[aesthetics of
perversity]




The following excerpts were taken from (a) chapter five ["Strategic
Pain: Fetishism and Sadomasochism in CENTOPÉIA: SONETOS NOJENTOS &
QUEJANDOS"] of Butterman's thesis; and (b) its "Conclusion," including
the topics: (a) "Depathologizing and Reinforcing Aesthetics of
Perversity" and (b) "Re-thinking Perversity." [1]


(a) DEPATHOLOGIZING AND REINFORCING AESTHETICS OF PERVERSITY


The title of this section may seem contradictory, but it actually
reflects a paradox that Mattoso's CENTOPÉIA: SONETOS NOJENTOS &
QUEJANDOS sustains throughout. There are poems which fervently attempt
to normalize alternate sexualities, and there are others which remain
committed to preserving the romantic isolation and severe judgment of
the bizarre perversity of fetishistic and sadomasochistic desires. One
of the strengths of Mattoso's work falls in the tension he is able to
maintain expressed by a conflicted poetic voice who clamors for
acceptance as intensely as he asserts a radical distantiation of the
self. Thus, Mattoso's project, as we shall see, is only partially
invested with McCallum's ultimate goal "to rescue fetishism from the
taint of sexual perversion, raising it to the higher cultural value of
an intellectual phenomenon" (64).

Mattoso is just as committed as McCallum in trying to show how fetishism
may be an expression of everyday lives, carving out an autonomous sense
of self whose boundaries resist simplistic categorization. However,
Mattoso simultaneously adopts and mocks the traditional psychoanalytic
theory which views all fetishes as phallic symbols and therefore
deliberately reduces the complexity and multiple levels of meaning
explored in feminist writings on fetishism since the 1980s. Much of this
work has effectively shown that the idea of perversion is completely
dependent upon the patriarchal subscription to genital heterosexuality
as the norm in sexual relations. [2] Mattoso's poetry, filled with
protests against anti-phallocentric impositions upon an autonomous self,
most certainly subscribes politically to the neutralization of
"perversion" explored above. His "Soneto Orogenital" conveys contempt
for heterosexual fellatio, relocating the sexual activity far below the
equator and reconfiguring what is conventionally conceived as
"fore-play" or "end-pleasures" [3] to the center stage of the sexual
performance:


SONETO 41 OROGENITAL

"Fellatio" é a quintessência do prazer,
assim diz o tratado de erotismo.
Lição que humilha as fãs do feminismo,
no esforço que a mulher tem de fazer:

Chupar calada até satisfazer;
garganta mais profunda que um abismo;
e língua calejada em "balanismo",
premissas basilares vêm a ser.

No pé já muda a coisa de figura:
em vez de sebo e mijo, tem chulé,
frieira e calo, além de mais largura.

Os cegos, que são bons de picolé,
superam a mulher na zona impura,
palavra de quem chupa o pau num pé.


OROGENITAL SONNET (#41)

Fellatio is the quintessence of pleasure,
so says the treatise on eroticism.
This lesson humiliates the fans of feminism,
due to the effort women have to make:

Sucking in silence until the man is satisfied;
throat deeper than an abyss;
and tongue skilled by glans-licking,
these are the basic premises.

On the foot, there's another pair of shoes:
instead of cock-cheese and piss, toe-jam,
chilblain and callouses, besides the larger width.

Blind men, who suck popsicles so well,
surpass women in the impure zone,
word of honor from one who sucks a foot like a cock.

