testosterone!” Deploring fake women who had robbed Chineseyouth of their testosterone, he asked: “How do youth without testosterone make thecountry dominate the earth?” (Chong 2010).

24 Many people joined him in the league, declaring that “At this juncture of the dearth ofpure, real men, a man should live like a man” (Chong 2010). Effeminate men, according


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to them, suffered psychological perversion and biological regression. Self-defined as“pure men” (chunyemen) and “real men,” members claimed that they loved sports andoutdoor activities, did Wushu (kungfu), performed sword play, revered real men such asArnold Schwarzenegger and Alain Delon, and worshipped brotherhood and armytroops (Chong 2010). The initiator of the league spent ten thousand yuan on a heavyTang Dynasty Sword and waved the sword every night imagining himself as a herorescuing the good and combating the evil. An ex-soldier member went through survivaltraining in the woods with little sustenance for seven days during which time he drankspring water, ate snakes, rats and birds. Members believed that men should be strongand tough. They convened online every night to discuss strategies to fight against thephenomenon of effeminate men (Chong 2010).

“Root causes” of masculinity in crisis

25 In the wake of the phenomenon of effeminate men, experts were eager to identify theroot causes of effeminate men. According to the experts, family and schools should beregulated and reconfigured to resolve the issue of the crisis of manhood in postsocialistChina.

26 Family and schools were identified as the source of gender misrecognition. The currenteducation system, exam system, and parents’ guidance, as the experts contended, wereconducive to the phenomenon of effeminate men (Yue 2012; Luo 2010). Yunxiao Sun,editor-in-chief of Youth Studies and board director of the Chinese Family EducationCouncil, published a book entitled Saving Boys (Sun 2009). Sun believed that theeducation system centered on entrance exams was the most violent killer of manhood(Sun 2009). He stated that boys’ testosterone level was 15 times more than girls’, whichdetermined the difference between boys and girls upon birth and led to boys’ sports-oriented, adventurous, and competitive traits. He argued that because schools plannedno outside activities, provided no sports equipment, and prohibited students fromrunning between classrooms, boys, whose biology required extracurricular activities,believed that schools were set up against them. Boys’ natural advantage in sports andvisual and spatial competence was not recognized. Girls, he stated, could sit still, butboys tended to jump around, which was incompatible with the school system and led toboys’ lower grades than girls’. The educational model that lacked game-play andenslaved students with books, repressed boys, and the lack of positive feedback inschools also damaged boys severely (Sun 2009).11

27 Sun’s criticism of the education system reverberated throughout the media. Thestringent education system, as the experts argued, rewarded obedience and docility asthe only criteria of a good student, thus robbing children of ingenuity and creativity,extinguishing their personalities, and turning them into domesticated cats (Yue 2012;Lu 2012; Mu 2012). They also affirmed Sun’s argument that a lack of outdoor activitiesand the enclosed school-home environment hindered the development of masculinity(Lu 2012; Mu 2012).

28 The education system was berated for generating a “yin waxing and yang waning”phenomenon, as stated above. In this system, the experts argued, because girls weremore meticulous than boys with better self-control and better memorizing skills, theirgrades tended to be higher than those of boys and allowed them to enter better schools,putting boys at a disadvantage (Lu 2012). In a junior high school, it was said that only


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three of the 26 leaders were male (Mu 2012). Women also eclipsed men in professionalperformance and exam grades for government work, as authors noted (Mu 2012).Science majors in universities used to be dominated by males, but are now equallydivided between males and females; equal admission of women into medical schoolsalso ended the era of male domination (Mu 2012).

29 Others such as Shao Yiming, Committee Member of the Chinese Political Association,also pointed out that the ratio of male to female teachers resembled an invertedpyramid. Almost no male teachers could be found in nurseries, and very few taught inelementary schools (Gu 2012). Shao Yiming concluded that the lack of contact withmale models led to the lack of “manhood education.” Almost exclusively femaleteachers bred delicate boys who lacked manhood (Lu 2012; Gu 2012; Mu 2012).12

30 Family was identified as the other source of mistaken gender (Lu 2012).13 First, parentswere blamed on two grounds. They were castigated for making too much demand onboys to study and for fostering an “excessive timid and weak” personality in boys (Yue2012). They were also chastised for doting on only children, prohibiting boys fromclimbing trees, climbing mountains, or getting into water, and preventing boys frombeing independent, adventurous, and taking challenges, thus robbing boys of strongwills and sharp edges (Gu 2012; Mu 2012).14 Boys were described as “little emperors,”enjoying the love and care of both parents and four grandparents (Lu 2012). They werealso depicted as seedlings in a greenhouse that could not withstand any wind orsunshine (Lu 2012; Mu 2012). In an enclosed environment, as authors stated, it wasnatural for boys to “degrade” into fake-women (Lu 2012; Mu 2012).

31 Second, fathers were blamed for failing in their role. In his book Saving Boys, Sun (2009)identified the father as the key to nurturing manhood in his son. When fathers werebusy advancing their careers, as Sun stated, they deprived the boys of an opportunityto learn to be a man.15 Hence Sun argued that the lack of the father’s role led to the lackof manhood in boys.

32 Third, mothers were criticized for being domineering in families. Authors pointed outthat in too many families, mothers were dominant and fathers were submissive-likelambs (Lu 2012; Xi 2012). Domineering mothers, according to authors, affected sons in anegative way (Lu 2012). Sun’s book intimated that mothers should safeguard fathers’images in front of boys, which would stimulate boys’ yearning to assume a man’s role(Sun 2009). According to the rhetoric of psychologists in the media, in normalsituations, daughters were closer to their fathers and sons were closer to their mothers.A disruption of this normal situation of a bullying mother and a weak father and childabuse by the opposite-sex parent could cause boys to feel fearful of women andembarrassed by their father’s humiliation and consequently, develop a mistakengender recognition (He 2012).16

33 Sociologist Yinhe Li’s analysis of the relationship between gender misrecognition andchild rearing was cited on many online websites. Li argued that her researchdemonstrated that the underlying reasons for gender misrecognition were the lack ofthe fathers’ love and child rearing (Li and Wang 1992). First, the missing father’s roleled to the son’s attachment to the mother and distance to the father. As a result, theson self-recognized as a female rather than a male, exhibiting timid and submissivesensibilities and displaying a female posture, female mannerism and female disposition.In addition, their mother-worship either caused their inability to feel attracted to awoman who was seen as far inferior to their mother, or made them revere all women as


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holy, inaccessible mothers.17 Second, parents who raised their boys as girls requiringthem to wear girls’ clothes and teaching them female-specific work such as knittingand embroidery were also an issue. Third, effeminate looks and a weak physique madesome boys want to play with girls and miss their male-role education. Due to their lackof courage and decisiveness, these boys sought protection from strong men andattachment to strong lovers.18 Fourth, abuse by women in childhood led to their disgusttowards women (Li and Wang 1992).

34 In consonance with Li’s theory, the theory of “abnormal gender misrecognition”stemmed from poor parenting was repeatedly reported throughout the media (Lun2005; You 2005; Pin 2004; Z. Zhong 2006). Parents’ prohibition of opposite sexinteractions was also blamed for yielding effeminate boys (Pan 2009; Zi 2010; Zuo 2006;Du 2007; Lin 2012).19 Parents were urged to visit a counselor’s website and consult withthe counselor (Zhuang 2008). Dr. Kong Fanyu, a counselor for the Nanguan Counselor’sCenter, was cited as an expert who stated that gender education from the age of 2 to 6was crucial and that it was extremely important and imperative that parents teach kidsgender roles. He noted that this problem was difficult to resolve, and that throughcounseling, he had discovered that this problem was caused by the parents (Zhuang2008).20

35 According to the psychiatrists, the most crucial time for intervention of gendermisrecognition was between 1 and 3, and certainly before the age of 12. Parents wereurged to look for preliminary “symptoms” to “diagnose” whether their children haddeveloped a “gender recognition impediment.” These “symptoms” in children weredeemed discernible between the ages of 2 and 4. Symptoms included the child wishingto become the other gender, wanting to wear the opposite gender’s clothes, imaginingthe self as a different gender, aspiring to participate in the opposite sex’sentertainment or games, and yearning to become playing partners with the oppositesex. It was noted that boys’ feminine behaviors would lead to homosexuality when theygrew up. Upon discovery of these issues, parents were advised to work together to solvethe problems or seek guidance from counseling centers (Bo 2012).

36 In a nutshell, disorder is not only denoted a result of gender misrecognition, but also acause of gender misrecognition and a crisis of manhood.

Solution of the crisis of masculinity: revamping theeducation system and reinforcing gender-differenceeducation

37 Educators around the country criticized the phenomenon of feminized men anddeclared that China was facing “a crisis of manhood” and losing a generation of men(Gu 2012; Sun 2009). In the 2012 National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’sPolitical Consultative Congress, Ronghua Wang, the head of National People’sRepresentatives and Shanghai Education Development Council, called on the nation topay attention to the “crisis of manhood” and recommended gender-differenceeducation (yinxingshijiao) (Gu 2012; Sun 2009).

38 To correct this situation, as educators and media discourse argued, the educationsystem had to change (Yue 2012). Ronghua Wang, board director of Shanghai EducationDevelopment and head of Shanghai Social Science Academy, stated that many measures


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should be taken to solve the “crisis of manhood” (L. Zheng 2012). He contended that thecrisis of manhood was inextricably linked to problems in the education system as theexam system and evaluation standards failed to advance boys’ advantages and led totheir setbacks in study. He argued that a gender-difference education should be carriedout nationally and “men’s junior high” schools should be established to provide boyswith multi-dimensional educational choices (L. Zheng 2012). The lack of coherence inthe strategies to fight the feminization of boys is made clear in the decision to createmen’s junior high schools where boys would be separated from girls during the criticalperiod of their development. As we saw earlier, encouraging heterosexual dating wasseen as the solution to gender misrecognition and the crisis of manhood in China.

39 The new men’s junior high schools would establish an agenda to reverse what wasperceived as a trend toward the feminization of Chinese men. First, national educatorsand leaders, following the lead of General Yuan at the Chinese Military Council, arguedthat a militaristic, patriotic, heroic, and fearless spirit-training should be incorporatedin the national education system (Luo 2010; Yue 2012; Lu 2012).21

40 Second, gender-difference education was underscored as urgent and pressing (Sun2009). In his book Saving Boys, Sun argued that gender difference should be amplified inchildhood years and that gender-difference education could combat the phenomenonof feminized boys and gender ambiguity, and create a new generation of real men (Sun2009).

41 Sun agreed that boys and girls should be placed in segregated classes and that theeducation system should apply different evaluation standards to each gender (Sun2009). Evaluation of boys should emphasize their sporting and adventurous nature,whereas the evaluation of girls should be based on their superior memory and languageskills. Since sports was in boys’ nature, Sun argued, a sports-oriented education wouldsharpen boys’ will and increase their ability to withstand setbacks (Sun 2009).

42 Third, parents, especially fathers, were called on to assume the prominent role ineducating boys (Sun 2009). Parents, as authors argued, should encourage boys to acceptchallenges in life, provide boys with personality training, and inculcate in boys themeaning of manhood (Gu 2012; Wang 2012; L. Zheng 2012).22

43 Following national educators’ call to battle the phenomenon of feminized men, someschools have already started to change. For instance, in Zhengzhou city, the 18th JuniorHigh School stipulated 28 evaluation standards for boys and 20 evaluation standards forgirls, requiring boys to be masculine and girls to be demure (Gu 2012).

44 In Shanghai, East China Normal University signed a contract with Huangpu DistrictGovernment to turn Shanghai’s 8th Junior High School into a “men’s junior highschool” (Mu 2012; L. Zheng 2012). The headmaster Lu Qisheng clearly stated that theprimary purpose of establishing the men’s junior high school was to combat “the crisisof manhood” and solve the problem of “yin waxing and yang waning” (Mu 2012, Gu2012). The goal was to instill in boys a sense of manhood and terminate thephenomenon of feminized men.

45 In this “men’s junior high school,” as reported, boys’ needs would no longer be ignored,nor would their advantages be undercut as in co-education schools (L. Zheng 2012). Asnoted by the headmaster, this school would tap into experts’ resources and employ amodel of boy’s education to mould boys’ personalities and advance their latent talents(L. Zheng 2012). This personality education was intended to take advantage of boys’


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perceived logical superiority, and target their disadvantages of weak will and poorplanning. The “masculine” curriculum would include boxing, Chinese chess, and malemusic bands. Schools, as noted by the headmaster, would continuously adjust andperfect teaching techniques to increase boys’ self-confidence and make up for theirdisadvantages (L. Zheng 2012).

46 Although the Shanghai Huangpu government, the Education Bureau, and East ChinaNormal University supported the establishment of this school and believed that thisenvironment would benefit boys and ensure their growth as real men, some expressedworries that a few qualified, real men trained by the men’s junior high schools were notenough to change the entire society’s problem of feminized men (L. Zheng 2012; Mu2012). To completely eliminate the problem of gender misrecognition, authors arguedthat both schools and parents, especially the father, should indoctrinate boys with malegender roles and girls with female gender roles (Zhang 2012).

Conclusion

47 Reactions to the phenomenon of effeminate men in postsocialist China are responsiveto the broad cultural changes produced by market reforms. More specifically, it reflectsthe anxieties about gender, social security, and the nation-state. In this article, I arguethat underpinning the discursive debate about effeminate men and a crisis ofmasculinity is the need to strengthen the nation-state. Indeed, it is believed that torevive and strengthen the nation requires building a strong manhood and sharpeningproper male gender roles.

48 Distinctive gender roles are considered crucial in safeguarding the security of thenation, and are supported and controlled through media discourse. Sexuality isappropriated to control gender in the same way that gender is utilized to controlsexuality. The central concern of media discourse is gender behavior, rather thansexual behavior. As illustrated, media articles focus on effeminate men’s mistakengender behaviors and a lack of understanding of gender distinction. The characteristicsascribed to these men as passive and weak are considered deviant. Their mistakengender identities and misrecognition of gender is not only depicted as creating a crisisof manhood in the nation, but also portrayed as an indicator of poor parenting and aproblematic education system. As shown in this paper, educators, psychiatrists, andpsychologists have prescribed a myriad of preventive strategies involving parentingand the education system to strengthen socialization and education of proper genderroles and thus combat “the crisis of manhood.” As such, gender deviance is governedand controlled in order to prevent and control sexual deviance.

49 In exploring the root cause of effeminate men and methods to avoid gendermisrecognition, the scientific expertise of doctors is sought. The authority of doctors isemphasized when media articles tend to end each story with doctors’ comments andappraisals. The kind of power and authority media bestows upon doctors’ “scientific”narratives exerts far-reaching impact in the social milieu. This resonates withFoucault’s (1978) theorization of governance operated through professional discourseby experts and scientists.

