At the Fork of Gender and Democracy No Cruzamento de Gênero e Democracia
Ethnography of a Gatekeeper with Political Aspiration in so-called
Slum in Recife, Brazil during Presidential Election 2018 Yusaku Yoshikawa
Wageningen University & Research Major thesis for Master Development & Rural Innovation Chairgroup: Sociology of Development & Change (SDC) Supervisor: dr.ir. Pieter de Vries Second reader: dr.ir. Joost Jongerden Student Number: 930910980090 Date: March, 2019
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS ...... 2
ABSTRACT ...... 4
CHAPTER 1. FAVELA THE PHANTOM ...... 5 1.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 5 1.2 THEORISING SLUMS AND THE POLITICAL ASPECT ...... 7 1.3 RECIFE & COQUE ...... 9 1.4 METHODOLOGIES ...... 14 1.5 ETHICAL ISSUES ...... 16 1.6 THESIS STRUCTURE ...... 17
CHAPTER 2. “DO YOU WANT TO MARRY ME?” ...... 19 2.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 19 2.2 (UN)CONSCIOUS REAFFIRMATION OF MALE DOMINANCE THROUGH GENDER JOKES IN COQUE ...... 21 2.3 VARIOUS GENDER ISSUES IN COQUE: FAMILY, POPULAR MUSIC, AND LGBTS 28 2.4 JOKE AS HOPE: OVERTURNING STRUCTURE? ...... 35 2.5 SUMMARY ...... 37
CHAPTER 3: RETHINKING “LAUGHTER OF THE OPPRESSED”: EXPLORING A DARK SIDE OF HUMOUR IN FAVELA IN RECIFE, NORTHEAST BRAZIL ...... 39 3.1. ABSTRACT ...... 39 3.2 INTRODUCTION ...... 39 3.3 JOKES IN COQUE ...... 43 3.4 CONCLUSION: FUNCTIONS OF HUMOUR IN THE FAVELA ...... 47
CHAPTER 4. “HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE TO DISLIKE WOMEN, HE IS MARRIED!” ...... 49 4.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 49 4.2 GENERAL BACKGROUND OF THE ELECTION ...... 50 4.3 THE ELECTION IN RECIFE ...... 55 4.4 CONCLUSION ...... 67
CHAPTER 5. “STANDING UP FOR THE COMMUNITY” ...... 69 5.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 69 5.2 (EMBRYONIC) ANALYSIS OF CLIENTELISM “IN EMBRYO” ...... 70 5.3 PRIVATE & PUBLIC: AMBIVALENT SUBJECTIVITIES? ...... 78 5.4 CONCLUSION ...... 88
EPILOGUE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... 89 Chapter 1. Favela the Phantom
APPENDIX ...... 90
REFERENCES ...... 93
3 Abstract
Abstract
This ethnographic research deals with three different topics of gender, election, and political broker in a so-called slum (favela) in Recife, northeast Brazil called Coque. In one sentence, it is about the ceaseless struggle of an individual (political broker) in the male-centric community (gender) under the politically intense moment (election). My argument is threefold. First, I show male-centricity is highly normalised in Coque through daily interactions such as sexual jokes (gender) by drawing on Bourdieusian concept habitus, a subtle yet steady inculcation of the social norms. The habitus offers “regulated liberties,” that is, it simultaneously generates an infinite number of ideas and blindfolds the choice unfit to the norms. Second, I report the Brazilian presidential election 2018 was a sheer mudslinging contest (election). Two big powers (Worker’s Party [PT] and a far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro) slandered each other. The strategic difference might influence on the outcome is that Bolsonaro was successful at denying the criticism (“he is not a fascist”), whereas PT had to ignore the libel since their corruption scandals have been manifest. In short, denial outweighed ignorance. Third, a person in favela has to well manoeuvre himself under this bleak situation (both in terms of gender and politics) for his political ambition (political broker). Vavá, a gay person with aspiration to be a city councillor, had an immature clientelistic relationship with a political candidate to relate himself to the politics. This suggests conventional clientelism to pay further attention to the forming process and gender aspect because Vavá has a unique network of his gay friends. He thoroughly decouples his political and private sphere: he stays mute about his sexuality in political settings but becomes expressive when with gay friends. I see this detachment as an intersection of three spheres of gender, election, and political broker. I extend the feminists’ Bourdieusian debate to Judith Butler and argue the tactic is construed as performativity producing his gender identity hinged on the social norms and conditions above.
Keywords: Slum politics, Brazilian presidential election, habitus, performativity, ethnography, jokes, gender identity, clientelism Chapter 1. Favela the Phantom
Chapter 1. Favela the Phantom What is a “favela”?
1.1 Introduction
Imagine a high street. It is lined with miscellaneous shops e.g. boutique, lanchonete (snack store), small market, bar, cake shop, grocery store, bakery, pet shop, and Japanese restaurant. Five-minutes' walk from the lively street takes you to the soccer field with new illuminations and open-air field where people wearing stylish sportswear from famous brands do exercise. By adding ten more minutes to the walk, you would reach to one of the biggest metro/bus stations in the city. Would you think I am talking about the high-end residential area in the Cosmopolis? The answer is no. This is Coque, a well-known “slum” in Recife, a coastal city of northeast Brazil. I wrote the first paragraph of my thesis in this tricky way to avoid giving a stereotypical image of this multi-faceted place. Gilbert (2007) pointed out that the word "slum" entails negative, dirty, and homogenous image of the place whereas in reality every “slum” is different and diverse. He also mentioned that slum, the word signifies only physical problem of poor-quality housing such as insufficient hygiene and water supply, has been mixed up with the characteristics of the people living there. I think it is not too far-fetched to say this implication has motivated the mainstream view regarding slum as a problem that should be “solved” through external inventions such as state-led upgrading projects. Many people I met had a thought that Coque is an extremely dangerous, or even barbarous place; whenever I told that I stay in Coque to people outside, like people living in the city of Recife, they sighed and commented: “you are courageous.” I also heard some saying Coque is “another universe” before this visit. Although it is true that Coque has been notorious for its high crime rate and frequent violence over the past years, I argue this type of fear or antipathy sometimes has no just ground. It seems that the negative might that word "slum", in Portuguese favela, possesses is accelerating these emotions. Not only people outside but also inside are quite aware of this stigmatization. I consciously asked the question “Do you think Coque is a favela?” to the residents and the dominant answer was “No, Coque is not a favela”. Instead, they were likely to use the word “comunidade [community]" as the same meaning pulled off the negative accent. It is worthwhile to take a closer look at these answers. Some added: “But I know people in the city call here favela”. Some others put the title of the favela to other places such as palafitas [stilts] besides a river or even Africa. In short, on the one hand, people in Coque are conscious about the fact that Coque is seen as favela from its outside. On the other hand, they do not consider Coque as a favela. Favela is always somewhere else. Therefore, I treat Portuguese word favela as a translation of the English word “slum,” but with an emphasis on its negative aspect in this thesis. I sometimes use the word “slum” when referring to preceding studies and hinting a negative image people have, but I would personally call Coque a community as many residents liked. Back to the topic, in the beginning, these answers were confusing – I got an impression that slum is
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as if a mirage since it disappears when I get close to, and reappears at a different place. Then, the second metaphor came up in my mind: people outside see entire Coque is a slum, relatively well-off people in Coque such as people have a solid house with tiled wall along the main street say where the people with less income live is a slum – it is a nested, repetitive process just like Russian doll Matryoshka. There is another (a bit smaller, but exactly same look) doll inside of the doll. You keep opening it, on and on, and when you open the last doll, nothing inside. Slum disappears. This seems to be a valid simile, but let me introduce the third metaphor to explain the other side of this iterative process. In these days, I see slum as more like a phantom possesses the people, rather than a mirage. Why phantom? I found out that slum does not escape from any others or me. If anything, it is the opposite. It chases people living in Coque who try to escape from this social stigma. I encountered few people acknowledge Coque as a favela, but none of them acknowledged Coque as their home; this type of people tend to have a strong connection with outside. People did not see Coque as favela actively tried to deny the image through strategies like choosing different words. In spite of all these efforts, people in Coque are anyways living in the favela for the people outside, however hard they try to get out from there, and no matter who and what kind of people they are. The stigmatization is inescapable because the idea of seeing the place as a favela belongs not to object (e.g. people in Coque) but to the beholder (e.g. people in the city). Hence, the only way to change this situation is to approach the people outside. What I could do is, then, to exorcise this phantom by delivering my sense and thought obtained through my own body and brain to the outsiders. I put my effort on describing Coque as not a gloomy dilapidated place with full of "slum-minded people", which is, of course, more suitable for "slum", but as a normal community with sundry people. The reason is nothing more than the fact that it was my perception.
This thesis deals with issues in three important spheres: gender, election, and political broker. My aim is not to give three independent analyses, but to show how these different topics are deeply intertwined with each other. In short, it is about the ceaseless struggle of an individual (political broker) in the male-centric community (gender) under the politically intense moment (election). My “exorcism” would once end when I show all-out effort of the political broker in the last chapter.
In this chapter, as its first step, I would like to zoom in on this phantom, in other words, how slums have been theorized. This consists of two parts: slums in general and the political aspect of slums. The following section provides background information about the setting of the research: basic data and a brief introduction of Coque. I have also decided to write small vignettes not only to propose more concrete image about the place but also to explain how I, an apprentice researcher doing his first fieldwork, had been involved to this intriguing place. For me, it is a big achievement if I could deliver you reader(s) even a small piece of a sense of the place. The rest of this chapter is about practical aspects of the research: research methodologies, ethical issues, and in the end I write about the structure of this thesis.
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1.2 Theorising Slums and the Political Aspect
A brief introduction to the studies of slums UNHABITAT (2003) admitted it is troublesome to establish the uniform definition of slum, but did give seven attributes they tend to have in common: (1) lack of basic services (2) substandard housing or illegal and inadequate building structures (3) overcrowding and high density (4) unhealthy living conditions and hazardous locations (5) insecure tenure (6) poverty and social exclusion (7) minimum settlement size. Based on this understanding, it seems logical that slums have been problematized and seen as the place to be fixed at first glance. One of the most well-known studies about slums, Planet of Slums by Mike Davis (2007), also regarded slums as an issue. From the Marxist perspective, he identified a root cause of urban disorder as its connection with a larger context of the state and other Western countries: slums are, therefore, the embodiment of global inequality for him. Though his cutting remark aroused a big interest of this topic, this way of problematization has also a risk to see slums as an inferior place to adjacent cities and so do people within. In other words, problematization of slum might lead to the stigmatization of the place. The simplified understanding of diverse places is another risk (Gilbert, 2007). Sociological and anthropological studies have warned the one-sided view by shedding light on different aspects of slums. One fundamental argument is that slum-dwellers often have attachments to where they live (see for instance Biswas-Diener & Diener, 2001). During the fieldwork, I often faced strong attachments of people to the community as well; an easy example is frequent questions like “do you like Coque?” “Do you want to live here forever?” and “which do you like, Holanda [the Netherlands] or here?” showing their identification to the place. Although many people do not want to move out and are satisfied with living in the slums, this argument is incomplete by itself in the sense that it does exact reverse of the first argument, that is, downplaying certain aspect. Full acceptance of this view leads to an ignorance of tough reality the people have to face. For instance, Scheper-Hughes (1993) sturdily reported a frequent occurrence of infant death due to an extreme living condition in favelas in Northeast Brazil. It even transformed the mind-set of the people: mothers started taking a death of their own child with “no surprise,” if not “for granted.” Coque also has this duality. It is too easy to say “Coque is not a slum, a beautiful place” but I also heard many sad stories like crimes and diseases during my stay. We ought to avoid romanticising and provide more nuanced interpretations of the place. For instance, Stokes (1962) made up two simple distinctions: slums of hope and despair. This way of typology does not show a good fit for today’s complex society. Slums are located all over the world and over 85 million people are belonging in 2014, which the absolute number is increasing (UNHABITAT, 2016). This is still a moderate estimation. Since all slums are different and heterogeneous in any term such as location, population, proximity to the city and so on, it is natural that, for instance, they react to the same phenomenon in a different way (Wit & Berner, 2009). Nuanced interpretations of slums are in urgent need for capturing the situations ongoing, which transgresses the mere black-and-white image of the areas.
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The political aspect of slums Politics became a central aspect of my research due to the lack of understanding of politics in slums despite its importance and increasing population (Koster & de Vries, 2012). I briefly summarize how the aspect has been theorised to provide a background of my research. The conventional studies of politics in slums, especially that of South America, tend to focus on the relationship between community leaders and politicians in terms of clientelism or patron-client relationship. Community leader is a powerful person from the community and act as a “gatekeeper” bridge inside and outside there: for instance, it is common that they distribute the necessities like foods offered by politicians (patrons) to the residents (clients) in exchange for their votes and attendance to political rally (Auyero, 1999, 2000). Coque is no exception (Silva, 2015). But there is still no consensus on the rigid definitions of the concept (S. C. Stokes, 2011). One well-known definition is ties in which “an individual of higher socioeconomic status (patron) uses his own influence and resources to provide protection or benefits, or both, for a person of lower status (client) who, for his part, reciprocates by offering general support and assistance, including personal services, to the patron” (Scott, 1972). The implication is that the political support could be influenced by the votes. For instance, Auerbach (2016) reported politicians tended to prefer extending upgrading projects to slums where few or no rival party workers are in India. Although the popularity of the concept due to its wide applicability, clientelism has been exposed to the criticisms too. First, the clientelism tends to underestimate client's agency. This is because of unequal power relations it bases imply the coercive power of patrons, though it acknowledges follower's agency to some extent (Scott, 1972). In reality, however, the clients often have other channels for the material such as kinship (see Auyero, 2001). In Coque, I also noticed people count more on families and friends rather than capricious, short-term help by the community leader. Second, the clientelism rarely refers to a gender aspect, while it often plays a significant role in slums where have a large number of women often with their small children. Silva and Vries (forthcoming) who studied Coque succinctly puts: “community leaders are almost always men, but the subject of slum politics is feminine.” I add analysis of this aspect and clientelism in chapter 4. Another important theorization of the political aspect of slums is slum politics of Koster & de Vries (2012). They insisted that slum-dwellers implement completely different type of politics from that of the government in the sense it is oriented to aspirations of dwellers themselves, not states. The authors argued the slum politics is a potential and a capacity of slum-dwellers to actively claim their right to be counted and recognized. Silva and de Vries (forthcoming) also see slums as an intersection of different kinds of politics (slum, electoral, governmental). What they see is not the light of hope, but its fleeting blink. They argue slum is a niche where has the potential to nurture the emancipative politics aiming at overturning the whole system of the oppression. The originality of slum politics is its stance to look at the bright side of politics of slums: the concept contrasted clientelism and idealistic
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hope preventing the former, whereas slums have been conventionally regarded as merely a hotbed of political clientelism. Could the slum be a protagonist of the didactic, right-and-wrong story then? The answer is not so simple. Silva and de Vries are afraid that these emancipative politics are recently under the shadow of electoral politics. In other words, clientelism cloaks the autonomous choice. The implication is that pork-barrel politics never ceases to exist as long as the dwellers choose it actively, even though it was the result of their survival strategies. Differently put, paradoxically, it is the strategic choice of the people perpetuates clientelist politics. Considering these factors, they argue that to invert system is becoming more and more difficult these days. The moment of my fieldwork was a perfect embodiment of this shift. It took place in the historical moment of Brazil’s presidential election in 2018, which a far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro from minor party PSL [Partido Social Liberal: The Social Liberal Party] became the president (I will analyse this topic in chapter 3). The people in Coque showed diverse reactions to the turn: laughter, acceptance, support, denial, sorrow, rage, resignation, and/or a combination of them. Notwithstanding, to put it bluntly, I did not find the people who are ready for an uprising against this political confusion. If anything, an impression I got in response to the result of the election was a sense of hopelessness. A part of my motivation for this research is to grope through this hard situation for another small blink of the light of the hope, a possibility to make a breakthrough.
1.3 Recife & Coque
Recife & Coque The fieldwork for this study took place in a community of Recife, the second biggest city in Northeast Brazil with a population of nearly 1.6 million,1 where is known for its vigorous political and cultural movement (van Leerzem, Nuijten, & de Vries, 2016). Indeed, various cultural activities put vivid colours on my stay. For instance, maracatu, a genre of music with different types of drums making high and low sounds. In the historical part of the city from 17 century, Recife Antigo, you can easily find civil groups practicing maracatu for the carnival. Religious cultos [cults] mixing different religions like Christianity, Hinduism, Animism, and Buddhism are also popular; many communities have Punto de Cultura [Culture Centre] inside and people in the community join the rite in search of consolation. Economic gap is huge and visible in the city. Haves and have-nots live adjacent yet clearly separated. In Boa Viagem, the coastal area at which many well-off families stay, you can see skyscrapers erecting and find fancy coffee shops. On the other hand, numerous so-called slums
1 The statistics was retrieved from the Website of Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística). Although the latest census in 2010 reported a population of 1,537,704 of the city, the estimated population of 2018 showed a sharp increase to 1,637,834 in total. Further information can be accessible from: https://cidades.ibge.gov.br/brasil/pe/recife/panorama (the latest access at March 1, 2019)
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are dispersed all over the city. One of the strongest impressions of my stay was the view from the room I stayed; plain houses with clays and bricks were accompanied by a handful of flashy high-rise buildings on its back (figure 1.1). Thanks to vivid descriptions by preceding master thesis of Silva (2015), I had access to some pre-information about the area. Nevertheless, the view conveyed me a strong impression by envisaging the gap behind.
Figure 1.1: A visible economic difference of Recife
How has the municipality dealt with this inconsistency? In Recife, a unique institution called PREZEIS [Plano de Regularização das Zonas Especiais de Interesse Social: Plan for Regularization of Special Zones of Social Interest] was established at the end of the Brazilian military regime. The initial aim of the institution was to protect and promote the autonomy of low-income communities through participatory planning (Silva, forthcoming). For PREZEIS, several representatives are chosen from each community and they attend the meeting for decision-making. In the meantime, the municipality has been conducting upgrading projects of the communities, which often ended up with questionable results or even uncompleted. Prometrópole project funded by the World Bank is an example. The project encouraged the mass removal of the dwellers in Chão de Estrelas community by providing new housing and monthly financial compensation (auxilio moradia) of 151 Reais. However, the end result was a deterioration of dweller’s living conditions due to the mismatch between provisions and needs of the dwellers (Nuijten, 2013). The wreckages of similar projects are easily found in Coque as well; I will describe this in detail in the chapter 4. Geographically, Coque is located in the centre of Recife. Due to this fact and high-accessibility to different parts of the city, some residents called Coque a “Corazon do Recife [heart of Recife].” Notably, Coque stayed next to the bus/metro integral station of Joana Bezerra. Many people living in the city used the station for commuting. Regarding basic information such as history and sub-areas, I confronted confusions because of coexistence of different explanations. For instance, Rene, a community leader who was used to be a member of PREZEIS, said there
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were 12 subareas in of Coque: Realeza, Rua da Zuada, Areinha, Fernandinho, Villa 1, Villa 2, Villa da Motorista, Villa Imperial, Villa do Papelão, Villa Zenaide, Villa Brasil, and Espólio de Estevinho (see appendix). However, the map made by PREZEIS displayed fewer sub-areas. A population of Coque also vary depending on whom to ask: Aderbal explained 48,000 and Silva (2015) reported over 60,000. The history of Coque had different versions in spite of, or because of, a number of the people who has been living there for over decades. They told different stories and landscapes when asked to tell what kind of place it used to be; this dichotomy could be partly attributed to the lack of consensus about where exactly Coque is. For instance, a person from Neimfa, an organisation hosting religious cults and a preparation course for childbirth for pregnant women in Coque, told that 32 years ago (when Neimfa was established) the whole area was covered by mange [mangrove] and there were only palafitas [stilts]. But I also heard many people saying there were houses at that moment. It seems reasonable to speculate that the truth is somewhere in the middle. Nonetheless, everybody agreed that Coque has been developing and becoming a secure place, even though infrastructure and basic sanitary are still lacking. Indeed, I observed a rapid transition of Coque like the housing construction. Next, I introduce two vignettes of Coque to deliver more concrete images of the place with which most of the readers are unfamiliar. The short pieces of ethnography explain how I went through Coque. Another wish is to convey a sense of the place to the student(s) going there in coming years. This begins with Coque Gourmet Tour based on two intentions: (1) to invert the dismal image of favela by shedding light on the positive aspect (2) to close-up people living there by looking at food, a fundamental part of human living. In the second part, I introduce my neighbours and host family. My learning sources were, obviously, also from these casual daily interactions.
Vignette 1: Coque Gourmet Tour It was my daily routine to go for a morning walk after I woke up around 7:30. Although side streets of Coque could be dangerous and many people advised me not to stroll around, I did not go through any perilous experience to walk along the main street where many stores lining. I would like to introduce three stores from this street. The first store is a cafeteria in front of the school. As long as I know, this is the only cafeteria open for an entire day. Two hard-working young ladies, Patricia and Fatima, are running the store. They are relatives, live separately but on the same side street behind the cafeteria, and share one phone to call and message. They open the shop at 6 in the morning and cook breakfast such as macaxeira [cassava] served with a piece of chicken or beef to sell for 5 Reais (approximately 1 euro 17 cents based on the rate 1 euro = 4.3 Reais, November 2018). In the evening, they sell a beer to the people. Patricia blew me a kiss whenever I passed by, and Fatima made me laugh by her sense of humour. For instance, when I showed her a picture from my birthday party last year, she giggled and asked me if I became a six-year-old because only six candles standing on the cake. Few doors away from the cafeteria, there is a mercadinho [small market] ran by Nena and her
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husband. Nena is a lady of middle age and has been running the shop for over two decades. She seemed sullen at first glance but is so kind that brought me a chair to rest and sometimes gave me snacks for free. I was in favour of her store because they sell cafezinho [a small cup of coffee] for 0.5 Reais, a half price of other shops. I remember one day I ordered coffee and chocolate chip cookie and coffee for breakfast. She replied the combination of the cookie and coffee is horrible, which made me bewildered. She said, “You have to have a coffee with sandwiches” and cooked a cheese sandwich for me; it turned my favourite breakfast. Jucelia, an owner of the house where I stayed, usually cooked the lunch for Sven and me. She loves cooking and is proud of cooking various dishes day by day: arroz [white rice], arroz carioca [rice cooked in a manner of Rio de Janeiro, yellow rice steamed with vegetables], tomato sauce pasta, feijao [beans], galinha asada [grilled chicken], galinha guisada [stewed chicken], sucos [juices]…this list goes long. She also took our preference into account; for instance, I told her that I am used to eating fish, and then she sometimes prepared fish for me. For me, lunch was often a pleasant moment to know new ideas and the Brazilian way of living through a conversation with Jucelia. One day she taught us a Brazilian proverb “Almoça como rei, janta como principe [Have lunch like a king and eat dinner like a prince (in terms of amount)],” showing the enthusiasm of Brazilians about food. I liked seeing her face smiling when she talks about foods. She often enlightened us do not hesitate to spend money for foods; to be rich is not about to be in a good position or buy gorgeous jewellery, but eat a lot of tasty foods, she said. In the afternoon, I used to go for my second walk of the day and often dropped by at a bakery Esperança [hope]. The walk took place around 16 when the temperature starts to descend, and the bakery opens only a few hours in the evening. The bakery sells fresh bread at a cheap price, so people made a long queue every day (figure 1.2). My favourite was sweet bread with custard cream; the price was only 1 Real for 5 of them.
Figure 1.2: The popular bakery Esperança
In the evening, I sometimes went out for a drink or to find a supper at the food stalls. There
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were many choices: batatas fritas [fried potatoes], pastel [pies with filling inside], churrascos [grilled meat], soups, tapioca [a crepe made of cassava with filling inside], coxinha [Brazilian croquette with often chicken inside], cakes and drinks. The prices vary, but mostly each costs 3 to 5 Reais. Almost all people working in those stalls are women. Selling the snacks is a way to earn some extra money for them, but at the same time, the fact implies that cooking is seen as a “women’s work.” I will come back to this topic in the next chapter. The only exception was a young couple of Sergio and Vanessa running the stall of churrasco on the corner near the house I stayed. Every Friday and weekend, they open the stall with chairs of plastic and neighbours came over to buy some foods and have a chat. The couple merrily, but efficiently prepared the food and sometimes joined the talk. When smokes came out from the hotplate and went up to the dark sky with the laughter of the people, I had a misty thought "Okay, I am ready to go to bed now" and felt good.