(translated by Akira Nishimura)


The poem laments the rigid roles of submission that the woman is
expected to play in patriarchal cultures. Her responsibility, the poetic
voice implies, is to quietly satisfy the desires of the man, subjecting
herself to the the foul odor of "cock-cheese" that emanates from the
foreskin of the penis and ingesting vast quantities of his semen and
urine. The experience of oral sex is rendered, at the hands of the poet,
a repulsive one, thereby inverting and demeaning the age-old "lesson" of
fellatio to the status of perversion. The use of the phrase "zona
impura" contributes further to the pathologizing of
erotically-acceptable behaviors in general. By the same token, he
inserts the foot in the place of the penis, normalizing the act of oral
sex itself while arguing that the only essential difference in foot
worship is the body's natural emission of other foul odors. In fact, the
poetic voice seems to advertise the benefits of sucking the foot, for it
is wider than the penis and does not entail the ingestion of repulsive
and potentially harmful bodily substances. As we have seen before,
Mattoso is literalizing and simplifying (thus mocking) Freudian
psychoanalytic theories which cannot escape the phallus as a point of
reference to any and all sexual desires.

"Soneto Nojento" is essentially a strong poetic defense of fetishism,
emphasizing the relativity of notions of "normality" and questioning
canonized notions of "good taste." Once again, the poetic voice attacks
the judgmental subject, finding perverse and repulsive patterns in
conventional everyday choices and practices. Most of his examples
revolve around images of food, relevant in the sense that his fetish is
orally celebrated. Ultimately, determining what is "normal" becomes an
impossibility. Mattoso maximizes linguistic strategies to achieve this
effect. For example, the paranomastic link between "pé" (foot) and "pó"
(dust) makes this combination much more aesthetically connected than
"chá gelado" (iced tea) and "peixe cru" (raw fish) :


SONETO 10 NOJENTO

Tem gente que censura o meu fetiche:
lamber pé masculino e o seu calçado.
Mas, só de ver no quê o povo é chegado,
não posso permitir que alguém me piche.

Onde é que já se viu ter sanduíche
de fruta ou vegetal mal temperado?
E pizza de banana? E chá gelado?
Frutos do mar? Rabada? Jiló? Vixe!

Café sem adoçar? Feijão sem sal?
Rã? Cobra? Peixe cru? Lesma gigante?
Farofa de uva passa? Isso é normal?

Quem gosta disso tudo não se espante
com minha preferência sexual:
lamber o pé e o pó do seu pisante.


NAUSEATING SONNET (#10)

Some people condemn my fetish:
to lick the male foot and his footwear.
But, as I see what other people like,
I won't allow anyone to put me down.

Who ever heard of a sandwich
of fruit or unseasoned vegetable?
And banana pizza? And iced tea?
Seafood? Oxtail? Bitter legumes? My goodness!

Coffee without sugar? Beans without salt?
Frog? Snake? Raw fish? Giant snail?
Raisins mixed with salty food? Is that normal?

Whoever likes all those things should not be shocked
by my sexual preference:
to lick the foot and the dust from its footwear.

(translated by Akira Nishimura)


The normalization and veritable advertisement of the pleasures of foot
fetishism is not the sole objective of Mattoso's project. Many poems
endorse the pleasure of perversity itself, a joyfulness where survival
is dependent on resisting integration with sexual norms and maintaining
the mark of subversion. Mattoso accomplishes this re-radicalization of
his departure from the norm by exploiting differences of desire that
pertain to foot fetishism itself. For example, "Soneto Antiestético" is
the ultimate valorization of the anti-aesthetic, for it presents and
then systematically rejects allusions to foot fetishism found and
canonized in Western and particularly Brazilian literary traditions:


SONETO 19 ANTIESTÉTICO

Bandeira quis cantar, como Delfino,
uns pés de musa tipo Cinderela;
e o Alencar, na "Pata da gazela",
também rendeu-se a um pé bem feminino.

Não vou dizer que é fêmea o que abomino,
mas minha preferência não é bela
nem doce e perfumada como aquela
que cabe em salto alto e bico fino.

O pé que almejo é sujo e chulepento,
e, em vez de curva, tem a sola chata,
provando que tamanho é documento.

Portanto, me permitam que rebata:
procuro ser isento, e bem que tento
gostar de pé de pato e pé de pata.


ANTI-AESTHETIC SONNET (#19)

Bandeira, like Delfino, wanted to celebrate
some muse's feet such as Cinderella's;
and Alencar, in "A pata da gazela,"
also surrendered to a quite feminine foot.