50 The attitudes of medical professionals reflect the social mores of postsocialist China. Asdemonstrated in this paper, the rising middle-class medical professionals incontemporary China subscribe to the mainstream sexual morality and advocate cures


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for and prevention of gender misrecognition. In an effort to advance their professionand procure influence, medical professionals have a vested interest in producingnarratives that do not counter cultural norms. This will not only ensure their prestigeand influence, but also draw more income to their profession, as parents andeffeminate men continuously pay fees to seek their professional, invaluable advice.

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NOTES1. I would like to acknowledge the helpful comments and advice by Valerio Simoni and AdrianaPiscitelli that have improved the quality of the paper.2. “Fake women” is a role created by Japanese ACG (animation, comics, and games).3. The question arises as to why this masculine narrative is so popular in China. To understandthat we have to look at Chinese history through the last century (T. Zheng 2009). In traditionalChina, a self-contained culture that paid little attention to outside opinion, there was a masculineideal that gave prestige to those who were not particularly physically masculine. The mandarins,who represented the highest social ideal in China, were people who worked with their mindsrather than their bodies. The symbol of this was long robes that today we would considerfeminine clothing and the practice of allowing the fingernails to grow into extraordinary lengths


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of six inches or more, making the hands unfit for physical labor. This was a powerful symbol ofstatus that rejected physical activity as a defining factor of masculinity. When China, finally inthe twentieth century, succumbed to Western aggression after stubbornly clinging to thistraditional culture, traditional culture was rejected in favor of what was called a New CultureMovement. The New Culture Movement accepted Western culture and with it, Westerndefinitions of masculinity as sexually potent and aggressive. Implied in this was great shameabout China’s past and a belief that male feminine nature was the cause of China’s troubles in thetwentieth century. In spite of Mao’s rejection of the “Four Olds” – his attack upon traditionalChinese cultures –, in many ways his standings represented a return to traditional China. Maorepresented himself as an all-knowing Emperor whose wisdom brooked no challenge andrequired complete conformity with his values. Mao’s emasculation of men certainly did notfollow the traditional lines but nerveless was very effective, even though ironically using theWestern ideology of Marxism. The rejection of Marxism in 1978 and the affirmation of the needfor a new culture and a new economy led, once again, to a rejection of the traditional view ofmasculinity as emasculated and feminized and to an affirmation of a macho, Western-stylemasculinity in its place. The powerful driving force in the post-Mao reaffirmation of a Westernstyle masculinity was a new capitalist economy that emphasized a masculine entrepreneurialspirit.4. Courtesan houses or public places where courtesans were summoned as professionalentertainers formed an integral part of the official and business routine where social relations ofofficials, literati, artists, and merchants were conducted. Every official entertained his closecolleagues – superiors and inferiors and merchants – to conclude or to negotiate deals. An officialcould ensure his promotion by introducing his superior or an influential politician to a discreetlychosen courtesan, and by the same means, a merchant could obtain a much-needed credit or animportant order.5. Before liberation, men could gain economic and political power, but in the Maoist society, theywere stuck in socialist work units earning the same meager wages as women. The party-stateconstantly watched over them, stifling their personal ambitions and prohibiting them fromspeaking their own minds. That led to men’s feminization and lack of initiative and creativity. Itwas believed that the Maoist state’s alliance with liberated women stifled men’s ability todiscover their own strength and led to their feminization.6. A Japanese movie, Born for Myself, recounted a story of a man with “gender impediment” whowas in love with his boyfriend and after painful struggles, decided to go through a transgenderedsurgery (Xia 2010). Chongqing counselor Hu Hui told the reporter that this movie had a negativeimpact on kids in serving as an encouraging movie for them (Xia 2010).7. This article attributes gender misrecognition to sexual liberation and material desires.8. According to a news report about an effeminate man, LvTu, he came out to reporters at anewspaper agency (Zhuang 2008) and pointed out that many male students could not find a jobappropriate for them because of their feminine images.9. Luo defined the future mainstream society as a society with a sound legal system, a masculineand militaristic spirit, and a patriotic and heroic sentiment. Luo stated that without a strongmilitary, the country can never be a strong nation. “A country is not strong until we retrieve theland neighbor countries have plundered from us.” Luo reminded people that Communistfounding generals sacrificed their lives for this land and this kind of militaristic spirit should beadvocated (Luo 2010).10. The report read that “The initiator was originally silent about the rampant fake-womendisaster, but was dismayed at the sight of several fake-women high school students and finallydecided to act” (Chong 2010).11. Sun (2009) pointed out that boys’ grades were lower, boys’ advantage was not advanced, andboy’s development was not guided.


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12. The author (Mu 2012) stated that feminized education started in nurseries and it is too late tostart saving the boys in junior high.13. Authors claimed that the criminal was family education (Lu 2012).14. Author Mu (2012) pointed out that parents doted on boys and followed the boys everywhereuntil they screamed in terror at the sight of a roach. This kind of boys, according to the author,could only be tender leaves in green houses and would easily degrade into “fake women.”15. Sun (2009) pointed out that boys needed the discipline and supervision from fathers abouthow to be a man.16. It was noted that the boy would yearn for a masculine man and assume a female role in ahomosexual relationship. The weak father led to the boy’s mistaken gender; and the imperfectmother affected the boy’s understanding of the opposite sex – such setbacks led the boy topursue same sex partners (He 2012).17. Li pointed out that many effeminate men could get along with older women but could not likeyoung and beautiful women because they felt in awe before these (Li and Wang 1992).18. Li contended that the reason that the youngest son tended to be an effeminate homosexualwas because he usually did not like boys’ activities that were risky and wild. It was difficult for aloner boy to relate with other boys (Li and Wang 1992).19. Pan (2009) contended that the little resistance of making same-sex friends led kids totransplant their emotional needs to same-sex friends and mistake themselves as homosexuals.According to counselors and health educators, the prohibition of heterosexual contact at an earlyage made kids fear the opposite sex. Parents’ rejection of early heterosexual relationships causedchildren to seek intimacy and emotional needs through homosexual relationships. 20. Dr. Kong noted that many visitors were parents (Zhuang 2008).21. Authors argued that setback education should be instilled in boys too (Lu 2012).22. Authors also argued that more male teachers should be equipped in nurseries (Gu 2012).

ABSTRACTSThe phenomenon of “fake women” sparked indignant discourses chastising it as an epitome ofthe loss of Chinese manhood and a threat to the nation-state. Experts, counselors, and educatorscalled for “saving boys” through revamping the education system and underscoring gender-difference education in schools and families. Effeminate men have become a scapegoat uponwhich anxiety over the current social problems such as dissolved marriages is displaced. While adissolved family is pinpointed as one of the key factors that can lead to a child’s effeminacy andgender misrecognition, the media also portrays the lack of manhood not only as a public menaceand a threat to the family, but also as a metaphor for passive masculinity and national crisis.Drawing on research of print and electronic media in China from 2010 to 2012, this paperenlightens the inextricably intertwined relationships between a lack of manhood and thestrength of the state in the globalizing era of China. It is argued that the crisis of masculinity ineffeminate men is considered a peril to the security of the nation because it reflectspowerlessness, inferiority, feminized passivity, and social deterioration, reminiscent of thecolonial past when China was defeated by the colonizing West and plagued by its image as the“sick man” of East Asia.


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O fenómeno das “falsas mulheres” gera discursos indignados que o condenam como epítome daperda da virilidade chinesa e uma ameaça ao Estado-nação. Especialistas, conselheiros eeducadores apelam ao “salvamento dos rapazes” por meio da renovação do sistema educativo edo reforço da educação sobre as diferenças de género nas escolas e nas famílias. Os homensefeminados tornam-se bodes expiatórios para os quais é transferida a ansiedade a respeito dosproblemas sociais atuais, como a dissolução de casamentos. Ao mesmo tempo que aponta adissolução das famílias como um dos principais fatores que conduzem a que uma criança sejaefeminada e não distinga os géneros, a comunicação social retrata a falta de masculinidade comouma ameaça pública e um perigo para a família, e também como metáfora para a masculinidadepassiva e a crise nacional. Com base numa investigação realizada em 2010-2012 a partir daimprensa e recursos eletrónicos chineses, o artigo explora a relação inextrincável que interligauma carência de masculinidade e a força do Estado na era da globalização da China. Argumenta-se que a crise de masculinidade dos homens efeminados é considerada uma ameaça à segurançada nação porque reflete impotência, inferioridade, passividade feminizada e deterioração social,aspetos que remetem para o passado colonial em que a China foi derrotada pelo Ocidentecolonizador e assolada pela sua imagem de “doente” da Ásia oriental.

INDEX

Keywords: masculinity, effeminacy, gender roles, state, ChinaPalavras-chave: masculinidade, efeminação, papéis de género, Estado, China

AUTHOR

TIANTIAN ZHENG

State University of New York, [email protected]


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Negotiating desirability andmaterial resources: changingexpectations on men in post-SovietHavanaNegociação da desejabilidade e recursos materiais: mudanças das expetativasacerca dos homens na Havana pós-soviética

Heidi Härkönen

Introduction

1 One day my Cuban friend Yanay found herself a new man whom she considered to be areal catch:

“— He makes 1200 [Cuban] pesos [about 52 USD] in a day because [at his work] theydivide the tip and share the money between them. He is not good-looking, a veryskinny […] guy. And he had a perfume Issi Miya…— Issey Miyake?, I suggested.— Yes, the one that costs 30 dollars [CUC] and I put it on and it lasted on me all theway until the next day! And he bought lots of beer, we went to a disco in 10 deOctubre [a neighbourhood in Havana] and it was packed with people, expensivebeer that costs 1,25 [CUC] and [Heineken] of 1.50 [CUC].” 1

2 Money has become increasingly linked with attraction in contemporary Havana.2

Women in particular pay considerable attention to a man’s material resources in theirviews about a desirable partner. Women expect men to have the money to court them,to take them out to restaurants and discos, to indulge them with little gifts and toprovide them regularly with funds to tend their personal needs. While money is not theonly factor linked to a man’s attractiveness, it does play a significant role in a man’sability to create relationships with women. No one wants to be with a muerto-de-hambre(someone who is starving to death).3


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3 Cuban gender and family relations are in general characterised by very similartendencies to those described by many of the classical works (e. g. Clarke 1974 [1957];Smith 1988, 1996) on Caribbean matrifocal kinship: the bond between mothers andchildren is exceptionally strong, legal marriages are rare and men are seen as relativelymarginal to family relations in their role as fathers.4 Moreover, gender relations canoften be fragile and change rapidly. It is common that some of such relationships resultin children, who are deeply cherished by all Cubans. The attainment of parenthood is afundamental factor in gaining full adulthood for both men and women.

4 Although money played a role in social relations already before the 1990s (seeRosendahl 1997: 61-62), the current importance of money to gender relations seems tobe something new that is closely related to wider transformations that have takenplace in Cuban society in the post-Soviet period. The severe economic crisis that Cubaencountered in the 1990s due to the collapse of the Soviet Union forced the state tomake several concessions to the socialist ideology, such as allowing the formation ofsmall private enterprises, legalising the use of double currency and opening thecountry to international tourism (e. g. Eckstein 1994: 88-127; Azicri 2000). The 1990salso witnessed the increasing monetisation of Cuban society and since this“dollarization” (Eckstein 1994: 125), most material items have become available toCubans only through money – whether in the official state shops or in the informaleconomy – as opposed to the previous possibility to receive them as state contributions.This has emphasised the significance of personal social relations in providing Cubanswith the needed material contributions in the context of day-to-day life.

5 Many scholars argue these changes to be connected to social changes such as increaseddifferences of wealth (e.g. Azicri 2000: 71-99; Roland 2006; Porter 2008; Weinreb 2008;Cabezas 2009; Hamilton 2012: 75-80, 113-116, 214-231), greater significance of markersof wealth and privilege (Holbraad 2004: 649-651; Porter 2008; Allen 2011: 37-38;Lundgren 2011), intensified desires of consumption (Holbraad 2004; Porter 2008; Allen2011), increased significance of racialised differences (de la Fuente 2001a, 2001b; Roland2006, 2011; Weinreb 2008; Cabezas 2009; Fernandez 2010: 7, 47-48, 128-130; Allen 2011;Hamilton 2012: 47, 75-80, 113-116, 214-231), as well as the new importance of the bodyas the site where such privileges are marked and expressed (Lundgren 2011).

6 Several of these changes in social relations since the 1990s conform to Susan Gal andGail Kligman’s (2000a, 2000b) observations on the transformations that have takenplace in Eastern Europe during the post-socialist period. They connect such large-scalesocial, political and economic transformations to increasing class differentiation, adecline in state subsidies and changes in the possibilities for social mobility. Gal andKligman emphasise the gendered nature of such large-scale transformations.

7 In a similar vein, Jennifer Cole and Lynn M. Thomas (2009: 6) argue that social andeconomic transformations may bring changes to grassroots intimate relations of love.Monetisation in particular has been noted to bring transformations to gender relationsin different parts of the world. Even though economic changes are experienced andenacted drawing on long-term notions of gender and kinship, they still transform thelogic of intimate relationships in complex ways (e. g. Wardlow 2006; Hirsch andWardlow 2006; Cole and Thomas 2009).

8 I suggest that the transformative processes that have taken place in Cuba in the post-Soviet period and the types of changes that they may have brought to social relationsshould be examined as gendered. My ethnography shows that such processes as the


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increased monetisation of exchanges or the new significance of consumption takeshape as gendered and are experienced through local conceptualisations of genderdifference – simultaneously as they also transform social relations. While thesetendencies represent changes in comparison to social relations in the Soviet-era, theyat times seem to reproduce situations reminiscent of the colonial era in terms of theirgendered, racial and economic implications, when beautiful mulatas partner with menwho are visibly lighter-skinned and wealthier than them. In Cuba (Martinez-Alier1974), as elsewhere in the Caribbean (e. g. Newman 2010), since the colonial era, sexualrelations have offered non-white women in particular a way to seek socioeconomicascendance by maintaining relationships with wealthier or “racially” higher-statuspartners.

9 In the increasingly monetised post-Soviet Cuba, this situation has the power to producegendered marginalisations. Maurice Godelier (1999: 2-3) argues that in a monetisedeconomy, income is crucial in maintaining a social life, as money is needed for all typesof activities from the most everyday to the more ritualised. Thereby, when undergoingliberalist re-structuring, states also indispensably exclude certain groups of peoplefrom society as not everyone has the means to access a sufficient income.

10 While the changes that continue to take place in Cuba’s economic, political, and socialclimate affect the lives of both men and women, this article examines the ways inwhich these larger transformations influence the lives of men. Despite the currentinterest in masculinity studies, men are often relatively neglected in studies onCaribbean kinship, sexuality, and gender relations (see also Hamilton 2012: 102).Through an exploration of how men negotiate their relationships and women’sincreasing expectations by drawing on distinct local notions of masculinity in post-Soviet Havana, this article complements the discussion on diverse masculinities and theethnographic study of Caribbean gender and sexual relations.