Vignette 2: Neighbours and Host Family In this paragraph, I introduce some interactions with my neighbours and host family. I stayed in the house of Jucelia, and her three children, Anderson, Jessica, and Nino were living proximate to her house. Anderson and Jessica have their own families; Anderson is with his wife Dédé, their children Guilherme and Gabriel. Jessica lives with her husband Claudio, their children Emanuel and Ester. Jucelia is already separated with her former husband Aderbal, but he keeps coming over to the house, even though he is now together with another woman in another community. After a half century, it is still true that “the importance of the family cannot be overestimated” in these low-income communities (Mangin, 1967). I will refer to this aspect in the next chapter but mention some basic points here. First, the division of work by gender strongly persists. The division of labour within a family (men go out to work for income and women stay inside the house to do housework and take care of children) existed as Rebhun (2002) described. Second, relatives have strong ties too. For instance, I seldom used the word “niece” in Japan, but in Coque, frequently heard people talking about the third degree of kinship. Third, children have only partial access to primary school. Most children go to school for only a half day, either in the morning, afternoon or evening and not for every day but two or three times a week. People have strong bonds with their neighbours. The street is a socialising space and people did bate-papu [chat] about a hotchpotch of different topics: gossips, weather, family issue, politics, etc. It made my fitting in the community easier; not just because I could easily catch the people to talk on the street, but also I was their topic hence they were (as far as I understood) quickly informed about my existence in the community. I talked with neighbours while my daily walk. Sonha is a stout 60-year-old woman with white hair who has over 10 children, living on the same street with us and likes to make cynical jokes. When Bolsonaro got elected, she sneered: “I saw the politicians from PT [Partido dos Trabalhadores, the leftist party] crying. Do you know why they are crying? It's because they lost the opportunity to make money through corruption."
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I personally like the evening in Coque because people looked more relaxed after the whole day work. The night brought a breeze and people sitting on the dim street huddled together. They chatted about various things (“I have eaten armadillo before, it tasted like a chicken” “Hey Japanese, do you play kung-fu?” “You don't have to think about the future, be in present”) – then I noticed this world, where can be a cutthroat place, showed an instant of calm face to the people.
1.4 Methodologies
Methodologies Here onwards, I explain a practicality of my research. This thesis takes a form of ethnography with two months of intensive fieldwork in Coque as a data collection period. I stayed in Coque from the end of August until the beginning of November in 2018, which fully overlapped with the moment of the presidential election – political campaigns, the first and second round of the election. The methods I conducted are some elements of ethnography: participant observation, in-depth interview, and informal conversations. Participant observation is more than often about qualitative research and requires the researcher to dip him/herself into the cultural context (Bernard, 2011). I was more a participant observer than observing participant since I had a distinguishable appearance from people in Coque. In other words, it was quite obvious that I came from outside. For instance, when most children see me for the first time, they shouted me “Chinese! [Chinese]” and ran to me, giggling, started asking questions. This reaction was more frequent at the beginning of my stay. For the interview, I did purposive sampling because I was mainly looking for the informants involved in political activities. It was not difficult to find them since they were actively trying to show their presence off in the community during the electoral times. The interviews are semi-structured, that is, I prepared question lists but often the topic digressed. I received many supports from people to establish these connections. In total, I did 16 interviews with 15 people; all are in Portuguese, the length varied from 20 minutes up to 1 hour 50 minutes with an average of 1 hour. List of the interviews is in the appendix. I made a case study of a man Vavá (see chapter 4). I first bumped into him when I was walking the road with Sven, and then started visiting his home afterwards. I decided to make his case study because of the following reasons: (1) he was involved in various political activities. He also had an aspiration to be a politician and was supporting a candidate of district deputy at the moment. (2) he was kind enough to share his opinions about politics and patiently taught me, who speaks only unsteady Portuguese. Eventually, this choice added an interesting twist to my thesis: he is gay and the only LGBT with a political interest in Coque. It does not mean he was an LGBT activist; on the contrary, he did not speak out about his sexuality when he talks about politics. His house was Casa de Mãe Juana [slang meaning hangout] so I got to know many people through this visit: his friends like Daniel and family. In Coque, I hanged out, chatted, had a meal, drank beer, went for shopping, running errands,
14 Chapter 1. Favela the Phantom
washed dishes, cooked Japanese dishes, and accompanied their political activities together with people in Coque. As well as most of the ethnographic researches, I acquired some of my best information in this way. Besides, I tried to passear [taking a walk] more than twice a day. I went to almost every shops along the main street: bakery, bars, coffee shops, cafeteria, supermarket, boutique, cake shop, etc. I often had conversations with people running there. It was impressive how Coque shows different faces every time to me. I also sometimes went out of the community to follow political events e.g. campaigns, speech, demonstration, and panel discussion. There were many political activities during the campaign period of the election. During these events, I caught some informants by convenience sampling, “a glorified term for grabbing whoever will stand still long enough to answer your questions” (Bernard, 2011). Fortunately, most of them were friendly enough to have a short talk with me. I attended campaigns of both left and right parties to contrast their opinions. Lastly, I have to note that my research was limited due to my Portuguese proficiency. Although I managed to interview and have fun talks, I often missed out talk and conversation among the people. In other words, my research owes welcoming people who kept talking with me for a large part. Next, I clarify my position as a researcher. It is about how people reacted to me, a Japanese student from the university of the Netherlands, because it significantly influenced my research.
Researcher’s position: Japa / Chine / Gringo? In ethnographic research, researchers him/herself become a factor of research making the locals act differently. In this sense, I was outstanding in Coque due to some points. First, candidly saying, I am Japanese with an “Asian face.” Paraphrasing, my appearance was different from people living there. Second, people in Coque are not used to seeing foreigners in daily lives, though they are exposed to the ocean of information on the Internet. Third, I came from far Europe, whereas a large part of the people finds it difficult to earn sufficient money to travel abroad. Some people liked to call me Japa or Japonês [Japanese], Chinese [Chinese], or even Gringo [literally meaning American, but could be used for foreigners in general]. These facts influenced my research in various ways. I was in a “comfort zone” in the sense that many people showed a frank curiosity to me: I could easily explain why I am here because they already noticed that I am an outsider. A woman once concisely referred to this comfort zone: “You are treated well because you are a foreigner.” However, it also prevented me from doing research because the people, especially children, sometimes kept asking questions and did not answer to my questions. Let me categorize questions I was frequently asked. First, the questions based on stereotypes were remarkable. “Is it true that you eat dog/scorpions/beetles/cockroaches/insects in China (or Japan)?” “Can you play kung-fu?” “Do you know Jackie Chan/Bruce Lee?” It is notable that many people have a homogenous image of Japan; I was expecting more diverse questions. When I ask the source of these information, they answered it is either from the Internet or Television.
15 Chapter 1. Favela the Phantom
The second category is driven by curiosity to different cultures: “How do you pronounce my name in English/Japanese?” “What do you eat in Japan?” “Please speak something in Japanese” “What is the name of your father/mother?” Most of the people mixed up Japan with China so I first needed to clarify the distinction. The derivation of this is a question in comparison with their own situation or yearning for them: “How much did it cost to come to Brazil?” “Is life in Japan/the Netherlands better?” Thirdly, there are questions about my impressions of Coque: “Do you like Coque?” “Do you want to live here forever?” “How long are you going to stay?” showing people’s attachment to the place. The last category is questions about me. Especially, they liked to ask about my relationship: “Do you have a girlfriend?” “Do you have a family here?” “Do you have a kid?” “Are you married?” These questions were almost inevitable after introducing my age, 24 at the moment. Although it might be relatively young to have a child in Japan or the Netherlands, 24 are enough old to have a partner and also a child in Coque.
1.5 Ethical Issues
Ethical issues are innate to social science research that we ought to pay full attention. Nothing to say, scientific knowledge has to be used to make the lives of our informants better; however, sadly, the research almost always contains a risk to do the opposite, that is, doing harm on them. It can happen both through research instruments like naïve questions and the researcher's own (non)verbal behaviour. Considering ethical issues become especially important when we conduct research to a vulnerable population, and people in Coque are the case. I reflect on my fieldwork by using the concept of two ethics proposed by Guillemin & Gillam (2004) consisted of (1) procedural ethics guided by ethical codes and (2) microethics, or “ethics in practice,” that each researcher has to cope flexibly and reflectively in response to the situation.
Procedural Ethics I aimed at following The Wageningen Code of Conduct for Scientific Practice (Eijsackers, Brom, Zaane, & Dohmen, 2008) composed of five pillars of scrupulousness, reliability, verifiability, impartiality, and independence. I declare that any commercial or political interests did not drive my research and I did my research as sincere as I could. Regarding impartiality, however, I admit that an attempt to scoop the voice of people who have been downplayed into mainstream itself is inevitably partial because the try assumes lack or incompleteness on the dominant view, as Silva (2015) points out. Verifiability and reliability are also always difficult to fully guarantee for an ethnographic research since society and situations of target groups constantly change. Nonetheless, I wish the effort I made to record a situation in Coque itself would be ethnographically meaningful not in spite of, but because of the fugitive nature of the society, however small it may be.
Microethics Informed consent is a basic factor of the code of ethics (Christians, 2005). I introduced myself to
16 Chapter 1. Favela the Phantom
people in Coque as a university student doing fieldwork for master thesis and explained about the topic of research before the interview. I gave explanations to interviewees beforehand that it is not obligatory to answer questions because the topics I handled, gender and politics, could be sensitive especially when it comes to personal experience. I also asked for permission to record the interview every time and all interviewees kindly admitted it. Despite all these considerations, I confronted some difficulties in reality. The typical experience is begging. I usually did not respond to it but sometimes gave them small money like 2 Reais or accompanied buying stuff after asking for what they need the money. However, I cannot assert all my acts are ethically correct and am still afraid of the risk that I indirectly did harm to the people. Regarding money, I paid 500 Reais per month as a housing rent including daily meals to Jucelia. I personally think what I received from her is worth way more than the amount I paid. I faced another, more serious ethical issue when I observed unethical behaviours of the people. An example would be to make sexually offensive jokes over women. What I tried is not to brandish the rusty sword of justice, but rather, to understand what drove people to the behaviour and to keep thinking about it. It even became a centre of my thesis (I analyse sexual jokes in chapter 2). I believe taking a step back from the situation and analyse it has more potential to question the norms making them act in the certain way than just keep cautioning every time, yet I still do not have a perfect answer to this ethical dilemma.
1.6 Thesis Structure
This thesis consists of four chapters classified into two main parts. The first part (chapter 2 and 3) provides analyses of the broader social context by focusing on two big factors influencing Coque at the moment: gender and election. The second part (chapter 4) is a case study of a political broker Vavá. His endeavour to achieve the political aspiration within the social context presented in the first part will be described. Chapter 2 demonstrates how male-centricity or machismo is normalized and influencing people’s behaviour in Coque. In other words, the chapter deals with the gender issue in Coque. I introduce examples with a keyword of “joke.” Why joke? The principal reason is that jokes are a part of daily lives giving a breath of fresh air to the people. People in Coque loved jokes. I argue gender jokes functioning as an instrument to naturalize the unequal relationship between men and women in the community. The debate among feminist scholars drawing on Pierre Bourdieu will be presented too since I see these verbal practices as habitus. Chapter 3 is about 2018 Brazilian presidential election took place during my fieldwork. The first round was on 7th and the second round was on the 28th of October. The political campaigns prospered already in September and people’s response against the whole shebang will be reported in detail. I contrast two protagonists of the election (PT and Bolsonaro) in terms of their strategies and explain where these differences derived from. I explain the election was a big “carnival” for most of the people in Coque to earn some pocket money. Chapter 4, the second part of my thesis, is a case study as explained. Vavá had grown up in Coque
17 Chapter 1. Favela the Phantom
and would aspire to be a vereador [city councillor] in 2020. He is, again, the only sexual minority in Coque with political ambition. He eloquently expressed his visions and passions on politics with beautiful words, but he could turn indecent when he is with his gay friends. In the first half, I focus on the clientelistic relation of him and the candidate, calling it clientelism “in embryo.” The second half of this chapter contrasts a gulf of his behaviour between formal/informal settings and explores what makes him embrace these seemingly ambivalent attitudes. To close this chapter, let me repeat what I wrote at the beginning of this introduction. My objective of this thesis is to show the entanglement of the three following elements: election, gender, and political broker. Specifically, this thesis is about the ceaseless struggle of an individual (political broker) in the male-centric community (gender) under the politically intense moment (election).
18 Chapter 2 & 3. Analysis of Humour and Jokes in Coque
Chapter 2. “Do You Want to Marry Me?” Analysing gender in Coque through jokes and popular music
2.1 Introduction
It is obvious that even one sentence can mean hundreds of different things depending on the context. That is why Douglas (1968) pointed out the necessity to analyse jokes by not focusing on the word itself, but capturing the social situation it was given in his early study of jokes. What I introduce here is its simple example I found in Coque: “Do you want to marry me?” It can be, of course, a passionate, and serious line for his/her lover. However, this romantic sentence is often worn-out and loses its original nuance in Coque. The sentence metamorphoses into a joke. This is cynical since it is this dramatic tone that makes the people fancy using this as a joke. The people love talking about love. Preceding ethnographies of the area could not avoid the topic neither; if anything, it occupies the central (Rebhun, 2002; Scheper-Hughes, 1993). People make laugh a lot about love and also its possible form in reality, that is, relationship, marriage, and sexual intercourse. Regarding marriage, I often found that the way in which people in Coque deal with this intriguing topic is very different from the romantic stories I am used to hearing through comics and televisions. The reality in Coque is still very much male-centric and machismo as Rebhun and Scheper-Hughes painfully described. A dominance of men over women had been one of the serious issues in Brazil. I did find many similarities in today’s Coque while their fieldwork took place more than two decades ago. In other words, hegemonic masculinity defined as “the pattern of practice that allowed men’s dominance over women to continue” (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005) remained unchallenged in Coque. It is not my objective of this chapter to impeach gender inequality per se. Rather, what I try to dig up is the mindset behind. I will explain the mindset supporting/underlying this inequality is so deeply embedded in society that it makes the whole gender issue difficult to confront. Back to “Do you want to marry me?” or its derivation “Do you want to marry with this girl/my sister?” and “Do you want to have a relationship with me/this girl/my sister?” let me think what makes this jokes a joke. My answer is twofold. The first idea is a dramatic and romantic tone of the sentence representing their favourite topic love. Second, it is the unreality of this offer; the people all knew that I would refuse this offer and never take it seriously. In other words, there was a tacit consensus that this joke provides a peal of 'safe' laughter. I also acknowledge this unreality derived from my privileged position (a wealthy temporal outsider from another country). In this chapter, I regard gender as not fixed individual sex differences but a fluid, unstable entity in society as many prominent feminist studies such as Doing Gender of West & Zimmermann (1987), Lois McNay (1999), and Judith Butler (2009) emphasised. In other words, I focus on social context as well as the jokes given. A joke functions in different ways like an insult and the way to open up a conversation up to the context. To clarify, I describe different the situations in which this “Do you want to marry me?” joke took place.
19 Chapter 2 & 3. Analysis of Humour and Jokes in Coque
1. I met Daniel’s friend in her twenties at the birthday party of Vavá. We were asked to pick some equipment for churrasco up from his friend’s house, so we walked the side streets for a couple of minutes toward the house with several men. It was around noon and some people were walking the street. On the way, she kept saying: “I love you, seriously” “Do you want to marry me, and bring me to the Netherlands?” “Please walk holding my hand” and when we passed by her house, she slid inside of the door and beckoned to me, saying, “Do you want to come in?” with sexual nuances.
2. Yasmin, a twenty-four years girl who has clear-cut features with dark skin liked to tease me when she saw me walking. She often sat in front of the hamburger shop along the main street in Coque with her female friends, sometimes also with her small children. The typical conversation was that first she asked me “Do you want to marry me?” and then her friend tacked on “Then you will have four children” triggering their laughter.
3. I used to go to the station to buy a newspaper in the morning. Two cheerful women in middle age, Vera with dark blonde hair and her friend, were vendors and we often had a little chat. In the very beginning of my stay, once Vera indicated her friend and chuckled: “Don’t you want to have a Brazilian girlfriend?”
4. Juan and Ruama are brothers living in the same street as me. Ruama is 19, studying to be a nurse outside of Coque and Juan, 17, works as a navvy in the construction. They both have beady eyes and we sometimes had a long talk in front of their house. Juan was the only one in Coque who called me “Senhor”, showing his politeness. Nevertheless, one day when I told them I do not have a girlfriend, he pointed out Ruama and said, “Don’t you want to have a relationship with her?”
On top of these examples, I heard this joke for further times from the people with different gender and ages like girls and boys, middle-aged women, and old men. Although the impression differed every time, the joke sometimes came with an uncomfortable feeling as if women concerned were treated as if commodity talked in terms of “to buy or not to buy, that is the question.” In other words, I recognized a link between this joke and the objectification of women. The point is not only an objectification per se but the social norm admitting this joke, which could be seen as a projection of the male-centricity of the community. Not only jokes but also slang and popular music could be symptoms of deeper social gender issues. The people loved them as a part of their daily lives. The aim of this chapter is to present and deepen the analysis through close-up on these practices I observed in Coque. I draw on literature studying the intersection of jokes and gender as well as some feminist theories. I have decided to put jokes and slang in the same section because using slang itself could be seen as a joke. Regarding popular music, I particularly analyse a song by MC Bruninho and Vitinho Ferrari called ‘Sou Favela [I’m a slum]’ released in 2018. First, I analyse a reaffirmation of male dominance in Coque as both conscious and unconscious process by drawing on the feminist studies of applying Pierre Bourdieu. In the second half, I shift my focus to other aspects of gender issues i.e. family, LGBTs, and popular
20 Chapter 2 & 3. Analysis of Humour and Jokes in Coque
music. Lastly, I introduce an interview with Catarina and her joke as another possibility of jokes, that is, inverting the structure (Kotthoff, 2006). I finish this chapter with a summary of arguments bridging to the following chapter of politics.
2.2 (Un)Conscious Reaffirmation of Male Dominance through Gender Jokes in Coque
Word definition, literature study, and gender jokes in Coque Before starting the analysis, it is necessary to explain what I regard as jokes. Two Portuguese words are frequently used to mention the English notion of jokes; piada and brincadeira. Both words have a wide range of meaning. Piada focuses witticism and brincadeira is more about having fun hence perhaps piada is closer to the English sense of jokes.2 Throughout this thesis, jokes correspond to not only piada but also brincadeira. Brincadeira is sometimes translated into “teasing”, but teasing is also an important aspect of jokes, which sometimes has a blurred boundary with insult (Douglas, 1968). For instance, I heard several times some men made laugh of their friend of being corno [literal translation horny, but also refers to a man who has a wife had an affair with another man]. Men targeted were either absent or smiling, awkwardly. This chapter draws on several key studies. First, I again introduce two remarkable ethnographies of Northeast Brazil; Death Without Weeping by Nancy Scheper-Hughes (1993) and The Heart is Unknown Country by Linda-Anne Rebhun published in 2002. Both works put gender as its central topic while their perspectives are different. Scheper-Hughes delved into oppression against women and infant death by tenaciously listening to their deep (often despairing) voices. Rebhun intertwined love relationship of the locals with external factors like an economy. These books were even more suggestive than other books due to some reasons. First, the books are about geographically close areas. Second, authors’ perspectives are more professional and both authors are women touched on the different aspects as I did. Another fingerpost is McNay (1999) applied the concept of habitus and field3 from Pierre Bourdieu to gender and complemented his theory. I will summarise this article later and complement by some other articles. McNay understood gender as not a given, fixed category, but a fluid notion shaped and created day by day through tiny daily interactions. This view goes hand in hand with analysis of jokes, which is, nothing to say, a pungent spice of daily lives all over the world. During my fieldwork in Coque, I collected 110 jokes made by 56 people in total. I counted jokes
2 Brincadeira means “fun, play; jest, joke; gaiety; merrymaking, skylarking” and piada means “birdcall, chirp, chirping, peeping; biting jest, jeer; joke, witty saying, quip, crank, witticism, sally, smart repartee” cited from “Dicionário de Português – Inglês (2nd edition)” (1995). Porto Editora. 3 Habitus is a central concept of Pierre Bourdieu. It is initially defined by him as “A system of lasting, transposable dispositions which, integrating past experiences, functions at every moment as a matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and actions and makes possible the achievement of infinitely diversified tasks, thanks to analogical transfers of schemes permitting the solution of similarly shaped problems (Quoted in Lizardo, 2004).” However, he elaborated on the definition for several times and added some elements such as a function of “regulating”. The definition is so rigid that made full acceptance of the concept difficult. The function is twofold: a perceptual and classifying structure and a generative structure of practical action (Lizardo, 2004).
21 Chapter 2 & 3. Analysis of Humour and Jokes in Coque
that I repeatedly heard for only once. The breakdown of jokes is: 50 are made by male adults, another 50 are made by female adults, 8 are made by male minors, and 2 are made by female minors (table 2.1). The large part of jokes was collected during informal conversation with people, but some also came from interviews and events. This means the jokes collected mainly represent the informal way to talk to others. I wrote down these jokes in the field note I was taking every day.
Major Minor Men 50 8 Women 50 2 Table 2.1: A breakdown of jokes (N=110)
The date set includes, however, some constraints. The biggest constraint is that I often missed out or could not follow the jokes due to my insufficient language fluency. I have to admit that this is one of the reasons why jokes here consisted of simple jokes with relatively straightforward word choices. Second, I was an outsider for people in Coque so that some of them might consciously choose the different jokes for me. This is not to say they hid or refrained from saying a certain type of joke, but rather, they decided to say particular jokes to entertain/make fun of me. For instance, as I explained in the introduction, people liked to talk about Japan and so do the jokes. Third, my relationships with the people also influenced the jokes they made. For instance, I heard more jokes based on stereotypes at the beginning of my stay. Fourth, there are some geographic and personal biases. Though I made efforts to communicate with diverse people, I was not able to communicate with the whole population in Coque. My conversation partners were neighbours (including a landlady Jecilia and her family), Vavá and his friends because I spent quite some time with him to make a case study. People on the street also became source but still it was a small part of Coque. Fifth, the boundary between jokes and something else was sometimes not very clear. Jokes were sometimes mixed up with greetings, talking to him/herself, even serious opinions so that I had to define jokes arbitrary. My strategy was to accept a wider interpretation of jokes, rather than the strictness. Put differently, I put my priority on collecting more quantity rather than finding bona-fide jokes. The last constraint is, of course, some people love to tell jokes while others are not. Naturally, jocular people took up a large proportion in my dataset. Nonetheless, in my observation, people in Coque are in general very playful and willing to make jokes. In spite of these constraints, I claim these jokes were useful to show some differences of joking style between e.g. Coque and the other Western countries like Netherlands, men and women, and so on which are sustained by the different ways of thinking or mind-sets. As partly argued, they also do imply the social norm since sexual jokes are often based on sexism, which is “in an in-between state of acceptability” (Ford, Boxer, Armstrong, & Edel, 2008). In this chapter, I analyse jokes related to sex and love. Out of 110 jokes I collected, the category takes up 42, which accounts for 38.2%. This type of jokes can be particularly classified into (1) relatively direct sex or gender-related jokes. For instance, there was a boy who told a girl sitting next to him at the bar: “we had sex this morning, hadn't we?” (2) Milder jokes. For instance, “Please
22 Chapter 2 & 3. Analysis of Humour and Jokes in Coque
bring your brother from Japan and arrange that he marries me" heard from a woman on the street. But again, the boundary of these two jokes is unclear. I hereafter call these jokes as “gender jokes” all at once. One of the strongest impressions I got in Coque is the frequent encounter to these gender jokes. There is no doubt that this kind of jokes is very popular in Coque; people love to make jokes about sex, marriage, relationship, affair, love, prostitution, genitals, and sexualities, yet of course, there are those who do not like these jokes too. Quantitatively speaking, 26 out of 42 jokes are made by men and 16 are made by women. It could be argued men prefer gender jokes to women, but we should take a closer look here. Studies have reported that there are gender differences in humour (Kotthoff, 2006). For instance, Bruner & Kelso (1980) investigated the restroom graffiti where sometimes expresses (sexual) humour in the campus and its adjacent town of U.S., which is characterized as “same-sex communication.” They concluded men’s graffiti tend to be derogatory, aggressive and egocentric, whereas those of women are more advisory and interpersonal. They also claim that underlying meaning of these graffiti differs; men’s graffiti is more about reaffirming dominance against e.g. women, blacks, and specific race like Jewish, while women’s graffiti often try to rethink their subordination under men. Indeed, Kotthoff (2006) that one in higher position is “People on the top are freer to be aggressive.” This resonates with the argument of Douglas (1968) that jokers are often privileged person not exposed to danger. Davies (2006) found that some men prefer sexist humour compared to other men through analysing American film Sling Blade, which leads to an obvious yet important premise that different joking styles exist not only in between but also within a sex category. Do gender differences of joking styles exist in Coque? My answer is yes. It becomes clear when I pick up highly sexualized jokes referring to genitals and intercourse. Out of 42 gender jokes, 15 jokes directly mention to them and men made 12 of them (Table 2.2). Men tended to make these jokes when there are only men, but they could be oriented to the women in the same place (see the vignette below). In the case of women, the jokes always took place within a circle of their female friends. Although this could be the reason I did not capture many high-sexualised jokes by women, it seems valid to argue that some men liked to make these jokes. The second point is, following Bruner & Kelso (1980), that I often observed men used gender jokes as an instrument to reaffirm and/or maintain their superiority to women, but not vice versa. I observed these men did this both consciously and unconsciously; sometimes they were even mixed up. In my observation, some men were especially with this tendency compared to others in terms of the conscious act. I introduce these two types in order.