I'm not going to say that I hate females,
but my preference is not beauty
nor is it sweet or perfumed like the one  
which fits in high heels and pointed shoes.

The foot I crave is dirty and stinky,
and, instead of being curved, its sole is flat,
proving that size matters.

Therefore, allow me to refute:
I seek to be exempt, and even try
to love a male duck as well as a female duck's feet.

(translated by Akira Nishimura)


The poetic voice is not inclined to worship an object that is beautiful,
sweet, and perfumed. Instead, he renounces any attraction to the purity
and daintiness symbolized by the feet of a young woman. It is important
to note that he is careful to renounce any hint of misogyny,
establishing that his sexual attraction to the male foot does not equate
to a hatred toward women: "Não vou dizer que é fêmea o que abomino."
However, the poet clearly announces that he is not enticed by the
aesthetically acceptable curves and arch of the foot he desires. Rather,
in camp terminology, it might be said that he is a "size queen,"
sexually stimulated by the flatness and width of a large masculine foot.
Similarly, dirt and odor replace the perfumed, sweet fragrance that
emanates from the feet of the heroine. The pun in the final verse is
significant, for "pé de pata," literally referring to the web of a
female duck, also carries the slang connotation of a big foot. "Pato,"
the male duck, also has a colloquial rendering as a "bad player" or a
"sucker," both configurations to which this Brazilian "maudit" poet
self-identifies.

A similar rupture of aesthetic attitudes toward foot worship can be
found in a number of Mattoso's poems throughout the CENTOPÉIA. For
example, in "Soneto Histórico," the poetic voice elaborates specific
requirements for his object of desire, factors which must be met as a
prerequisite for the stimulation of his libido. Then, he attempts to
locate ancient civilizations where his tastes were once revered and
appreciated by others: "Ouvi que o pé que tenho procurado, / com seu
dedão mais curto que o segundo, / já foi muito comum no Antigo Mundo / e
'egípcio' seu formato hoje é chamado" (2.24). Poems like this one
demonstrate that the poet does indeed have an aesthetic prescription for
the foot he desires but it is clearly one which bears little connection
to the Western canon.


SONETO 24 HISTÓRICO

Ouvi que o pé que tenho procurado,
com seu dedão mais curto que o segundo,
já foi muito comum no Antigo Mundo
e "egípcio" seu formato hoje é chamado.

Lhes digo sem temor de estar errado:
o pé do brasileiro é vagabundo.
E quando nesse assunto me aprofundo,
constato que não passo dum coitado.

Quem foi que me mandou ser fetichista,
se o pé mais à mão nunca me contenta?
O jeito é elementar: eu que desista

da estética, que nada representa.
Além do mais, quem já perdeu a vista
que lamba um tênis número cinqüenta!


HISTORICAL SONNET (#24)

I have been told that the foot for which I am searching
the one which has its big toe shorter than the second toe,
was very common in the Ancient World
and today its shape is called "Egyptian."

I tell you, not afraid of being wrong:
the foot of Brazilians is ordinary.
And when I search deeply into this subject,
I realize that I am nothing but a wretch.

Who told me to be a fetishist,
if the most available foot does not satisfy me?
The solution is elementary: I'd better give up

the aesthetics, which mean nothing.
Besides, whoever has lost his eyesight
should lick a size fifty sneaker!

(translated by Akira Nishimura; see also "Soneto Imperfeccionista"
clicking [SELECTED SONNETS])


Indeed, even podophilia has its standards of cleanliness and aesthetic
appeal in conformity with historical literary tastes. In the Brazilian
tradition, erotic foot imagery is evidenced, for example, in José de
Alencar's A PATA DA GAZELA, which is essentially a re-writing of the
Cinderella fable, adapted to the aristocracy of nineteenth-century Rio
de Janeiro. What has traditionally been considered acceptable in the
Western canon is the admiration (if not a disguised or aestheticized
fetish) for the feminine, delicate, tiny foot, imbued with an erotic
symbolism that accentuates the sensuality of the female body. Mattoso's
performance is dependent upon a rupture of the aesthetically perfumed
foot of a lady, preferring instead the stinky, toejam-infested, large,
flat feet of a "machão."