Men’s attractiveness and material resources

11 Drawing on Marilyn Strathern’s (1988: ix-x) insight that gender can only be understoodas a difference, Matthew C. Gutmann (1997: 843) argues that in studying masculinity,we should pay attention to the accounts that women give on men, because “women’sinvolvement [is] central and invaluable to any ethnography of men.” He states thatmasculinities can only be understood in relation to meanings and practices connectedto women.5 This is why it is useful to pay attention to the hopes and expectations thatwomen place on men, as these play their own part in shaping gendered relationshipdynamics and consequently men’s experiences of love and sexuality.

12 Yanay’s statement is exemplary of the views that my female respondents had aboutdesirable partners: a man’s attractiveness is deeply intertwined with his materialpossessions. No matter how good-looking my female respondents would find a man, hewas out of the question if he was perceived by them as being completely withoutmoney. While most women were not as successful as Yanay in hooking up with wealthymen, many, however, had partners who provided them with regular contributions ofsmall sums of money and material gifts (such as food, beer, and clothes). A good manhas the ability and desire to pay for diverse things and outings and he frequentlyprovides his partner with food and commodities.


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13 Consumption is thereby closely connected to a man’s possibilities to createrelationships with women.6 Both men and women told me that a Cuban woman doesnot take any money with her when she goes out on a date with a man. While womentend to spend their money most importantly on their children, other kin, and (morerarely) on themselves, men’s money goes significantly to the women with whom theyare, or wish to be, romantically involved. In the context of many Cubans’ low level ofincome and the country’s high prices, such gendered courting practices place a bigstrain on a man’s income: a night out in a disco may take up an entire month’s wage,even more.

14 When first meeting up with a new man, my female respondents assessed his materialresources by paying close attention to his clothes and to the way in which he usedmoney. Drinking foreign beer, wearing Nike trainers and gold chains, as well as sharinghis money generously are all valued as signs of desirable qualities in a man. A man withmoney is expected to share it and use it on providing for women and male friends (seealso Rosendahl 1997: 61-62; Holbraad 2004: 649-651). These are examples of theextension of global notions of consumption to Cuba in particular since the 1990s,showing how wealth must be worn and consumed (Allen 2011: 37-38; see also Porter2008: 142-143), the new importance of the body as a site for expressing privileges(Lundgren 2011: 121-125), and the intertwining of such practices withconceptualisations of masculinity.

15 Mark Hunter (2009: 146-152) describes similar views on desirable masculinity in SouthAfrica, where in the midst of economic difficulties since the 1980s the ability toconsume and shower girlfriends with gifts became the qualities that women found themost attractive in men. Cole and Thomas (2009: 22) connect this with a shift from aneconomy of production towards an economy of consumption. While there are greatdifferences between the Cuban context and the South African situation described byHunter, his material is similar to the ways in which my female respondents emphasiseda man’s ability to spend as evidence of his desirability as a partner. While Cuba canhardly be seen to represent an economy of consumption as such (compared to manyplaces, there is little to consume), this does suggest that Cubans’ intensified desires forconsumption (Porter 2008) intertwine importantly with gendered expectations in loveand sexual relations, at the same time exemplifying the continuing importance ofgenerosity to Cuban notions of masculinity (see Rosendahl 1997: 61-62). In atransformed situation, more long-term conceptualisations of masculinity are reworkedby women to place new demands on men (Hunter 2009: 148).

16 Women may sometimes be very straightforward in their expectations of men’s materialcontributions, making claims that men struggle to meet. Yet men often find it hard todeny women’s requests of spending. For a man to deny his money to his partner raisessuspicions of stinginess, a characterisation that most men would prefer to avoid.Moreover, being very tight with his money might also question his personal ability tomake a living, leading at the worst case to a description of him as a muerto-de-hambre –another feature that all my research participants found highly despicable. Finding waysto make money, knowing how to survive and resolver (resolve problems), are allqualities that connect with notions of desirable masculinity. Such resourcefulnessintertwines complexly with a man’s material assets: good skills in resolving problemsbecome visible in a man’s access to diverse possessions, showing that he is able to gethold of money and commodities and is willing to share his resources with his partner.


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At the same time, money in itself matters. When Xiomara’s sister changed her young,handsome and resourceful boyfriend for a significantly older and wealthier, but bad-mannered man, Xiomara stated: “Yes, but Yonkiel [the sister’s ex-boyfriend] didn’thave money, this one has money!”

17 Possessing other forms of material resources also gives a man advantage in hisrelationships: having access to a car or decent housing conditions increases hisattractiveness to women. The lack of adequate housing has been a constant problem inHavana throughout the revolution (and even before; see Butterworth 1980; Hamilton2012: 218-229) and the city continues to be full of deteriorating, overcrowded flats.Carrie Hamilton notes that since pre-revolutionary times, heterosexual relationshipshave provided women with a way to acquire housing (2012: 220, 224-226, 229). Thisincreases the importance that having access to (decent) housing has to a man’s abilityto attract partners. While Anna Pertierra (2008) argues that during the post-Soviet erathe house has increased in symbolic value for women, I suggest that housing also holdscentral value to men. As the idea of family and home/house (casa) often merge(Pertierra 2008: 753-754), housing (as the family home) becomes connected to notionsof security, stability and kinship continuity. Owning an apartment places a man in theposition of a well-established man mature enough to start a family. Although inpractice Havana’s on-going housing crisis often forces Cubans to negotiate this ideal,providing housing for his partner forms part of local conceptualisations of responsiblemasculinity.

18 Material contributions from men to women connect with the idea that the man issupposed to be the breadwinner who brings resources to the household. While the statehas tried to discourage such gendered practices by promoting women’s extensiveparticipation in the workforce and even though the huge majority of women do work,some type of a cultural ideal of a man who provides for his family lives in Cuba –despite the fact that in some households the majority of income may in practice beprovided by women.7 The Caribbean has a long history of non-white, lower-incomewomen working outside the home, although this has been connected more profoundlywith the English-speaking Caribbean (see Wong 1996; Freeman 2001). Virtually all myfemale interlocutors were engaged in some type of an employment that generated forthem some income of their own. Yet, at the same time, if a woman is romanticallyinvolved with a man, there is a strong expectation on him to provide her with somemoney and food.

19 Although there are men who have relationships with women in such arrangements thatmoney flows from the woman to the man, this is, however, an inversion of how things“should” go. Some of my male respondents felt uncomfortable with such genderedexchanges. While for women, to receive money and material support from theirpartner confirms their femininity, for men such behaviour risks questioning their“proper” masculinity.

20 If a man started to show signs of stinginess, my female research participants were quickto lose interest. In a relationship, a man’s inability or unwillingness to give money andmaterial contributions to his partner is closely connected to many women’s desire toend the relationship. A man who neglects his material contributions to his partner,quickly risks losing her since women interpret this as a lack of interest from the man’spart – concluding that he no longer desires to continue the relationship – or as anindication that he is sharing his material resources with another woman.8


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21 Notions of responsible masculinity thereby intertwine importantly with a man’smaterial possessions and his ability to provide economically for his partner andchildren. While this gendered connection between material resources andresponsibility is significant to a man’s social relations throughout his life course, itbecomes particularly highlighted in the context of fatherhood.

Fatherhood and material wealth

22 Parenthood is fundamentally tied to notions of mature, gendered adulthood in Cuba.9

Having children is seen as a crucial part of the normal life cycle for both men andwomen. This way, fatherhood is closely connected to notions of masculinity.

23 Pregnancy, birth and childcare are considered very strongly as women’s issues.Deciding whether to have a child is seen as entirely a woman’s choice. It is up to a manto convince a woman of his suitability as a father.

24 Material conditions play a particularly important role in women’s views and decisionsabout pregnancy. When reflecting on a particular man’s suitability to fatherhood,women often assess a man’s material resources and likelihood to provide for his child.Having access to a car, housing, or having a job in the – by Cuban standards lucrative –tourist industry, are all issues that make a man desirable as a potential father. Eventhough my respondents paid some attention to a man’s character in the sense that theydid not want to have children with a “bad” man who “doesn’t care about” his childrenor who “hits you,” considerations over a man’s possessions tended to weigh moreheavily than other concerns.

25 Women often say that they want the father of their child to be “responsible,” but aman’s responsibility is largely tied to his material contributions to his partner andchild. A responsible man is one who provides for his family. Since love is thought to beunreliable and relationships may break suddenly, wealthier men are seen as morelikely to continue providing for the child even if the relationship with the mother ends.Thus, while love and sexual relations constantly bear the risk of turning sour, quantityin material resources is seen as creating a form of security. A man with plenty ofpossessions is seen as a more reliable partner than someone with fewer assets, whomay stop providing for his children from a previous partner when he finds a new love.This further highlights the importance of material resources to a man’s possibilities ofembracing responsible masculinity.

26 The notion of responsible masculinity as closely connected to material security isshared by both men and women. This is exemplified in the way men often emphasisethat they want to “have the conditions” (tener las condiciones) before having a child, tobe able to provide their partner and child with proper material contributions and adecent home (although in practice, such plans may often go unfulfilled).

27 When a woman has a child “alone,” without a male partner, the problem is not seen tobe in the raising of the child without the father or in the woman coping with thepregnancy on her own, but rather in how the mother will raise a child without themoney supplied by the father (or another male partner). Hamilton states that familieswithout the presence of a husband/father often experience aggravated patterns ofpoverty (2012: 75-80, 89, 105). While I want to point out that men’s materialcontributions to their partners do not depend on cohabitation nor on legal marriage, it


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is true that mothers who receive no male contributions easily struggle with makingends meet.

28 While in practice not all men provide money to the mother(s) of their children, theyare strongly expected to do so and frowned upon if they do not fulfil this responsibility.Both men and women emphasise that responsible fatherhood entails giving moneyand/or other material items to female partners and children. Since materialcontributions connect with responsible, caring fatherhood, I see contributions ofmoney and other material items as a crucial form of male care in Cuba. This closelyintertwines views about (ideal) fatherhood, masculinity and material contributions.

29 Cole and Thomas (2009: 20-21) argue that material exchanges may both reflect andproduce emotionally charged relationships. In discussing gender relations inMadagascar, Cole (2009) describes a long-term local conceptualisation of love assimultaneously material and moral/emotional, enacted in reciprocal exchanges ofgoods and labour distributed across social networks. This is very similar to how Iunderstand the role of Cuban men’s material contributions to their partners andchildren.

30 In the context of contemporary relationships, money is importantly gendered; it issomething that men are expected to contribute to women in a system of reciprocalexchange where women respond with nurture, sexual access and children. This doesnot mean that women would not desire sexual relationships with men if it were not forthe money, but rather that money is an object that allows men to create relationships,both sexual and non-sexual. While women also have their own money, money isimportantly the means through which a man expresses an interest towards a woman,giving her small material gifts and taking her out to eat, for drinks or dancing. It isthrough his material contributions to her that she assesses whether he is a responsibleman and someone who can help her in life. A man’s provision of material supportthereby becomes evidence of his emotional commitment and responsible masculinity.

31 Despite the fact that women tend to emphasise rather pragmatic views of men’smaterial resources and highlight their ability to contribute, this gendered intertwiningof money, material resources and a man’s desirability cannot be understood as mereeconomic rationality. Rather, the emphasis is on the social relationship enabled bymoney and material resources as objects of exchange.

32 Caribbean men are frequently described as marginal and absent in their fatherhood;being indifferent towards their children and emphasising rather the physical ability toimpregnate a woman (e.g. Clarke 1974 [1957]: 96, 161-164; Wilson 1973: 149-151; Smith1988: 147, 1996: 83-84; Gussler 1996 [1980]: 129; Andaya 2007: 201-248; Hamilton 2012:101-109). This connects with a strong focus on the mother-child relationship andmatrilateral bonds in the kinship system. While a mother’s bond to the child is seen asnatural, a father needs to affirm his connection to his child through materialcontributions. Biogenetic conceptualisations of fatherhood/kinship are not sufficientby themselves, but relations need to be affirmed through active practices of care.

33 In the gendered practices of reciprocal care through which Cubans create, maintainand negotiate their social bonds, money and material contributions enable men tocreate and continue their relationships. Material resources become a way for men tokeep gendered care flowing between themselves, women and children and emphasisetheir commitment to specific relationships.


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34 Although not all men take up the opportunity to create bonds with their children bygiving material help to the child’s mother, I argue that such contributions may expressa strong desire from the part of the man to be a proper, caring parent for his child. Thisway, men’s material contributions should be seen as important in their quality ofinstalling a social relation between the baby’s mother and father and between thefather and the baby. However, in Cuba’s difficult economic situation, sometimes evensmall contributions may require considerable effort from the man’s part and not allmen are able to access wealth for sharing it around. This creates a situation wherethose without money and material resources often struggle to create relations. Whenmaterial contributions come to represent a man’s emotional commitment to hispartner and child, access to money or other material items becomes important to aman’s ability to become a parent.

Post-Soviet Havana and gendered monetisation

35 I connect the strong importance of money for men’s ability to create and maintainrelationships to the overall tendency towards monetisation that has characterisedCuban society since the country’s severe economic crisis in the 1990s.

36 Ideally, the socialist “new man” initially envisioned by the revolution was supposed tobe devoid of bourgeois vices such as materialism (see Guevara 2005 [1965]). Drawing onEngels’ (2004 [1884]) views on socialist gender relations, the early revolutionarygovernment laid its hopes on women’s employment as a way to create love relationsdevoid of material interests, governed by the true equality of men and women. Sinceeverybody would be equally engaged in the labour force, earning their own money,material wealth would not create dependencies between people. The aim was to createa society without inequalities; a society where socialist love relationships would beembraced by people across the earlier divisions of wealth, race, age and place ofresidence, leading to a full egalitarianism (see e. g. Díaz Tenorio 1993; Hamilton 2012).

37 The importance that women currently grant to a man’s position as a material providergoes against this ideal, despite the fact that none of my female interlocutors could becomfortably described as a “housewife.” Since most salaries earned from official workare insufficient for living in contemporary Havana, socialist ideals are undermined bythe constant economic shortage.

38 Since the 1990s, the state has been seriously struggling to provide goods and services tothe population, as the loss of its most important political ally and trading partner, theSoviet Union, plunged the Cuban economy into severe shortages. The state was forcedto cut down many of its earlier contributions and services to the population, initiallydesigned to provide individuals with nurture from cradle to grave, following socialiststate ideals. These economic problems brought ruptures to the earlier ideals ofegalitarianism, as the opening of the country to tourism, more possibilities for privatebusiness and the heightened role of remittances all played their role in increasing theold divides of wealth and race amongst the population (see e. g. de la Fuente 2001a,2001b; Cabezas 2009: 57, 64, 79-81; Allen 2011; Roland 2011). As the state continues toretreat from more and more aspects of society, day-to-day existence has becomeincreasingly monetised, since many goods and services that used to be provided by thestate can now be acquired only in the cash economy. Moreover, material gifts havebecome an important way to cultivate relationships that guarantee an access to distinct


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state (and other) services (see Brotherton 2005, 2008; Andaya 2009a; Kath 2010). At thesame time, most items in Cuba’s new economy are extremely expensive for individualsand nearly all Cubans work second jobs in the informal economy as a way to make endsmeet. While material issues have undoubtedly played a role in social relations duringthe Soviet era, they seem to have become particularly highlighted during the post-Soviet era as state services continue to crumble.