Gender jokes High-sexualized jokes Men 26 12 Women 16 3 Table 2.2: A breakdown of gender jokes (N=42)
23 Chapter 2 & 3. Analysis of Humour and Jokes in Coque
Conscious reaffirmation of male dominance One morning, I came across with Aderbal and his good friend Nado in the street and they invited me to a neighbouring community, Afogados, to have breakfast. Aderbal used to be a community leader in Coque but moved out a few years ago. Yet, he still keeps coming over Coque periodically. On the way to Afogados, they saw two young girls, Daisy and Taliana, walking along the street so honked a car horn and picked them up. I got the feeling that they both knew each other from before yet not very close. At a small stall in the market of Afogados, Aderbal paid for the breakfast and served it to us. While we were having a breakfast of cassava with stewed beef and a big bottle of Cola-cola all together, two men made the same sexualised jokes such as “you eat this one [pointed Daisy] first. Then this one [pointed Taliana] next” for several times. In response to my comment that I liked the meal after finishing it, they also said: “(the food was tasty) like a vagina.” Scheper-Hughes (1993) introduced a poignant quote from a woman to explain this intimacy between sex and hunger (or eating): “How else am I going to know that I’m alive if I don’t screw? At least in sex…I know that hunger hasn’t killed me yet!” Although the hunger was not as serious issue as her period, the link is still valid: “in popular Brazilian culture the idioms of food and sex, eating and making love, are interchangeable” she wrote. The two girls were politely smiling while these jokes were taking place, but did not actively participate in both jokes and normal conversations as if they were asked to behave so. The girls left after finishing the big breakfast and Aderbal drove me back to Coque with Nado. The most conspicuous point of this scene was, of course, the directness of the sexual jokes made by two men and the response of the girls; an air of male dominance and superiority. The jokes Aderbal and Nado made were clearly offensive to the girls but they neither get angry nor respond. The superiority was even reinforced because two men were much older than two girls; both Aderbal and Nado have a daughter in the age of the girls. In sum, the dominance was a mix of two components, that is, gender and age difference. Then, does this scene just show how male dominance strongly exists in Coque, and women have to subordinate? I do not agree with it. It is important to note that Aderbal and Nado were fulfilling the role of “knights” at the same time. Driving, payment, serving the food, and pouring Cola-cola to emptied cups of the girls…all behaviours were those of “good patrons” and the girls also accepted to be looked after. Put differently, they attacked and protected, disdained and respected the girls simultaneously. How is that possible? What I observed was two sides of “Machismo” (Arciniega, Anderson, Tovar-Blank, & Tracey, 2008). They argued that though historically machismo has been characterised as something aggressive and hypermasculine, it is in fact intertwined with contrasting “Caballerismo” associated with affiliation, chivalry and ethnic identity. Both ideas are based on a recognition that men should have power, however, these two ideas drive men to apparently opposite acts. Clearly, in this scene, sexual verbal jokes are manifestations of the former and their act is that of the latter. The question is, then, what was the role of jokes at the moment? One of the frequent arguments from joke study is that of Freud, seeing jokes as a way to loosen the reality (see Kotthoff, 2006). Attardo (1993) refers to “decommitment” as a social function of jokes
24 Chapter 2 & 3. Analysis of Humour and Jokes in Coque
that offers an “overt sign of ‘non-seriousness’”. Jokes widen a range of socially acceptable topics. At the moment, Aderbal and Nado were expected to follow Caballerismo way of acting but they as well wanted to show their superiority. I would argue that the avenue they found to envisage their power was the sexual jokes. They resolved the contradiction between the expected behaviour and their desire through jokes. The last question I ought to concern was: for whom was this skit performed? Yes, the principal audience of the skit is an ignorant newcomer from the Netherlands; me. There are some plausible explanations why two men chose these harassing jokes. First, the jokes were used to show their power off. Second, they enjoyed embarrassing novice researcher. Third, they protected themselves from complex questions I might ask by confusing me. It could also be the case that my existence disrupted them from making further sexual jokes (Their jokes could be even harsher if I was not there). Whichever the case may be, I was also taking part in the entire situation. This calls further attention to the role of the audience, in many cases, researcher.
Unconscious reaffirmation of male dominance Reaffirmation of male dominance in Coque is done not only consciously, but also unconsciously. In this section, I take a closer look at my neighbour Wellington. He is a 21-year-old man with short yet hunky physique. He is Evangelic and lived in a small house with his wife and baby born in the same year 2018. He works as a car engineer and earns some extra money by driving an Uber cab. Next to his house, his niece Brenda and his aunt are living. They have a strong kinship relationship. I often saw two families sitting together on stairs in front of their houses in the evening. Wellington sometimes made gender jokes, but it is questionable to how extent he did it on purpose to maintain or reaffirm his superiority. For instance, a week before my departure, he and his family threw a farewell dinner for me at his house. Brenda spent a whole day to prepare the gorgeous dinner of Brazilian pancakes, arroz carioca, and cuscus, escondidinho [a sort of potato lasagne with meats inside; literally means hidden because meats are not observable from outside] etc. Before dinner, we decided to take the picture together but Brenda did not want to be in it. In response to this, Wellington facetiously incited her by saying “Com’on Brenda, you got a makeup so your appearance is okay now.” I see this as a gender joke because it is about one’s appearance highly relates to women’s beauty influencing on her popularity among men. The joke also included certain contempt against Brenda because he mocked her looking. Another example is from the other day when we were talking about jobs in front of their houses. A mother of Brenda, who was Wellington’s aunt, said that she had been looking for the job for years; she complained that it is hard to find a job without an introduction by “peixe”, literally means fish, but in this context, meaning a person who mediates the job. I asked “So if the person introduces the job to you is a fish, are you a pescador [fisherman]?” induced their laughter: fish is just a fish, they said. During the talk, Wellington talked to me as if I was a five-year-child; speaking extremely slowly and repeating simple words for five times. It seemed that he was enjoying his superiority to me. Though this joke was not directly related to gender, it is about power affirmation. However, it is crucial to note Wellington is very kind and did not hesitate to help me many times; for instance, he
25 Chapter 2 & 3. Analysis of Humour and Jokes in Coque
drove me to the airport at two in the morning on the day leaving. And it is a part of the reason his comments above perplexed me. How could these jokes be interpreted? My observation is that these jokes downplaying women or “enjoying” his superiority are not the projection of his consciousness but unconsciousness. It seems he was just making jokes that he thought funny and Brenda was also used to it. She did not take the jokes seriously and ignored them. When he mocked me, she angrily told him to stop it. In this sense, his jokes are “innocent”. Next, I look at a mechanism behind the jokes and the power reaffirmation by drawing on feminist studies.
Analysing gender jokes in Coque through feminist studies: habitus of favela? I analyze male dominance and its reaffirmation in Coque by drawing on a feminist debate about the application of the theory of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu into the field of gender – especially, his central notion habitus and field. The most influential paper regarding this topic is perhaps McNay (1999). She first introduced the contribution of French philosopher Michel Foucault. Foucault made important progress in the study of social identity by shedding light on the constructed, changing part of identity. Foucault's argument is that identity is something not just imposed, but what individuals actively determine through his/her conscious acts. In other words, identity is “self-fashionable”. However, Foucault was not successful at positioning himself between determinism and voluntarism, that is, an answer to the question if we can “choose” gender by ourselves or not. This is, McNay insisted, because he did not take the materiality of the body into account and treated social construction of gender as a one-sided, straightforward process. She claimed Bourdieu made a breakthrough by proposing new light about our bodies seeing it as a “dynamic, mutable frontier.” His notion of embodiment, the mutual enhancing nature of body and mind, simultaneously admits and refuses simple reduction of gender into either social norms or one’s choice. These norms, according to Bourdieu, are constructed “through the subtle inculcation of power relations upon the bodies and dispositions of individuals” and it is this point that his idea of habitus becomes useful. It is not given social norms, but the accumulation of small interactive processes enables the institution to attain full realization. Here, habitus is a generative structure that offers two seemingly opposite options to the people within. It engenders a potentially infinite number of thoughts, jokes, and behaviours, but it limits the diversity of them at the same time; it is called “regulated liberties.” The place for this habitus (the feel for the game) is called “field (the game itself)” (Adkins, 2003). McNay stands in the middle of constructivist and structuralism’s views, as well as Bourdieu himself located his work as “constructivist structuralism” (Powell, 2008) by offering this constraint. Other study demonstrated that, for instance, exposure to verbal practices of sexual humour could promote sexually harassing behaviour against women by some men (Ford et al., 2008). The link between verbal and non-verbal practices could be found here. Following McNay’s argument, I argue gender jokes are enhancing male-centric social norms in Coque, which in turn makes it easy, if not encourage, to play with these jokes for the people inside. In other words, gender jokes and sexualised social norms are mutually reinforcing each other. The
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power derives from these interactions becomes even more powerful when “the power is no longer incarnated in persons or specific institutions but becomes coextensive with a complex set of relations between different fields, social control becomes more insidious and hence more effective (McNay, 1999).” In short, the power obtains a basis to last longer when it is well dispersed in society. Applying these ideas to Wellington, it seems that he surely used his power as a man when he made jokes above, but without noticing it. The point is that the power to be a man is so permeated in Coque that some men like Wellington are not even aware of the fact that they own and conduct it in everyday lives. The lack of consciousness itself implies how male dominance and gender difference are deeply embedded in their mindset. Here, gender joke is not merely an expression of the mindset; it is as well an outcome of one’s negotiation with “regulated liberties” narrowing down his/her choices offered by social norms. Making gender jokes is, in this sense, a habitus, a repetitive inculcation contributing to normalizing the male-centricity in Coque. Is it possible to transform this situation in which these differences are highly naturalized? I try to answer this question by taking a further look at the concept of field – namely, Coque, a “favela,” as a field of this habitus. McNay would answer yes to this question. Although Bourdieu himself saw the field as a given, pre-condition for habitus, therefore deterministic by social structure, McNay made the concept more flexible (McNay, 1999; see also McLeod, 2005). She argues, for example, an influx of mothers who finished child rearing into employment would bring the workplace (field) further “reflexive” awareness of the patriarchal working condition (field). In other words, McNay sees the field as not permanent, but temporal. However, McNay’s application of Bourdieusian concepts has also been criticized. McLeod (2005) criticized McNay for being a “utopian” since she overestimates a potential to social transformation through reflexivity and Bourdieusian concepts’ plasticity. She more supports Adkins (2003). Adkins followed in the footsteps of Bourdieu’s understanding, that is, the reflexivity emerges out of the lack of ‘fit’ between the habitus and field, but added that the reflexivity does not necessarily lead to a social transformation such as gender detraditionalization. This is because the reflexivity itself is not independent of, but tied up to the very social norms. The positive change occurs only occasionally. Combining these views altogether, my answer to the initial question would be still yes but much weaker than that of McNay. Once again, these practices of gender jokes are not easy to cease and it would be too optimistic to acknowledge the full malleability of the field. This is principally because these practices are simply easy options. Bourdieu himself explains that when habitus:
“…encounters a social world of which it is a product, it is like a ‘fish in water’ ’: it does not feel the weight of the water and it takes the world about itself for granted.”’ (Quoted in Murtagh, Morris, & Thorpe, 2013)
Another factor makes this transformation difficult is an elusiveness of these norms. Powell (2008) did research about love/sex relationships of heterosexual young women and men in Australia and found that many women accept unwanted sex, not because of the coerciveness of the offer, but
27 Chapter 2 & 3. Analysis of Humour and Jokes in Coque
because they think it is "inappropriate" to refuse. For Powell, it typifies Bourdieusian term symbolic violence in which “certain gendered norms, values and dominant discourses come to be accepted as ‘natural’”. I think in Coque it is also the case. Some gender jokes are so “accepted as usual” that it is difficult to dissent or refuse laughter. I remember the wry smile of the middle-aged man who was made laugh by his friends of him being cheated by his wife. He did not protest against the joke but just waited for the end of the laughter. It could be same for the others such as two girls who were made laugh by Aderbal and Nado, and Wellington’s niece Brenda. Next, I turn my eyes from power reaffirmation by males to other gender issues in Coque – namely, family, popular music and sexual minorities.
2.3 Various Gender Issues in Coque: Family, Popular Music, and LGBTs
Family in Coque Family is a crucial aspect of society strongly intertwined with gender. I introduce the diverse forms of families I encountered in Coque. In general, a family tends to be bigger than Western countries and women-headed households are more common. A typical explanation for the latter is that when a man who has a wife “falls in love” with another woman, he escapes from his house; Rebhun (2002) describes, “Brazilian men don’t break up, they just leave, and come back.” Aderbal is the typical example. The dominance of a big family is apparently due to two main reasons: (1) older people tend to have a large number of children. I know some people have over ten children or grandchildren. (2) Kinship is stronger and distant relatives often live together. For instance, one’s niece or nephew can stay in the same house, which relatively rarely occurs in the West. Kinship has been also historically important as a network providing the way to economically survive in Brazil (Rebhun, 2002). There are also people, especially elderlies, who have an idea that the larger a number of children become, the better since a child is a bênção [blessing] from the god. Didio is a stout man in his fifties and used to be a member of PREZEIS on behalf of Coque. After he got married to his third wife, he became a devout evangelic and quit drinking, smoking, and dancing. He works as a mechanic and goes to church every week. I remember one day when we were having churrasco together in front of his house with loud music but without dancing, with Coca-Cola but without alcohol, I talked to him “you have so many children” because he was a father of over ten kids. He laughed: “I would go to Japan to make more children.” Then, his friend sitting next to us added, “Didio is a fabricante!” gushed their laughter. Fabricante has relevance to fábrica [factory] so, in this context, it meant that Didio is like a child factory. At first thought, I understood this joke as an unconscious expression of machismo as the case of Wellington since it objectifies a woman as an instrument to “produce” child. However, I noticed some women also have this way of thinking. Eolidiz is an old woman organizing a small group in Coque called AMPAC [Associação de Mãe, Pai e Adolescente do Coque: Association of Mother, Father, and Adolescents in Coque] oriented to education and arranged activities like handcrafts and child drawing workshop. During the interview,
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she admitted there are gender problems in Coque and emphasised the importance of education of women. Yet, she does not consider the adolescent pregnancies itself as an issue: “The more children, the better. I would like to have forty grandchildren,” she said. For her, what matters is not a teenage pregnancy itself, but an absence of help from her husband. Her vision is, in this sense, different from other interviewees since they consider early pregnancy itself is a big issue. I got the feeling that young women tended or wanted, to have a smaller number of children but this requires further clarification. However, it is significant to be aware of the diversity of families in Coque. Rebhun (2002) pointed out the shape of a family is also influenced by economic factors; different families with different economic level could have different shapes. An interesting point is that the family owned a house along the main street and is relatively well off. Leonice is a hospitable woman in her thirties running a cake shop along the main street. She lives with her husband works as a car engineer and their little child. The couple joins a cycling club outside of Coque with road bikes, goes for running in fashionable sportswear, and is used to journeying to a distant city for a family visit to which many people in Coque cannot afford. When I asked Leonice if there is a gender problem in Coque during casual conversation, she frowned: “No, I do not think there is a big problem of gender.” Another example is a modest girl Andreza living along the main street. She is about twenty years old and an only daughter of their parents. She studies at a university to be a nurse with a national scholarship and likes listening to rock music with English lyrics. She said most of her friends live outside and is not familiar with Coque. Indeed, she did not know about local events and politics like community leaders. On the contrary, there are families in worse-off economic situations. These families subsist their livelihood by handling jobs such as taking care of elderlies, working as a maid for a better-off family outside, and running food stalls. The joke made by the saleswoman of a newspaper who got separated and is taking care of her children single-handedly well represented this tough reality: “We have to work and earn money. You know, women love money!”
Analysing gender through popular music My stay in Coque was coloured by a rushing stream of music manifesting the gorgeous culture of Brazil. Every event from a personal birthday party to big parade came with earsplittingly loud music; churrasco, alcohol, and music are the Three Sacred Treasures in Coque. One of the most popular music in Coque is a variation of funk music called Brega of which the topic is often about either romantic love or vulgar sexual intercourse. Hit songs were repeatedly broadcast during my stay via music player, radio, and propaganda trucks (figure 2.1). The latest fad during September and October in 2018 was, for instance: “Tiro de Bumbum” [Butt Shot] by MC Troia, “Treme Treme” [Shake and Shake] by MC Loma e As Gêmeas Lacração, “Amor Falso” [False Love] by Wesley Safadão, “So Que Vrau” [Just want to have sex] by MC MM. It is not my intention to report that all people in Coque liked this type of music. On the contrary, many people have no interest in this kind of music as well. Nevertheless, I consider Brega music as an important element of Coque since, as referred above, it recurrently came back during various events.
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Figure 2.1: A propaganda truck sprinkles earsplittingly loud funk music
“Sou Favela” is one of the popular Brega songs I frequently overheard in Coque. It was originally released by MC Bruninho and Vitinho Ferrari in 2018, and covered by Ruanzinho. I particularly analyse the lyrics of this song because of the following reasons: (1) the song reached my ears for various times (2) a protagonist of the lyric is the boy from a favela (3) the lyric includes some interesting implications about gender to my research. My aim is not to criticize or advertise the song itself but to exemplify the widespread music in Coque. The lyric begins4:
Rodo becos e viela / mas não encontrei ninguém que tinha a beleza dela Sou do morro, sou favela / mas meu coração se apaixonou por essa Cinderela [Looked around alleys and side streets / but I found nobody had her beauty I am from a slum, I am a favela / but my heart was passionate for this Cinderella]
The song is about a boy from favela who fell in love with a girl from a middle-class family. This first part illustrates his enthusiasm about her and the big obstacle he is facing: a difference of social rank between them. The word Cinderela has an effect to make the situation even more romantic – it sounds as if the girl came out of the world of fairy tale.
Ela é da Zona Sul, loirinha, de olho azul / E o impasse é o pai dela Só porque eu sou neguin, moro num barraquin / Mas dei a chave do meu coração pra ela Hoje ela vem me ver / E eu vou bater uma real pra ela [She is from Zona Sul, blonde with blue eyes / and the impasse is her father It is only because I am the one living in a small hut / but I gave her the key to my heart Today she comes to see me / I will beat the reality for her]
4 The lyrics and PV are retrieved from the websites (the latest access at March 2, 2019) lyrics: https://www.letras.mus.br/mc-bruninho/sou-favela-part-vitinho-ferrari PV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvJIwSPte4E
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In this part, the situation they confront is explained more specifically. The boy confesses he lives in barraquin meaning a small barraca [hut, stall, tent], and a father of the girl opposes to his wooing because of the fact. The word barraquin is a casual, not formal way of speaking so this also fits well to his explanation. Rhetoric with dramatic effects continues to be used in this part, such as “the key to my heart” “beat the reality.” An important point is that the girl is described only in terms of her appearance, especially words of “blonde with blue eyes.” These characteristics are used to only show her beauty and social class. This phrase reflects a social norm attaching much importance to women’s appearance, especially sees characteristics referred above as privileged ones. A clear divide between two is even enhanced by boy’s social status. A word neguinho [black small guy] is transformed into interesting unusual form neguin here, which sounds similar to ninguem [nobody]. The boy is clad in anonymity. The lyric completely follows a classic story type a hero who “beat the reality” to rescue a powerless princess captured by evil enemies. The boy is a hero taking action in spite of a huge obstacle and the hindrance is a reality embodied by her father. The enemy gets stronger and the obstacles become bigger, the story obtains more romantic, intoxicating tone. Here, the song reaches to its hook:
Fala pro teu pai que eu não quero dinheiro / Eu já tenho uma riqueza que é você Se quiser casar, eu caso / Vamos brincar de amar, somente eu e você [Talk to your father that I don’t need money / I already have the richness that is you If you want to get married, I marry you / let’s play with love, only you and me]
The boy asks the girl to tell her father that the objective of his approach is not money, “marry into the purple.” He says the beauty of the girl compensates for it, but I remind the beauty is merely described by the phrase “blonde with blue eyes.” He proposes the perfect solution to this problem: marriage. What surprises is that boy says, “If you want to get married, I marry you,” not “I want to marry you.” If the boy has made up his mind so strongly, why does he not directly ask her to marry him? The implication is that a marriage is considered as something more important, if not desirable, for women than men and that is why the boy becomes a little condescending here. He scrupulously creates his own image as a knight on a white horse by expressing his single-minded passion and unshakable resolution to conquer her. However, she stays silent from the beginning of the lyric and there is no way to know her wish. What we see here is an objectification of the girl. In the lyrics, she is only introduced as a target of “love.” She has to be both beautiful and voiceless to deserve the boy's noble, passionate love. There is an official promotion video of the song on YouTube with more than 200 million views at the time of December 2018. The video takes place in Brazilian favela and in the beginning it shows the typical components of the place: a resting ownerless dog, brick-made housing, narrow and dim side streets, etc. Two singers, MC Bruninho and Vitinho Ferrari, dress up like people in the favela; T-shirt, hoody, shorts and flip-flops. The video goes in accordance with the lyrics; for example, the singers approach to a white girl and her father gets angry. It ends with the scene that the singer is
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having dinner together with the girl and her parents. Everybody is smiling. As a whole, the video gives an impression that “love” overcomes an economic and social obstacle, that is, stereotype of girl’s father. However, I argue, this “triumph” of love conceals and is based on the objectification of women and the idea measuring women only in terms of their appearance. To add to this, the lyrics of Brega music are often more openly sexist. Suffice to say that even a “romantic” song could be a covert projection of male-centric, and/hence preferable story.
LGBT in Coque So far, my analysis has much drawn on Rebhun (2002). Her fieldwork was conducted in 1980s nearby Recife and the book reaffirmed my observations for many times. However, I found one principal component of my experience was untouched in her work; the LGBTs, especially gay people in the community. In this section, I analyse the sexual minorities in Coque by putting the focus back to jokes. In Coque, gay people were quite active and forging unique network. Unexpectedly, there was even a big parade called Parada da Diversidade [Diversity Parade: LGBT Parade]. Though there was a criticism saying it did not reflect the aspiration of the LGBTs concerned, it is still arguable that many people socially accepted, at least not actively oppressed these minorities. As I will explain in chapter 4, I did my case study with Vavá who is also openly gay. I briefly introduce gender jokes unique to the sexual minorities and the effect they have. First, I answer the question: why Rebhun did not write about sexual minorities? Iri, who was working in Secretaria de Justiça e Direito Humano [Secretary of Justice and Human Rights] in Recife, introduced some intriguing clues to me. She was politically active for both leftist party and LGBTs because she herself was a lesbian. We got to know each other in the demonstration and she kindly invited me to her office in the city to interview. During the interview, the air conditioner was making a huge sound. She restlessly moved her eyes and sometimes had candy, but the answer was clear. Iri is a woman in her forties, has brown skin with curly brown hair. For me, it is natural that she strongly supports PT since a representative of another option PSL, Jair Bolsonaro, has made harassing comments against sexual minorities over and over. She has been active in LGBT movements for over two decades:
Iri: I was born in the house of a nanny (= her mother was working as a nanny). I suffered from prejudices. In 1991, I achieved autonomy and became unionist; the state gave me the opportunity to grow up. Yusaku: In 1991? What happened? Iri: I was interviewed by the director of the union. And we organized the journal "LGBT do Pernambuco” as public politics and invited to work as a coordinator.
Based on her experience, she explained how the discrimination against sexual minorities is deeply embedded in society. Many prejudices against LGBT people exist in Brazil, and they are pretty much institutionalized. For instance, she told some regulations to assist the oppression.
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Iri: Military Police here have POP [Procedimento Operacional Padrão: Procedural Operational Standard], an instrument of formation, for military police, as LGBT comes with the way abundant women treated…something like batida [beating]. Do you understand? This instrument of the state exists.
Then, the situation of LGBTs today is desperately bad? Her answer was yes, but she also admitted notable progress had been made as well. She perceived a more diverse kind of LGBTs nowadays in the front stage and the communication became easier.
Yusaku: How have the situation of LGBT people changed over time? For instance, compared to twenty years ago? Iri: [before there was even no conversation, but] …you can ask for conversation now. Now we need to do more. But nowadays, all difficulties…I don't want to say violence doesn't exist, it does exist because many prejudices exist…but now we have diversity because twenty years ago travesti [transvestites] could not leave the house during the day. They leave the house only in the evening…I think we activists advanced a lot.
I wondered what had brought this change, so asked the following question.
Yusaku: And when was the change? The ruling age of PT [2002-2016], or before… Iri: That point is put on political discussion. But it advanced in the age of esquerda [left] because the politics of the state was very feminist. Many feminists were working… When you will need the place to work, I want to take you to the part of political discussion. There are lesbians, strangers, gays, they started separate parties… Yusaku: When did it start exactly? Leftist party, you mean PT? Iri: It started much before, but it was very slow. It advanced a lot with Lula [a former president from PT ruling 2002-2010] …But nowadays the advance is very small.