The poetic voice may not be accused, therefore, of embracing an
anti-aesthetic posture for its own sake or merely to self-identify as a
radical subject. [4] Indeed, in poems like "Soneto Cristão," where the
poetic voice assumes the identity of a "cego pervertido," proudly
celebrating his own "verve e perversão" (2.32), there remains a constant
need to reaffirm the subversive perversity of his desires, an argument
proclaimed as vigorously as the goal to normalize these very desires.


SONETO 32 CRISTÃO

Do Cristianismo aquilo que seduz
um cego pervertido como eu
é o que na Santa Ceia aconteceu:
a máxima humildade de Jesus.

Lavou, secou, beijou Ele os pés nus
de cada secular seguidor Seu.
O gesto em tradição se converteu,
e eu próprio a repeti-lo me propus.

Segui o exemplo audaz do Cardeal,
que faz questão de pé de trombadinha,
na cor, idade e número ideal.

Porém prostrei-me ao único que tinha:
mais um deficiente visual,
com verve e perversão igual à minha.


CHRISTIAN SONNET (#32)

From Christianity, that which seduces
a perverted blind man like me
is that which took place at The Last Supper:
the extreme humility of Jesus.

He washed, dried, kissed the naked feet
of each of his secular followers.
That gesture became traditional,
and I myself decided to repeat it.

I followed the bold example of the Cardinal,
who insists on the foot of juvenile delinquents,
in its ideal color, age and size.

But I prostrated myself to the only one I had:
another visually handicapped,
with verve and perversion like my own.

(translated by Akira Nishimura)


In Mattoso's poetic universe, the landscape of human sexuality
reluctantly but ultimately continues to diversify.


(b) RE-THINKING PERVERSITY

If, as I have tried to establish during the course of this thesis, a
critical reading of Mattoso's poetic contributions demands new
theorizations of "perversity," not encompassed within conventional
genital heterosexuality, then I would like to summarize a new platform
of perversity, one which is constituted by the components highlighted
below. The first characteristic is an inversion of the patriarchal
notion of forepleasure, which is traditionally conceived as a prelude to
the climactic level where intercourse takes place. In Freudian
psychoanalysis, pleasures are characterized as perverse if they linger
too long before the "sex act" consummates the desire initiated and
stimulated by such play. Mattoso's sexual universe not only partakes in
an extension of forepleasures — an "overinvestment" Freud may have said
— but is actually defined by it and frozen at that point. Thus,
repetition of fetishistic behaviors occurs with such (ironically)
mundane intensity that progression to intercourse is almost never an
option. Karmen MacKendrick reinvokes the redundant voice of Sade to
illustrate this process:


[The final Sadean violence is not against the Other, the body of the
victim, but against consciousness itself, using its own methods — its
own iterative, discursive, and free rationality — to bring into it the
potent force of destruction, the infinite intensity of repetition. When
everything has been said again, all sense is shattered.] (49)


Within the infinitely pre-orgasmic stage of sexual excitation, orgasm is
de-emphasized, "jouissance" is no longer characterized principally by
sexual penetration. Reading Mattoso is far more productive if the critic
heeds the decentering of the phallus and the notions of pre-genital play
of children emphasized in a postmodern interpretation of Freudian
"polymorphous perversity."

Furthermore, Freud's "pleasure principle," which essentially equates
sexual tension with displeasure and orgasmic release with dissipation of
tension, is totally undermined in Mattoso's verses. Mattoso's poetic
voice is libidinally motivated by a sense of pleasure WITHIN the
tension, to the point where pain is the inevitable but chosen outcome.
Freud relegated a prolonged sustaining or increase in tension to the
status of perversity. However, as Karmen MacKendrick points out, "The
sole aim of perverse sexuality is pleasure: pleasure in the service of
nothing whatsoever, not even the release of tension. But if the increase
in tension is perversity, all sexuality is more or less perverse" (10).

