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Paradoxes of Intimacy: Play and the Ethics of Invisibility in North-east Brazil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2016

MATAN SHAPIRO
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Abstract

In this article I examine ordinary ethical practices that underpin intimate relations in the Brazilian state of Maranhão. I focus ethnographically on jealousy and seduction as complementary forms of play, which simultaneously affirm and challenge such aspects of emotional relatedness as trust and love. I argue that since a measure of concealment is inherent in both these play-forms, they render invisible those actions that challenge conventional moral injunctions, such as sexual infidelity. I consequently offer an ethnographic theory of ‘invisibility’ by which opacity, uncertainty and paradox become intrinsic to the emergence of intimate relations as ethical practices in their own right.

Spanish abstract

En este artículo examino las prácticas éticas cotidianas que sostienen las relaciones íntimas en el estado brasileño de Maranhão. Me centro etnográficamente en los celos y la seducción como formas complementarias del juego íntimo, lo que simultáneamente afirman y desafían aspectos de una relación emocional como la confianza y el amor. Afirmo que ya que un grado de ocultamiento es inherente en ambas formas de tal juego, tales acciones se hacen invisibles y desafían prohibiciones morales convencionales, como la infidelidad sexual. Por lo tanto, ofrezco una teoría etnográfica de ‘invisibilidad’ por donde la opacidad, lo incierto y la paradoja se vuelven algo intrínseco al surgimiento de relaciones íntimas como prácticas éticas en si mismas.

Portuguese abstract

Neste artigo examino práticas morais comuns que sustentam relações íntimas no estado do Maranhão, Brasil. Foco etnograficamente no ciúme e na sedução como formas complementares de cortejo, os quais simultaneamente afirmam e desafiam aspectos de ligação emocional como confiança e amor. Considerando que certa medida de ocultação é inerente a ambas essas formas de cortejo, argumento que elas tornam invisíveis ações que desafiam restrições morais, como a infidelidade sexual. Ofereço, consequentemente, uma teoria etnográfica sobre ‘invisibilidade’ na qual opacidade, incerteza e paradoxos tornam-se intrínsecos à emergência de relações íntimas como práticas morais em si.

Keywords

playparadoxMaranhão/Brazilrelatednessinvisibilityordinary-ethicsintimacyjuego íntimoparadojaMaranhão/Brasilrelacióninvisibilidadética cotidianaintimidadcortejoparadoxoMaranhão/Brasilconectividadeinvisibilidadeética (moralidade) comumintimidade
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , November 2016 , pp. 797 - 821
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

1 I interviewed Seu Reginaldo in 2010. Although the Brazilian law obliging men to ‘assume responsibility’ over loss of virginity or the impregnating of under-age girls was annulled in 1940, my data suggests that it was enforced in remote regions of Maranhão at least until the 1960s. See also Octavio da Costa Eduardo, The Negro in Northern Brazil: A Study in Acculturation (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1966[1948]), pp. 34–5; and Sueann Caulfield, Defense of Honor: Sexual Morality, Modernity, and Nation in Early–twentieth Century Brazil (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000).

2 See Linda-Anne Rebhun, The Heart Is Unknown Country: Love in the Changing Economy of Northeast Brazil (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), Introduction.

3 This tension between discourse and practice is prevalent beyond the Brazilian context in other Latin American and Caribbean low-income realities. See for example Peter J. Wilson, Crab Antics: A Caribbean Case Study of the Conflict Between Reputation and Respectability (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1995) and Amalia L. Cabezas, Economies of Desire: Sex and Tourism in Cuba and the Dominican Republic (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2009).

4 In 2010 Maranhão registered 6,569,683 inhabitants of whom about 37 per cent defined as ‘rural population’ and 15 per cent lived in São Luís. Here I mainly draw on material collected in Santo Amaro but the notions of play and concealment on which I elaborate below apply also to Guanabara. This is because a single theme of sociality, moral conduct and types of affective linkages characterise both these locations so that notions of ethical personhood ultimately encompass the rural-urban divide.

5 See Segato, Rita L., ‘The Colour-Blind Subject of Myth: Or, Where to Find Africa in the Nation’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 27 (1998), pp. 129–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and more recently Collins, John, ‘Melted Gold and National Bodies: The Hermeneutics of Depth and the Value of History in Brazilian Racial Politics’, American Ethnologist, 38: 4 (2011), pp. 683–700 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For further reading on race and colour mixture in Latin America see Wade, Peter, ‘Rethinking Mestizaje: Ideology and Lived Experience’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 37 (2005), pp. 239–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 The data presented here are taken from the IBGE, Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics), available at http://censo2010.ibge.gov.br/.