We should take this answer with a grain of salt since she herself is a petista [supporter of the leftist party PT]. Nonetheless, I think her remark contains an important implication to answer the question cast above. The situation of sexual minorities has changed so that they become more visible. It is impossible to fully compare Rebhun’s study and my experience at the same level, but it seems a modest conclusion that they could become more outspoken in the issue they fight for. Hereafter, I introduce gender jokes they made because it has an important aspect I have not touched on; the gender jokes as social glue. In other words, I observed gay people made gender jokes within their group in order to bond themselves. They constantly reconfirmed their friendship through these jokes, which has been indeed considered as one of the main functions of humour that strengthen social relations (Douglas, 1968; Kotthoff, 2006). Indeed, jokes are a means for group identification creating in- and out-group (Attardo, 1993).
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For instance, I was once invited to a big music festival in Igarassu close to Recife by Vavá and went with seven gay people. We lent a van and hired a driver, loaded a big cooler with full of beers. We left Coque at eight thirty in the evening and came back three in the morning so it must not be hard to imagine that it was a long, intense night. On the way to the venue, they made laughed a lot about their own sexuality. For instance, a guy sitting in the front seat looked back to me and asked: “Hey, do you like Vavá?” Another guy sitting next to him interrupted, “No, he must prefer novinho [slang meaning young boy]” and they laughed together. I noticed that at this moment they put me inside of their circle; they used novinho instead of novinha [young girl], which assumes I like boys but not girls. After the long festival, most of us got drunk and were in cosy vibrations. The gender joke clearly functioned as social glue on the way back to Coque when they suddenly started shouting: “Go! Go! Franginho [frango literally means chicken, but often used to indicate a gay person]!” The roads were not crowded so the drive was going quite smoothly, and everybody in the car kept exclaiming, “Go! Go! Franginho!” all together laughed a lot. In short, they reconfirmed their solidarity and identity through this shout. Indeed, it was my strong expression that gay people like to laugh about sexualities, especially when there are only gay people without me. For instance, Vavá often bewildered me with this kind of joke served with his smirk; “You can say you eat meat and fish, but not frango” implying the second meaning of the word. The interesting point is that these jokes are often seen as jokes only when they are told by gays. For example, a word viado [fagot] is usually not used to indicate gay because of its pejorative nuance. However, Daniel explained to me, “If a gay says viado to another gay, that is fine. It is only among friends.” Apparently, it seems they inverted the meaning of the word from pejorative to acceptable, even a friendly one. The truth is, however, its opposite; they enjoyed the light contempt the word originally contains. Jokes could take place in relation to heterosexual men as well. One day, Daniel started a small quarrel with his colleague Batatinho during the meeting of their political group ACC [Agente Comunitário do Coque: Community Agent of Coque]. At one point they started to yell each other “Frango!” and “Homofobia [homophobia]!” but it was not Daniel exclaimed “homophobia.” It was the other way around; Daniel cried “Frango!” and Batatinho shouted “Homofobia.” In other words, they insulted each other by the word in which the opponent never fits. The quarrel ended up with laughter and they reconciled. I first got confused with this, but this strategy had, in my observation, a dual function. First, it has a lower risk to make an opponent angry. If Batatinho says “Frango!” to Daniel, it could sound like a serious insult and vice versa. Second, the shout also created a sense of solidarity because it treats an opponent as if he is in the same group, whereas it is not the case. In short, it was a euphemism of “You are my friend.” The bottom line is that gender jokes could serve as social glue among different social groups. Lastly, I would like to mention that heterosexual men could also make jokes of gays. One day, Vavá and Daniel were absent from the meeting of ACC. When I asked Roberval, a member of ACC, “where are Vavá and Daniel today?” he grinned and said “Enamorando [they are having sex].” He
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also once made a joke that Vavá’s house is a zona [brothel]. The word zona sounds strong, but I heard several times that a man calls his friend’s house as a zona e.g. Nado once said: “88 [a house number of his friend] is a zona” when he was drinking with his friend. What I am saying is, again, that heterosexual men can also make jokes about the sexualities of LGBTs. However, it is not accurate to consider these jokes as social glue bonding heterosexual men with gays. Rather, I argue the joke functions as a means for them to talk about different sexualities. Put differently, jokes detoxify risky topics. In this case, it seems heterosexual men could not talk about this issue of sexuality without the jokes. In fact, I never saw gay and heterosexual men seriously discussing their sexuality. The joke worked as not social glue making people close, but its opposite; it contributed to keeping a safe distance between different social groups.
2.4 Joke as Hope: Overturning Structure?
Interview with Catarina I have introduced various functions of jokes in Coque in diverse settings. I do not deny many jokes I observed in Coque included prejudice and contempt against women and sexual minorities. Jokes can harm, insult, and hurt the object in a sly way. Nevertheless, I would like to end this chapter with a positive lingering sensation by proposing another function we should never overlook; overturning structure (Crawford, 2003; Douglas, 1968). Kotthoff (2006) pointed out that a possibility joke could serve as a tool for gender construction, but also its deconstruction. In her interview, Catarina made a joke with a sparkle of hope. Catarina is a 23-year-old girl with curly black, partly mixed with gold hair putting tasteful round glasses I seldom saw in Coque. The whole interview went smooth thanks to her efforts to choose words I could understand. The interview was at Neimfa, an NGO in Coque implementing various activities such as language courses and religious cults, with her little son Don playing around her and watching videos on her cell phone. He interrupted the interview by running up to his mother several times, which made Catarina sighed: “To be a mother is like this!” I appreciated her attitude clearly saying, “I don’t know” about what she does not know, rather than pretending or inventing a desperate excuse. She was born and has grown up in Coque. She is one of the founders of Revelar.si [the name came from the wish to “reveal (revelar)” herself through taking pictures], a small group of the girls in Coque primarily aiming at women empowerment. The girls mainly learn the skills of a photograph with a help of some students from UFPE [Universidade Federal de Pernumbuco] but the activities can vary e.g. lectures explaining some actions taken by women activists. In sum, Catarina was very active in claiming women’s right through her activities. In the meantime, she was studying computer graphics to obtain useful expertise for her future job. She piquantly explained the predicament women not in Coque, but also outside were facing. For instance, when she got pregnant, people who had worked with her abruptly changed the attitudes. It became even more difficult to find a fixed job for women when she gets pregnant.
Catarina: when I got pregnant, I was working as an issuer of television here. I was not
35 Chapter 2 & 3. Analysis of Humour and Jokes in Coque
working as a signed issuer but was working as a freelancer. And when I discovered my pregnant…I was not asked to work. And I had to pass a whole period of pregnant without working. Because nobody wants, nobody makes a contract with pregnant women because it requires a lot of care. So, I did not work, and he was born, after a while, I started another work but it is not fixed work…
Not only the plight but also the fear women have to confront are deeply permeated into society. She also explained the day-to-day fear to be a woman in Coque through a simple question. She said a huge fear is that of being raped, and it adds an extra to the terror that women have to confront. We had the following conversation:
Catarina: Do you feel fear when you walk along the street? Yusaku: Here? Catarina: The streets. Yusaku: The big streets, no. But side streets… Catarina: Are you scared? Why? Yusaku: Because… I’m new here, arrived in August, still don’t know many things. Also, I heard many crimes are taking place. Catarina: Men do have fear, but the fear of men is about to be killed. But that of women is about to be raped and killed, which is worse than just killed. I think that is besteira [bullshit].
She also asserted the gender problem exists in politics. She believed that impeachment of former president Dilma Rousseff happened in 2016 was nourished by the fact that she is a woman, though it was officially due to her overlooking of corruption. In response to these severe stories, I asked the following question:
Yusaku: How can men contribute to improving the situation of gender? Catarina: First, they do not understand or listen. There are many men who talk about gender, but they do not listen. They say what women need but do not ask women what they want and what they need. Do you understand? I think the first thing is to listen to. Let women speak and say what they want. Yusaku: They speak about gender, but… Catarina: Do not listen. They talk about the importance of women, respect women, but do not listen to women.
It was right after the formal interview that Catarina made the joke I am keen to introduce. I stopped a recorder and we had a small chat about the political situation. She said she is strongly afraid of the rise of the far-right represented by Jair Bolsonaro. In line with her feminist way of thinking, she had a serious fear of him making offensive comments against woman over and over. The period of my
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stay is probably marked by the tendency that an issue of gender and LGBT became surface because of his statements. One of his favourite concepts is “traditional family” consisted of a husband working outside to earn money for his family and a wife taking care of housework and children in the house. This vision was popular among his supporters and I often heard the idea “woman should stay in the house” from them. I should note here that even some men not supporting him held this idea in their mind and cherished. Digressing a little, for instance, one day I was cooking lunch with Jecilia and her ex-husband Aderbal came in. He pointed me out and laughed “Cozinheira!” means a chef but in a feminine form. What he laughed is the fact I was cooking, which contradicted his way of thinking assuming it is a women’s job. It is interesting that the concept of traditional family itself ironically contradicts its missionary Bolsonaro because he himself had divorced twice and gotten married three times. After pointing out this sarcastic fact, Catarina bitterly said:
Catarina: What is a “traditional family”? When women get older, men abandon them and search for young girls like him [Bolsonaro]. That is a Brazilian tradition.
This joke is splendid, I argue, because of two principal reasons. First, it was an excellent summary of stories I heard or observed in Coque. I felt as if Catarina spoke this out on behalf of many women in Coque, and probably that is what she did. Even in two months, I heard many cases that men put gaia on their wives [cheated] and left his family. It is always women taking care of children after the separation. The second reason I liked this joke is that it strongly satirized male selfishness by using the same word “tradition”. What we see is two contrasting sides of the same notion; tradition as a politicized, if not manipulated, propaganda by politicians like Bolsonaro to arouse nostalgia for the good-old glory type days of Brazil in people’s mind which Catarina would say never existed. It resonates with an argument of Rebhun (2002) that men often romanticise their debatable acts like affair under the name of love; the beautification of events through the language use. This theme will come back in the coming chapter. On the other hand, we see “tradition” from the perspective of oppressed women, representing their painful reality without filtration. What Catarina laughed at is this abyss between two incompatible “traditions” of men and women, beautiful idea and harsh reality. Importantly, it was this abyss what makes this joke a joke. The biggest sarcasm is perhaps the fact that the power of this joke itself is sustained by the difficult reality surrounding women.
2.5 Summary
I presented the gender situation in Coque by mainly focusing on jokes and music. I hope I explained the complex role of jokes fulfilling in the highly male-centric society that Coque personifies. I briefly highlight three points of this chapter. First, gender issues are fairly naturalized in Coque. Though I observed gender differences in joking styles, some women like to play with sexual jokes magnifying the oppression of them. Men actively
37 Chapter 2 & 3. Analysis of Humour and Jokes in Coque
use these jokes in order to reaffirm their dominance, but it could be done both consciously and unconsciously. Principally, gender jokes function as an instrument to maintain this hierarchy. The importance of the process of making jokes in the daily settings could be well understood when seeing it as a habitus, a subtle yet accumulating social interaction that forms the mindset of the people and that offers “regulated liberties.” The link between verbal act (jokes) and non-verbal behaviour can be found here. Indeed, Ford et al. (2008) reported that sexist men could put sexual thoughts in practice easier when exposed to sexist humour. We should not overlook the role of these small actions embedded in the daily lives of Coque. I also analysed by drawing on feminist studies of Bourdieu and argued that transforming these norms are not impossible, but quite difficult since the male-centricity were taking the form of “symbolic violence,” that is, well-accepted oppression of women. Second, however, the reality in Coque is not monolithic. Some people do not perceive the gender issue in their daily lives. The perception could have a link with their economic condition. Gender is not an issue between men and women, but a complex set of diverse sexual preferences including sexual minorities. Jokes not only bonded friends within the same group but also functioned as a buffer between different groups. Jokes are an expression of these differences and, simultaneously, articulated the very difference. Third, however difficult it may be, jokes have a possibility to invert unjust structure. In Coque, I saw its glimpse in the joke of Catarina. Yet, this aspect requires further clarification. The potential follow-up research of jokes would more focus on not only influence of social structure on the individual (joke as a habitus), but also its converse, that is, jokes as a way to ease the difficult reality and rebel against the structure. Jokes are funny, they transform serious topics into enjoyable ones, and that is why jokes are being loved. Finally, I introduce a small quote of a woman explaining why they joke (Scheper-Hughes, 1993): “I have to joke. I have to horse around. What else I can do? Wring my hands and weep?” Indeed, it is source of the vigour for the people. In chapter 4, I delve into the fundamental topic Catarina tried to rebel against; politics. My focus will be a furious rise of the far-right represented by Jair Bolsonaro, a new president elected at the presidential election in 2018, which could become an ominous sign for the democracy in Brazil. But before, I would like to deepen the analysis of jokes in chapter 3.
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Chapter 3: Rethinking “Laughter of the Oppressed”: Exploring A Dark Side of Humour in Favela in Recife, Northeast Brazil
“The negative has to be rescued from amnesia.”
___Michael Billig, Laughter and Ridicule (2005)
*This is an analytical chapter of jokes lately added on which I worked during my second stay in Brazil from March until June 2019. My best objective is to publish this chapter as an article in anthropological journals, so some descriptions about e.g. events and methodologies are repeated for the new readers.
3.1. Abstract
This article delves into a downside of humour in Brazilian favela in order to suggest a more balanced view of the subject that has been underestimated its importance. The assumption is that humour is a phenomenon neither positive nor negative but being alike a prism turns its colour depending on the perspective. After the corroboration of the view, two examples are drawn out from the ethnographic data: sexist jokes by males and jokes among gays about their sexuality in the setting. It is argued that though these jests are uttered to fulfil the certain aim of the jokers, they induce other functions such as an exposure of fragility of the speaker and the disciplinary effect. A primary contribution of the article lays on the first critical analysis of the negative aspect of humour in a favela.
3.2 Introduction
This article delves into a downside of humour in Brazilian favela in order to suggest a more balanced view of the subject that historically either described as positive or underestimated its importance. The mundane practice is analysed by drawing on a variety of examples like sexist jokes and jokes made by sexual minorities obtained during ethnographic fieldworks. It is argued that though these jests are uttered to fulfil the certain aim of the jokers, they induce hidden effects such as an exposure of joker’s feebleness and an exclusion of other social groups. A principal view this article follows is humour as not black or white, but a prism5 turns its colour depending on a perspective employed. In other words, the article aims at degrading a brightness of the prism of
5 The metaphor of two sides of the same coin and two-edged swords are also employed. Yet, the primary interpretation of humour in this article stays prism. The difference between three is that prism contains a gradation from the brightest to the darkest, whereas the coin and the sword are merely black and white.
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conventional view on humour in the setting. A primary contribution of the article lays on the first critical analysis of the negative aspect of humour in a Brazilian favela. First, the article offers a chronological overview of humour research and the central discussions in order to corroborate this intricate view. Although Bergson (1900/2008) famously writes that humour is a quintessentially human occurrence, its importance has been significantly underrated in the realms of social science until recently (Oring, 2008; Kuipers, 2008). Few consensuses have been established hitherto due to novelty and complex quality of the topic. Nevertheless, the discussions have raised a horde of important points represented by disposition, function, and potential of humour in reality as will be explained. Suffice to say humour is an extensive frontier deeply intertwined with society as well as human nature in much more diverse ways than widely recognised. Second, a run-through of humour in Coque, a community perceived as "favela [slum]” from the outside in Northeast Brazil, will be presented by drawing on ethnographic data of the author. A sexualisation of humour goes hand in hand with characteristic use of slang and non-verbal gesture in the community. Given two examples of sexist jokes by middle-aged men and what Freud called “tendentious jokes” of sexual minorities, the section aims at describing functions of the humour to both jokers and the butts (they can be identical) in presence. It will be emphasised that the humour often diverges, if not strays, from an initial intention to unexpected results. Though gender is not the primary concern of the article, the discussion integrates insight from the discipline by referring to various preceding studies about gender and jokes. In conclusion, I highlight the main arguments again to underline the fruit of the analysis.
Historical overview: light and shadow of humour Studies of humour have a deep origin, as well as humour per se, yet its codification was not until the beginning of the 20th century when two masterworks – Laughter from French philosopher Henri Bergson and Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious of Sigmund Freud – were published in quick succession. Notably, these works shared a fresh assumption of humour as essentially social, not individual. Succeeding to the assumption, humour studies since then have shouldered a mission to transcend three premodern theories magnify humour in the private sphere – namely, the superiority theory, the relief theory, and the incongruity theory. The superiority theory, often represented by Hobbes’ description of laughter as “sudden glory” in Leviathan (1651/2017), considers laughter as an embodiment of the sentiment of superiority over the others. It was the first systematized theory highlighted a negative side of mirth usually addressed as positive. The approach putting laughter under suspicion, however, was marginalized by two completely different accounts in the 18th century which “neither even mentions feelings of superiority” (Morreall, 2016). The relief theory argues that laughter is liberation of accumulated nervous energy, so to say, we laugh when we are freed from psychological oppression. The theory is later extended to non-negative energy as well. Freud (1905/1990), for example, explained pun causes laughter because it creates surplus energy through the economy of words. Laughter is a
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release of the remainder generated due to the economy seeking for a way out. Therefore, laughter is a matter of art rather than the contents in the relief theory. The last of the triplets explains laughter is a reaction to a perception of something incongruous. The incongruity theory is thus about surprise; it first demands an expectation or taken-for-granted rules of an event, and then its betrayal. Despite the simplicity, scholars have disagreed over details such as if funniness arises at the moment of perceiving incongruity or its resolution (Morreall, 2016). The studies of humour today endeavour to seek a link between humour and society with the help of these theories rather than their radical alternative. The contemporary approach can be roughly classified into two groups: (1) to identify the roles of humour in society (2) to analyse a society through the lens of humour. In short, function and expression of humour in society are in quest. One of the key functions humour is considered to fulfil is a reinforcement of social interaction. The typical argument is that humour propels communication and group cohesion, and thus useful in organisational management (see for example Romero & Cruthirds, 2006). Boxer & Cortés-Conde (2003) wrote “we all enjoy a good laugh,” suggesting jokes can be an innocuous means of bonding people with no harm. It is often reported that women create a sense of solidarity through jokes (Crawford, 2003; Hay, 2003; Kotthoff, 2000). However, the harmlessness supposed is controversial. Plester (2015) reported how a newcomer started mocking a “weaker” person who is often jibed to get the sense of the membership in the IT Company in New Zealand. The same mechanism of inclusion through exclusion is so universal that can be found at different countries (Schnurr & Chan, 2011), schools (Pascoe, 2005), and online (Kendall, 2000). These two contrasting faces of humour referred as “bonding and biting” by Boxer & Cortés-Conde (2003) lead us to two central questions of humour: how much influence, or at least the potential, does humour actually have on reality? And what kind of power does the humour by choice conspire with? Too simplistic to say scholars are either positive or negative on humour as a whole, yet it is true that two contrasting views coexist: humour as a rebellious power or a pawn of the supremacy. Douglas (1968) famously insisted a joke is a rebellious “anti-rite” breaking the social rule because “the rite imposes order and harmony, while the joke disorganises.” The Joke as a disruption, however, is contingent on mirroring society. She argues that joker is by no means risking oneself, rather a mere vehicle of jokes exteriorising the society behind. Although her observation is based on the fruit of anthropology of African ethnic groups, it resonates with several recent studies. For instance, scholars acknowledge the people in higher position are freer to joke (Kotthoff, 2006; Schnurr & Chan, 2011). On the other hand, many other scholars have presumed the existence of un-privileged rebellious jokers by understanding humour as a weapon of subordinated groups. Indeed, we only need to refer to Charles Dickens or Jane Austin to prove how humour has slapped the haughty faces of power and bourgeois. Obadare (2009) argued that black humour against the corrupted government in contemporary Nigeria works as “critique cum caricature” hence “a form of agency” offering a way to take part in subversive movements for the citizens. A German feminist stand-up comedian made use of obscene jokes from which women usually suffer in order to bewilder male co-workers in her
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comedy (Kotthoff, 2006). The explanation that the tricky nature of humour goes hand in hand with the oppressed craves for giant-killing is plausible. The account is nonetheless not successful at evading the critiques. Davies (2007) analysed political jokes in the communist countries of Eastern Europe against the Soviet Union and persuasively pointed out that an amount and distribution of these jokes were more salient in a later period of the Soviet ruling rather than the earlier when the suppression and hardship were even severer. He, therefore, more affiliates with a view that humour as a cold-feet expression of reality. It was “cynical and alienated people no longer able to protest or resist, unable even to envisage an alternative to the immutable, omnipresent, overwhelmingly powerful political system that dominated every aspect of their lives” employed the strategy according to him. In sum, humour for him is a sign of stagnation that has “ceased to struggle (Yurchak (1997) quoted in Davies (2007)).” Cynical enough, the scholars studying humour in extreme environments tend to agree with the pessimistic view. Bryant (2006) examined Czech jokes under Nazi occupation ended up with admitting joke telling at the moment was “humble attempts to halt the fragmentation of society and to make at least partial sense of an absurd world” rather than a fountain of energy for heroic resistance. The coping strategy is an aspect also emphasised in other studies in extreme setting such as sex industry (Sanders, 2004), aftermath of the tragedy (Oring, 1987), and slums (Scheper-Hughes, 1993). Goldstein (2003) encountered the puzzling “laughter out of place” in favelas in Northeast Brazil like ridicules about the rape and the death of a family member; her interpretation is that these cruel jokes are a manner of opening up discursive space of catastrophic, otherwise untold events. Besides a binary decision between humour as the defiant and the impotent, some scholars have enriched the more nuanced discussion by taking another aspect of humour into account this article follows, that is, what Kuipers (2008) called the “dark side” of humour. The approach admonishes optimists to look at “the transgressive, aggressive, and conflictive functions” humour can have. Sexist and racist jibes typify. Bemiller & Schneider (2010) claims sexist jokes are not just jokes, but a form of the oppressive, misogynistic power. Multiple studies reported the verbal acts to contribute to liberating male-centric actions and ideologies (Ford et al., 2008; Pascoe, 2005). C. Davies (1988) convincingly suggested offences against ethnic minority are an act of relief seeking by the “rational” individuals losing control of modern society in rapid progress. The rationales ease their dissonance between desired progress and anxiety over knowing less about the world by spotting the “backward” other. These findings in line with the superiority theory yield two grave implications. First, offensive jokes against the weak tell more about jokers than the butts; it exposes who the jokers are. Second, ridicules are a hollow package which butts are easily replaceable. In another study, Davies discussed the migration of jokes and transportability of ridicules (C. Davies, 2006). He explained that, for instance, British jokes of the foolish Irish are translated into ridicules about Belgians in the Netherlands. A heart of ridicule is, thus, an illusion of inferior others endows the jokers a temporal satisfaction. Optimist views on humour yet persist. In his provocative book Laughter and Ridicule, Billig (2005) tried to clear up this “howdunit”. According to the author, a sanctuary of innocent humour has been
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well protected by making a distinction of good or bad humour and scapegoating the latter like Boxer & Cortés-Conde (2003) did. In other words, it has been widely believed that there are two types of swords, not a double-edged sword. Billig rightly points out these classifications are highly a matter of language: “teasing” sounds much lighter than “deriding” or “ridicule”, for example. Privileged jokers themselves can take the trouble to be a judge of these jokes in order to dwarf the issue by using a softer expression, or in Billig’s words, “’just joking’ spray”. This outwitting function is “decommitment” defined by Attardo (1993) as “denying any harmful intention for action.” Crucially, the function has a flipside of halting self-reflection. Zillmann (1983) concisely explained the consequence by supposing us witnessing a neighbour bumped his new car against his mailbox: “we can always tell ourselves that we laughed because of the peculiar way in which the mailbox was deformed…we do not have to believe that we are cruel enough to have enjoyed our neighbor's misfortune.” Speier (2002) argues the same process of “psychological alibi” creation takes place in subversive jests as well: “one can live more easily with nagging, half-conscious insights about accommodation or one’s own failure to revolt.” However, it must not be overlooked the self-deceit is indeed a part of a coping strategy in which scholars favourable to humour appreciate. It is in this sense that I argue humour is a prism-like phenomenon; “bright” and “dark” sides of humour are mushy melted with each other. This is why I assert that a balanced view on humour that not merely contrasts light and shadow, but sheds light on the dark side of seemingly bright humour is necessitated.