Mattoso's valorization of the necessity of tension itself is
representative of his sustained contradiction between clamoring for
acceptance and endorsing perversity, a motif I have attempted to address
throughout the dissertation. This intentionally dramatized dilemma in
Mattoso is at the core of his project, one which embraces ambiguity,
irreconcilable dualities, and perhaps most importantly, an escape from
categorical definitions which would ultimately have the power to
de(con)struct the author's development of transgressive themes.
MacKendrick theorizes the tension inherent in this suspended state as
the need to resist containment:


[We seek easy classification; a pleasure, even a counterpleasure, is
normal or it is pathological. To pathologize is to dismiss from serious
consideration. But to normalize any of these pleasures is equally
dismissive. To normalize, which is part of what it means to take any
marginal element into the mainstream, is to render safe and harmless,
and THAT is to render these pleasures null, because they are pleasures
dependent UPON transgression [...] What transgresses is precisely what
cannot be contained, what bursts the boundaries, rendering the center
(the safe, harmless, assimilationist center) nowhere at all.] (17)


Throughout this dissertation, I have employed an eclectic cultural
studies framework to show how, in Glauco Mattoso's poetic universe,
postmodernism, gender theory, performance theory, and construction of
subjectivity may be used to interpret and assess the validity of an
author whose queer-themed project has been largely ignored. Political
subversion is successfully carried out whilst the subject is
simultaneously (de)constructed and de-aestheticized. If the personal is
indeed the political, a philosophy to which this reader subscribes, then
the erotically-charged, sadomasochistic body becomes a tool for
political commentary on the nature and (ab)uses of power defined in the
postmodern paradigm established during the course of this thesis.
Indeed, if Mattoso's poetic contributions may be placated under the
umbrella of feminist theory on gender subversions and construction, it
also transgresses the boundaries of conventional feminisms. As
MacKendrick perceptively observes:


[Recent theory suggests that gender may be another of the boundaries
with which it (s/m) delights in playing — it becomes not only
gender-bending but what the artist Bob Flanagan gleefully labeled
'gender demolition.' This playfulness with gender, here as elsewhere, is
unsettling to more traditional feminisms, which require a firm sense of
gender boundaries if they are to be supportive of women. Thus s/m takes
its place among the practices of the postmodern, in which the identity
of the subject becomes a performance, sometimes fluid, sometimes an open
question. Practices can deconstruct as well as construct identities;
these practices of pleasure do both.] (100)


Indeed, a ludic attitude toward constructions of gender does not inhibit
a critical commentary on how societies configure and conceptualize such
categories. In fact, Mattoso expresses such playfulness — by Brazilian
standards, a "brincadeira" so thorough that it achieves the lofty
proportions of "sacanagem," colloquial Brazilian Portuguese terms
problematized throughout this thesis — in order to subvert and critique
the seriousness implied in viewing conventional genital heterosexuality
as the only standard by which normality and perversity are assessed.

To return now to the fundamental questions raised in the Introduction of
this thesis [1] and examined throughout, we must inevitably confront
some essential contradictions encouraged and sustained by Mattoso's
quest for transgression. It seems far too simplistic to make the claim
that Mattoso's focus away from the phallus and onto the foot is enough
to defy patriarchal order, even on a metaphorical level. One cannot deny
that within the transference of emphasis from one body part onto
another, a symbolic power accompanies the exchange; this power clearly
and ironically represents many of the very tenets of patriarchy that
Mattoso disdains. By obliterating the phallus and embracing the foot,
Mattoso does not fully degender the sexual exchange. After all, his
verses make clear a longing for large, masculinized, dirtied flat feet;
thus the object of his desire is still infused with profound
masculinity, even if it does not have the power to dominate through
penetration. Similarly, in much of Mattoso's work, as we have seen
throughout this thesis, a destructive and dominating power is conferred
onto the foot. If, in a "machista" mentality, the phallus can be viewed
as a symbol of conquest because of its ability to penetrate and violate,
then a similar mentality may be used to interpret the eroticism
repositioned onto the foot, for this object is resignified in Mattoso's
universe such that it possesses the power to crush, to step on, and
consequently to humiliate and render defenseless.