39 With the transformations in post-Soviet socialism, the dismantling of many stateservices has brought intensified pressure to Cubans’ personal social relations tocompensate for state deficits. Along with the growing differences of wealth and theincreased monetisation of the economy, the significance of men’s materialcontributions to women takes on an increased importance. While the post-Sovietperiod has seen an increase in the feminisation of nurturance (Andaya 2009b), therehas also been an increase in the masculinisation of material care, shifting to a greateremphasis on individual men as suppliers of material security instead of the state thanduring the more prosperous years of Cuban socialism.

40 Moreover, the post-Soviet period has seen an increase in Cubans’ possibilities anddesires for consumption (see Porter 2008; Allen 2011). Despite the fact that shopofferings continue to be meagre and highly over-priced for average wages,consumption has emerged as site of displaying distinctions of wealth that aresignificant in the local context – as Yanay stated, it makes a difference whethersomeone drinks a local beer or a Heineken, or wears a perfume that lasts. At the sametime, accustomed with the notion of socialist egalitarianism (see Verdery 1996: 28),many Cubans have a strong feeling of entitlement expressed in that everybody shouldbe able to possess such commodities as DVD players, Nike trainers and fancy cellphones. Amy L. Porter (2008) argues that differential access to consumption fragmentsCubans’ ideas of citizenship and national belonging and undermines a previousrevolutionary focus on needs, replacing it with an atmosphere that cultivates thecreation of wants and desires and dreams of their fulfilment.

41 While the material deficiencies and dissatisfactions of the post-Soviet period haveintensified Cubans’ desires for migration, heavy state investment in the tourismindustry has brought to the island plenty of foreigners – attractive in their ability toprovide answers to many Cubans’ longings for a better life. While both men and womenmay enter into relationships with tourists and seize the opportunities of migration andsocial mobility that this may offer, due to the importance of money and other materialcontributions especially to men’s possibilities to build relationships, the threat of losingtheir partner to someone wealthier was felt more intensely by male respondents.

42 Even though material resources have played a part in women’s views of a desirablepartner also in the past, their significance to men’s ability to attract partners seems tohave gained far more prominence since the 1990s. In her account on 1980’s east Cuba,Mona Rosendahl (1997: 69) states that a man’s wealth was not particularly relevant tohis attractiveness to women; women stressed instead the importance of finding a“good” man who takes care of them and respects them. Nevertheless, in contemporaryHavana, regular contributions of money to his partner are what makes a man “good.” Agood man cares for his partner by giving her money and supplying her with food andcommodities. This suggests that while the importance of a man’s material possessionsto his attractiveness to women may not be anything new as such, its significance has


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intensified in the post-Soviet era in the context of declining state contributions and theheightened monetisation of day-to-day life.

43 These changes in Cuba’s economic and political climate also relate to the island’s lowfertility numbers. Elise Andaya (2007: 170) connects Cuba’s current very low fertilityrates with the country’s economic difficulties, as state failures to provide women withthe needed nurture combine with men’s frequent indifference towards children andpush women to exert responsible motherhood via abortion in a situation wherecontraceptives are poorly available and it is difficult to provide even for one child.Pertierra (2008: 748 ff.), on the other hand, sees the declined fertility in the post-Sovietera as connected to women’s desire to wait until they are able to provide economicallyfor the children they intend to have. In this context, responsible motherhood may alsobe practiced through trying to secure a child as much material resources as possible bychoosing a wealthy father.

44 Since women’s personal kin and sexual relations are of primary significance in copingwith the state’s material deficiencies, wealthier men become more desirable as partnersand fathers. This way the change that seems to be occurring in Cuban fertility, aswomen have fewer children than before, may also have the gendered consequence ofleaving some men childless.

45 Due to the central role traditionally played by forms of redistribution in creatingsocialist state legitimacy (Verdery 1996: 23, 61-69), such practices may undermine theoverall political legitimacy of the state as people come to depend more and more ontheir personal relations in providing them with distinct goods and services instead ofthe state. Nevertheless, my material suggests that instead of being expressed as a directcritique towards the state, often such deficiencies in state services just make womenexpect more contributions from the men in their lives.

How do men negotiate women’s expectations?

46 All of these state-level transformations are connected to the types of desires andexpectations that Cubans set on each other. For many of my male respondents,women’s expectations of money, gifts and consumption were hard to fulfil. They useddifferent ways in coping with the transformations that the post-Soviet period hasbrought to their lives and negotiated women’s expectations how they best could,drawing on distinct cultural notions of masculinity at different moments.

47 In his efforts to court Sulema, a beautiful mulata in her mid-thirties, Armando, a 30-year-old black man drew on ideas of responsible masculinity. Working as a chef in afive star hotel, he brought Sulema food from the hotel kitchen almost daily. He alsogave her small sums of money several times per week and took her out to discos andbars. Sulema was pleased with Armando, stating that he was “very good” (muy bueno) –a good man – and Armando had no complaints, even though at times he responded toSulema’s requests of material contributions by putting them off to a later occasion.

48 Reinaldo, on the other hand, was even better positioned to embrace the characteristicsassociated with responsible masculinity. He was white, in his late forties and employedin a high position that allowed him access to a car and a relatively good salary.Moreover, he received regular remittances from kin in Miami and owned a houseequipped with air conditioning and running water.10 He charmed Rosa, a 29-year-old


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attractive mulata, by showering her with money and gifts, such as a laptop. Reinaldowas successful in his courting: Rosa gave up her job, moved into his house and soonbecame pregnant with her first child. Reinaldo fitted perfectly with the types ofexpectations of material resources and responsibility women place on desirablepartners and possible father candidates.

49 However, not all men are capable or willing to fulfil women’s expectations of materialcontributions as successfully. José, a white man in his late thirties, was interested inFlor, another pretty mulata.11 Nevertheless, he rejected what he saw as her excessivedesire for leisurely outings, stressing that he did not have money for such trivialities asdiscos, bars and restaurant dinners. However, even in resisting such gendered practiceson the use of money, he drew on notions of responsible masculinity to turn down Flor’srequests. He emphasised that money must be used on the house, for improving one’shome, on something lasting instead of amusements. This, however, did not land wellwith Flor, who interpreted his unwillingness to take her out as a lack of interest, and –for worse – started to suspect that he was only looking for ways to move into her house,as she lived alone. Whatever the reason for José’s interest in Flor, his tactic of resistingthe usual courting practices resulted in his failure to create the relationship he wanted.

50 Especially when having problems with their partner, several of my male respondentssought to handle the situation by resorting to practices that can be connected to localnotions of machismo.12 This was particularly likely to take place when men werestruggling to fulfil their partner’s expectations.

51 When Armando lost his job, he became unable to continue his contributions to Sulemaand her interest started to fade. Armando sought to fix the situation by starting tosupervise Sulema’s movements, tortured by jealousy for suspecting her to be seeingsome other man. One night, he followed Sulema to her home and tried to force hisentry into her house. This, however, led to a further cooling down of their relationshipand eventually to its ending.

52 Luis, a mulato man in his early thirties, on the other hand, had all the time kept a strictwatch on his partner Rosa. One day he caught her maintaining a friendship with aCanadian man by email. Luis got angry, since for him it was clear that Rosa wasplanning to migrate out of Cuba by entering into a romantic relationship with theCanadian man. After a while, however, things settled down between Luis and Rosa andthe relationship continued. Nevertheless, soon after, Luis caught Rosa in a café withanother man, got furious and slapped her. He was hoping this would put her back atbay, but in fact it had the opposite effect, with Luis ending up losing Rosa to anotherman. The man – indeed – was Reinaldo, who was wealthier and better positioned tofulfil Rosa’s aspirations of a more prosperous life. Luis knew he could not compete withthe Canadian man for Rosa’s affections since he did not have the means to offer herwhat a foreigner could: migration out of the country. Nor could he compete with whatReinaldo could offer Rosa. Luis had a monthly income of approximately 20 dollars, nocar and no house. He was good-looking, well-educated, smart and (most of the time)very good mannered but he lacked money.

53 The troubles that Luis had in his relationship with Rosa exemplify particularly well thenew uncertainties and demands that many men have come to encounter in the post-Soviet period, competing for women’s affections with foreigners – advantaged by theirofferings of migration – and with the newly wealthy Cubans, who can afford cars,laptops, and air conditioned flats.


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54 Recently, Cubans’ relationships with foreigners have received particularly abundantattention from researchers. With the emergence of the mass sex tourism to Cubaduring the post-Soviet era, research on sex work in Cuba has shown that many Cubansplace expectations of more long-term relationships on the foreigners with whom theyenter into contact, blurring the line between ideas of commoditisation and bonds ofaffect and friendship (Cabezas 2004, 2009; Simoni 2008, 2009, 2012; Alcázar Campos2009; Fernandez 2010: 130-133; Allen 2011; Roland 2011; Daigle 2013). None of thepeople with whom I worked was engaged in sex work so my data is limited in thisregard. Some women, however, had had relationships with foreign men and the greatmajority of my female interlocutors expressed desires to find a foreign partner due tothe material resources, luxuries and possibilities of migration, travel and leisure thatsuch men were thought to offer. Many of my research participants imagined mostforeigners who come to Cuba to be millionaires (how could they otherwise afford totravel so far on a holiday?). At the same time, similar dreams and expectations of socialmobility and improved material resources characterised women’s expectations ofwealthy Cuban men, although in a more moderate form. Those with plenty of materialresources are expected to share them with their kin, partners and friends and becauseforeign men are thought to be considerably richer, the expectations placed on them aregreater.13

55 Although most of my male interlocutors situate themselves somewhere in between ofextreme forms of wealth and poverty, they all had to come to terms with the type ofclose intertwining of material resources and attraction that characterises sexualrelations in contemporary Havana. In this, they drew on different aspects of localmasculinities. Often, a full embracing of the position of a “provider” – showering theirpartners with gifts and money – helped them to create the relationships that theysought. The situations where they embraced machismo brought them possibly the worstresults, with many women rejecting their partner’s efforts to control them.

56 Both of these aspects of masculinity entail their own difficulties. Embracing aspects ofresponsible masculinity and providing his partner with money and gifts contains theconstant possibility that someone may appear offering more, no matter how hard aman tries to provide for his partner. But then again practices that women see asexcessive machismo easily lead to the opposite result of that desired by the man – ofalienating his partner instead of bringing her closer. Gender relations thus requirecontinuous, often complicated negotiations. Embracing the gendered practicesconnected to responsible masculinity in many cases goes hand in hand with machismo.So I do not argue that different men would embrace different notions of masculinitiesbut rather that at distinct moments and situations, men draw on different aspects ofthe local meanings of how to be a man.

Monetisation as transforming the expectations ofgendered reciprocity

57 As we have seen, the post-Soviet era has seen the emergence of new complexities inlove and sexual relations that have the gendered consequence of increasing women’sdemands of material contributions on men, making access to money and materialresources an indispensable part of desirable masculinity.


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58 While both men and women see money as a male form of care and connect it with theway in which a responsible man should behave in a relationship, sometimes men maystart to feel more ambiguous about such gendered exchanges.

59 My male interlocutors sometimes expressed annoyance about the amount of claimsthat their partners made on them, or complained about how much money they hadspent for the benefit of a woman in a relationship. However, this usually took placewhen a relationship was also flawed by other problems or after a woman had ended therelationship. At the same time, even when expressing such views my respondents neveroutright denied women’s rights to make material claims on them. Rather, theycomplained about the amount of these claims, that women expect too much. Thus love,care and material contributions intertwine also in men’s conceptualisations ofromantic relationships, but what becomes the issue is the negotiation of the (imaginaryof a) properly balanced reciprocity in a relationship.

60 Since cultural conceptualisations of a desirable masculinity closely connect men withmoney and material contributions, for a man to start suggesting that his partner iscultivating a relationship with him primarily for material interests leads to severalmoral ambiguities.

61 To propose that his partner is a greedy abusadora who exploits his materialcontributions raises suspicions of a man’s ability to fulfil his position as a real man, onewho does not take abuse from anyone. In the light of notions of machismo, this relatesto the question of respect in social relations, of whether a person knows how tocommand respect for himself or instead lets others walk all over him. A person who letsothers take advantage of him is not worthy of others’ respect since he does not knowhow to earn respect himself.14 Thereby, for a man to imply that a woman is takingadvantage of him easily evokes an image that it is his own fault for being such a foolthat he lets himself be abused by cunning women, leading to a perception of him asweak and lacking masculinity. While men may sometimes complain about women’sgreediness, at the end it is not in their interest to portray their relationship withwomen in this way, since this would imply that their relationships are not based on anytype of proper reciprocity. This would suggest that they let themselves be used bywomen, risking to give the appearance of being a “come-mierda” (a shit-eater; a verydespising insult).

62 Moreover, emphasising a man’s single-sided material contributions in a relationshipmay suggest that a man is so unattractive that he may only attract women with money.This would deny any emotional attraction from the woman’s part, which again has thepotential to question his masculinity, since Cuban conceptualisations of gender involveimportantly a notion of mutual heterosexual desirability (see also Lundgren 2011;Härkönen 2014: 120-161).

63 Thus, in practice it is often difficult to differentiate between a man’s heterosexualdesirability and his possessions. While in the beginning of my fieldwork, I kept onpressing my female respondents with questions about whether they liked a man orwere mainly interested in what he had to offer, most of the time it was impossible totease the two apart. This way, having access to material resources gives a man eroticagency, which Holly Wardlow (2006: 232) defines as “the power and delight of beingdesired.”


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64 This close intertwining of material resources and erotic agency is not only connected totransformations and inequalities in sexual relationships between men and women; italso highlights differences between men, in particular when it comes to fatherhood.While some men – like Rosa’s white partner Reinaldo – easily attract partners and haveseveral children with various different women (in this case, four children with threedifferent women), others – such as my very poor, black, artist friend Osmael – riskremaining childless, as they struggle to find a woman who would be willing to maintaina relationship with a man who is constantly broke, let alone to have a child with such apartner. With white or lighter-skinned men more likely to have an advantageous accessto money and other forms of material resources (see de la Fuente 2001a, 2001b; Allen2011: 119-120), such views about desirable masculinity carry the potential to make theinequalities of the post-Soviet period particularly poignant, emphasising theirracialised and gendered characteristics.