3.3 Jokes in Coque
Methodological note and overview Coque, the site of study, is a favela6 located on Recife, the second biggest city in Northeast Brazil. The coastal city holds a population of over 1.6 million in 2018 showing a sharp increase from 1.5 million in 20107. It is estimated that roughly one-third of the population living in the favela8. The city is also a cultural centre of Northeast Brazil and known for vigorous political and cultural movements (van Leerzem et al., 2016). The movements are strongly influenced by the Atlantic slave trade at the port of the city legalised from 16th until the 19th century (Carvalho & Biase, 2016). The data was collected during six-month ethnographic fieldworks in Recife in 2018 and 2019 for
6 It is necessary to note that the majority of the residents of Coque do not like the derogatory term “favela [slum],” rather prefer “comunidade [community]” or “bairro [neighbourhood]”. In this article, the term favela is used in either of the two following ways. First, the term underlines the fact of the stigmatisation the site has been incurred. Second, the word indicates the imaginary of the site shared among these communities existing all over Brazil. 7 The statistics were retrieved from the Website of Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística). Further information can be accessed from: https://cidades.ibge.gov.br/brasil/pe/recife/panorama (the latest access on June 10, 2019)
8 “Levantamento mostra que Recife tem 564 mil pessoas morando em favelas” retrieved from: http://g1.globo.com/pernambuco/noticia/2013/12/levantamento-mostra-que-recife-tem-564-mil-pessoas- morando-em-favelas.html (the latest access at June 10, 2019)
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the master study of the author. Most of the data such as verbal jokes were amassed through taking part in and observing informal conversations of residents of Coque in the field note. A principal form of humour in Coque is jokes; especially sexual ones are stood out. Recent studies explain differences in joking styles between genders tend to note that men are more in favour of obscene jokes (Hay, 2003; Hemmasi, Lee Graf, & Russ, 1994; Kotthoff, 2006). However, this type of jokes was preferred by both genders in Coque. My data, for instance, contains scores of sexual pranks on an ignorant newcomer, the author9, from the people on the street. Some of the jokes have recurrently emerged from mouths of the people of different ages and gender with minor adjustments to the social and conversational contexts at the moment. For example, “Do you want to marry me?” was “conjugated” into “do you want to marry my sister?” by a young boy, “Do you want to marry me? I would do all the housework for you” by an old lady, ”Do you want to marry and bring me to Japan?” when our topic is about my homeland, and sometimes even served with a “punch line” of “then you will have four sons!” making the audience burst into laughter. Nothing to say, the people have different joking styles not only between but also within gender (C. E. Davies, 2006) and there are both avid fans and abominators of these jokes in Coque. Nevertheless, these tricks are casually accepted in the community. These jests often take a more straightforward form. Sexual intercourse, genitalia, adultery etc. are a popular topic. Body language often accompanies these verbal jokes. For instance, shaking the forefinger and the middle finger to and fro together signifies having sex. Slang is also rich in Coque. The basics like gaia (adultery), frango (gay), zapatão (lesbian), safado (playboy), talado (pervert), piriguete (sensual woman) are frequently used in daily conversation with being aware of its pejorative nuance. For instance, a husband whom his wife turned out to be unfaithful is derided, if not stigmatised, as corno. These tawdry gestures and the language use are hardly a humour in themselves, but undoubtedly important decorations of them directing the whole atmosphere. In Brazilian favelas, two eminent ethnographies had wedded contrasting comportments of the residents to a pitiless reality of the setting: Death Without Weeping by Nancy Scheper-Hughes (1993) and Laughter Out of Place by Donna Goldstein (2003). The latter is the only preceding ethnography in favelas putting humour as its central theme. Scheper-Hughes (1993) reported mothers had started taking the death of their own children with “no surprise,” if not “for granted,” due to frequent infant death caused by the harsh living condition. For Goldstein (2003), on the contrary, it is laughter that reifies the reality realised through facetious jokes about e.g. family death and sexual assault. She put: “a sense of humor developed and displayed under cruel and unusual circumstances provokes what I would call ‘laughter out of place.’” Although expressions at stake are in clear contrast, both scholars shared a focus on the influence of society on human comportment; how reality shapes the mindset of the people. A quote of a woman from Death Without Weeping articulates: “I have to joke. I have to horse around. What else I can do? Wring my hands and weep?” My argument is that the second sphere of contemporary analysis of humour, an exploration of the function, should be able to contribute to complementing the first
9 This is mainly because I have publicly exposed myself being alien in the place with both my “Asian” appearance represented by olhos puxados [slanted eyes] and shaky Portuguese.
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approach. Bluntly, functions of humour in favela are still open to discussion. Mind that functions of humour in this sense clearly go beyond social constructivist’s basic that subtle verbal interactions incessantly provide a piece of our reality as West & Zimmermann (1987) suggested in the classic Doing Gender. Rather, functions unique and intrinsic to humour are at issue. Two following examples from Coque – “preemptive” sexist jokes by males and bonding-distancing jokes by sexual minorities – will provide advanced insights to the discussion. Before that, I briefly introduce the disciplinary effect of laughter two examples have in common. It was Bergson (1900/2008) who first addressed the disciplinary effect of laughter maintaining current order in his book Laughter. We laugh, he argued, at someone’s inelasticity failed to follow social codes based on three observations about humour being human, feeling-detached, and social. He puts: “Laughter must be …a sort of social gesture. By the fear which it inspires, it restrains eccentricity.” In short, laughter is a chastisement against outcasts. Pascoe (2005), for instance, found American adolescents endeavour to avoid being made laugh of as unmanly “fag” by behaving masculine. The laughter educates the boys. This tendency is further intensified by the flipside, that is, jokers laughing are not the butts. Stepping further, jokes here work as surveillance in Foucauldian sense judging members following the rules and offer the first come safe zone. The bottom line is that this aspect of humour nipping a deviation from the social norm in the bud stands on the contrary side of the subversion.
Sexist Jokes by men One morning, I came across with Aderbal, a lean ex-community leader of Coque in his fifties, and his friend Nado in the street and was invited to a neighbouring community Afogados for breakfast. On the way, they saw two young girls whom they know, Daisy and Taliana, walking along the street so honked a car horn and picked them up. As we had arrived a small stall in the market, Aderbal paid for the breakfast and served to us. While we having breakfast of cassava with stewed beef and a bottle of Cola-cola, two men repeatedly told me obscene jokes about the girls such as “you eat this one [pointed Daisy] first. Then this one [pointed Taliana] next.” In response to my comment I liked the meal, they said: “[the food was tasty] like a vagina.” The pun is a classic: “in popular Brazilian culture the idioms of food and sex, eating and making love, are interchangeable (Scheper-Hughes, 1993).” The two girls were politely smiling while the jokes were taking place, neither oppose nor participate. Besides the immorality of the jokes, it is important to note that Aderbal and Nado were fulfilling the role of “good patrons” at the same time such as driving, payment, serving the food, and pouring Cola-cola to emptied cups of the girls. The girls also accepted to be looked after. In other words, two men attacked and protected, disdained and respected the girls simultaneously. Some would argue the antinomy manifests what scholars call two sides of machismo – namely, hypermasculinity and “caballerismo” associated with affiliation, chivalry and ethnic identity (Arciniega et al., 2008), which the indecent jokes represented the former. The expectation of being knights in this context was high also because two men were at the age of fathers of the girls. It seems plausible to claim the jokes “decommit" serious tones from the comportments solved the inner conflict of the men
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between chivalrous role they are socially expected to fulfil and hidden desire of exercising power by offering an avenue to put the latter into practice. The account yet fails to incorporate the fact that malandro [playboy] is also a social figure, which in this context the expectation mainly comes from their present male friend. From this perspective, the jokes can be read as peer performance proving another that they are strong and masculine enough. In other words, the preemptive repudiation of the social stigma of an effeminate man was present. The humour was their mutual education reconfirming their social codes of following a playboy-type of masculinity. Paradoxically, however, this strategy of assuring masculinity through offensive jokes itself brings their failure into relief. In her ethnographic study about the sex industry in Fortaleza, Northeast Brazil, Piscitelli (2007) found that lower-class women think local masculinity of “intensely possessive, aggressive, remote, disrespectful and unfaithful" subordinates to the masculinity of foreign sex tourists who are rich, white, generous, and socially privileged. The aestheticisation of foreigners put coarse locals into sharp contrast. As it tells more about jokers than the butts, the fragility of ridicule is also underlined in other studies such as mockeries of male sex drive by prostitution as a flipside of male dominance in sex industry (Sanders, 2004) and quips against tyranny under Nazi (Bryant, 2006) and Soviet Union (C. Davies, 2007). Two men from the stigmatised favela are located in the middle of hierarchy in terms of power in which the rich above and the women below. Positioning themselves in the map through offensive jokes downplaying women automatically signifies a defeat against the “attentive” and “tender” superior. However, it must be noted that the superior also exploits women; it is just a different way of exploitation. In a nutshell, what the ridicules two men made in order to confirm their power revealed was its very absence.
Jokes by gays in Coque Sexual minorities in the favela are one of the few topics that have successfully escaped from the eyes of the prominent ethnographies about Brazil (Scheper-Hughes, 1993; Goldstein, 2003; Rebhun, 1999). However, they become more and more visible recently (Hutta, 2013; update). Gay people had also forged a unique network in Coque. The most remarkable point of their humour is that they enjoy putting humour about their sexuality in use; especially when no heterosexual is present without me. For instance, Vavá, a thin man in his thirties with a dark complexion and grizzled short hair, often bewildered me with this kind of joke: “you can say you eat meat and fish, but not frango [literally means chicken, but also implies a gay person]” combined with a metaphorical use of eating explained above. One day, he invited me to a music festival in Igarassu, a municipality nearby Recife, with his seven gay friends. They lent a van with a driver and loaded a big cooler with full of beers. On the way, a guy sitting in the front seat looked back to me and asked: “hey, do you like Vavá?” Another guy sitting next to him interrupted, “no, he must prefer novinho [young boy]” and they laughed together. It was already two thirty a.m. when we got on the way back after a long festival. All the crew were drunk in cosy vibrations. Suddenly, someone started shouting: “Go! Go! Franginho!” clearly referring to themselves. A road
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was not crowded hence the drive was going smoothly. Soon after the rest in the van joined a whoop of “Go! Go! Franginho!,” which soon burst into laughter. The banter exemplifies how they utilise humour as social glue reinforcing their unanimity. Another example is viado [deer], slang for the gay with a pejorative nuance. Daniel, a good young friend of Vavá, explained: “if a gay says viado to another gay, that is fine. It is only among friends.” A confirmation of the unity is achieved through an acceptance of the light contempt of the word and a fact that the speaker shares the very same “flaw” of being gay. Interestingly, the humour is the exact opposite of preemptive “fag” discourse studied by Pascoe (2005) – one invokes is not a fag – though the negative assumption on homosexuality remains. One invokes is a fag. In this sense, the joke has something in common with a self-mockery that has historically been construed as self-devaluation of laughing “about” the teller, while in fact is more about laughing “with” the joker (Kotthoff, 2000). When one says “viado,” it must be sharable: it ought to also refer to himself to be a joke. A flipside of the union reinforcement by confirming the sexuality is a separation from non-gays, even though it is not as direct as aggressive “inclusion through exclusion.” In a political meeting, Daniel started a small quarrel with his heterosexual colleague Batatinho. The quarrel escalated and, at one point, they started yelling each other “Frango!” and “Homophobia!” However, it was Daniel cried frango and Batatinho shouted homophobia. In other words, they insulted another by the expression in which the opponent never fits. The quarrel ended up with laughter. If Batatinho says "Frango!" to Daniel, it could sound like a serious insult and vice versa. It seems that the jokes worked as a lubricant for reconciliation by allowing them to keep a safe distance; the humour exposed not solidarity, but the chasm between the groups of two different sexualities. I consider these gay jokes as a variation of the disciplinary jokes because it constantly reminds them of their sexuality. The only difference is that while usual disciplinary jokes order the members not to be laughed at, these jokes demand them to be laughed at within their circle. Some would remonstrate that sexuality is not a social code. I would respond to belong to a certain group is a social choice, especially when it means estrangement from the others. In a word, the humour contributes to solidifying the gay group by disciplining the members to stay in the circle and to keep a distance from others simultaneously.
3.4 Conclusion: functions of humour in the favela
The article has introduced a variety of humour and examined the functions in a Brazilian favela. By paying particular attention to the so-called dark side of humour, what the article principally challenged is a romanticised view depicting “laughter of the oppressed“ as essentially positive. This argument is based on the understanding that humour is not black or white, but a sort of prism turns its colour up to the angle. The understanding suggests the positive humour and the negative humour can be identical though many have conventionally believed that two different kinds of humour exist. One prank can produce mirth and gloom regardless of the intention.
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Again, it is not my intention to disavow the bright side of humour like a creation of discursive spaces (Goldstein, 2003; Oring, 1987), coping strategy (Collinson, 1988; Sanders, 2004), and a power for resistance (Douglas, 1968; J. Obrdlik, 1942; Obadare, 2009). The thrust is to propose a balanced view on this topic. My primary concern regarding heroic view on humour is its fragility to a supposition when the very oppressors start using the same instrument. For instance, it is hardly a new finding that sexist humour “putting it on” often drives the butt (i.e. women) into a double bind of laughter signifies the obedience or its denial (Bemiller & Schneider, 2010). The latter is what Billig (2005) called unlaughter: “a display of not laughing when laughter might otherwise be expected, hoped for or demanded.” A strategic denial of laughter against rhetorical use of humour is, however, a risky choice of bringing her a disgrace of humourless. An optimist view blinds the aspect as a weapon of the oppressor. This is why Billig (2005) grimly asserted, “the negative has to be rescued from amnesia.” It is crucial to be aware of the aspect in the hard setting of Brazilian favela where the oppressor can easily turn into the oppressed and vice versa. As explained, the people in Coque are trapped in the nested structure of power; the men deride women subordinate “tender” masculinity. It is not only jokes, but also jokers change the colour hinging on the situation. Speaking up for the positive leads to a partial admittance of the suppression. Nothing to say, an implication of the stance is seemingly dreadful jokes also hold benefits for some (Oring, 1987). In this article, I introduced two dark sides of humour by drawing on sexist jokes and gay humour in Coque: estrangement from the others and disciplinary effect. Following the view of Bergson (1900/2008), it is argued that these jokes serve as an instrument raises both solidarity and rigidity of the groups. Understanding laughter as a social corrective of comical inelasticity brings us to the conclusion that humour is a mechanism making society alive. In his study of humour among male shopping clerks, Collinson (1988) explained how the clerks convince themselves to conform to manual work through masculinity discourse. Applying this argument in Coque, the humour presented can be construed as the conformity of the speakers to the fragility they confront. Further clarification is required in order to examine the coping aspect of the jokes. Finally, it is necessary to emphasise once again the importance of taking a look at the negative aspect of humour in slums. Despite, or rather because of the difficulty of the setting represented by Brazilian common saying “rir para não chorar [to laugh not to cry],” humour is a crucial component of the lives in favelas. Rethinking “laughter of the oppressed” would elucidate their actuality by unveiling negative functions of humour. I completely agree with Bergson argued humour is quintessentially a human occurrence as presented in the beginning. Taking the negative seriously is crucial in order to understand the light and shadow of society we human always constitute.
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Chapter 4. “How Is That Possible to Dislike Women, He Is Married!” Reporting presidential election from Brazilian “favela”
4.1 Introduction
There is a huge contrast between the upper and the lower half on the front page of a local newspaper, Diario de Pernambuco, of October 29th. On the upper half, a smiling man, Jair Bolsonaro, pokes his hands with a caption saying, “Bolsonaro promises to defend constitution and democracy [Bolsonaro promete defender constituição e democracia].” Turning the eyes to the bottom, however, three pictures catch your attention and at one of them we find the face of another candidate for president, Fernando Haddad, and his supporters with pathetic faces captioned “Don’t have a fear, we will be here [Não tenham medo, nós estaremos aqui]”. Furthermore, the smallest picture from the bottom part indicates two women with red shirts, showing that they had supported the leftist party, seriously crying (figure 4.1). What is going on here?
Figure 4.1: A big contrast from the local newspaper Diario de Pernambuco of October 29th
The newspaper is from the next day of the end of the long, twisted presidential election in 2018, or even more importantly, one of the most controversial presidents in Brazil came into being. It was an extremely polarized election. In the end, people had to choose from two parties in the second round, unless they voted for null or white: the leftist party PT [Partido dos Trabalhadores: Worker’s Party] or the far right wing party PSL [Partido Social Liberal: Social Liberal Party]. The candidates were Fernando Haddad (PT) and Jair Bolsonaro (PSL). However, political parties are not as important as candidates in Brazil except for few exceptions like PT. Hence, the election was the battle between PT and Jair Bolsonaro. These two powers are ideologically opposite and have strongly attacked another over and over. PT accused Bolsonaro of being fascist, racist, discriminating women and LGBTs, and Bolsonaro denounced PT for their corruption scandals and “communism” way of governing, both without
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properly responding to the criticism made by another. It is hard to deny it was a mudslinging contest based on not dialogue, but full of abuse to their counterparts. Naturally, I came across many people fed up with this political situation embracing the feeling of hopelessness. A person cynically told me once: “this is the election between a shit [PT] and fascist [PSL].” Although its extreme word choice, I reckon many people agree with this account. How did the people in Coque react on this troublesome election? Were they indifferent about the electoral politics? The answer is definitely no. The politics were, contrarily, the most popular topic during the electoral times I heard almost every day. However, interests of the people were not established through the sense of impending crisis or craving for the promising future. Rather, it was a sense of diversion and economic interests that drove them. The election did attract people but not in a serious way, more like a big “joke”. In other words, people enjoyed this political carnival (I will explain this later). Just like crowns in the carnival, I heard many comical stories about the elections. For instance, one old man told me that he once heard about a guy doing campaigns for both parties holding opposite ideologies by changing only his T-shirts for getting double income. It is not my intention to give the impression that no people were seriously concerning the future of Brazil. I also participated in a lively demonstration with great passion of the public and got to know people kept fighting in this darkness. The point is that there were numerous ways to be involved in politics; my aim in this chapter is to describe and present them as realistic attitudes tied up with the complex backgrounds. In other words, the chapter is about elucidating the enigma of the contrasting pictures from the newspaper – why one had to hardly sob hearing another got elected. To answer this, I start from describing the political situations in Brazil in general to provide historical contexts and explain why this election was especially problematic. Second, I report the way in which the election presented itself in Coque. I give short examples of the people connected to politics and diverse motivations drove them. Every person had a different style to diffuse his or her political thoughts/ideology. Each section includes a short analysis. I close this chapter with a brief summary.
4.2 General Background of the Election
Historical background Brazil ended the military regime in the mid-1980s and Fernando Henrique Cardoso from centre-left party PSDB [Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira: Brazilian Social Democracy Party] became the president in 1994. Cardoso started promoting neoliberal economic policies counting on market dynamics. This was mainly achieved through curtailing state intervention such as privatization and liberalization of domestic finance, foreign trade, as well as allocating financial resources e.g. labour and capital (Mollo & Saad-Filho, 2006). Although these policies contributed to mitigating high-inflation, this was as well the period in which dependency of Brazil on foreign countries significantly increased and labour market deteriorated. A big economic gap was also not solved and people became disgruntled. Nevertheless, two decades of the stability from the Cardoso government has provided a ground for those who believe in the democratic political system in Brazil (Melo &
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Nunes, 2017). A significant change was in 2002, Luís Inácio Lula da Silva, a founder and the head of PT, took over the position of the president in response to this dissatisfaction. It was a triumph for PT to become a ruling party after twenty years from its foundation. However, PT had to sacrifice their original leftist ideology for this triumph. In other words, PT moderated the discourse to secure the support from wider audiences. The specimen is “Carta ao povo brasileiro [Letter to the Brazilian people]” Lula published before the 2002 election. In this letter (Folha de S.Paulo, 2002), he states:
…O que há é uma forte preocupação do mercado financeiro com o mau desempenho da economia e com sua fragilidade atual…[There is a strong preoccupation of the financial market with a bad performance of the economy and its actual fragility] …A volta do crescimento é o único remédio para impedir que se perpetue um círculo vicioso entre metas de inflação baixas, juro alto, oscilacção cambial brusca e aumento da dívida pública. [The return of growth is the only remedy to prevent the perpetuation of a vicious circle between low inflation, high-interest rate, abrupt exchange rate fluctuation, and increasing public debt]
These sentences necessitating economic growth show a partial renunciation of PT's ideology in the 1980s and 1990s. The party shifted its advocacy from left to centre-left. Samuels (2004) explained this “de-radicalization” which driven by both internal motivations like factions and external factors such as interparty dynamics granted PT the victory. For instance, other leftist parties were becoming more conservative so the space for centre-left ideology became vacant in this period, which allowed PT to take over the place. Several PMDB leaders (including Fernando Henrique Cardoso) accused their party of becoming too conservative (Samuels, 2004). However, the ideological moderation strategy entailed two side effects. First, Lula decided to follow the liberal economic policies of former president Cardoso instead of strengthening social welfare. In other words, he prioritized fiscal conservatism more than being true to the leftist's principles, which was regarded as the betrayal of leftist ideal. Second, the strategy nudged PT to collaborate with parties with different ideologies. The governing coalition is a characteristic of Brazilian politics where one party rarely occupies the majority. In this case, PT was tied up with the right parties such as PL [Partido Liberal: Liberal Party] and, importantly, the party achieved this by making monetary promises (Balán, 2014). Put differently, the coalition was a two-edged sword with a downside of triggering corruption. It was soon after his inauguration that tentacles of corruption started nagging new president Lula. An example is Mensalão scandal (2004 – 2005) in which the Lula administration was accused of a large amount of monthly payment (mensalão) to in total 18 deputies and one former deputy. The payment was for ensuring the support from the parties in coalition in the Congress. The scandal also included suspicions to not his aides but also Lula himself of having deliberately overlooked these wrongdoings – it was a perfect embodiment of the problems above. Pereira, Power, & Raile (2008) shed light on an institutional aspect of this scandal such as the fragmented federal structure of the
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government giving multiple actors veto interrupting the PT policies. The mensalão scandal undermined an ethical image of PT fighting against wicked corruption. Yet, Lula maintained his popularity and won the Presidential election in 2006 with ease. Balán (2014) analysed this popularity in spite of the scandals as a result of complex factors such as informal failures (e.g. lack of transparency) and the logic of “rouba mas faz [steals but gets things done: translation of Balán]”. Rouba mas faz logic is a product of cynicism assuming “all politicians are corrupted,” acknowledging some of them at least “do something.” He argued that these mechanisms shifted the responsibility of corruption from a person (Lula) to the party (PT). Suffice to say the coexistence of corruption and a popular president was the product of the interactions of complex factors. Dilma Rousseff (PT), a successor of Lula, won the election in 2010 and became the first female president in Brazil. She showed a tough stance against corruption and, Balán (2014) argued, gained her popularity through fighting with, paradoxically, the very corruption her party had been accused of. But she was devastated by another gigantic corruption scandal of Lava jato [carwash] in 2014, even though she was not directly involved (Avritzer, 2017). She was regarded as being responsible for the scandals and, in the end, impeached. Melo & Nunes (2017) bluntly reported this process as following:
“In any case, the most important consideration was not that the technical arguments in favour of impeachment were or not sufficiently convincing. What mattered was that a large majority in Congress, in society, in the media, and in the financial/business world had arrived at the conclusion that it was necessary to remove the president.”
It was also argued this impeachment is a consequence of mass manipulation by Globo Corporation, the dominant media company in Brazil strongly opposing PT’s leftist agenda (Van Dijk, 2017). He claimed that through various strategies such as selective accusations and treating suspicions as facts, Globo media spread the negative images of Lula and Rousseff into Brazilian citizens. As a result of this impeachment, Michel Temer from PMDB [Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro: Party of Brazilian Democratic Movement] became an acting president and inaugurated a new government which was “unpopular, conservative, but with a base in Congress” (Melo & Nunes, 2017). Although various views coexist, it is hard to deny Brazilian politics is absolutely in turmoil. Chronic corruption scandals nurtured the feeling of distrust in people's mind and politics has lost rapport with citizens.