Subjugation and violence, dominance and humiliation, are still the
results of such sexual encounters, even if the humiliation is desired
and chosen by the masochist who craves such attention. An important
distinction, however, is that the masochistic subject desires and, in
fact, demands gratification precisely through sustaining degradation
caused by the object of his desire.

As I attempt to make a final although still tentative assessment of
Mattoso's revisionist eroticism, another fundamental contradiction is
inescapable. Despite encouraging the sexual being to choose and use
objects to produce an autonomous sense of sexuality not confined to
genitalia or other body parts which have earned the Freudian stamp of
libidinal acceptability, fetishism is fundamentally defined by and as
fixation. In other words, as liberating as it is for one to discover her
own sexual identity (or perhaps "disidentity," in the sense of escaping
from adherence to conventional notions of sexualities), does the
individual truly — not metaphysically but physically — have the power
to construct fetishes and then apply them to satisfy varied sexual
longings? In the case of the repetitive structure of the poems in the
CENTOPÉIA: SONETOS NOJENTOS & QUEJANDOS, while such a technique can be
deemed transgressive in itself, as I have attempted to show in chapter
five, the poetic voice seems to be the (perhaps willing) prisoner of his
own unfulfilled desires. His quest to attain sexual satiation through
the process of sustaining humiliation at the foot of a domineering man
is nauseatingly redundant such that the cycle of abuse or the cycle of
pleasure, however one may perceive it, involves the entrapment of the
poetic voice's subjectivity. This voice which, from the bottom of a
man's boot screams out in orgiastic ecstasy, while seeking pleasure in
unconventional ways, is still condemned to repeat the same activities,
the same scenes, the same fantasies.

In a utopian embracement of sexual diversity and freedom, the
performance of the libertine poetic voice that is Glauco Mattoso is
acted out repeatedly and endlessly from behind the bars of its own
fetishistic identity. Perhaps in the infinite repetition of sexual acts
we may find a metaphor for the Mattosian tenet of "plágio inteligente,"
which holds, to repeat briefly, that the notion of an original version
is itself a falsity and that creative work emerges by recycling,
repeating, redoing, cutting and pasting that which has already been
done. If Mattoso's work proposes an eternal re-enactment of a staged
performance, it also embraces change, adaptation, and adjustment with
each and every repetition. The only element that remains thoroughly
frozen in Mattoso's poetic universe is the very mechanism which
stimulates repetition itself, a moment as elusive and abstract as is the
vain attempt to seek an answer to the enduring ontological question of
why each of us desires who and what we desire.

I would like to address one more critical question and offer a possible
answer. As we have seen throughout this thesis, one of Mattoso's most
central projects is to praise the pleasures of foot worship as a means
of replacing or substituting the phallus as the primary object on which
masculine libidinal pleasure is centered. While he has achieved variable
success in using this motif as a device to perform socio-political
critique, is he simultaneously calling for safer sex in this day and age
when AIDS and other serious and sexual diseases still take many lives? I
believe that such an agenda, despite its endorsement by critics like
Néstor Perlongher, is an inaccurate one. Mattoso's poetic universe has,
at the core of its objective, a desire to take pleasure in the very
critique of narrow-minded sexuality which it brutally yet ludically
performs. I do not believe that Mattoso's insistence on foot fetishism
can be directly tied to the ulterior motive of achieving a "campaign" of
safe sex. To this reader, applying the word "safe" to such a
narcissistic, indulgent, and shameless writer who craves dirt, toejam,
and noxious smells is itself a dangerous designation. However, the
promotion of safer sex by degenitalizing the sexual exchange itself is
yet another excellent by-product of Mattoso's proposals. [...]