7 The term ‘familial arrangements’ (arranjos familiares) includes any grassroots definition of ‘families’ in the Brazil. This means that ‘kinship links’ technically include both contractual and consanguine relations that cut across domestic units (domicilios particulares); while ‘families’ are essentially isomorphic with co-residence. Socio-economic indices are measured in accordance with the differential composition of households.

8 See for example Donna M. Goldstein, Laughter Out of Place: Race, Class, Violence, and Sexuality in a Rio Shantytown (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003). For a historical perspective see Susan K. Besse, Restructuring Patriarchy: The Modernization of Gender Inequality in Brazil, 1914–1940 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).

9 See Claudia Fonseca, ‘Philanderers, Cuckolds, and Wily Women: Reexamining Gender Relations in a Brazilian Working-Class Neighborhood’, in Matthew C. Gutmann (ed.), Changing Men and Masculinities in Latin America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2003a), pp. 61–83; and Walmsley, Emily, ‘Raised by Another Mother: Informal Fostering and Kinship Ambiguities in Northwest Ecuador’, Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 13: 1 (2008), pp. 168–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 In 1984, when the last but one of Seu Joaquim's ten children was born, he asked Seu Sansão to become her padrinho (godfather). He thus formalised their long-term friendship. For further reading on consideração as a vector of intimate relations see Marcelin, Louis Herns, ‘A linguagem da casa entre os negros no reconcavo baiano’, Mana: Estudos de Antropologia Social, 2 (1999), pp. 31–60 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Marcelin portrays a continuum between ‘blood’ and ‘consideration’ (consideração) across three concentric circles. The closer to the innermost circle a person is located (i.e. conviviality), the more he/she is ‘considered’ family. The further towards the external circle, ‘blood’ is used as a vector of relatedness.

11 See Claudia Fonseca, Família, fofoca e honra: etnografia de relações de gênero e violência em grupos populares (Rio Grande do Sul: Editora da Universidade, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, 2000); and Maya Mayblin Gender, Catholicism, and Morality in Brazil: Virtuous Husbands, Powerful Wives (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2010).

12 See Fonseca, Claudia, ‘Inequality Near and Far: Adoption as Seen from the Brazilian Favelas’, Law & Society Review, 36: 2 (2002), pp. 397–432 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Klaas Woortmann, A família das mulheres (Rio de Janeiro: Tempo Brasileiro em co-edição com o Conselho de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, 1987).

13 Viviana Zelizer, The Purchase of Intimacy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 18.

14 See Shapiro, Matan, ‘Intimate Events: The Correctness of Affective Transactions in Northeast Brazil’, Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 33: 2 (2015) pp. 90–105 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Parry Scott, ‘Matrifocal Males: Gender, Perception and Experience of the Domestic Domain in Brazil’, in Mary Jo Maynes, Ann Waltner, Birgitte Soland and Ulrike Strasser (eds.) Gender, Kinship, Power: A Comparative Interdisciplinary History (New York and London: Routledge, 1996) pp. 287–301.

15 See Roger N. Lancaster, Life Is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992); and Stanley H. Brandes, Metaphors of Masculinity: Sex and Status in Andalusian Folklore (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980).

16 Maranhão é terra boa/ terra que Deus nos conduz – De dia falta água/ de noite falta luz/ E se há uma casa sem corno/ É só por descuido de Jesus.

17 Um brinde a nós mulheres, portadoras da sedução, que nenhum homem vagabundo é capaz de destruir. Que os nossos sejam nossos, que os delas sejam nossos, que nunca venham a ser delas. Se for para ser, que broxem. Eu bebo porque vejo estampada no fundo desse copo a foto do homem amado, morre afogado, vagabundo desgraçado. Que nossa fonte nunca seque e nossa sogra não se chama esperança, porque esperança é a ultima que morre. E a partir de 13 anos estamos pegando tudo, porque homem só tem três utilidades – pagar conta, carregar a mala e levar chifres.

18 This popular joke draws on an hypothetical situation of a man trying to convince his new girlfriend that he only wants to introduce the ‘tip’ of his penis into her vagina.

19 See also notions of female infidelity in a low-income neighbourhood of Salvador in Sarah Hautzinger, Violence in the City of Women: Police and Batterers in Bahia, Brazil (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007).

20 Roberto DaMatta, Carnivals, Rogues, and Heroes: An Interpretation of the Brazilian Dilemma (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991); and A casa e a rua: espaço, cidadania, mulher e morte no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 1997).

21 Novo dicionário eletrônico Aurélio (Curitiba: Editora Positivo, 2010). I will use ‘ciúmes’ because unlike the English ‘jealousy’ and ‘envy’ it indicates simultaneously the possessing of and caring for a person.