General Election 2018 It was under this stormy circumstance the 2018 general election arrived. It showed completely different pictures in the beginning and the end. Initially, it was supposed to be a combat between Lula and Geraldo Alckmin favoured by financial markets. Centre parties also declared to support him (Folha de S. Paulo, 2018). However, the upshot of the election became, eventually, extremely polarized combat between PT and the far-right candidate Bolsonaro known for his frightening
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statements. The confusion got even more accelerated because of lurid incidents. Notably, two events raided the protagonists of the election: disqualification of the candidacy of former president Lula and the stabbing toward Bolsonaro. I concisely summarize the particulars by drawing on journalistic sources. It had been said the fate of the candidacy of Lula serving a 12-year sentence for corruption in jail would be the watershed of not this election, but also Brazilian democracy (The Guardian, 2018a). He was a front-runner from the beginning and remained an only candidate outweighs Bolsonaro in popularity after he came in front. PT strongly appealed for his candidacy but he was barred from the election on September 1st. Technically, he had to hand over his position as a candidate of PT to his successor Fernando Haddad, a former mayor of São Paulo, though the term “Lula Livre [Free Lula]” remained a central slogan of petistas [PT supporters] till the end of the election. Less than a week later than Lula disqualified from the election, Bolsonaro got stabbed during his campaign. The criminal was a former member of the small leftist party and Bolsonaro had been in a serious physical condition and it took several weeks him to get recovered. Supporters of Bolsonaro referred this case to emphasize how dangerous Brazil had become (The Guardian, 2018b) and used as a justification of Bolsonaro’s repressive stance on social security. In spite of these confusions and aspersions, or rather because of them, the promotion of candidates became a crossroad of the match. Bolsonaro made adept use of these accidents and his conflicting statements via social media. On the contrary, PT was unpopular among big media (for instance, newspaper O Globo, Folha de São Paulo, Estado de São Paulo). There is no progressive newspaper in Brazil despite its strong leftist tradition (Van Dijk, 2017) and media are in favour of candidates advocating neoliberal agendas. Consequently, PT failed to inherit the popularity of Lula to his successor Haddad. In other words, most of the PT supporters kept concerning of Lula even after him being barred. The big doll I saw at one of the demonstrations perfectly embodied this twist; the doll took after Lula, but a red uniform he wore was saying “Vota em Haddad 13 [Vote for Haddad 13].” (figure 4.2)
Figure 4.2: A Lula-like doll claiming, “Vote for Haddad 13”
At the end of September, the movement of #EleNão [Not him] started rising which American singer Madonna ignited by her post on Instagram. Ele referred to, clearly, Bolsonaro and the hashtag
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expressed the strong opposition of him being a president. It became one of the few catchy slogans for PT who was not successful at spotlighting Haddad, yet, it is important to note that the entire movement of EleNão was forged on relativism, not absolute favour of PT. The Guardian (2018c) reported anti-Bolsonaro protests were held in all Brazil’s 27 states and nearly four million people had joined, but it does not mean they all supported PT at all. After a month of this cumbersome campaigns with full of lusts and interests, the first round held on October 7th and it turned out that Bolsonaro got 46%, whereas the second Haddad got 29% of the valid votes. Since no candidate reached 50%, it was settled to hold the second round in three weeks, October 28th, which would be a final ballot between Bolsonaro and Haddad. In spite of a large gap between two candidates, many still had hope for Haddad since it had been said that votes of other candidates would flow into him. Belatedly, I present other figures in the first round; Ciro Gomes from centre-left party PDT [Partido Democrático Trabalhista: Democratic Worker’s Party]; Marina Silva who had been a spokesperson of Rede, a sustainable party; Geraldo Alckmin from PSDB. However, I only focus on the confrontation between PT and Bolsonaro in this chapter to clarify the focus, and nobody would deny it was the highlight of this election. The gap between two candidates did not become, however, as narrow as expected even after the first round. The second round resulted in 55.13% for Bolsonaro and 44.87% for Haddad. At around seven o’clock in the same evening, breaking news on the television showed exulting Bolsonaro supporters with a caption of “Jair Bolsonaro é eleito presidente do Brasil [Jair Bolsonaro was elected for a president of Brazil].” (figure 4.3) It was the end of the long, acrimonious election. Or rather, it was the beginning of a tumultuous, if not ominous, new chapter of Brazilian history.
Figure 4.3: A TV newsflash of the outcome of the election
Lastly, I introduce a piece of practical information about the election. General election in 2018 was for six political positions: (1) president [presidente] (2) vice president [vice presidente] (3) state governor [governador] (4) senator [senador] (5) federal congressman [deputado federal] and (6) state or district congressman [deputado estadual]. People voted for these positions except for a vice president because the president and vice president was a pair. The candidates for vice president were Manuela d’Ávila (Haddad) from PCdoB and Hamilton Mourão (Bolsonaro) who had a long
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career in military service. It was mandatory to vote in Brazil for citizens from 18 to 70 years old and, in total, there were 147,306,294 voters for this election. The election consisted of two rounds: the second round is only for the president, vice president, and governors. Senators and congressmen were elected only through the first round. The first and second round respectively took place on Sundays of October 7th and 28th in 2018. Brazil adopted electronic vote system since 1998 therefore the vote counting was so quick that ended within a single night. There was also a huge number of candidates: 14 candidates for president, 28,957 people claimed for candidacy, yet 2,016 of them were disqualified due to the Lei da Ficha Limpa [Clean Record Law] hence it ended up with 26,941 candidates from 35 parties actually ran the election (de Oliveira Dias & Teles, 2018).
4.3 The Election in Recife
In this section, I elaborate on the way in which the election presented itself through ethnographic descriptions. The large part of my fieldwork was in Coque, yet I also followed political activities in the city of Recife. To begin with, I would like to introduce the political division – the reasons why people supported PT or Bolsonaro.
The reasons to support PT/Bolsonaro – at a glance A general yet simplistic understanding of the dispersion of the supporters is that far-right candidate Bolsonaro was principally supported by middle or high-income people and PT had deep-rooted backing of low-income people. Business people, evangelicals, and farming lobby were Bolsonaro’s support bases (BBC, 2018). Bolsonaro would say these supports are a reaction to a history above in which PT had prioritized low-income people for a decade with its “communism” way of thinking. The divide was also geographical. The result clearly showed the northeast was in favour of PT and in the southern states Bolsonaro was more popular. The economic and geographical factors are correlated since it is the south that has taken the lead of economic development in Brazil. Following this theory, Coque, one of the poor communities in the economically backward northeast, should have been the vote bank for PT. Although PT outweighed Bolsonaro in Pernambuco state, the reality is far more complex. Different political positions existed even in Coque and sometimes they disputed against each other. Many Bolsonaro (and PT) supporters with different motivations were in Coque. Based on interviews and daily conversations I had, I made a table of the reasons to be for/against PT/Bolsonaro (Table 4.1) Particularly, three points are crucial from the table. First, some reasons could be false, or at least have no just background. For instance, “gender ideology [ideologia de genêro]” is a favourite word of Bolsonaro and his supporters referring to “vaguely denote policies or activism aimed at improving gender equality and upholding the rights of women and the LGBTQI community” but “has no academic or theoretical basis, nor a clear and coherent definition (Aljazeera, 2018).” They recurrently used this jargon to fight hard in defence of their value of evangelic “traditional family” composed of husband, wife, and children (see chapter 2) but itself is a shady concept.
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PT Bolsonaro For - Lula had helped the poor - Bring change - Have programs about the gender issue - Increase security - Liberal economic policies - Against gender ideology Against - Corrupted - Fascist [dictatorship] - Gender education - Racist - Use a lot of money for the campaign - Anti-LGBT - Had failed to improve the situation - Anti-women Table 4.1: The reasons to be for/against PT/Bolsonaro
Second, the reasons to support could easily turn into the weapon to attack another. If one has what another does not have, the absence could be a reason to denounce. For example, people in favour of Bolsonaro because of the radical changes he promised tended to say, “nothing will change with PT” or “Bolsonaro is (at least) not corrupted.” The last point is that censures far outweighed backing. Petistas harshly blamed Bolsonaro for his conflicting statements and ideologies, whereas Bolsonaro supporters (including Bolsonaro himself) were fond of abusive criticisms on the corruptions of PT. The more one agrees on PT or Bolsonaro, the harsher criticism could become. In this sense, PT and Bolsonaro (and their supporters) are mirrors held against each other; the disadvantage of one is the advantage of another, yet it only showed the opponent did not have the minus at stake. Popularities of both candidates were highly relative and one could surface by disparaging another. Nothing to say, the table above is so simplified that does not deliver the people’s real voice and reasoning behind. How and why did the people argue or disagree? Did they tell real intentions, or were there any unspoken motivations? I will shed light on these dimensions by taking a closer look on each side.
Bolsonaro supporters Jair Bolsonaro was undoubtedly a central figure of this election. One could even argue that the biggest point in dispute was not to support PT or Bolsonaro but to support Bolsonaro or not since another influential candidate Lula was in jail. It was definitely true that Bolsonaro established his popularity through denouncing PT. “We will not continue to flirt with socialism, communism, populism, and extremism of the left” he said at the same night he got elected. To obtain buoyancy through downplaying counterpart was also the main stance of his supporters. Bolsonaro first got elected as a congressman in 1991 and has been known for his conflicting remarks regarding many topics such as gender, race, and human rights. He is in favour of torture, expresses nostalgia of the military regime, slanderes refugees, and on top of that, makes offensive remarks about sexuality (The Guardian, 2018d). For instance:
During a parliamentary debate in 2014, he told MP Maria to do Rosario that he would not rape her because she “was not worth it”. The same year, he suggested during a TV
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interview that spanking a son who “showed signs” of being gay was the best way for parents to change his behaviour and assure he would grow up as a “proper” man. In 2017, he claimed that after having four sons, having a daughter was the result of a moment of “weakness”. (Aljazeera, 2018)
At a first glance, it seems very difficult to back the person whom recurrently makes these statements. However, his supporters achieved this by two simple tactics: (1) attacking the counterpart and (2) denying the criticisms. On the day before the first round, I had an opportunity to talk with Bolsonaro supporters in an open-air political meeting held next to the beach of Pina nearby Coque. A big tent was installed and many participants wore the T-shirt with a face of Bolsonaro in front, with captions like his slogan “Meu Partido é Brasil [My Party is Brazil]” and “Bolsonaro Presidente”. Most of the participants were families or couples and from the middle classes. Men were dominant, but there were also women often accompanying her husband. During the event, there was cheerful music out aloud singing “Muda Brasil, Muda Brasil, Muda de verdade, Bolsonaro com amor e com coragem [Change Brazil, change Brazil, the true change, Bolsonaro is with love and courage]” from loudspeakers. It was an excellent example of how one could arbitrary uses the language: the song reminded me of a popular Japanese animation called Anpanman. The face of the hero is made of bread with sweetened bean taste inside [Anpan], and he gives his face to those who are hungry (figure 4.4). The hook of the theme of the animation says: “don’t be afraid, go for all, love and courage are your friends” – does not this somehow resonate with the song of Bolsonaro? This comparison between “the most misogynistic, hateful elected official in the democratic world” (The Guardian, 2018d) and a friend of children in animation aims at pointing to the fact that (1) language serves anybody and (2) they could utilize, and even define the words as they want.
Figure 4.4: Anpanman (in the middle) – a friend of love and courage (as well as Bolsonaro?)
I caught some participants and asked them why they supported Bolsonaro during the event, and they were all kind enough to have brief chats with me. I think the arguments below cover the principal of his supporters:
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Man in his thirties selling Bolsonaro T-shirts to participants: Bolsonaro brings change. It is not true that he opposes to LGBTs. He merely opposes to gender ideology by which gives a bad influence on children. Man in his forties: Bolsonaro will bring good security and inspection. He does not have prejudices and treats everyone equally. Children should not learn about LGBT. I am against gender ideology. PSL does not use the money of the citizens for the campaign. A woman in her forties and her son in his twenties: The reason to support him is health and security. Bolsonaro is not corrupted. It is too early to start gender education at the age of 5 or 6 in elementary school. Man in his forties: He brings change. PT has not been successful at changing situation of, for instance, people living in the slums. The traditional family is important because I was raised up by traditional values. Man in his twenties: He is ficha limpa [clean record]. I support him because economic policies are liberal. Man in his twenties studying at a university: Bolsonaro thinks things in a long-term. A traditional family is important because it is the basis of society. I don't want Brazil to become second Venezuela. Other candidates are attacking Bolsonaro himself, not his policies. Many movements are agreeable when it is a social movement, but it turns ugly once it becomes a political party. Bolsonaro is not like that. Freedom and equality are important.
The arguments clearly show the second strategy, denial of the criticisms, by saying Bolsonaro is equal to everyone and their earnest desires for the change. Besides the event, I often came across Bolsonaro supporters in Coque. Although I did not find a big difference of reasoning for the support between people from the middle class like above and people in Coque, the account could sometimes be more urgent. Sergio is the hard-working young man with short hair and glasses, running the stall of churrasco on evenings every weekend with his wife Vanessa. He explained Coque used to be a more dangerous place than today, and even in this year, there was a murder in July. He considers that Coque needs more police force to maintain the security and that was why Bolsonaro became his option. This resonates with an explanation that Bolsonaro “represents law and order” to his supporters (The Guardian, 2018d). I got to know another family supporting Bolsonaro at the different churrasco stall: two men in thirties and a woman in her twenties. According to them, as I often heard, it is false that Bolsonaro is fascist, anti-LGBT, and anti-women. On the contrary, he was trying to create an order of the traditional family. They insisted Bolsonaro is not against LGBT, but just opposing their “privilege” such as a request for a special toilet for sexual minorities and financial assistance. In short, they said LGBTs demand too much. They also attacked PT for introducing gender education and claimed that it is not their own interests but anxiety to Brazil that drove their decisions. These arguments brought me to a next, more fundamental question: what makes people so enthusiastic about Bolsonaro?
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I believe the last example of Bolsonaro supporter would help to address this question. He is Nelson, a head of the far-right political group in Coque Endireito Pernumbuco [Indirect Pernumbuco] for several years. Notably, he is officially a member of PSL and himself was a candidate of the district deputy. He made handbills lining his bust together with Bolsonaro for his campaign and made a gaudy show of this alignment through its distribution. The interview took place in his house two days after Bolsonaro won the election. First, he explained why he was happy about this outcome.
Nelson: The result was expected…because the left had dominated Brazil for a long time and Brazil did not have alternation to change. …The politics here in Brazil is the politics of assistentialist [assistencialista], meaning that taking away from the haves and treating have-nots. Lowered many taxes. The result is that each person has nothing…because they don't have the perspective of life and the will to be strong…we need something different…willpower that each person can grow and economic movement, more or less the same with what the United States does. We need to do what the United States does.
Two contradictions are found at this point. First, the causality between “taking away from the haves and treating have-nots” and “each person has nothing” is neither plausible nor logical. Second, the economic policies of Bolsonaro and Donald Trump are far from identical while they share the notoriety for their radical stances against minorities. On the contrary to Trump holds up “America first” policies, Bolsonaro aims at liberal economic policies increasing foreign trade. Next, Nelson explained his view on Bolsonaro. He distinguished his politics from assistentialism (PT-like politics) and called “altruism”. He insisted Bolsonaro is “equal” and stands for everyone:
Nelson: The leftists don’t reach to the complex society. They will divide [Brazilians] to win. They will divide black and white, rich and poor, heterosexuals and homosexuals, and every time represent only rights of one side. We [PSL] do not do it. We will govern for all. We have to make rules for everyone. So that’s why I don’t like shit leftist [mierda esquerda]. Their very assistentialist politics…we have an example of Venezuela where people have to kill dogs to eat.
Venezuela, where is extreme inflation for already years, gave a “logic” of “Do not make Brazil second Venezuela” to Bolsonaro and his supporters during the election. The advocates argued that the condition of Venezuela came from their economic conservative policies, and Brazil would follow the same way if the PT government initiates again. But this argument is too far-fetched: Venezuela and Brazil have a different history, diplomacy, resources, industry, populations, and these countries are incomparable in terms of only a few economic policies. To add to this, PT had followed the neoliberal policies of the Cardoso government, prioritizing revenue than social welfare (Pereira, 2008). Another important point is that his statement demonstrated strong hatred against PT. My argument is that it is this hatred that incited people to the two strategies above: slander and disavowal.
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Bolsonaro manoeuvred and stirred up the antagonism by controversial remarks and denunciations but he himself is merely a vehicle of this hatred. The antagonism reproduced itself over and over by stimulating Bolsonaro followers to recycle his logic: Nelson is absolutely the case. The “punchline” of the interview was in the end when he defenced Bolsonaro from the criticism of being against woman.
Nelson: For those who offences, they think he [Bolsonaro] is misogynistic and doesn’t like women. How is that possible to dislike women, he is married! He has a daughter.
The interview came with many debatable arguments as I presented. Although I should refrain from overgeneralization of these arguments, the moderate conclusion of this section would be that the affirmation of Bolsonaro often required fishy reasoning and critics on the left and, insofar as I know, it was seldom based on the specific agendas or policies. Then, I turn the eyes to another side, PT, to demonstrate why people do or do not support the party.
PT supporters To begin with, I would adopt more of ethnographic descriptions to this PT side because I had talks with petistas mainly through participating political demonstrations. In total, I attended nine marches and it became one of the most impressive experiences, showing the energy of Brazilian public to politics. I believe it is crucial to report these vigorous activities because it occupied an important role in the electoral processes. I enumerate the “elements” of the political demonstrations below to deliver the special air of the event: though there are some variations, the basics stayed the same for all gatherings. l T-shirts: The primitive, yet powerful instrument to show the political ideology represented by the colours, slogans, and logos. For instance, PT supporters tended to wear red (derived from the leftist (socialist) origin of the party) T-shirts with a star-shaped emblem and Bolsonaro supporters liked T-shirts with his face in front. Many of Bolsonaro T-shirts are green and/or yellow because these two are colours of Brazil, showing their “patriotic” stances. There are multiple designs for each party and available in many places e.g. an open-air market in the city centre. Digressing a little, a T-shirt is a crucial element of football, a national sport of Brazil, too and it also has an “ideological” meaning, that is, you are the supporter of which team. l Propaganda truck: A huge truck loads big speakers to scatter ear-splitting music. People often ride on the top to give a speech or a shout. During the demonstration, the truck goes forward slowly and stimulates people to keep motivated. l Music and/or speech: Spread by propaganda truck. These two can be combined by e.g. parody songs with political lyrics. For instance, a popular song in 2018 “Só Que Vrau” by MC MM and DJ RD has the lyric “Só que vrau, só que vrau, só que vrau vrau vrau” for its hook, which is replaced by “Ele não, ele não, ele não não não” in PT demonstrations. The music can be
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also made by instruments – for instance, drums with a rhythm of maracatu, music originated in northeast Brazil. l Stalls: wherever there are many people in Brazil, stalls selling foods and drinks show up. They sell beers, water, churros, ice creams, churrascos in few reais with handy signs. In political demonstrations, the stalls can also sell bandanna printed slogans and T-shirts. A side effect of these stalls is trashes produced afterwards; some collect empty cans during the event to earn a little money. l Stickers: The simple version of T-shirts showing ideology. For instance, the stickers for PT are with a red star and number 13 (a number of Haddad). The stickers are usually distributed during the parade for free and people put it on the chest. l Flags and banners: Both are to make propaganda of a specific candidate or party. In general, the flags are of the parties and banners are to show the slogan, such as “O Brasil feliz de novo [Happy Brazil Once Again]” and “Mulheres sem medo de ser feliz [Women do not fear to be happy].” However, this is not always the case e.g. handmade flags can come with slogans. l Handbills: A small handout of the political campaigns made by each candidate. The basic structure is photos of the candidate (and candidates he/she does tie-up) in front and space takes after ballots (figure 4.5). It is notable that there is almost no space for the manifest or policy the candidate advocates.
Figure 4.5: Handbills & stickers
The interesting point is that these instruments of T-shirts, loud music, stalls, and signs for a political campaign are almost the same with that for the carnival. Although the contents could be different e.g. T-shirt says not the name of the politicians but promoting the carnival, a framework is identical. In other words, these demonstrations are highly “carnivalised” to the way in which people are easy to participate. I briefly report these demonstrations. There was a big women’s march backing PT before the first round of the election. Approximately 70% of the participants were women and many of them
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looked like either forties or fifties. The parade started around 17 and women on the truck gave a shout: “A primavera chegou, a primavera somos mulheres! [The spring arrived. The spring is women!]” “Lula Livre!” “Mostra uniao esquerda! [Show the union of the left!]” The shout was appealing to “negras, negros, mulheres [black people and women].” I was with an old woman got retired from the public office of health, and she supported PT because it is “the only party has a program about labour, right, poverty, and violence against women”. The demonstration seemed nice, but there was a shady element as well. A young man with yellow T-shirts advocating Paulo Câmera, a state governor of Pernambuco, told me that he is hired by the candidate by 500 reais for 15 days. The minimum salary in Brazil is approximately1000 reais per month, so the reward is not very high. Nothing to say, this is one of the reasons why money is important for electoral politics; to organize big campaigns. Once Daniel told me that if we look at the weight on the ground sustaining the flag for candidates by the roadside, we could tell if the candidate has the money or not. Candidates with abundant money could afford to buy new, smooth weights whereas the others used more plain, clunky weights. The second march took place a week before the second round. It was the biggest march I attended during the stay and over 10,000 people put like on the Facebook event page. The demonstration was different from other marches because the supporters of other leftist parties such as PCB [Partido Comunista Brasileiro: Brazilian Communist Party] and PCdoB [Partido Communista do Brasil: Communist Party of Brazil] also joined in order to fight against their “common enemy” Bolsonaro. The march occupied full of a wide four-lane street with its overflowing slogans and shouts and cheers: “Não racismo facismo xenofobia [No Racism, Fascism, Xenophobia]” “Feminista não vota em Facista [Feminist does not vote for Facist]” “Nos estamos aqui para dizer, ‘Ele não! Ele nunca! Ele Jamais!’ [We are here to say “Not him, never him, never and never him!]” (figure 4.6)
Figure 4.6: PT’s caminhada
Since this march took place in the politically tense period, I also observed small disputes between supporters of two parties. A Bolsonaro supporter tried to provoke the march from his room in the high building and the participants reacted on it by booing. Some Bolsonaro supporters heckled the march from the bus. Yet, as a whole, the parade went peaceful. People danced in a circle, confetti fell off from the building, some reported the demonstration to friends and families via video call or
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post on social media, full of handclap and fist, some bumped into their friends and hugged each other. The third demonstration happened in Recife city centre just three days before the second round, and Fernando Haddad himself showed up to give the speech for his last spurt. The Facebook event page suggested participants bring the book to the march as a token of to vote for the “professor” Haddad who took his Doctorate in philosophy. The shout was “Eu quero paz! Eu quero amor! Estou na rua para votar num professor! [I want peace! I want love! I am here to vote for the professor!]” Some held the book over his or her head during the walk. The temporary stage was installed next to the old church, and there were so many people that I could not even move an inch. The supporters of Haddad gave a speech from the stage, but he did not show up for more than two hours. Giving a supplementary explanation, there were also marches in different circumstances. Once my neighbour Ednaldo brought me to the old city centre of Recife around midnight because he said he plays maracatu there. Around 150 people of both middle and low-class people were playing the rhythmical music on the street with a stone pavement. Surprisingly, they said it had been continuing for over a decade. We walked the street surrounded by walls full of graffiti dancing, singing, and waving the red flag. A person recommended the coconut water mixed with vodka. This odd yet funny march lasted till two thirty in the morning. The shout unique to this march was “Lula ladrão! Roubo meu Corazon! [Lula is the thief! He stole my heart!]” It metamorphosed criticism of him and PT of being a corrupt thief to backup by re-embedding it into a different context. During these events, I got to know some people kindly accepted my offer of an interview. The first one is a beard young man Adreano, a member of the LGBT committee of PT. He himself is gay and fighting for better conditions of sexual minorities. The interview was conducted in the PT office in the city centre and he gently answered my questions with a calm tone. He preferred dialogue, not an interview; he did answer, but also asked me questions. He began with a concise self-introduction:
Adreano: I am a part of PT. I believe the ideology of the party as leftist, but I firstly identified with the activist group inside of PT in which I already knew, the politics inside of PT, and I affiliated, and keep till today. From 2006, 12 years with PT… Yusaku: Long time. Adreano: Yes. Long time already. [Laughter] Yusaku: In the beginning, how did you start supporting PT? Adreano: First I entered a social movement; a gay group of Pernambuco, started activism…I got to know some people and they invited me to participate in some movements existed in PT. I started participating in this movement of the party, and I identified with it.
This testimony resonates with the explanation in chapter 2 that sexual minorities started to come out to the public in the era of PT since 2006 was the year Lula won his second election. When the topic comes to Bolsonaro, Adreano expressed serious fear of the rise of the far-right.
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Adreano: I am not against Bolsonaro. I am against the ideology he has in a form of politics…a form of big regression…His form is Nazism and not the idea of doing politics. Yusaku: I understand. For example, what do you think about the ideology of gender? Because he is against… Adreano: Yes, he is totally against…get well of removing gay from reality as if a gay doesn’t exist preceding…nobody was taught to be gay in school…anyways, it is the turn of him to remove gay… Yusaku: Do you think the school should teach diversity? Adreano: Not only diversity but all forms like racism, diversity of religions… and also include sexualities.
He consciously made a distinction between Bolsonaro and his ideology, unlikely PT supporters as usual who accused Bolsonaro himself. He is aware of the fact that Bolsonaro is not a problem, but a projection of built-up frustration among Brazilians. It seems he chose to critically reflect on the situation he had to face, rather than being a fanatic supporter of PT. I think it was difficult for him to be critical to the party in its office, but still, his tone was with composure. There is no doubt that the election put the PT in a difficult situation. The reaction to the criticisms and the rise of the strong counterpart of PT politicians was, in general, twofold: (1) attacking the counterpart and (2) ignoring the criticisms. First, as already mentioned, politicians from PT liked to denounce Bolsonaro as being fascist, racist, etc. They emphasized that they stood up for democracy, love, and peace during their speeches. I venture it was empty in a way. Their counterpart Bolsonaro also talked about these topics and PT politicians kept claiming the same notions without proper responses to the criticism they received. The strategic difference between two powers is that Bolsonaro and his supporters were successful at denying the criticisms by carrying out the arguments that he is a “good person” till the end, PT failed to do the same. Nobody could say, “PT is not corrupted” since it was too obvious because of recurrent big scandals. I remember once a taxi driver told me a politician from PT asked him to write a receipt of 120 reais when the true bill was merely 13 reais, in order to put the difference in his pocket. Hence, I argue, it was the desperate strategy of PT ignoring these criticisms. Decorating the speeches with beautiful ideas instead of reacting to the criticisms is not as convincing strategy as perfect denial. It could be a part of the reason decided the fates of two forces. Lastly, I introduce a small quote from Iri, a worker of Secretaria de Justiça e Direito Humano [Secretary of Justice and Human Rights] in Recife I introduced in chapter 2, showing the different and positive aspect of this election. She is another interviewee I caught at the march. As an expert of grassroots movements, she tried to focus on the bright side by interpreting this election as a chance to merge different movements in which had been disputed against each other.