65 This way, Cuba’s new economy puts some men in a particular risk of remainingchildless, a great tragedy because parenthood is of crucial significance to the normallife course and full adulthood for both men and women. Moreover, remaining childlessis not just an emotional tragedy, it risks marginalising a person more thoroughly (ifthere is no further family around), because in contemporary Cuba, the nurturingsupport provided by an individual’s family relations plays a central role in survivingthe pragmatics of everyday life (see also Andaya 2007).

66 Moreover, the fact that such practices and views about desirable masculinity and idealfatherhood easily evoke colonial-era memories (see Martinez-Alier 1974) of wealthywhite men entering into relationships with beautiful mulatas – often in highly unequalconditions – fits uneasily with larger discourses of the socialist nation, claiming tomake a clear break with its colonial past. If racialised inequalities of wealth becomematerialised at grassroots-level intimate attachments and reproductive practices as mymaterial suggests, this strikes at the heart of state egalitarianism, when povertybecomes a significant factor inhibiting individuals from creating relationships andseeking continuity for their lives through children. Inequality is not just a question ofeconomic marginalisation, but comes to threaten a man’s whole social being.

Conclusion

67 The transformations of Cuban society in the post-Soviet era have had importantlygendered consequences, transforming differently the lives of men and women. In theirways to deal with such large-scale changes as monetisation and declining statesubsidies, men and women draw on local gendered practices and meanings. For womenin particular, love and sexual relations are an important way to generate income andgain social mobility; simultaneously, they continue to maintain greater responsibilityfor dependent family members than men. In making their demands on men, womencan draw on longer-standing conceptualisations of masculinity. Many men, on theother hand, struggle with women’s expectations of material resources, gifts andlucrative consumption. Currently getting by economically is highly difficult for manyCubans, at the same time as the island has become flooded with new desires anddreams of a better life.

68 My ethnographic evidence shows that men cope with women’s intensified demands byembracing distinct aspects of cultural conceptualisations of how to be a man, drawing


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at times on notions of responsible masculinity, at times on machismo. The increasedimportance of material resources to men’s ability to create relationships, however, putssome men at a considerable disadvantage. Because money has become to significantlyrepresent something that allows a man to create relationships, the men who are unableor unwilling to make material contributions to women may struggle to establishrelations. At worst, this may mean that they remain childless, as women lay particularemphasis on the material resources of potential father candidates, being highlycommitted to provide for their child as favourable material conditions as possible.Cuba’s large-scale transformations in the post-Soviet era not only have genderedconsequences, but they also highlight differences and inequalities between men, asmoney, material resources and attractiveness intertwine and connect with genderedmeanings and practices in contemporary intimate relationships.

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NOTES1. Two different currencies are in circulation in Cuba: the Cuban peso (CUP, moneda nacional), andthe convertible peso (CUC), which is close in value to the USD. One CUC / USD equals 23-24 CUP.The average monthly salary is currently about 20 USD (Anonymous 2008). At the time, thenormal price for a beer was 1 CUC.2. This article is based on research material collected in Havana through ethnographic fieldworkamongst relatively low-income, racially mixed (ranging from black to all shades of brown towhite) Cubans in 2007-2008. My research participants can be characterised in many ways as“ordinary people.” Unlike the research subjects of many contemporary studies on Cuba, myrespondents did not engage in sex work, they did not make a living on tourism (or jineterismo),they were not marginalised politically or sexually, nor were they in a specifically advantagedposition either. All the names of the research subjects have been changed and I have blurredsome biographical details in order to better preserve their anonymity. I am using local racialcategorisations and all translations from Spanish to English are my own.3. This is a popular Cuban expression used to refer to poverty.4. There are also certain differences between these descriptions on Caribbean matrifocality thatdraw on the Anglophone Caribbean and contemporary Cuban gender and kinship relations. Inthe Anglophone Caribbean, even though legal marriages are rare especially among low-incomeAfro-Caribbean people, legal marriage still holds value as an important status symbol (cf. Clarke1974 [1957]; Smith 1988, 1996; Barrow 1996; Freeman 2000). Amongst my Cuban interlocutors,


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legal marriage was not valued in such a way. Nevertheless, my ethnographic material points tothe significant relevance of matrifocality amongst my research participants (Härkönen 2014);Jean Stubbs (1997), Helen Safa (2005), Elise Andaya (2007: 219-220) and Anna Pertierra (2008), allsee contemporary Cuban kinship relations as characterised by bonds very similar to notions ofCaribbean matrifocality. There is little ethnographic information on Cuban gender and kinshiprelations apart from these works so it is not possible to provide a detailed historical account onthe subject (see however Martinez-Alier 1974: 124-130).5. Carrie Hamilton (2012: 112) makes a similar point in her discussion on Cuban sexual history:“Just as women’s narratives of love, marriage, and missing men provide clues to both dominantvalues of masculinity and the diversity of men’s expectations and experiences, so, too, malenarrators’ stories about their female partners point to ways of thinking about changing Cubanfemininities.”6. See also Porter (2008: 144), who in discussing a female respondent’s ideas about relaxing,points out that they all involve acts of consumption.7. For the official employment statistics, see data from Oficina Nacional de Estadísticas de Cuba(ONEC 2010). At the same time, women who are not included in such official statistics are oftenalso engaged in various forms of income-generating work (see Pertierra 2008). Safa (2005) andPertierra (2008) both argue that the post-Soviet era has seen an increase in the position ofwomen as the primary providers for their households. Stubbs (1997: 255), however, points outthat since the 1990s, Cuban women “appear to be retreating back into a family survival role.”Moreover, amongst my research subjects, a considerable part of the money and goods thatwomen had access to actually came to them from their partners or admirers. This highlights theimportance of paying attention to day-to-day gendered exchanges. In the case of Pertierra’smaterial, such dissimilarities may of course also reflect differences between Havana andSantiago.8. Both male and female infidelity were rather common occurrences amongst my researchparticipants, although male infidelity was much more culturally permitted.9. For similar notions from other parts of the Caribbean, see Clarke (1974 [1957]: 96); Barrow(1996: 397); Gussler (1996 [1980]: 129).10. Reinaldo was in quite a good position in the state hierarchy so in that sense he could perhapsbe seen as displaying some of the characteristics of desirable revolutionary masculinity.Nevertheless, his comparatively high income, the fact that he had kin in Miami and such qualitiesas his lack of athleticism, sharply differentiate him from the exemplary humble, fit, hard-working and committed revolutionary that Che Guevara (2005 [1965]) wrote about in his views onthe socialist “new man.”11. The fact that, in all of these cases, my male respondents were trying to court mulatasexemplifies the position of la mulata as the object of desire in Cuba (see Kutzinski 1993).12. I am aware of the critique (e. g. Gutmann 2005 [1996]) towards the concept of machismo, butCubans themselves (men, women and the state discourse) use this concept for discussing genderrelations (for instance, “Here the men are very machistas”). The term can be used to refer to anumber of practices ranging from the gendered aspects of domestic labour to sexual jealousy.The positive and negative aspects of machismo form a continuum that displays some ambiguityand the meanings of the same practice may vary from one situation to another.13. My female interlocutors also saw foreign men often lacking in such factors of attraction asdancing skills and being a machote.14. A similar notion of respect concerns women, but to a lesser degree.


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ABSTRACTSIn post-Soviet Havana, material resources emerge as a factor in terms of which women assess aman’s desirability as a potential partner. These tendencies in current gender relations relate tothe larger transformations in Cuba’s political and economic context. The fall of Eastern Europeanand Soviet state socialisms seriously diminished the Cuban state’s ability to provide socialservices. Remittances generated through transnational kin ties and recent liberalistic changes inlabour politics intensify the disparities of wealth. Moreover, Cuba’s dependence on tourism as asource of national income has brought about changes to the possibilities for social mobilityavailable through the promises of migration and affluence that relationships with foreigners canoffer. This article focuses on the gendered consequences of these large-scale transformations,experienced as the increasing intertwining of material resources and desirability, especiallywhen it comes to men’s attractiveness. Coping with increasing demands from women, men drawon local notions of masculinity that include elements both of machismo and responsible manhood.Men thereby at times comply and at times resist women’s expectations on them.

No contexto pós-soviético em Havana, os recursos materiais são critério para a mulher avaliar adesejabilidade de um homem como potencial parceiro. Tais práticas nas relações de género estãoligadas às transformações políticas e económicas mais vastas. A queda do socialismo soviético eno Leste da Europa diminuiu drasticamente a capacidade do Estado cubano para prestar serviçossociais. As remessas geradas através de redes transnacionais de parentesco e a liberalizaçãorecente das políticas laborais intensificaram as disparidades na distribuição da riqueza. Adependência do turismo como fonte de rendimento nacional gerou novas possibilidades demobilidade social através do relacionamento com estrangeiros, pela promessa de migração eprosperidade. O artigo centra-se nas consequências destas transformações em termos de género,concretizadas numa maior interligação entre os recursos materiais e o que torna os homensdesejáveis. Em resposta à exigência crescente das mulheres, os homens ativam noções locais demasculinidade que incluem elementos de machismo e responsabilidade masculina, por vezescorrespondendo e outras vezes resistindo às expetativas das mulheres que sobre eles recaem.

INDEX

Keywords: Cuba, masculinity, gender, monetisation, love, sexualityPalavras-chave: Cuba, masculinidade, género, monetarização, amor, sexualidade

AUTHOR

HEIDI HÄRKÖNEN

Independent researcher, Helsinki, [email protected]


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Breadwinners, sex machines andromantic lovers: entanglingmasculinities, moralities, andpragmatic concerns in touristicCubaProvedores de sustento, máquinas sexuais e amantes românticos:masculinidades, moralidades e preocupações pragmáticas interligadas na Cubaturística

Valerio Simoni

1 In this article, I wish to show how experiences of sexual and love relationships withtourist women led Cuban men to articulate and act upon different – often contradictory– models of masculinity.1 To understand such situated enactments of masculinity, Iargue that one must pay attention to the moral and pragmatic concerns to which theyresponded, and in which they were entangled. Cuban men’s purposeful alignments as“breadwinners,” “sex machines,” and “romantic lovers” afforded different relationalpossibilities and expressions of masculinity as people moved in and out of the tourismrealm. It is by taking seriously these relational possibilities and the demands theygenerated that transformations of masculinity can be productively illuminated, andthat tourism’s potential to amplify and subvert (stereo)-typical configurations of “beinga man” in present-day Cuba can be assessed.

2 Tourism in Cuba developed in earnest after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1990president Fidel Castro declared the beginning of a Special Period in Time of Peace, aperiod of austerity, reforms, and economic restructuring which has been credited forthe island’s progressive but unsteady integration to a “larger global, neoliberalframework” (Cabezas 2009: 22). The key implications of the Special Period in itsrelation with the development of international tourism have been recently assessed byCabezas (2009), who emphasizes how the crisis and the way the Cuban government


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coped with it resulted in the amplification of gender and racial inequalities and theemergence of new sexual formations that found expression in the tourism realm.Following the massive arrival of people from abroad, a wide range of tourism-relatedactivities escaping state regulation flourished on the island, a place where interactionswith foreigners had the potential of being more beneficial and gratifying than manyother professional activities. Indeed, in spite of governmental efforts to controltourism, Cuban men and women found ways to avoid governmental restrictions andcreate opportunities to engage with tourists, offering their services as guides orcompanions, seeking foreign friendships, selling cigars, providing private taxis,accommodation or food, and – central to my concerns here – engaging in sex andromance with foreigners. This was the world of jineterismo – from the Spanish jinete(rider) – a contested term evoking the “riding” of tourists for instrumental purposesand often equated with notions of tourism hustling and prostitution.

3 Several authors have outlined the porosity (Argyriadis 2005: 47), the ambiguities (Berg2004; Cabezas 2004; Fernandez 1999; Palmié 2004), and the kaleidoscopic character(Kummels 2005: 24) of jineterismo and other related phenomena and categories in Cuba– sex work, prostitution, and partnership for instance. Scholars have emphasized howjineterismo is a complex phenomenon, one which brings issues of morality, nation, race,class and gender into play (Berg 2004; Cabezas 2004; Fernandez 1999; Simoni 2008). Oneof the most tenacious and controversial lines of distinction in narratives of jineterismorelated to gender, with the activities of women often acquiring a different connotationthan those of men. Several authors have remarked that jineteros are less stigmatized inCuban society than jineteras (Allen 2007; Alcázar Campos 2009; Berg 2004; Cabezas 2004;Palmié 2004). Whereas their activities are considered to pertain to a much morevariegated and heterogeneous spectrum, which can include sex and romance withforeigners but is more broadly related to tourist-hustling (selling cigars, act as brokers,tourist guides, etc.), the activities of jineteras are more readily equated withprostitution and commercialized sex.

4 A consideration of gender and of the sexual dimensions of informal tourism-orientedactivities in Cuba’s Special Period also point to the emergence of other sexualidentifications that complicate any heterosexist reading (Allen 2007; CouceiroRodríguez 2006; Fosado 2005; Hodge 2001; Sierra Madero 2006; Stout 2007). Amongthem is that of the pinguero (from a slang term for penis, pinga), a neologismdesignating men whose activity had to do with their pinga. According to Cabezas,“while some pingueros identify themselves as straight, they tend to provide sexualservices mainly to gay tourists because male-to-male practices are more lucrative thanstraight sex” (2004: 994). By contrast, the men considered in this article emphasizedtheir distance from the world of pingueros, displaying rather homophobic attitudes andstressing their exclusively heterosexual orientation. They mostly saw themselves asbeing in a “line of women” (línea de mujeres), viewing their own activities as specificallytailored to the development of sexual/romantic relationships with female tourists,often with the stated goal of marrying one and being able to travel abroad. As thearticle shows, monetary transactions between these foreign women and Cuban menwere fraught with controversy as they interfered with ideals of masculinity that sawmen as women’s providers. These findings may provide important clues forcontemporary debates on “sex tourism” and the commoditization of sexuality in


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tourism settings, a line of analysis that will, however, remain largely out of the scope ofthis article, but which is nevertheless worth mentioning briefly here.

5 In the academic literature, much debate has been going on to ascertain whether womentraveling to poorer countries, notably in the Caribbean, engage in “sex tourism” “asmen do” (itself a problematic assumption, see Simoni 2014), or if the term “romancetourism” (Pruitt and LaFont 1995) or “companionship tourism” (Herold, Garcia andDeMoya 2001) would be more appropriate to describe these relationships. According toJeffreys, the matter often revolves around whether researchers “privilege theoppressions of class and race over that of gender in their analyses” (2003: 234), or viceversa. In a more nuanced way, Frohlick has recently argued that “[w]ithin the globaleconomy, women from First World countries can and do exert their relative economicpower over local lovers and others in the communities to which they travel in ThirdWorld countries, but power associated with masculinity complicates this schema”(2007: 141). Regarding the behavior of tourist women – which I will not be able toaddress in this article – my conversations indicated that none of them wasstraightforwardly paying for sex with Cuban men.2 My findings converge here with theresearches of Pruitt and LaFont (1995) and Frohlick (2007), which suggest that touristwomen engaging with local men in the Caribbean may be looking for more than “justsex” – namely romance and intimacy. In line with these authors, my examination of themen’s perspective in this article also shows that Cubans did not simply adapt to theforeigner’s tastes and desires, but that different vectors of power could inform theirrelationships, among which gender played an important role. Taking into account thelocal men’s negotiations of masculinity enriches our understanding of intimateencounters and their power dimensions in these tourism settings, shedding light onrelational dynamics that may otherwise be neglected, particularly when relying onreductive readings in terms of sex tourism and prostitution.