22 Erving Goffman, Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1961).

23 The Afro-Brazilian religion generic to Maranhão is Tambor de Mina. It draws on reciprocity of money, food and objects with spiritual entities during possession-trance ceremonies, which take place in a cult-house or terreiro. Priests are called pais (for men) or mães (for women) de Santo. See Mundicarmo Maria Rocha Ferretti, Desceu na guma: o caboclo do tambor de mina em um terreiro de São Luís – a Casa Fanti-Ashanti (São Luís: EDUFITIA, 2000).

24 Michael Lambek, ‘Introduction’, In Michael Lambek (ed.), Ordinary Ethics: Anthropology, Language, and Action (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), pp. 1–36.

25 See Michael Lambek, ‘Towards an Ethics of the Act’, in Michael Lambek (ed.), Ordinary Ethics: Anthropology, Language, and Action (New York: Fordham University Press 2010), p. 55.

26 Roberto DaMatta (1991) describes malandragem as the weapons of the weak of the Brazilian poor, a performative improvisation aimed at making-do through deliberate subversion and the manipulation of rules.

27 See Jean L. Briggs, Inuit Morality Play: The Emotional Education of a Three-year-old (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998); Brian Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); and Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2000 [1972]), pp. 177–93.

28 Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (London: Maurice Temple Smith Ltd, 1970), pp. 8–11; for a recent critique see Peter G. Stromberg, Caught in Play: How Entertainment Works on You (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), pp. 101–5.

29 Ehrmann, Jacques, ‘Homo Ludens Revisited’, Yale French Studies, 41 (1968), pp. 31–57 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Caillois argues that the controlled boundaries of any instituted ‘game’ consist of a wide range of activities, which correspond to four types of play-forms: competition (agōn), chance/luck (alea), simulation (mimicry) and vertigo (ilinx: a game premised on thrill). Roger Caillois, Man, Play, and Games (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001), pp. 14–26.

31 Fink, Eugen, ‘The Oasis of Happiness: Toward an Ontology of Play’, Yale French Studies, 41 (1968), pp. 19–30 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Don Handelman, Models and Mirrors: Towards an Anthropology of Public Events (New York: Berghahn Books, 1998), p. 68. For example, when I emulate a pistol with my fingers my hand is at once my hand, a pistol or both, and therefore during the temporality of the play episode it may well be neither.

33 Cabeça is ‘head’, which in this context could mean the man's ‘brains’ or the tip of his penis.

34 ‘Que time é teu?’ (‘Which team is yours?’) vs. ‘Quem te meteu?’ (‘Who stuck you up?’).

35 See Richard G. Parker, Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions: Sexual Culture in Contemporary Brazil (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1991); and Don Kulick, Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture Among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

36 Handelman, Don, ‘Passages to Play: Paradox and Process’, Play and Culture, 5 (1992), pp. 1–19 Google Scholar.

37 For example, women regularly expect their partners to have sex with them several times in a row, and see refusal as lack of interest. For further reading on sexuality and the construction of gendered identities see McCallum, Cecilia, ‘Restraining Women: Gender, Sexuality and Modernity in Salvador da Bahia’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 18: 3 (1999), pp. 275–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 For distinction between different kinds of social boundaries see Lamont, Michele and Molnar, Virag, ‘The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences’, Annual Review of Sociology 2002, pp. 168–9Google Scholar.

39 See Don Handelman, Models and Mirrors, pp. 246–7. Handelman claims that clowns are epitomes of paradox because they do not break the moral precepts that distinguish seriousness and play but rather dissipate the boundaries between these oppositions. Like a Moebius strip, they constantly shift between gravity and frivolity and this constitutes a porous boundary between figure and ground, which come to implicate each other.

40 Motel in Brazil is a short-term room let most commonly used for sexual encounters.

41 Ramon Sarró, The Politics of Religious Change on the Upper Guinea Coast Iconoclasm Done and Undone (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), p. 144. Sarró convincingly demonstrates that despite rigorous Islamic iconoclasm in the 1950s and 1960s, traditional sacred sites and religious objects of the Baga on the upper Guinea coast are merely ‘removed from the senses’ (ibid., 6–7). In other words, deep-seated cultural inscription still stands ‘behind’ the overt visibility of things so that knowledge of absence is as powerful as the ethical projections of the present icons.