Yusaku: [summarizing her argument] so, various movements of women, black people, and LGBTs are mixed, but still not enough.
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Iri: All organisations are mixed, the moment of constructing all unions. The moment of the fight for liberty... Yusaku: Then, you see this election as a chance to unite. Iri: Unite, have conversations, think more… Yusaku: Opportunity. Iri: Yes. Better organisations, better ideas. A mix of social classes. And cultures as well.
It is one of the few arguments referred to the importance of bottom-up social movements, not the top-down “democracy” proposed by both parties. However, even though the quote showed a small light of hope in this difficult time, it is absolutely true that people are fed up with repetitive corruptions and ceased supporting the party. It was Bolsonaro snatched the disappointed citizen by promising a radical change, though he was not clear about the direction of the change.
The reaction of people in Coque to electoral politics The electoral politics also took shape in Coque. People in Coque related themselves to politics in three ways: (1) having direct contact with politicians with or without a political ambition like Nado, Aderbal, and Vavá. I write about this in the following vignette and chapter 4. (2) Devoting entire attention to be beneficiaries of the trickling bonus of electoral politics. They attend political gatherings and are hired to the campaigns to get a monetary/material benefit, but never actively organize events. The degree to devote him/herself depends on the person. (3) To be indifferent to the entire politics. Candidates seeking votes through “gatekeepers” divide Coque into fragments. Put differently, Coque is never monolithic. In this chapter, I only give a short summary because chapter 4 will take a closer look at the topic. Who are these gatekeepers? They are the people in Coque who have personal connections with the candidates like Vavá and Aderbal. They did political campaigns within Coque on behalf of the candidates; some have a political aspiration and economic interests drive others. As repayment for these campaigns, the politicians provided financial supports such as patronizing community events and food distribution. One example would be a small gathering with breakfast in mid-September Aderbal and Nado hosted aimed at helping a politician they were in contact with. Approximately twenty neighbours sat in a circle in a small room and most of them were old women. After the politician had arrived, Aderbal and Nado standing in front of the circle gave short speeches. The politician in his fifties with a white beard and a neat short-sleeve shirt took the speech over, and I noticed two young photographers wearing nice clothes took pictures of him e.g. when the politician hugged with one of the old ladies. After the speech, a relatively gorgeous breakfast including bananas, handmade chocolate cakes, guarana was offered and, interestingly, the politician and two photographers immediately sneaked out from the place, which people did not care. I attended this kind of meetings for several times, but the endings were always the same – politicians left Coque as soon as they finished the speech as if it was unbearable for them to be in the favela. What I observed was the bleak contrast between politicians who wanted votes and people expecting for the support (food).
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Although politicians shared the stance, the gatekeepers had different strategies to relate themselves to these politicians. For example, it was important for Aderbal to win the fame of both the politician he supported and himself since he had a hope to be a politician. He organized many events in his name such as food distribution. This strategy might be seen as a relatively straightforward exchange between vote and support, mere clientelism, but also has a twisting element that Aderbal made use of this support in order to raise his own reputation such as putting his own name on T-shirts for the events. Many followed this way because the connection to politicians is the lifeline and often an entry point to politics-oriented people in Coque. In this sense, Nelson I presented above came up with a new avenue to empower himself, that is, seeking votes outside of Coque. He officially belonged to the PSL and organized a political group supporting the party. In this way, he gathered the votes from wider PSL supporters. Moreover, he built a network of the people resonating this ideology through social media. He explained during the interview that he got to know many people at a Facebook group of Bolsonaro supporters. The bottom line is that multiple ways to be related to the politics coexisted in Coque and each person was searching for their own way. The large part of people in Coque was, however, not as deeply involved in politics as this type of people. Many attended to the meeting like mentioned above, helped out simple tasks e.g. handbill distribution or voted for a certain politician to earn pocket money, but there was nothing more than an instant calculation of economic/material benefits. At the exterior of this circle, there are those who indifferent to the politics – people with the strongest feeling of resignation, if not hopelessness. The logic of “rouba mas faz [steals but gets things done] (Balán, 2014) expresses this resignation. In other words, the resignation is a realistic attitude of the people tired with political scandals recurring in the history. I once observed a politician gave a zealous speech saying the people should vote for their rights to raise a voice, not economic interests, and left the place without talking with any participants immediately after his nifty speech; it is not my aim at all to acknowledge the people’s choice based on economic interest, voting for a particular candidate in exchange for 10 euros, but I could easily trace the decision prioritizing quick profit over “rights,” which were strongly intertwined with the distrust to politics. Lastly, I describe the first round of the election because it was the condensation of the materials presented in this chapter. It was the first day I woke up hearing the rain. The rain kept off and on during the morning. The polling stations (public schools) opened from eight in the morning till five in the afternoon. Despite the fact that it was on Sunday, bars were open and stalls sold food e.g. churros in front of the school entrance (figure 4.7). Handbills of the candidates thrown away covered the street and some were even trying to put on the last spurt. I found a lady from my neighbour distributing the handbills and she said she got paid 40 reais for the job. But these players disappeared after the Election Administration Committee arrived since it was technically illegal. In the morning, I observed relatively more mothers with children coming over to vote. In the afternoon, many people gathered in front of the school and started drinking, discussing, and shouting randomly. I was engulfed by the chaotic discussion of people, which main speakers were
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Roberval and Loro. Roberval voted for PT and Loro voted for Bolsonaro. Loro was exposing his arguments with rhetoric and jargons, for example: “I’m against privatization so I vote for Bolsonaro” “I am against liberal economic policy so I vote for Bolsonaro,” which were totally opposite of the case. In the meantime, Roberval was interrupting Loro by shouting “Bolsonaro kills! Fascist! He kills you if you wear a red T-shirt! (Red was the colour of PT)" His wife did not agree with this radical argument, which made a man next to her voted for Bolsonaro grinned: "She is his woman, but does not agree on him [mulhere dele mas não concorda]”, implying the prejudice that women have to agree with the husband. When I went back to home, children were playing with handbills – they filled in 13 (number of Haddad) to handbills, yelled “Haddad won!” and threw them like confetti. However, the next day it turned out that Bolsonaro got 46%, whereas Haddad got only 29% of the whole votes.
Figure 4.7: The Election Day in front of the school (a polling station)
4.4 Conclusion
This chapter reported about the Brazilian Presidential election 2018 in Recife. I first introduced a historical background of the election with a focus on explaining why the election became saliently troublesome. Although some confusions were expected due to the controversial governance of PT, the election came with much more commotions because of two incidents: disqualification of the most popular candidate Lula and the stabbing of Bolsonaro. Next, I took a closer look at the voice of the supporters of both PT and Bolsonaro; three points are important. First, the entire election was a mudslinging two powers harshly attacked another without proper dialogue. PT blamed Bolsonaro for being fascist and Bolsonaro denounced PT’s corruptions and “communist” way of governing, both without responding to the criticism. Second, PT and Bolsonaro, so do their supporters, employed similar yet different strategies. Although both did not hesitate to slander their counterparts, PT ignored the criticisms and Bolsonaro side was successful at denying it, however desperate it might be. I argued this difference influenced on the final outcome
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of the election. Third, two parties had very different views in terms of policies and ideologies, yet both talked about democracy, love, and peace – these beautiful ideas. The secret is that language could stretch itself to fit into many contexts and serve to the different people with even opposite ideologies behind. Hence, it is crucial to focus on not what they talk, but what they try to achieve through these words. In the last paragraph, I introduced how people in Coque related themselves to politics. There were options to be involved or not, to how extent one would be involved, and how one would be involved depending on his motivations/interests. In the last chapter, I will further approach this dimension by introducing a case study of Vavá to provide an answer to the initial question, that is, how the person who has direct connections with a politician behaved in Coque during the electoral times.
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Chapter 5. “Standing Up for the Community” A case study of a gay person aspiring to be a politician
5.1 Introduction
He has a tattoo of a microphone with musical notes in his shoulder appear when he wears a tank top, and under the microphone his name is also tattooed: “Vavá Locuções.” The tattoo well embodies not only his talent of being an interlocutor in events but also his political stance, that is, to stand in the middle of people and politics; he often stated his motivation to be a politician is to be a voice of the people living in Coque. His aspiration of being a “voice of Coque” is realized through the use of his principle medium Facebook. During the election, it was easy to find him making live broadcasts with his selfie, fluently commenting on the events in Coque, or making videos of impassioned speeches about his political opinions. He said the information flow is bidirectional: he was as well trying to deliver accurate information to the people in Coque so that they could make choices forged on political consciousness. In a nutshell, he was intent to bridge the gulf between Coque and politics. Fulfilling this role, he has to be an expert in politics and community. His strategy to prove this I take a closer look in this chapter is presenting himself as a heroic, intransigent figure. Vavá is a 37-year-old, thin and short man with grizzled short hair. He works in the large shopping mall RioMar as a plumber on the night shift for several days a week. He has been living in Coque since he was born; he often referred to himself as a “morador [dweller] do Coque.” He is proud of being a part of Coque, as well as being a Brazilian; he often stated that Brazil is the best place in the world. For his spare time, he enjoyes hanging out with Daniel and their friends, drinking beers and cachaça [sugarcane liquor] in his house and a bar in the riverbank. He also enjoyes his house being hangout among his friends; they often dropped by at his place without an appointment. I appreciate him because he patiently listened to this ignorant, apprentice researcher with unskillful Portuguese and gave precise answers to the questions. Simultaneously, he often surprised me by showing his different faces seemed to be even based on different subjectivities. When he is with his gay friends in the daily setting, he makes a lot of jokes and most of them are about his sexuality. He liked to make jokes about sex, good-looking guys and genitals. When the loud music takes place, he is the one starts dancing with sexual moves. However, when he talks about politics or presents himself in a formal situation, he makes neither remarks about his sexuality nor his favourite type of jokes. In other words, his political position of this topic is not a representative of LGBTs in Coque, but an ignorant outsider. For short instance, he is one of the key members of a political group in Coque ACC [Agentes Comunitário do Coque] demanding the accomplishment of abandoned projects. He often took part in the panel of the broadcast of ACC, but he never tried to speak for the sexual minorities. Rather, he chose to present himself as a symbol of hope, equipping himself by using clean words. I noticed the same tendency when I accompanied a campaign of a candidate of district deputy whom he was personally in contact with. This big difference, if not ambivalence, between his “formal” and “private” attitude is an entry point
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of my case study. What is the implication of the difference? Why he chose to, or was forced to hold these attitudes as his strategy? I discussed this topic with Vavá and he admitted he clearly makes a distinction with these two realms, which led me to establish a hypothesis. My hypothesis is that sexuality is his “sanctuary”. In other words, he protects his sexuality from the contamination of politics because two realms are irreconcilable under the current situation in Coque and Brazil (I will explain this later). My interest, however, went beyond as getting to know his relationship with the candidate of district deputy. The relationship between Vavá and him attracted my attention because it had a clientelistic element in it, yet also lacked some of its conventional components. For instance, both Vavá and the candidate were not enough influential yet. They were neither a community leader (political broker) nor a politician (patron). In this chapter, I argue their clientelism was therefore “in embryo” and had room for development. These two (a lack of sexual identity in his political discourse and incomplete clientelism) are the questions I deal with in this chapter. The first half of this chapter analyzes clientelism. The second half is dedicated to describing the intersection of politics and gender/sexual identity, that is, Vavá’s two subjectivities. I briefly summarize my argument in the conclusion. I do not see his attitudes and acts as problematic. I aim not to be judgmental, but to understand the factors behind his reasoning by putting this case study within a broader social context.
5.2 (Embryonic) Analysis of Clientelism “in Embryo”
In this section, I reflect on clientelism, a central concept for the understanding of Latin American politics, by taking a closer look on Vavá’s personal connection with the candidate of district deputy Augusto Barreto. This section consists of three parts; introduction of Vavá’s political discourse; describing his relation with Augusto; analysis of clientelism. As background information, I introduce Vavá’s life history. He has grown up in Coque and started working as a porter of a business that he explained in his own word “general service” from 2001 to 2003 (he was 21 to 23 years old). Since then, he drifted from job to job. In 2004, he started working in the kitchen of the big hospital and afterwards, he again backed to the general service. The lists of his jobs could go long and, at the same time, he tried to acquire the skills: comerciante [merchant], working in a barraquinho [small tent], auxiliar eléctrico [electrical assistant], participated in the course of atendimento do cliente [customer service] and retalhista [retailer]. His life became stabilized in 2013 when he got a job as a plumber [encanador] at the big shopping mall in the vicinity of Coque, which he has. In the meantime with these jobs, he has been working for an important side job, that is, militancia [activism] in his word, for 15 years in total. However, he frankly explained that his motivation has changed over time. He said he was more profit-oriented in the beginning and doing it to simply earn money, whereas he now does it “for the community” and supports the candidate who “does good.” He lives alone but used to be married with a woman and has two children – a son and a daughter. They still keeps in touch after four years of the separation e.g. Vavá often posts the picture of his
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children on Facebook. He said he financially helps their family. Once I visited his ex-wife’s house, she served me a slice of pizza but Vavá several times said: “this pizza is not good, because it is for the poor.” During the meal, he started a quarrel with her because contrary to Vavá, his ex-wife was pro-Bolsonaro. She insisted she couldn’t overlook that LGBT people receive more money than she does – however, it seemed these arguments were actually directed at her ex-husband. She snidely attacked Vavá so that we left the house in an unfriendly mood. Later on the same day, we had a drink in the cafeteria with Sven; Vavá said “I lived with her [ex-wife] for nine years, and have been separated for already four years. But I never want to live with someone again. Freedom is the best.”
Vavá’s discourse I next describe his discourse explaining why he chose to be active in politics and wish to become a politician. The discourse is a justification of his political interest. In total, I interviewed him three times and each took place in the beginning, middle, and end of the stay with an hour respectively. The transcription below is mainly drawn by the first interview and soon after we got to know each other. Paraphrasing, this is the most “formal” answer regarding his political stances. The interview was conducted at the park in Coque. His cell phone rang for several times during the interview, but he did not pick it up and kept answering my questions. He maintained eye contact and paid attention to choose simple words for explaining his opinions and to repeat the same words. This is, obviously, to make sure I understood. In transcriptions below, I did not omit these repetitions to provide his tone and way of speaking. First, I asked his opinions about community leaders in Coque, which he replied me with a harsh tone of criticism:
Vavá: Today in Coque, we have only two representatives for PREZEIS, which are not leaders…we don’t have [a leader]… Various people exist without a title of community leader, [but they are] only working for politicians. They work because they receive [money]…aggregating votes for these politicians, that is, selling the community, without the title of a community leader. There are various people helping party politics [política partidária]. They forget the politics of civilized society with education…forgot all these things. They are more concerned with finances, that is, helping politicians in order to receive the money, and not for the sake of projects for the community.
Two important points emerged here (I will explain “party politics” later). First, he did not admit the idea of “community leader” exists and said there is no leader in Coque. He said formal positions are only two people elected for PREZEIS at which their voice is supposed to be heard. It is a denial of the representative of the community. Second, he strongly criticized people who are in contact with politicians in Coque as “selling the community,” that is, earning extra money through helping out these politicians. He explained why these people put the community at risk.
Vavá: I think the politics have to be changed. I think these practices have to be changed. Why? If we continue these practices, we cannot obtain strength in the city council, in the
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chamber of deputies, because…if we receive [money] to do the work, we don’t have a perfect guarantee for the return to the community…we have the right for the guarantee of return, like education, health, and public security too. Why? We made a deal of sales; buy and sell. Yusaku: So, what is needed to guarantee? Vavá: What needed is a more united society in which thinks a form of equality for beating the corruptions. Many people say, “The government we have is what we are [O govierno que temos é o que somos].” If we have corrupted governments, we feed the corruption…if society unites, does not accept more corruptions, and votes for proposals and projects of the growth and empowerment, things will start changing. Yusaku: For equality and society with more union, what is needed? Vavá: The effort for re-education is needed. We have to be educated for serious politics. Because people actually take politics like…joking and do not take politics as a very serious thing. Politics is serious. If politics have been taken seriously for more times, maybe Brazil has not grown up like today. If people do not sell this [the community], bet, and people who want to enter the politics…without corruption, I can sure that things will change for the population in general.
This quote clearly illustrates his awareness and analysis of the political situation. He regarded those who are “selling the community” put Coque in an unstable situation without guarantee, and hence they should be driven away. Another point is that he not only criticized the government but also was aware of the responsibility of the public who “do not take the politics seriously.” Indeed, as I referred in chapter 4, politics in Brazil is highly “carnivalized” and many people take it as a kind of “joke.” In this sense, I completely agree with his argument. As a solution to this issue, he proposed “reeducation” nurturing the political consciousness of the people. This consciousness is intertwined with his ambition to be a politician. He aims to be city councillor [vereador] in the coming election of 2020. Next, I asked him to clarify how he is going to improve the situation when he gets elected as a city councillor. The way in which he introduced himself in this entire political context is crystallized in the part below:
Vava: For 2020, I have constellations, not only by myself. As I told you in the beginning, I am a very popular person, living in the community for 37 years…many people came to me through my works spreading what I speak and what I tell on the internet, they believe that I can make the paramount future, representing the municipality of Recife, but on top of everything, my community, my stronghold, where I live…I have a chance to elaborate on the projects to improve for Recife… I also have a chance to bring the resource to the community for education, health, and security… primordial things for the population to start living.
Obviously, he presented himself as a bright figure confronting difficult reality. The gloomy reality
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and his heroic volition supported by “his community” were impressively contrasted. He was eager to take actions and bring resources to Coque. At this point, I was attracted by his eloquence and asked for further concrete visions. He emphasized the information transparency and even stated that he would be happy to make his salary public. His splendid image gave further sparkle at this point. His argument is consistent in the sense that it aims at improving the entire community.
Vavá: When I reach to there [be a councillor], get elected for the public, I want to bring the same information to the population. I want to bring even more. I want to bring [to people] what my chamber receives, where my chamber invests, certo [right]? How much I receive…it is not my obligation to inform people what I do with salary, but I want this dialogue, to inform them [the public]. Look, my salary is this lot, I want this lot for my own, for family, for my personal life, and I want to invest this money to an institution. An institution applying courses, library, courses for elderlies, and the area of health. This money is not of the chamber, but mine. My salary. But I want to invest a part of it.
Next, I introduce his responses to the questions about gender and sexuality, which made him tone evidently less lively and more cautious. I approached this sensitive issue from the question about Gay Parade took place in the week before in Coque. Aderbal and Nado were the organizers of the parade, but some sexuality minorities criticized the parade being held without the voice of the people concerned on the contrary to the copy.
Yusaku: Do you think a gender problem, like women and men, exist in Coque? Vavá: Existing any problem of gender? Being men or women? No, here in Coque no. In Coque, everybody is treated equally, has the same rights, and duties. Yusaku: OK. And if I could ask…what do you think, how sexual minorities are treated? For example, Gay Parade in the last week… Vavá: The parade happened in Coque are supposed to be the parade to call for further attention of the population to create more respect to the LGBTs, saying no homophobia, to respect the decision of each person, to be a human…this is a social problem of them, and nobody has the right to intervene. Because we are living in the secular, democratic country, where the people choose how to live…the diversity parade was, however, a party politics of the politicians who call for people’s attention regarding the right of the LGBTs.
This part contains, in my understanding, three important points. First, it is his denial of gender issue in Coque. He stated that everyone is being impartially treated. Second, he did not criticize the parade in this interview. Rather, he looked on the positive side which event tried to arouse further attention to sexual minorities. I added “in this interview” because later I heard him giving negative comments about the organizers of the event when he was talking with his gay friends. Last but
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hardly least, he actively chose not to represent LGBTs – he said “them” instead of saying “us.” He stopped being a part of them and treated sexual minority as his “other,” not himself. To add to this, he neither willingly nor accurately responded to my questions. His answer is diverted into different directions, which in this case, the political meaning of the parade. The last element of his discourse I introduce is his distinction of two types of politics; party politics [política partidária] and social politics or politics of the community or community politics [política social or política da comunidade or política comunitária]. This idea is central to his political view to which he constantly came back. Let us take a look at how he defined them with his own word:
Yusaku: What is the difference between party politics and social politics? Vavá: …Party politics is the same thing as I was saying. They [the politicians] are trying to buy your votes…and social politics, politics of the community is what I told you. Clarifying the population [esclarecimento da população], bringing the people close to the LGBTs, respecting one’s rights. The LGBTs are respecting the rights of heterosexuals. So, each is living in their space in the best way without hurting others. That is community politics. Yusaku: So, two types. Política comunitária is equal to política social? Vavá: política social, awareness… Yusaku: Two types of politics are completely different? Vavá: Yes. Partidária is politics of the party, and social politics. Politics of clarification. Yusaku: So, party politics always negative? Vavá: Always negative. Yusaku: Party politics and politics of the community are never mixed up? Vavá: In fact, these two politics must work together. Party politics should bring society politics to society. Politics of clarification, knowledge, but they, the parties, are working for themselves…they must work together, but unfortunately, in reality it is not like that.
Rather than having a clear definition, it seemed that he made up a simple standard to distinguish two politics and applied it to other situations; party politics dealing with all the complicated tedious practicalities and another as genuinely good, innocent politics. They could probably be rephrased as good politics and bad politics. According to him, party politics are expected to bring social politics helping out the residents to the community, but it does not function in this way since the party is self-interested and corrupted. Again, the biggest party PT (2002-2016) is known for its recurring corruption scandals like mensalão in 2005 and lava jato in 2014 (see chapter 2). Nevertheless, this simple distinction raises a doubt, such as: is party politics truly “always negative?” Are different words he mentioned – awareness, clarification, and respect – could be summarized into a single word “social politics”? I think I covered a highlight of his political discourse. The next section provides further clarification regarding his political acts by investigating the correspondence of his words and behavior. I turn my focus to Vavá’s connection with the candidate.
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The connection with a political candidate One of the main political activities of Vavá during the electoral times was to help out the campaign of the candidate of district deputy. He was personally in contact with Augusto Barreto from AVANTE party. Augusto is 37-year-old (same age as Vavá) man with square glasses and combed hair. In his handbill for the electoral campaign, we can see him smiling somewhat timidly in a white coat because he used to work as a nurse in some hospitals and focusing on the health sector. According to Vavá, he got to know Augusto much before his candidacy through Daniel. Vavá said that he and Augusto are in a good partnership, but I observed some awkwardness between them. For example, Vavá once invited me to Augusto’s office to meet up with him, but Augusto did not show up after waiting for about an hour. Vavá has the phone number of Augusto, but he did not try to call him during the waiting. Augusto’s office is in the neighbourhood Derby and with printer, sofa, handbills, and posters for his campaign. After drinking a soluble coffee, we went back to Coque in vain. What did Vavá practically do for Augusto? His main function was a “gatekeeper” to Coque in terms of clientelism, which I will come back. Vavá navigated Augusto to Coque from which outsiders usually flinch away. For instance, Vavá planned the caminhada [march] for Augusto one day at the beginning of October. He called his friends in the afternoon, but in the end, he failed to gather enough people; I, Vavá, Daniel, Vavá’s wife and son Jackson were only ones. When Vavá got the phone call from Augusto, he held his head in his hands, squatted down. Daniel explained to me: “This is the practicality of politicians without money” implying Augusto did not pay enough to hold the march. In other words, Daniel spoke for Vavá. Soon later, Augusto and his two supporters (both male, working as a nurse) came over to Coque by a white car. Apparently, he got irritated by Vavá’s work but did not openly say it. We, including a little Jackson, lined up and distributed the handbills at a bus platform inside of the Joana Bezerra station. Most of passersby in the rush hour accepted the handbill. Augusto, wearing a white coat for his campaign, was almost always with two supporters and did not communicate well with Daniel, Vavá, and his family. We finished the distribution within half an hour, and then Augusto decided to walk around Coque. At this point, some reinforcements mainly consisted of Augusto’s family like his sister-in-law and her husband came over and joined the tour. Vavá took the lead and we strolled in Coque. Augusto bought some pastel [fried snack] in a stall and treated us. I remember I felt a little strange because Augusto picked a piece of potato flies from the pile of the stall before buying. Vavá, Augusto, and his supporters approached the people on the way of walking. Vavá greeted some people he knew and introduced Augusto. Yet the conversation took only up to three minutes; Augusto, wearing nice brown leather shoes, full-length pants, and a blue polo shirt putting his sticker on it, looked badly uncomfortable being in Coque. For him, the landscape of Coque like a group of men playing a simple gamble on the road must be the aliens: as its corroboration, I asked one of his supporters “What do you think about Coque?” he immediately responded “perigoso [dangerous].” (figure 5.1) On this unplanned and awkward march, a husband of Augusto’s sister-in-law stated: “there was no
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canal before and shack houses were lining. The situation here is improving.” However, he must not know that the canal Ibiporã project was as well abandoned in its middle; the municipality of Recife started canal construction from the station side where was the most important part for the beauty for the station users, and they stopped the construction in its halfway. Another grave question is: if all the shack houses used to be here was gone, where did the people move? As a small sequel of this night, I visited Vavá’s house a few days later. He showed me a white coat Augusto and said he gave it to him, enjoying putting it on. I do not know if Augusto had another white coat or quit wearing it for his political campaign.