6 The Cuban men that appear in the following pages were all of very humble origins, andhad often migrated to tourism centers from less privileged areas of the country. I metthem mainly through my frequentation of tourist sites in the city of Havana, the ruraltown of Viñales (200 kilometers west of the capital), and the beach resort of Playas delEste (half an hour drive east of Havana) – the places where I carried out 13 months ofethnographic fieldwork between 2005 and 2014. With some of them, I developed verystrong ties, and was thus able to follow their engagements in and out of tourismsettings, observing and participating in the different realms of interaction thatcharacterized their everyday lives. It is this multiplicity of perspectives and ways ofbeing that interests me here (see also Simoni 2013). More than pointing out differencesbetween Cuban people, my analysis aims to account for heterogeneity within the livesof the subjects of my investigation – the multiple and paradoxical positionings andsubjectivities they inhabited as they worked over different models of masculinity.Accordingly, what is important to consider is the situational dimension of suchenactments of masculinity. As Vale de Almeida put it, “masculinities are situationallynegotiated” (1997: 147), and such negotiations may be fruitfully highlighted once weacknowledge “that the answer to what constitutes proper manhood shifts not only withtime, but also according to immediate variations in social situations and contexts in thelives of specific men” (Oxlund 2012: 32). It is this situational dimension that I want toretain in considering how my research participants enacted the “sex machine,” the


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“breadwinner,” and the “romantic lover” categories. Let me start with the first of theseaxes of masculinity, the one emphasizing sexual potency.

“Sex machine”

7 As a fruitful entry point into this vector of masculinity and the alignments it generated,let me start from a brief extract from a conversation I had with Umberto, an Afro-Cuban Rasta in his thirties with whom I spent several evenings discussing aboutrelationships with tourist women.3 Like many other men in his circle, Umberto talkedwith pride of his sexual feats, his numerous girlfriends, and his skills in seducingforeign women: “It’s been years now that I am in this. I know how to work the woman[trabajar la mujer], I don’t fail [yo no fallo, i. e. in the seduction enterprise]!” 4 And indeed,while not infallible, Umberto was quite successful in establishing intimate relationshipswith female tourists, and would not hesitate to boast about his latest adventures whentalking with his friends and peers.

8 The moments in which sexual conquests of foreign women were much talked about andexalted were moments of male sociability, which saw my informants engage in boastfulexchanges to assert their virile reputation and establish masculinity-groundedstandings. Such situations resonate with notions of “homosociality” or“homosociability” (Almeida 1997) describing the (often leisure-oriented) spaces of mento men interaction, helping consolidate male bonding and heterosexual identities, andwhose importance in constructions of masculinity has been highlighted by scholars(Gutmann 1997), notably in the context of Latin America (Vigoya 2001), and also inCuba (Lundgren 2011; Morel 2012). My research participants’ inclination to talk amongthemselves about their sexual feats may be read as expressing a value system based on“reputation,” as theorized by Wilson (1969) for the Caribbean context, described “as alower-class and masculine sphere of public performance, enacted in such venues asstreet corners, the political platform, the rum shop, and the market, and on the musicalstage” and “demonstrated through sexual prowess, verbal wit, and economic guile”(Freeman 2007: 5).

9 It was precisely in moments of homosociability that the importance of sexual behaviorin the enactment of masculinity became paramount. Sexual feats became something tobe proud of, to boast about, and could come to exemplify one’s excellence at being aman.5 While this is not unique to Cuba, the view that men have by their very ownnature “inherent uncontrollable sexual drives” (Lundgren 2011: 55; Alcázar Campos2009) seems very widespread in this Caribbean country. According to Alcázar Campos(2009), this is also what helps explain why any provision of sexual services to foreignwomen could be framed and normalized within an hegemonic view of masculinity thatvalued sexual exploits and promiscuity as marks of virility.

10 The men’s tales of sexual feats with foreign women actualized an hyper-sexualizationwhose roots may be traced back to the colonial past of the island, to which suchenactments of masculinity seem inexorably entangled. Several scholars writing aboutthe recent developments of tourism in Cuba underline continuities between thesexualized images of “hot” Cuban people and the slavery and colonial past of the island(Fusco 1997; Kneese 2005; Kummels 2005; Sanchez Taylor 2000). While theseconsiderations have mainly regarded the eroticization of the “mulatta” (la mulata) andblack women, “white stereotypes of primitive black male potency” (De Albuquerque


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1998: 50), and colonial, sexualized racist fantasies of “the ‘big black dick’” (SanchezTaylor 2000: 49) are also said to lure female (sex) tourists to Caribbean countries likeJamaica, Barbados, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic (De Albuquerque 1998; Kempadoo2004; Sanchez Taylor 2000). In her research on the negotiation of intimacy betweentourist women and local men in Caribbean Costa Rica, Frohlick (2007: 150) shows how“racial stereotypes and ethnosexual dynamics of mutual desire (that is, the desire forblack men by white foreign women and desire for white foreign women by black men)play out such that the men imagine themselves as hypersexual black men because inpart this is how they are imagined by the tourists.” For Frohlick, “[m]en’s sexualsubjectivities, complicated by their hybrid identities as Afro-Caribbean-Costa Rican, areforged through encounters with foreign women” (2007: 150), something that leads herto consider that “[m]asculinity is learned, negotiated, and performed within thisspecific context and political economy of mutual interracial erotic heterosexual desire”(2007: 151).

11 What my research suggests (Simoni 2011, 2013) is that besides continuities in theracialization of sexuality – most notably in the (hyper)sexualization of Afro-Cubans (seeAllen 2007; Fernandez 1999, 2010) – the stereotype of the caliente (“hot”) Cuban couldalso be re-actualized in a more culturalist/nationalist vein in specific tourism contexts,and applied to Cubans with little regard to their racial attribution. In her study ofinterracial couples in contemporary Cuba, Fernandez (2010: 126) notes that while“racist ideology supported ample stereotypes of black males’ primitive, animalistic, anduncontrollable sexuality […] notions of potent sexuality were not exclusively associatedwith black and mulatto Cubans.” Accordingly, “perceptions of Cubanness, in general,were closely linked with sexuality, and there was a sort of national pride about Cuban’smythical sexuality and ardency” whereby “Cuban men and women were seen to possessan uncontrollable ‘latino passion,’ particularly in comparison to Europeans and NorthAmericans” (Forrest 1999, quoted in Fernandez 2010: 126). It was precisely suchcomparison and relational opposition that acquired salience in the tourism contextswhere I worked, and that helps explain the overarching characterization of Cubanpeople as “hot,” or at least “hotter” than the foreigners visiting the tropical island.6

“No one fucks like Cubans!” maintained my friend Manuel, a white Cuban in his latetwenties, when comparing the sexual abilities of Cuban people to those of foreigners. Itwas not the physical size of the penis that mattered here – as the “big black dick” myth(Sanchez Taylor 2000: 49) would have it – but Cubans’ sexual prowess, which wasdeemed exceptional, unique, and cast as a national trait. What is worth noting in thiscase is also how masculinity became entangled in wider difference-producing processes(Strathern 1988, as discussed in Cornwall and Lindisfarne 1994: 40-41), in this case theus-Cubans/them-foreigners divide.

12 Beyond one’s exploits in sexual intercourse, what mattered was also the ability toseduce foreign women. In conversations about their adventures with tourists, myCuban research participants liked to emphasize their seduction skills and talent. “He isconfused” (El está mareado), “he is not going to do anything [with the girl]” (no va a hacernada), “he doesn’t know!” (no sabe) – was Umberto’s critique as he closely scrutinizedone of his colleagues’ clumsy attempts to seduce a young Norwegian girl that hehimself coveted. This he contrasted with his subtler moves and flirting abilities. In thecourse of several lengthy conversations we had about his and his peers’ ways of relatingwith tourists, Juan – a young Afro-Cuban man in his twenties that frequented the Rastaclique in Havana – told me about the importance of one’s ability to “vibrate” (vibrar), to


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“have a good vibration,” one that would lead tourists to stick to you as to a magnet.This meant “knowing how to talk” (saber hablar), how to capture her attention, how tocare for details, sensing her weak spots, and “killing her” (matarla) with one’s wit andseductive power.7

13 In the course of fieldwork, I was often confronted with heated debates which sawCuban men arguing about one’s knowledge of foreign women, and how best to dealwith and seduce them. In his late twenties, Rodrigo was a white Cuban man who hadbeen engaging with foreign women for about eight years. He was widely recognized byhis peers, often with palpable envy, as someone who never failed to get the women heliked, and he didn’t hesitate to boost about such “infallibility.” In the course of theevenings I spent with him and his friends in tourist bars and clubs, the conversationoften revolved around the best tactics one should employ for flirting. This led toconstant bickering, controversy as well as more practical exemplifications of one’sskills via concrete attempts to seduce one of the tourists that were present. Much likefor the Cuban practice of piropos – a term translated as “compliment” or “flattery” that“generally refers to verbal comments by men to women in street interaction,”according to Lundgren (2011: 97) – we are here in situations where men’s publicperformances were not just directed at the woman at stake – whose reaction to theadvances could even fall into second plan – but at the other men who were present, andwho were assessing one’s seduction skills. Following Lundgren, we can argue that thesewere situations in which “the woman became a necessary instrument through whichthe man could gain a position as brave and daring in relation to this homosocialenvironment” (2011: 106). As argued also by González Pagés “the construction ofhegemonic masculinity in Cuba” does indeed include “ingredients such as the demandto constantly demonstrate virility and bravery in front of other men” (quoted inLundgren 2011: 102).

14 In his advances to tourist women, Rodrigo exemplified braveness in front of his peers.His witty, playful, and daring attitude seemed to bring him much success inrelationships with foreigners. Proud of his seductive power, Rodrigo told me thatwhenever he went out in tourist venues at night, he was almost certain to end up withsome foreign girl, in a way that was almost beyond his control (note once again the“uncontrollable sexuality” trope). That was why, while he waited for his more “official”girlfriend and soon-to-be wife to visit him from Austria, he preferred to spend most ofhis nights at home, calm (tranquilo), so as to avoid the spread of potentially harmful,envy motivated gossiping that could reach the ears of his Austrian partner, withdisastrous consequences for Rodrigo’s marriage plans. As was rather common amongCuban men who entertained several simultaneous affairs with foreign women, Rodrigowas afraid that the gossip (chisme) of envious people could impact negatively on hisongoing relationships. This had happened to his friend Emilio (see below), who saw the“love of his life” with a Swedish woman destroyed by malicious rumors on hissimultaneous affair (trivial in Emilio’s eyes) with a German lady, rumors that hadintentionally reached the Swedish woman in question. While at home, however,Rodrigo’s exuberant sex life was not to be put on hold, as he enjoyed the company of ateenage Cuban girlfriend that could satiate his professed sexual appetite.

15 While speaking to me rather openly about the fact that in the last eight years he hadlived off his foreign girlfriends’ financial help, Rodrigo’s narratives emphasized the factthat it was him who had chosen the women in question, and that it was him who set the


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terms of their engagement. Illustrative in this sense was the story of a Dutch girlfriendwho, wanting to make him a surprise, had sent Rodrigo a parcel containing everythinghe would have required to visit her in Holland – including visa and plane ticket. In themilieu of jineterismo in which Rodrigo evolved, this was arguably one of the most valuedprizes one could hope for. As he proudly put it, however, and contrary to everyone’sexpectations, Rodrigo had refused his girlfriend offer, and even chastised her for takingthe initiative without discussing the plan with him beforehand: “I like things to betalked through. Who told you [the Dutch woman] that I wanted to come [to Holland]now? Perhaps I wanted us to get to know each other a bit more, don’t you think? I don’tlike things to be done this way, I don’t like to be manipulated! [no me gusta que memanipulen]” This was his reprimand. Rodrigo told me that “everyone else” – i. e. hispeers – had judged him crazy to refuse such offer. On the other hand, by distinguishinghimself this way, he had set himself out as a man who had his own life in his hands,who didn’t let women make patronizing assumptions about his needs and desires andmake decisions for him. Following the same logic, and contributing to similarenactments of masculinity, was my informants’ emphasis on the fact that it was them,as men, who had seduced their foreign partners and won them over with their manlyskills and abilities. A particular configuration of agency and power relations was thusactualized, which put the men clearly above their female partners in terms of decisionmaking, an important issue to which I shall return below.

16 Rodrigo’s narrative directs our attention to the different vectors of power (Simoni2008) that took shape in these gendered relationships between Cuban men and foreignwomen, most notably the contentious power dynamics associated with strikingeconomic asymmetries (see also Frohlick 2007, and Pruitt and LaFont 1995). Indeed,tensions could quickly arise once this other axis of Cuban-foreigner differentiation wasbrought to the fore: that of economic resources, which carried its own effects andimplications as to what being good at being a man amounted to, not on sexual groundsthis time, but in terms of economic agency.

“Breadwinner”

17 Grounded in the reification of a radical asymmetry of resources, jineterismo couldembody for my Cuban informants a just struggle, a redistributive tactic in an unequalworld in which wealthy tourists visited a developing country like Cuba. In line withwhat many believed the government was itself doing – “squeezing” foreign visitors tobring in as much hard currency as possible – jineterismo became a rightful way for themto get their slice of the tourism cake, part of a nation’s cunning tactics to siphoncapitalist wealth. If some deception at the tourists’ expenses was involved, it could beeasily justified via the adoption of an us-Cubans versus them-tourists approach. In thisframe of legibility, national belonging and political-economic considerations seemed totake precedence over gendered lines of differentiation. In other words, a Cuban mancould reasonably justify profiting from a foreign women once the Cuban-foreign dividewas given precedence over the man-woman one. According to this scenario, Cubanswere luring tourists into sexual/romantic relationships with the aim of gainingeconomic resources or migrating aboard via marriages and tourist-sponsoredinvitations. These were the sort of narratives that my Cuban informants could activatewhen talking among peers about their relationships with foreign tourists. In these


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contexts of interaction, their tendency was to objectify tourists, referring for instanceto them as piezas (“pieces”), and to avoid delving on the emotions one felt for a foreignpartner – something that could make you look foolishly vulnerable and naïve. Instead,people could align to the semantic registers and moral discourse of jineterismo,becoming “tourist-riders” who had conquered their foreign “victims” for essentiallyinstrumental purposes, to provide for their socio-economic needs and desires and thoseof their family.