Throughout this dissertation, I have attempted to view Glauco Mattoso's
poetic contributions as a postmodern extension of the first phase of
Brazilian modernism, particularly Oswaldian anthropophagy, in which the
author's literary universe consists of fetishized and therefore frozen
images of body parts, fluids, and actions which have characteristically
been relegated to the status of filth and have therefore been either
rejected or sanitized by even the most adventurous of the avant-garde
movements of the twentieth century. Mattoso uses the erotic realm to
critique social and political injustices evident in Brazilian society
and accentuated by military dictatorship in Brazil from 1964 to 1985.
His work exploits sadomasochism in its performative capacity to reveal
and to recreate the rigid social roles and intolerance associated with
authoritarianism. The motif of genital heterosexuality comes to
symbolize the hegemony of the patriarchal order, which Mattoso's poetic
voice insistently questions and continually rejects.

However, Mattoso's work is thematically and structurally indebted to a
long tradition of anti-traditional Western literature of transgression
which preceded his own work. This dissertation has attempted to show the
influence of the French "poète maudit" writers, not only in Mattoso's
cultivation of the "lado maldito" and his conceptualization of "poesia
malcriada" but also in Jarry's anticipation of absurdist aesthetics and
Apollinaire's rehabilitation of Sade.

"Black humor" is one of the essential ingredients in Mattoso's poetic
performance, an extension of the avant-garde theatrical contributions of
playwrights like Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, and Qorpo-Santo. Ultimately,
in a Brazilian context, Mattoso reinvents and re-presents the motif of
"sacanagem sexual" that was developed to an art form in the satirical
sonnets of Gregório de Mattos, Bocage, Laurindo Rabelo, and Augusto
dos Anjos. Certainly, and perhaps most importantly, it is my hope that a
critical analysis of Mattoso's poetry may serve to shed light on Oswald
de Andrade's own "antropofagia cultural," a construct that Mattoso so
carefully and maliciously dissects and reinvests with postmodern
anti-aesthetic fervor. [5]


[NOTES]

[1] See [SOURCES]. For Butterman's introduction and contents, see
[A TRANSGRESSOR AS CASE STUDY].

[2] For critiques and elaborations of the process whereby genital
heterosexuality is normalized, the reader may wish to refer to Anita
Phillips, p. 47; Marcia Ian, p. 54; and Kaja Silverman, p. 31. See
[BIBLIOGRAPHY] for complete citations.

[3] "End-pleasures" is a term which Kaja Silverman uses in her essay,
"Masochism and Male Subjectivity," p. 31.

[4] There are other poems in the collection which may be analyzed from
the standpoint of anti-aestheticism, most notably "Soneto Descalço:"


SONETO 65 DESCALÇO

O pé da mulher linda é também lindo.
Assim deseja o macho que é tarado
por pés, e ninguém vê nada de errado
se a fêmea, ao descalçar-se, está despindo.

O pé do macho feio é mais bem-vindo
a quem é cego e está inferiorizado.
Este é o meu caso: escândalo e pecado,
segundo alguns; e os outros ficam rindo.

O pé da mulher linda é adocicado
devido ao trato fino e ao mel do beijo.
O pé do macho é fétido e salgado.

Mas eu, conhecedor do melhor queijo,
de letra tiro o hilário e sujo lado:
Sem pejo rimo o pé com meu desejo...


BAREFOOT SONNET (#65)

The foot of a beautiful woman is also beautiful.
This way it is desired for the footlover man,
and nobody sees anything wrong
if the female, when taking off her shoes, gets naked.

The foot of the ugly male is more welcome
to whomever is blind and lowly.
This is my case: scandal and sin,
according to some, while others simply laugh.

The foot of a beautiful woman is sweetish
due to the fine treatment and to honey kisses.
The male's foot is stinky and salty.

But to me, connoisseur of the best cheeses,
the ridiculous and dirty aspect matters little:
Shameless, I rhyme the foot with my desire...

(translated by Akira Nishimura)


[5] Click [COLLAGE AND BRICOLAGE].



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