42 Carla told me that she became pregnant due to the affair, and consequently induced an abortion using folk medicine. In Brazil state-funded abortions are legal only in cases of rape or life-threatening pregnancy complications. For a comparison with other Latin American contexts see Mala Htun, Sex and the State: Abortion, Divorce, and the Family Under Latin American Dictatorships and Democracies (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

43 I here adopt Simmel's approach to secrecy, which focuses on the reciprocity between the person who protects a secret and the person who attempts to reveal it. See Simmel, Georg ‘The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies’, The American Journal of Sociology, 11: 4 (2006), pp. 441–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 Michael Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy (New York and London: Routledge, 2005[1997]), p. 52.

45 Exú is the spiritual entity in Afro-Brazilian spiritual doctrines who links divine and mundane realities.

46 In the context of Caribbean ethnography Peter Wilson, Crab Antics, develops a similar argument, which turns on the tension between ‘respectability’ and ‘reputation’. These idioms refer respectively to actors’ adherence to prescriptive etiquette on the one hand and their ‘good character’ on the other.

47 My analysis is based on Jackson's narrative. I could not interview Juliana because she no longer lives in São Luís.

48 I assume that Juliana too must have heard (and inquired about) Jackson's betrayals, but I cannot verify that.

49 Jackson used the term programa, which in Brazil is a euphemism for prostitution schemes.

50 Zigon, Jarrett, ‘Within a Range of Possibilities: Morality and Ethics in Social Life’, Ethnos, 74: 2 (2009), p. 263 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Anthony Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love, and Eroticism in Modern Societies (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992). For a well-crafted critique of this approach see Berlant, Lauren, ‘Intimacy: A Special Issue’, Critical Inquiry, 24: 2 (1998), pp. 281–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 William James, A Pluralistic Universe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1977[1909]).

53 David C. Lamberth, William James and the Metaphysics of Experience (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 156.

54 This assertion aligns with the notion of ‘cordiality’ in Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Raizes do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: J. Olympio, 1936). See also Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992); and in a Caribbean context Edith Clarke, My Mother Who Fathered Me: A Study of the Families in Three Selected Communities of Jamaica (Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 1999[1959]).

55 Paul C. Johnson, Secrets, Gossip, and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Candomblé (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 59–63. See also the seminal works by Roger Bastide, The African Religions of Brazil: Toward a Sociology of the Interpenetration of Civilizations (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978); and Yvonne Alves Velho Maggie, Guerra de Orixá: um estudo de ritual e conflito (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar Editores, 1977).

56 Two peoples (or ‘nations’ as they are locally known in Maranhão) were brutally funnelled into slavery in Maranhão. These are the Yoruba-speaking Nagô people and Ewe-speaking Jeje (or Fon) people. A significant number of slaves were captured in the Kingdom of Dahomey, which stretched across today's Benin and Western Nigeria (cf. Edurado, p. 47).

57 Daniel Linger ‘The Hegemony of Discontent’, in Daniel Linger, Anthropology through a Double Lens: Public and Personal Worlds in Human Theory (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press 2005) pp. 79–110. For a similar argument in the context of municipality-level political systems in north-east Brazil see Ansell, Aaron, ‘Lula's Assault on Rural Patronage: Zero Hunger, Ethnic Mobilization and the Deployment of Pilgrimage, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 42: 6 (2015), pp. 1263–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 For theoretical elaboration see Mary Douglas, Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology (London and Boston, MA: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), pp. 148–9; and Babcock-Abrahams, Barbara, ‘“A Tolerated Margin of Mess”: The Trickster and His Tales Reconsidered’, Journal of the Folklore Institute, 11: 3 (1975), pp. 147–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 On life-cycle see the classic works of Meyer Fortes, Kinship and the Social Order: The Legacy of Lewis Henry Morgan (Chicago, IL: Aldine Publishing Company, 1969); and Raymond Smith, The Matrifocal Family: Power, Pluralism, and Politics (New York and London: Routledge, 1996).

60 See also Antonius Robben, Sons of the Sea Goddess: Economic Practice and Discursive Conflict in Brazil (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989).

61 See also Ben R. Penglas, Living with Insecurity in a Brazilian Favela: Urban Violence and Daily Life (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014), chap. 3.

62 Jessica Gregg, Virtually Virgins: Sexual Strategies and Cervical Cancer in Recife, Brazil (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003).

63 For example, a friend once recounted how he refrained from talking to a woman who was staring at him on the bus, only to find out later that that woman was a ‘colleague’ of his wife who was ‘testing’ his fidelity.

64 Stephen Nugent, Amazonian Caboclo Society: An Essay on Invisibility and Peasant Economy (London: Berg, 1993).

65 Donald Martin Carter, Navigating the African Diaspora: The Anthropology of Invisibility (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), p. 5.

66 Laidlaw in Lambek (2010a), p. 27.