18 This was the kind of narrative that Rodrigo was likely to mobilize when explaining tohis Cuban girlfriend Raquel what his relationships with foreign women were all about.Raquel was aware of his on-going affairs, and went along Rodrigo’s scheming to obtainfinancial help from the foreigners. That was among the reasons Rodrigo liked her,because she “tolerated,” because she had lived la calle (the street) and knew how toadapt to this rather unusual scenario. Coming from a very humble family – much likeRodrigo himself – Raquel seemed happy to be living with him. She liked him and feltcomfortable in his house, where she was also benefiting from his tourist-sponsoredwealth and had a steady supply of gifts, good food and drinks, enjoying the exceptionaluse of a PC, an extensive DVD collection, and a range of other household appliances shehad no prior access to. As other stories I gathered during fieldwork seemed to indicate,what was earned by Cuban men through informal engagements with tourists couldbecome an appealing resource to seduce and nourish relationships with Cuban women,thus enabling the enactment of a breadwinner ideal of masculinity. It was preciselywhile reflecting on this state of affairs that my friend Ernesto – a young Afro-CubanRasta in his mid-twenties – told me, for instance, that once they realized that he wasdealing with tourists, Cuban girls felt more attracted to him, as they expected he wouldhave a steady influx of hard currency.

19 In regards to his relation with Raquel, Rodrigo was fulfilling an ideal of masculinity thatseems to hold currency in Cuba. According to Gonzales Pagés (2004: 6), the archetype ofthe good provider of the household still informs gender relations in this Caribbeanisland. For a man to perform well as man, he is expected to be able to obtain materialgoods and achieve economically. Thus the anxiety experienced by Cuban men livingthrough the current economic crisis, struggling to get cash (Gonzales Pagés 2004: 6), tosuccessfully prove themselves in relation to such ideal. Research on masculinity inother parts of the world where men are similarly affected by economic crises ordisadvantaged economic conditions, and where the breadwinner ideal remains strong –like the one of Aboim in Mozambique – suggests that “the lack of money or othermaterial goods is compensated […] by complex practices and discourses on sex andsexuality” (Aboim 2012: 82). This leads Aboim to argue that “sex comes into view as acapital that stands in distinct opposition to money, the last resort for those who lackother capitals” (2012: 80). While this may find some resonance with the Cuban case, mymaterial suggests that the economic resources that people like Rodrigo drew from theirtourist partners could also help them act as breadwinners in their relationships withCuban women, preserving to some extent this moral configuration of their way of beinga man.

20 At the same time, after living through eight years of relationships with foreign womenwho didn’t expect him to provide for them, Rodrigo had also grown more and moredetached, in his everyday practices, from such breadwinner ideal, and felt a certainanxiety in having to respond all of a sudden to its’ moral demands in relation to Raquel:


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“You know, it’s about eight years that I have been living from the money of foreignwomen, it’s about eight years I have not been working, and with her [Raquel] theother night, well, we watched a movie, we had sex, and then when I am half asleep,almost in the middle of the night, she tells me: ‘Hey, listen, be aware that fortomorrow there is no rice [i.e. there’s no food].’ Fuck! It brought me thisoverwhelming feeling [expressing anxiety, as if having breathing problems], I hadto go out of the house and take a walk [to recover]. It was about eight years that noone had told me that. Fuck, this gives you such a responsibility, you can’t imagine.”

21 In spite of the pressure he had felt, Rodrigo claimed that he wouldn’t mind to providefor Raquel for the rest of her life, if she wished so. He would even “give her” a child, ifthat’s what she wanted, and take financial care of the two, while at the same time beingmarried and living abroad with one of his foreign girlfriends. As far as his aspirationsfor a “proper” marriage and family life were concerned, Rodrigo remained determinedto fulfill them with a foreign woman, a woman he could love and feel comfortable with:“It’s been eight years now that I have had this objective, and I am going to succeed,” hemaintained. Thus preserved were two different systems of value and models ofmasculinity, which we could illuminate through the notions of reputation andrespectability (Freeman 2007: 5) and their on-going effects “as a living dialectic ofdynamic sentiments, cultural forces of production that are constitutive of social actorsthemselves” (2007: 6). I have already referred above to Wilson’s (1969) take onreputation. In regards to the other, “middle class ideological framework” of“respectability,” Freeman notes that it encodes, by way of contrast, “ideals ofdomesticity, propriety, enacted through formal marriage” (2007: 5). Much like in theBarbadian case examined by Freeman, the example of Rodrigo considered here cansimilarly illustrate how “the two cultural dynamics” could be simultaneously embracedby the same person.

22 The pressure and anxiety experienced by Rodrigo for meeting the moral demandsplaced upon him as breadwinner were shared by several other Cuban men I engagedwith during fieldwork. It was precisely in connection to this preoccupation of having toprovide that Ernesto, for instance, felt he would not be up for the task, a scenario thatinformed his pessimist stance on his chances of entertaining any long-termrelationship with a Cuban woman:

“It may be OK at the beginning you know, but then she may start to ask you for thisand that, to buy such and such thing for the house, and so on and so forth. And Ifeel bad not being able to do it, not to be able to make her happy […] If you go outwith a Cuban woman, she expects you to buy at least a couple of beers, and how do Ido that?”

23 What I sensed in this conversation we had was Ernesto’s worry of disappointing aCuban girlfriend on the economic side, and his ensuing reluctance in even trying toestablish such a relationship. As he put it, he liked Cuban women more than foreignones, but right now the latter were the ones that were up for him (“las que me tocan”).

24 Ernesto’s friend Aurelio, a white complexioned neighbor of his, still in his earlytwenties and rather unfamiliar with the world of jineterismo, had a more trenchantassessment of Cuban women: all of them were interesadas, interested in what you had,in your money. As a result, it was nowadays impossible to have a normal relationshipwith them. “Love doesn’t exist anymore” (El amor ya no existe), maintained Aurelio, andthis was why he now felt attracted to foreign women. With foreign women, he argued,you could still have a normal love relation. He illustrated this with the story of a briefaffair he had just had with a young Spanish girl, an experience he had really enjoyed:


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“She wanted nothing more than love, and to feel good together. […] European womenare good; they only want love and sentiment. Cuban women have much wickedness[maldad],” he added. As we discussed the issue further, Aurelio clarified that it was thefault of the system (“es el sistema”), in Cuba, that everything was now por interés.“Everyone is in need” [tiene necesidades], and needs “deform everything,” confirmedErnesto. In this context, Ernesto went on arguing:

“Love becomes a secondary preoccupation. When your belly is empty, love may aswell work the first days, but if you [the man] keep bringing back home boiled yam[boniato hervido], love gets lost, and goes screw itself [se va a la mierda]… It’s obviousthat the woman wants first of all to have the things she needs, and this [the presentcontext] has changed things.Also, if a woman can chose between a rough man who beats her [un bruto que le dagolpes, hinting at a typical Cuban man], and one [a foreigner] that takes her out fordinner, makes her happy, treats her well and cares for her, she will go with aforeigner… Imagine that the kitchen breaks down, and one [Cuban man] tells her tosort it out and repair it herself, while the other [foreigner] buys her a new one.In this system, where people have needs [necesidades], it’s normal, women areforced to look for these things in the first place. [They have to] think about thechild they may want to have, and about who is going to help them.”

25 While Ernesto and Aurelio articulated here a very widespread critique in contemporaryCuba about the generalization and increasing predominance of “relations for interest”(relaciones de interés, i. e. instrumentally motivated) – as opposed to normal, “real”relationships (Fosado 2005) and “true love” (Lundgren 2011) – they were also explainingthis negative trend with the present situation of economic crisis, normalizing it via acontextualization in the current exceptional circumstances.8 Insofar the Cuban contextwas judged responsible for “deforming” how things should have “normally” been, weare confronted here with a discourse of exception, a “normative politics” (Povinelli2006: 208) that did not tarnish the ideal of pure love, but simply displaced it elsewhere,in other places or other times. For Aurelio and Ernesto, such “regulatory ideal”(Povinelli 2006: 208) ought to inform people’s practices under normal conditions, butsince these conditions were now lacking in the Cuban milieu, the two of them werelooking toward relationships with foreigners as a possible ground for its realization.Indeed, Ernesto and Aurelio aspired to something more than a life dominated byeconomic needs and responsibilities, and were hoping for emotional fulfillment in truelove and intimacy, ideals that they valued highly. In contrast to the bleak prospectsthey projected on relationships with Cuban women, intimacy with foreign womenappeared in this sense as the realm in which true love was still possible.

26 As Umberto once put it to me, rather provocatively: “Cuban women want sex, and youhave to pay, tourist woman want sex, and love!” (¡Las cubanas quieren sexo, y hay quepagar; las turistas quieren sexo, y amor!). This contrastive vision, not uncommon amongmy Cuban research informants, ended up constituting two relationally opposed andrather purified versions of intimacy: sex for money on the one hand, and sex and loveon the other. But how did such trope of love find expression, once we consider that theeconomic could also intervene in relationships between Cuban men and tourist women,and how did it articulate with notions of masculinity?


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“Romantic lover”

27 When talking about his aspirations in regards to relationships with tourist women,Umberto repeatedly told me that love was what he hoped for, to find a nice woman hefelt comfortable with and could set up a family together, possibly have some kids, nomatter in which country, abroad. Umberto was regularly getting money and gifts fromhis European girlfriends, and when I asked him why he kept looking for new partnersand wasn’t content with the ones he had, he replied with an ironic, almost guilty smile– as if acknowledging his internal struggles and contradictions – that “money doesn’tfall from the sky” (el dinero no cae del cielo). He was referring to the fact that hisrelationships had ups and downs, and didn’t provide any stable emotional andeconomic rewards that could appease him and enable him to stay put and satisfied withwhat he had. Therefore, he kept doing what he did best, moving forward with hiseveryday struggle (lucha). Umberto had several Cuban girlfriends too, relations that hecultivated also thanks to the resources that he got from tourists. He explained that inhis neighborhood, a marginal and relatively poor area of Havana, if you had 5 CUC(approximately 5 USD) you could “fuck the best young mangoes” (beautiful girls) thatwere around. But to move from a relation with these “fun girls” (chicas divertidas, girlsto have a good time with) – as Aurelio once put it referring to a similar deal – to arelationship with a “serious girl” (chica seria), was not so easy. Drawing again on Wilson(1969), we may argue that what was at stake here was also one’s ability to move from avalue system based on reputation (a lot of sexual feats with many chicas divertidas) toone of respectability (a married family life with a chica seria). As Umberto told me, thegood, serious relationship he once had with a Cuban woman had been damaged whenher family started complaining and criticizing Umberto’s lifestyle, and moreparticularly his promiscuous relationships with foreign women.

28 After more than a decade relating with tourist women, Umberto was now in search of a“serious person” (una persona seria), a foreigner who would take seriously the possibilityof having a long term, love relationship with him. Opposed to the persona seria was thebandolera (litt. bandit): someone who was just looking for sex, fun, and short-termgratification in the exceptional frame of one’s holiday without taking any longer-termcommitment – as many tourists seemed more and more inclined to do nowadays, or sothe criticism went. The bandolera critique was quite widespread among the men Ifrequented, who occasionally went as far as qualifying some tourist women as sexualexploiters. This reproach could converge with resentment towards the privilegedeconomic position of the visitors. In relation to this last point, my informants tended toretort that whatever tourists might think of their economic power and what it couldafford them, all their money could not buy them, nor direct their decisions and choices.

29 Proudly telling a friend why he had broken his promising relationship with a Spanishwoman, Manuel, who often boasted about his macho qualities, was lapidary in hisremarks: “Because they have some money, they think they can do what they want: goto hell I tell them! You know I am rough [soy un bruto].” Similarly defiant were theremarks of Carlos, a Rasta in his early sixties who had been on and off in a relation witha very rich German woman for more than a decade, and had finally parted with her,apparently also due to conflicts over his spending too much time and money with hisCuban friends. As he unburdened all his frustration and boasted his intransigent manlyattitude, he told Ernesto and me:


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“This German woman, always trying to control me, to put herself above me. I toldher, go to hell! Who gives a shit if you are a millionaire? Look I prefer to stay hereon the street and sell maní [roasted peanuts], than to have to do what you tell me, tostay under your control. I have my friends and when I want to stay with them I dowhat I want!”

30 Here we see surfacing again the tension and the dilemmas occasioned by theasymmetric positionings of tourist women and Cuban men, as economic vectors ofpower clashed with gendered ones.

31 To have a woman openly paying for a man, particularly when this was done underpublic scrutiny, was widely considered as “ugly” (feo) and humiliating by myinformants. In the realm of the street, of cafes and bars, and setting aside perhaps thosetourism contexts where jinetismo was most normalized and accepted, this notion was tobe kept at bay, as it threatened the men’s self-esteem and situated sense of self.Sometimes, very practical arrangements could be found to avoid exposing suchshameful dependency on the women. This appeared in the story that Rodrigo andEmilio – another white Cuban man in his mid-thirties – recounted me about theamazing journey they once took across the island with their tourist girlfriends, aholiday that was entirely sponsored by the two young Europeans in question. On thatoccasion, to avoid that the women could be seen paying for the men – be it for drinks,food, or transportation – Emilio and Rodrigo had asked their girlfriends to let themcarry the cash. This way, they could be seen by others as the ones taking out the moneyfrom their wallets and settling bills. With this move, the two men were also “takingcare” of the women, ensuring no one would cheat them on prices.

32 In this and other similar other stories I heard, the Cuban men would try to take thelead, relying on their legitimacy as insiders to guide their tourist girlfriends around,activating their power-knowledge of local customs and circumstances and encouragingthe foreigners to do things the “Cuban way” (as opposed to the “tourist” one) so as tolive the “real” Cuba and save money at the same time. In a way, this could be seen as acontribution that ultimately benefitted the tourist’s wallet too. “Right from the start Itell them: ‘Look, I am poor. How much did you intend to spend for your holiday here?Well, give this to me, let me be in charge, and you will see [how much you will save]’.”This is how Yoanni, a young Rasta in his mid-twenties, put it, to highlight his materialinput to the relations he had with tourists. He abhorred seeing his partners wastemoney in the allegedly overcharged bad quality food and drinks served in tourismlocations, and was not going to let this happen, having “his woman” cheated this way.Yoanni was also very adamant about the fact that, while poor and with very limitedresources compared to the tourists, he was not a prostituto, and would never waitpassively for women to do things for him. One had to show initiative, do his part. Asmuch as possible, one had to strive to be the man that took care of his woman. At thesame time, by openly manifesting their being in charge of their foreign partners,people like Yoanni were also clearly signalling to other potential Cuban malecompetitors that these women were off-limits and under their control (see Pruitt andLaFont 1995 for a Jamaican parallel).

33 Via the relational idioms of care (cuidado), affection (cariño), and love (amor),relationships between Cuban men and tourist women took on essential qualities thatcould also enable people to obviate to economic asymmetries and the tensions theygenerated, or at least to recast the uneven economic transactions taking place in adifferent light. Umberto’s looking for a persona seria and for love relationships was


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echoed in the discourses of other research participants. Some of these men had enjoyedin their younger age a lot of on-off relationships with tourist women, accumulating awealth of sexual experiences that had certainly accrued their reputation among peers,but were now looking for something else – and the reputation-respectability lens mayonce again be fruitfully deployed here. For my friend Emilio, the prospect of being inlove with his tourist partner, of settling down with her and building a family together,was now all that mattered. In his early thirties, Emilio had been promised marriage byhis German lover, and had travelled to Germany only to find himself “used for sex”during two months – as he put it – and with no wedding prospect in sight. “I am not asex machine” was his outraged reaction, as he complained about the tourists’misrecognition of his ability to love and need for love. In the course of our long andrepeated discussion about such issues, Emilio acknowledged that the peak of his successwith tourist women had passed. He was getting “old and boring” (viejo y pesado), hadlost his freshness and appeal, and in his gloomiest mood told me it was now almostimpossible for him to find a partner at all, be it tourist or Cuban, apart perhaps someold foreign “granny” thirsty for sex and desperately looking for a younger man. Hischances with Cuban women were presently very low, he maintained, not only due to hisage and worsening looks, but mainly because he had no interesting job or income thatwould make him an appealing candidate for a long term relationship. That was thedepressing scenario worrying Emilio.

34 His critique of the “sex machine” paradigm was simultaneously a plea for beingrecognized as more than that, as capable, and in need of, deeper sentiments too. Theself that was taking shape in these narratives was more in tune with romantic ideals oflove than with sexual prowess and promiscuity. The emphasis was on one’s emotionalinteriority, and on worth that was to be measured according to the same moralstandards people tended to ascribe to tourists. A self that was not defined by penuryand economic necessity – the exceptional conditions of generalized necesidad Ernestoand Aurelio told me about – but by universal principles of what it meant to be a full-fledged human being, in need of sentiments and affects as any other. We may drawhere on Elizabeth Povinelli, who argues that it is precisely in love that one may “locatethe hegemonic home of liberal logics and aspirations” (2006: 17). According to thisview, “the ability to ‘love’ in an ‘enlightened’ way becomes the basis (the ‘foundationalevent’) for constituting free and self-governing subjects and, thus, ‘humanity’ ”(Povinelli 2004, quoted in Faier 2007: 153).

35 Rather than being viewed as naïve complaints, self-victimization discourses, ortactically instrumental moves to entice guilt, compassion, and help from the foreigner,I consider that these discourses on love, need for love, and lack of love should be takenseriously and appreciated in their aspirational qualities too (Moore 2011), as claims tobelong to a wider world from which many of my Cuban informants felt excluded, and toa universal way of being a respectable person in such world. What many of themaspired to was indeed to be able to live under “normal conditions of existence”– asopposed to the context of exceptionalism, enduring crisis, scarcity, and isolation theyassociated with Cuba, and which they wished to overcome.9

36 What is also important to consider here is what these claims and professions of lovecould afford, enable and achieve at a more pragmatic level too. Itself an “ethicaldemand” (Zigon 2013), love called for a certain commitment and continuity in therelationship, bringing to the fore a range of moral responsibilities and obligations. The


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ideal at play was that lovers surrender to one another with no calculation whatsoever,and help each other when required. For the Cuban men at stake, this could mean beingsent a monthly allowance to face the hardships of life in Cuba, or being able to marrytheir tourist partner and join them abroad to set up a family together. What wasextremely important in preserving this moral configuration of love was for theseresponsibilities and obligations to be experienced not as love’s defining motive, butrather as a sentiment-driven outcome of it. In other words, people first loved eachother, and subsequently, simply naturally, helped each other out as much as theycould. While we may object that this was a rather abstract and purified idealization ofromantic love, it was the one to which many of the Cuban men I engaged with seemedto aspire, or at least to claim as something they were willing and able to achieve.

37 The form of “subjectification” and “self-stylization” (Moore 2011) emerging from suchidiom of love was strikingly at odds with the one that Cubans tended to deploy whenboasting about their sexual conquests with their peers. It was not grounded on thesexual potency and prowess, nor on the breadwinner ideal of masculinity. Rather, lovehere seemed to bring into play the notion of equally sentient human beings, and a lesspolarized gendered power configuration.

Conclusion

38 Throughout this article, I have adopted an approach to masculinities that calls for asituated and multidimensional understanding of Cuban men’s affective, moral, andpragmatic concerns, as they moved in and out of the world of tourism in their everydaylives. From interactions taking place between peers to tourist-Cuban ones, fromglobally circulating discourses that reiterate colonial sexual stereotypes to street-corner gossiping and confidential self-reflection, I have highlighted the criss-crossingtraffic of different models and vectors of masculinity, their contrastive deployments ina variety of contexts and scalar levels. Such deployments could alternatively generateunity and fracture, consistency and contradiction, harmonization and friction withinthe lives of Cuban men, who found themselves having to respond to different needs andaspirations, and were enmeshed in different lines of belonging. Part of the successes orfailures of these men seemed to depend on their skills and proficiency in enacting avariety of masculinities, integrating and feeling comfortable with them all as equallyfunctioning – albeit potentially contradictory – “embodied moral dispositions” (Zigon2010).

39 It is possible to tease out some of the key (dis)continuities between the differentsituational enactments of masculinity I have examined. Images of sexual potency couldeasily traverse all situations, but could become an uncomfortable burden hamperingthe enactment of the romantic lover (as exemplified by Emilio’s critique of the “sexmachine” view; see also Simoni 2013). Such romantic lover, on the other hand, had tobe kept in check when discussing with Cuban peers, so as not to appear too foolish andnaïve in front of them. The breadwinner ideal could be played out with Cubangirlfriends, but its’ relevance tended to be silenced when interacting with femaletourists, only to come up as a reactive element when the tourist’s economic-drivenpower made people feel uncomfortable and retort with pride that “no money can buyme!” Besides the task of mapping these various articulations, and retrace the possibleconfigurations and (in)commensurabilities between different models and vectors of


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masculinity, what can be retained here at a more general level is the idea of dynamic,situated, tentative, and often paradoxical enactments of masculinity.

40 In the last section, I have emphasized the importance of recognizing Cuban men’saspiration to love, and of paying attention to the emotional, moral, and pragmaticpossibilities this opened up both for them and for their tourist partners. Touristicencounters thus seemed to provide new venues for subjectification and self-stylization,leading people to attune masculinities to globally circulating ideals of romance and theloving partner. This, however, should not silence the fact that the very same Cubanpeople, in other contexts of interaction where other models of masculinity and moralimperatives prevailed – like when gossiping with peers – could dispassionately bragabout their rough macho attitude and exclusively sexual feats with tourists. Instead oftrying to resolve such contradictions, one of my aims here has been to engage in an“ethnography of moral reasoning” to provide “specific accounts of how peoplenegotiate paradoxes in their daily lives” (Sykes 2009: 15; see Simoni 2013). Respondingto competing demands and aspirations, Cuban men’s purposeful alignments as“breadwinners,” “sex machines,” and “romantic lovers” afforded different relationalpossibilities and expressions of masculinity. It is by closely scrutinizing thesepossibilities that we can illuminate the transformations of masculinities that tourismengenders, and thus assess its potential to amplify and subvert (stereo)-typicalconfigurations of “being a man” in present-day Cuba.

41 Through their experiences of intimacy with tourist women, Cuban men worked overtheir masculinities while also reassessing their relationships and ways of being withCuban women. In this sense, tourism acted as a laboratory to rework one’s sense of selfand modes of relating to others inside and outside of the tourism realm itself. We aredealing here with a context – that of life in the tourism margins of a crisis-ridden Cuba– in which changing living conditions shed doubts on and came to question normativeideals of masculinity, calling for other “tactical alternatives” (Connell andMesserschmidt 2005: 847) to emerge. The men I worked with seemed often at pains tocompose with the contrasting affective, moral, and pragmatic demands they werecalled to respond to “as men” in the different milieus in which they evolved, andstrived to maintain a sense of worthiness in this intricate terrain. As Vale de Almeidaputs it, “[t]he experience of men and women is a difficult dialogue between thepolymorphous complexity of their feelings and the simplicity of social patterns” (1997:142). Confronted with such simplicity, with limited frames of legibility and justification,the protagonists in this article strived to situationally align their selves to the modelsof masculinity they found available, while at the same time re-actualizing and re-working them.

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NOTES1. I would like to thank the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) forsupporting my research and writing with their Post-Doctoral Grant program (SFRH / BPD / 66483 / 2009). The last stages of the publication process benefited from the support of the Swiss NationalScience Foundation (Ambizione Fellowship, PZ00P1_147946). Many thanks also to an anonymousreviewer for the useful suggestions and critiques on an earlier version of the article. Last but not


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least, this article would not have been possible without the collaboration of the Cuban men Iworked with in Cuba, and my deepest gratitude goes to them.2. Elsewhere (Simoni 2014), I have shown that monetary exchanges could become problematicalso in relationships between tourist men and Cuban women, and that even in this case the “sextourism” designation could silence a range of differences and nuances that were very importantto my research participants.3. All personal names of research participants appearing in the article are fictional. Those I got toknow as “Rasta” in tourism milieus in Havana were mainly Afro-Cuban men adopting asubculture style that may be summarily characterized as valorising blackness and Afro-relatedcultural expressions, sporting dreadlocks and Rastafari-inspired accessories and clothing, andprivileging a laid-back approach to tourists. These people generally self-identified, and were seenby others, as Rasta. See the research of Hansing (2006) for more on the Rastafari movement insocialist Cuba and what this author categorizes as “Rasta jineteros.” For more scholarlyconsiderations on the success, and the controversial adoption of a Rasta style by local menwilling to seduce foreign women in tourism destinations – from Jamaica’s “rent-a-dread” toIndonesia’s “Kuta cowboys” – see in particular the works of Pruitt and LaFont (1995) and Dahles(1997).4. All the quotes from research participants that appear in the article have been translated intoEnglish by the author, and are based on recollections after the events took place.5. Discussing Herzfeld’s work on manhood among Glendiot Cretan villagers, Zigon (2008)considers that what is important and counts as masculinity in this case is not simply to act asmen are supposed to do, according to the norm, but to act “in such a way that it is recognized asbeyond the norm,” to show excellence and virtuosity in one’s enactment of being a man. Thiswould explain why among the Glendiot “there is less focus on ‘being a good man’ than on ‘beinggood at being a man’”– “a virtue theory of masculinity” (Herzfeld 1985: 16, quoted in Zigon2008: 94) that resonates quite well with the Cuban material discussed here.6. An interesting parallel may be drawn here with Piscitelli’s work on sex travel in Fortaleza (inBrazil’s Northeastern coast), and her reflections on “the production of the idea of a ‘Braziliansexual culture’” (2014: 280).7. Drawing on their Jamaican case, Pruitt and LaFont (1995: 427) refer more generally toCaribbean men’s valuing of “proficiency at ‘sweet talk’ (Abrahams 1983, Wilson 1973),” and arguethat “ardent declarations of love, praises of beauty, and the like […] are a common part of aJamaican man’s repertoire.”8. Alcázar Campos (2009) Lundgren (2011), and Härkönen (2015, this issue) discuss this questionfurther, showing how gendered normativities and couple relationships are being affected byeconomic instability and crisis in contemporary Cuba.9. A fruitful parallel may be drawn here with Patico’s (2009) reflections on how internationalmatchmaking provides Russian women and American men a way to seek “normalcy” in theirpersonal lives. To illuminate the Cuban case, equally pertinent lines of interpretation can befound in recent anthropological research on love and intimacy (see Cole and Thomas 2009;Constable 2009; Padilla et al. 2007; Povinelli 2006; Venkatesan et al. 2011; Zelizer 2005), and moreparticularly in the approach adopted by Faier (2007) in considering the professions of love ofFilipina migrants in rural Japan, as this author productively draws together the emotional,moral, and pragmatic affordances of such transnational relationships across difference andinequality.


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ABSTRACTSExperiences of sexual and love relationships with tourist women lead Cuban men to articulateand act upon different – often contradictory – models of masculinity. Gossiping among peers, it iscommon to brag about one’s sexual conquests and exploits with tourist women; in contrast, wheninteracting with foreigners, men tend to insist on their allegiance to a romantic lover ideal.Intimate experiences with tourist partners also lead to reassess relationships with Cuban women,in which the men’s wealth is portrayed as the key for accessing (just) sex. These contradictoryenactments of masculinity call for a situated and multilayered understanding of Cuban men’saffective, moral, and pragmatic concerns as they move in and out of the world of tourism.Important dimensions of their paradoxical enactments of masculinities can thus be highlightedand explained. What emerges is that in struggling to respond to competing demands, aspirations,and vectors of power, Cuban men’s purposeful alignments as “breadwinners,” “sex machines,”and “romantic lovers” afford different relational possibilities and expressions of masculinity. Bytaking seriously these possibilities, the article illuminates the transformations of masculinitiesthat tourism engenders, assessing its potential to amplify and subvert (stereo)-typicalconfigurations of “being a man” in present-day Cuba.

A experiência de relações sexuais e amorosas com turistas do sexo feminino leva os homenscubanos a articular diferentes modelos de masculinidade, frequentemente contraditórios entresi. Entre pares, esses homens gabam-se das suas conquistas sexuais entre as turistas, mas nainteração com as estrangeiras insistem na lealdade ao ideal de amante romântico. A intimidadecom turistas conduz também à reapreciação das relações com as mulheres cubanas, nas quais ariqueza do homem é vista como a chave de acesso ao sexo (apenas). Estas performancescontraditórias da masculinidade convidam a uma compreensão situada e multidimensional daspreocupações afetivas, morais e pragmáticas dos homens cubanos na sua relação com o mundodo turismo, o que permite esclarecer e explicar dimensões importantes dessas atuaçõesparadoxais. Para dar resposta a exigências, aspirações e vetores de poder conflituais entre si, oalinhamento intencional dos homens cubanos com as categorias de “provedores de sustento”,“máquinas sexuais” e “amantes românticos” abre diferentes possibilidades de relacionamento eexpressões da masculinidade. Encarando com seriedade tais possibilidades, o artigo contribuipara a compreensão das transformações da masculinidade geradas pelo turismo, avaliando o seupotencial para ampliar e subverter configurações (estereo)típicas do que é hoje “ser um homem”em Cuba.

INDEX

Palavras-chave: masculinidades, turismo, moralidades, sexo, amor, CubaKeywords: masculinities, tourism, moralities, sex, love, Cuba

AUTHOR

VALERIO SIMONI

Department of Anthropology and Sociology of Development, Graduate Institute of Internationaland Development Studies, [email protected]


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