Figure 5.1: Augusto in Coque with Vavá, handing handbills to the people
Analysis: Clientelism “in embryo” Drawing on the descriptions above, I propose two points regarding clientelism. First, the connection between Vavá and Augusto was clientelism “in embryo” which certainly had clientelistic element and possibility, but was too immature to be labelled as a clientelism per se. Second, it is important to focus on the forming process and the broker's network when analyzing the clientelistic network. I will explain them in order. Vavá’s relation with Augusto shows merely bizarre fit to clientelism. Again, clientelism is about the reciprocal exchange of support between a patron and clients of which (not necessarily, but often) political broker stands in the middle. When the client’s support takes shape of the vote, it is called political clientelism. However, scholars yet have no consensus about the rigid definition (Hicken, 2011; Muno, 2010; S. C. Stokes, 2011). In his review paper of the concept, Hicken (2011) made an effort to enumerate key elements: dyadic relationships, contingency (reciprocal relationship), hierarchy, iteration, and possibly, volition. I classify these elements fit, do not fit, and unique in this case study (Table 5.1). The table clearly shows only a partial correspondence. For positive side, we identify four elements: Vavá’s practical function as a gatekeeper, his assistance for a political campaign, mutual recognition of the cooperation from two sides, and inequality of the relation. First, it is common that political broker functions as a “gatekeeper” to the community (Auyero, 1999). Vavá was clearly a gatekeeper of Coque for Augusto. In other words, Augusto could not enter to Coque without him.
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Second, their relation was dyadic, face-to-face, and unequal. Vavá contributed to Augusto's political campaign too. Indeed, Vavá was a few of Augusto’s faithful supporters: he distributed handbills, put the sticker on his chest, and made Facebook posts praising Augusto. Nevertheless, Augusto did not treat him equally (e.g. Vavá did not call to Augusto when he did not show up to his office). The relation was also voluntary: Augusto came over to Coque by himself and Vavá admitted his volition in his interview.
Fit - Vavá’s function as a gatekeeper - Vavá helped out Augusto’s political campaign - The volition of both Vavá and Augusto - Unequal relation Do not fit - Vavá did not distribute material support to the people in Coque - Questionable repeatability Unique - Vavá and Augusto were both amateurs in politics - Vavá’s network inclined to his gay friends and women Table 5.1: A partial fit of the case to conventional clientelism
However, some crucial elements of clientelism were missing from the relation too. The most crucial element was the reciprocity between patron and clients. In other words, this relation was about a patron and a political broker, and no clients involved. I did not observe any resource distribution funded by Augusto in Coque. Although the support could be non-materials like job and protection (Hicken, 2011), he neither provided them nor organized community events. The reason seems clear from above; he did not have enough financial resources. I remember Augusto’s wife complained to us, while we were waiting in his office, that it was hard to get elected in the election for candidates with no affluence. Furthermore, Vavá did not have enough power too. In other words, he was not known as a dependable support provider in Coque. To add to this, it is also questionable if their relation iterates. Augusto did not get elected in the end. He got 6,188 votes (0.14%) but was required at least its triple (approximately 18,000 votes) to be a deputy. There is no guarantee that he will stand for the next election in 2022 and he would ask Vavá to support him again. I saw him came over to Coque even on the Election Day, but I again observed him being extremely uncomfortable in “favela.” No wonder if Augusto withdraws from the personal tie with Vavá. As I wrote in the introduction of chapter 1, the stigmatization of favela is not in the object per se, but in the eyes of the beholder (in this case Augusto). Some elements are fresh in this case study. Interestingly, both Vavá and Augusto were not skilful in the electoral politics, which resonates with the outcome of the election. Patrons of clientelism are mostly politicians or political parties (Auyero, 1999; Hicken, 2011; Holland & Palmer-Rubin, 2015) with few exceptions (such as a community leader of Scott, 1972). The concept is often for explaining electoral support; Stokes (2011) defined it as “the proffering of material goods in return for electoral support, where the criterion of distribution that the patron uses is simply: did you (will you) support me?” Insofar as I know, however, clientelism of political candidates who did not
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establish his/her stable position yet remains unstudied. This is the very reason why I see the relation of Vavá and Augusto as clientelism “in embryo.” In other words, it is an incomplete form of the clientelism with a possibility of evolving into bona-fide clientelism with mutual support. For example, I coulc easily imagine Augusto starts material distribution via Vavá when he gets power in order to further stabilize his power basis. Last but not least, Vavá’s peculiar network also deviated from the conventional understanding of clientelism: his network is inclined to gay friends and women. It does not mean he does not have contacts with heterosexual men, but rather, his stronghold is in his gay friends and women. I acknowledge this research itself is also in an embryonic stage due to data insufficiency. One might criticize it would not be possible to pertain this relation to clientelism since “clients” were absent. This relation was of a patron and a political broker, but not of a patron and a client. Augusto did not get elected in the end too – the criticism pointing out it is too far-fetched to locate this case in the field of clientelism sounds plausible. Nevertheless, I argue these observations are suggestive and calling for the update of clientelism. Hicken (2011) observed the recent shift of the focus of the studies, that is, from patron-client ties to more complex, diverse pictures including brokers and networks. Auyero (2001, p.98) introduced four different types of political brokers in his book: potential, beginner, consolidated, and declining. In his early work, he called for the nuanced interpretation of the concept by introducing a client's perspective too (Auyero, 1999). In sum, contrasting tendencies of the expansion of the application and the detailed interpretation of clientelism are simultaneously taking place. These are a fair wind to my findings. Lastly, I add two aspects to Auyero’s call through this case study: the formation process and gender-orientation of the network. The way in which the relation is initiated would contribute to, for instance, understanding how the distribution would develop by giving a detailed understanding of the context. Besides, I think the gender aspect should be more stressed, especially in the favela where social norms tend to be sexually distorted. In this case, Vavá had a unique network inclined to his gay and female friends. This network could be attractive to politicians (or its candidates) since it reached to those who other political brokers are not able to. Another reason for paying attention to the gender aspect is that the constant transience of the situation surrounding LGBTs. As I explained in chapter 2, even though the reality is still not easy at all for them, they are becoming visible than several decades ago. However, I still have to answer one more question to complete this analysis: why Vavá did not take advantage of his unique network for his political ambition? As mentioned, he did not talk about his sexuality in the political setting. He did not talk about Augusto to his gay friends too. In the next section, I attempt to explain his decoupling of two spheres of private and public.
5.3 Private & Public: Ambivalent Subjectivities?
As noted, Vavá showed different attitudes in his political/daily settings as if he switched two subjectivities. He presented himself as a bright figure in the political discourse, whereas he was very
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expressive in his daily settings. This section contains three points of this topic. First, I describe his behaviours and strategies in different political contexts of his participation in the political gathering, community event, and his social media tactics. Second, I introduce him in his daily setting through one vignette: “a perfect day for the photograph” to contrast with the first part. Third, I analyse the origin of his different behaviours by drawing on overall descriptions, as well as his own explanation about the seemingly contrasting behaviours.
Political setting 1: Taking part in ACC ACC [Agentes Comunitário do Coque] is the local political group in Coque aiming at spreading information for political achievements. Their most important agenda is to push the municipality to accomplish a set of abandoned projects. In Coque, an outcome of haphazard urban planning, if not an outcome of a perplexing snatch by greedy politicians, is extremely visible. For instance, a ten-minute walk from the station brings us to a totally derelict building, where was supposed to be a habitacional [housing] for the people living in the stilts. Another example is Compaz (a complex with different functions including music, art, swimming pools etc. See appendix). Their main activity during my stay is called “Bate-papo com ACC [chat with ACC].” This project is initiated in the mid-September and aims to inform knowledge on politics to residents in Coque through a weekly Facebook live broadcast. The broadcast is on every Tuesday evening, from eight for about 45 minutes. There are usually two or three speakers, and the rest observes their talk behind the camera, almost every time with biscuit and sweet coffee. A roof of Roberval’s house is settled as a studio, and people from the ACC talk about a topic sometimes with guests knowledgeable about the issue (figure 5.2) The main facilitator is Batatinha but Vavá sometimes participates to give his opinion. Batatinha is a solidly built, strongly-willed man and also a member of ACC.
Figure 5.2: Vavá talking with Batatinha at Bate-Papo com ACC
The topic of the first broadcast was abandoned Compaz. Batatinha explained the situation and both him and Vavá harshly criticized the irresponsibility of the municipality. As could be imagined from the transcription below, Batatinha is very outspoken, eloquent and sometimes high-handed, whereas here Vavá presented himself as a calm, judicious figure:
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Batatinha: Compaz of Coque! Compaz is the site that should integrate sports, leisure, and art, all for the youth. We need it very much for the youth. Our compaz was promised in 2013, in the Pacote de Obra [work package: the name of the project] and until today, we don't have a source, totally abandoned. If you ask where the compaz would be, it is at the back of station Joana Bezerra, …we have information here, newspaper Folha de Pernambuco, some interviews with secretaries…27th of March 2017, one year and a half more or less, Geral do Julio [secretary]…told following: “We will keep working. …in the next year, it is a [Batatinha raised his voice louder] promise that in March 2018, we go for another. Affirmation completed”…March was passed, we are in September, for sure, I do not believe they want to make the progress. Compaz was abandoned, public money of us was spent in other things…I don't believe, what do you imagine, Vavá? Vavá: I believe this is the immunity… We united and criticized public that we always stay behind. We did meetings in the city hall of Recife, and the promise there was, I know each person's face, to come back later this year. And October of the year of the election is coming, promised for the return of the works of Compaz, and until today, nothing was done.
On the contrary to when he works as an interlocutor, his tone is very reserved in the broadcast. He is logical, listens to the others, and tries to give persuasive opinions with a spice of appropriate anger. I felt he was giving this connotation during the comment: “The situation is falling into obscurity. But don’t worry, I’m here, fighting for you.” Although members share the interest in the completion of Compaz, ACC is not monolithic. For instance, Roberval, Daniel and Vavá were against Bolsonaro throughout the election, whereas Batatinha started openly supporting him after the first round. They sometimes disputed among each other. Especially, Roberval was the spearhead of anti-Bolsonaro and his supporters. He made a lot of posts on Facebook expressing his opposition against Bolsonaro and also made laugh of him like the abrupt shout of “EleNão” during the drink. He even made the T-shirt ridiculing the head of Bolsonaro supporters in Coque, Nelson I introduced in chapter 2, combined with “#EleNão” logo with a help of Daniel. However, it seemed for me that Vavá tried to avoid this conflict. He sometimes participated in this dispute and stated his opinion to be against Bolsonaro, but less aggressively compared to Roberval and Daniel. Importantly, I never heard him talking about his sexuality in ACC. I did hear some comments from Batatinha and Roberval on Vavá being gay as presented in the previous chapter, but again, these were all jokes and never serious talk. Nonetheless, Vavá had ties with ACC members and often got together, enjoyed a drink and political discussions. In this sense, ACC could be seen as an intersection of his private/public domain. Lastly, I point out that this ACC gathering is never mixed with Vavá’s gay friends except for his right-hand man Daniel. Put differently, Vavá distinguished two networks of gay friends and political friends. Only once during my stay, Batatinha and Didil came over to his house when he
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was drinking with his gay friends. Everyone went out to the street to chat for a while, but two groups did not communicate with each other. I felt some awkward distance between two groups, but this might be attributed to ignorance of both groups toward another.
Political setting 2: Attending community events of Children’s Day A part of the objective of these political acts is to obtain popularity among the people in Coque so that one could not get the votes to be elected, but also legitimate themselves as a “representative” of the community. In this sense, participation to the community events is also counted as a political act; it is a good opportunity to “be known” for the person like Vavá, whom has political aspiration but is still seeking for his stable basis. As partly mentioned, he was seldom an organizer of these events but acted as a “reporter” of the event via Facebook broadcast, making adept use of his eloquence. A good example was the 12th of October; Children’s day in Brazil. On this day, various events for children were held in Coque, organized by some groups and people. For example, two different barber groups were doing the haircut of the boys for free in two different places (I did not see any girls in these events and Vavá was also saying this is only for boys in his video). I saw Vavá doing a Facebook broadcast of one of these events, so went to the venue. The barbers were wearing the same white T-shirt saying “Barbeiros fazendo o bom na comunidade [barbers doing good in the community]”. A law in Coque: T-shirts always came with ideology. Here, I put a report of the events to Vavá’s hands. The transcription below was from his broadcast:
Vavá: We are here in the live, directly in my Facebook, to show what is going on here in the station, free haircut and commemoration of The Children’s Day. More than twenty professional barbers of the area, I’m at bar do Orlando, Ibiporã Street next to the canal, what happening here is a professional haircut for the children …later at 15 o’clock, my friend Renautido do Faledão will be here, bringing also a piece of happiness and a piece of smile for these children in Coque, who need a lot, many galleries, is suffered, still an action has a big importance, [find his friend] Andre, there is my friend Andre, also with a help of Mercadinho Andre [small market in Coque] this big action…
He often nicely decorates the events by using flowery words for example in this case “professional barbers” and “bringing…a piece of a smile.” He is also witty enough to fit his speech as occasion demands. When he found me later in this broadcast, he introduced me to his audience and explained the whole situation once again under the guise of explanation to me. When I asked him “Did you organize this?” he responded after a little silence “No, I only do divulgar [spread].” In the meantime, Daniel kept taking the picture of this event, sometimes setting Vavá as a subject. He always played support of Vavá; he was the only “inner circle” of Vavá when I put Vavá into the context of clientelism. After finishing the broadcast, we moved to another place. Not the one of barber’s group, but the other event took place in front of the office of Gabriel, another member of ACC, organized by him
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and an old woman (figure 4.3). Around forty children were playing with a trampoline and a small hut with colour balls. Free hot dogs were being served and some boys were putting the decoration of flower on their heads. Daniel told me later, gladly, “It is nice to see boys with flowers in this country of machismo.” This comment was memorable for me because Daniel usually made positive remarks of Brazil; he often said that Brazil is “melhor parte do mundo [the best part of the world].” During this event, Daniel was still taking pictures of Vavá. When he intended to take his picture with an organizer, an old woman, Gabriel intruded them and tried to be in the same picture. Daniel became antsy and warned Gabriel: “Get out from the picture!” Vavá made a new broadcast for this event with a slightly different tone. He was still employing dramatic descriptions, but this time with slightly more focus on himself: he was becoming more an “actor” over a third party.
Vavá: In Children’s Day, what children doing here is indeed the roles of children, role of being a child, playing, in a community of Coque, the second event we are participating, I’m here with my friend Gabriel too, an important person in Coque, and once again, in my Facebook page, Vavá Locuções…
Figure 4.3: Vavá on Children’s Day making a Facebook broadcast
In the late afternoon of the same day, there was a present distribution in the street. A big propaganda track for the music and the small van with a full of small bags of presents in the trunk arrived at the side of the station. In the twinkling of an eye, several hundreds of children made a long queue accompanied by their parents. The presents were mainly an assortment of snacks, but some of them had a piece of luxuries such as football and clothing. It was a wonderful blessing in Children’s Day: the only problem was that there were not enough presents. As soon as people noticed it, they started rushing to the car and the distributors threw the bag to the sky. People jumped to catch it. The funk music was scattered around. It was a big mess. Some people showed off their booty, some others cut in the long queue, parents every now and then chose the gift instead of their children, the old woman in a shabby clothing started to cling to the guy throwing the presents, I observed the distributors preferentially giving gifts to their acquaintances, a strange man whispered me with a grin: “this is Brazil” – and the same as when it started, an end of the chaos was sudden: everyone left in a moment when the present
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finished. How did Vavá contribute to this fuss? He made full use of his speciality, doing MC, and gave instruction to the people on the queue saying, “please line up here” and “we organized this for the community” (figure 5.4).
Figure 5.4: Vavá giving an instruction to the people on the queue of the presents
After finishing this present distribution at dusk, the Children’s day metamorphosed into the Adult’s day – beer, dance with a sexual move, and loud funk music. Vavá started shouting and laughing boisterously on the same microphone. During this uproar, I asked if these events are “politica social? Politica partidaria?” to Vavá, which he promptly answered, “This is organized by the community for the community, so this is politica social.” In a similar vein, he once mentioned a music festival in Igarassu (see chapter 2) as politica social because the event was an anniversary of 483 years of the municipality. Yet, Vavá overlooked a point: not all residents of the community (or the municipality) were beneficiaries of the event. Not a few children missed the gifts and it was only a part of the community enjoyed the music festival. Put differently, Vavá assumed the community as a homogenous entity and avoided referring to the difference or divisions within the community.
Political setting 3: Facebook tactics In January 2019, Brazil had approximately 130 million Facebook users (the third largest number in the world)10. Coque is not the exception. Many people have their Facebook account, post pictures from family gathering, a selfie with elaborate makeup, political opinions, etc. The other side of this is abundant viewers: the post reaches to a large number of the people. The people put like, gave comments, and shared the posts they liked in this cyberspace. For instance, 1,218 people were following the Facebook page of ACC and its broadcast Bate-Papo com ACC usually had more than 1,000 views. Though other social media like Instagram are getting popular, the people explained Facebook is still the most popular medium in Brazil. Vavá was also taking full advantage of this medium for various uses. He has over 4,000 followers and is very active; almost every day, sometimes several times a day he makes posts. The posts could be classified into the following three
10 The statistics retrieved from the following Website (the latest access March 3, 2019): https://www.statista.com/statistics/268136/top-15-countries-based-on-number-of-facebook-users/
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categories:
1. Politics: Vavá often posted his political opinions by sharing the post of the others, posting short phrases, and making the live broadcast. During the electoral moment, he made many posts supporting Augusto or opposing Bolsonaro. However, after Bolsonaro got elected as a new president, he deleted all these posts. 2. Personal side activities: This category mainly consisted of pictures of him being an interlocutor. These posts stand in the middle of his public and private realm. In other words, these posts are not directly related to his political aspirations, but still somehow creates his image “active and has a wide network of people.” This category sometimes comes with pictures he takes with a famous figure e.g. popular funk music singer. 3. Private: He liked to contribute pictures of his private life such as his family and his holiday on the beach. However, it is crucial to be aware of the fact that these pictures are not his private life in the true sense; they are “sophisticated representation” of it so that we have to take it with a grain of salt.
It is hardly a new finding that individuals do “impression management” in social media. One could, for example, choose certain pictures of the event for the Facebook post to reinforce ties with their friends (Mendelson & Papacharissi, 2010). It is also a space for “the selective disclosure of personal details designed to present an idealized self” (Hogan, 2010). Vavá typifies this case. A point is that his “impression” in this space is consistent with his discourse; self-presentation of a bright, clean figure. Next, I turn my eyes to Vavá’s behaviour in his daily context.
Daily setting: “a perfect day for the photograph” Again, his daily behaviour showed a big contrast from his political talk mainly because he was very expressive of his sexuality. I went to a music festival, took a walk, visited his family, and had a drink together with him and his friends. His home is at one of the streets close to the canal and functions as a hangout, that is, where his friends freely drop by and enjoy a brief chat. His home consists of two rooms connected in lengthways; one on the back is his bedroom and office, and another room in front is a kitchen with a wooden chair, table, big speakers, fridge, and a small couth, etc. This room functions as a sitting room when visitors come. During my stay, Vavá bought a new wall-mounted television. The television is connected to the Internet and offers him a new enjoyment of playing music videos on YouTube when he is drinking with his friends. It was in this house that they chatted, drank beers, cooked simple dishes, and/or sometimes even danced. Most of visitors are his gay friends, but also his neighbours like a teenage boy Kaiio and woman living next to him visit the house. One day, I came across Vavá and Daniel walking on the street nearby Joana Bezerra station and started accompanying them. They were with a young hunky man I did not know: he was apparently at the beginning of his twenties and wearing a fancy outfit of grey T-shirt with a logo saying Tokyo. In response to my compliment, he later explained that he bought it in the city. He said that he lives
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in another community and quit his university, currently looking for the job. Interestingly, it was also the first time for Vavá and Daniel to see him. Daniel contacted him on Facebook messenger and asked him to be his model of the photos. Therefore, the young man brought other outfits such as a cap, tank top, and shirt too. We first walked to the small pond beside the highway. Daniel started taking pictures of this guy and soon tried various angles, distances, clothing, and a pose. Daniel treated as though the man was an eminent movie star; for instance, he asked the man to lean against the tree, put his foot on the root of the tree in order to slightly slouch, or put his hands on the chest part of his shirt. Vavá was sitting next to me, looked at him, and whispered – “I don't know but I think he is gay. He is afeminado [effeminate].” Then, we moved to the small seashore close by. It was a sunny day and two fishermen were pulling the net up from the sea. Small boats and white seabirds were floating the water’s surface. On the left bank, two monstrous white skyscrapers which people often explained, “built for Chinese” soared. On the right bank, contrarily, we could see a handful of favelas consisted of brick-made housing (Figure 5.5). The contrasting view of Recife always astonished me, which continued till the end of my stay and still keep lingering somewhere in my body; it was a condensation of urban absurdity, inequality, and reality.
Figure 5.5: Urban inconsistency under blue sky – a contrasting view of skyscraper and slums
Daniel kept taking pictures of the young man. In the meantime, Vavá explained to me that the place used to have more nature, mangroves, ocean, and there was no plastic trash. He said he wishes that the culture of Recife would be respected more. Also, he hoped more tourists to come to Recife so that they could touch on the culture. All these stories were told in the calm, soft tone. A few minutes later, yet he transformed his attitude: he joined Daniel and the boy and started teasing the model sexually. “Show the bola [testicles],” he said. He turned over the t-shirt of a young man to peek in his underwear, and he took pictures with the young man naked from the waist up. He is an expert at switching his attitudes. Besides this day, I observed him being expressive about his sexuality for many times. He liked to dig “good-looking” boys on social media, dance with shaking his waist sexually, and make sexual jokes – for instance when I asked him how to get to know one of his gay friends, he replied, chuckling, “by having sex.” As a conclusion of this chapter, I focus his self-perception of these different attitudes and its analysis.
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Analysis: different attitudes as a performativity To analyze his attitudes, I suggest the concept of performativity coined by Judith Butler locates the extension of the feminist debate I introduced in chapter 2 is useful. A perspective of Butler shares some characters with Bourdieu since they went beyond Foucault who did not cease wavering between self-determinism and determinism of identity (McNay, 1999). Their approaches are yet different: Bourdieu called his own work “constructivist structuralism” but Butler’s works stand in the middle of constructivism and post-structuralism. For Butler, identity is an effect of performance and not vice versa. It is neither static nor even a notion, but “always a process, always a becoming, a journey of the self with neither a point of departure nor arrival (McKinlay, 2010).” Identity as becoming is the argument of post-structuralist too, but her originality is the device of performativity: the way of identity enactment. Performativity is, in short, a mix of dominant social norms and a grain of the possibility for resistance against the norms (Butler, 2009). It frequently ends up with a reproduction of these norms, but never comes without performative agency as well. I think this concept is applicable to Vavá’s case – namely, I see a vast influence of norms in his actions and identity as the product of his behaviours. Once again, Vavá decoupled political/personal spheres and presented himself as a bright figure in his political discourse. This well resonates with Butler’s view that performativity represents not one's identity, but “an imaginary, impossible self” (McKinlay, 2010). In other words, what he tries to be through his scrupulous self-presentation is unachievable ideal. Why is it impossible? Cynically enough, the answer is the very reason he fights for – Coque, a favela. As I said in chapter 1, any person from Coque is unconditionally seen as from inferior favela because the idea of the favela is in the eye of the beholder. Put differently, it is the outsiders arbitrarily decide what favela is. The stigma is inescapable because it is like a phantom possessing, in this case, Vavá. McNay (1999) criticized Butler’s work:
“…leads to an overemphasis on the internal uniformity of gender norms. Reiteration [of performativity] becomes a static rather than temporal act where the reproduction of the sex-gender system involves a ceaseless reinscription of the same… disruption can come only from outside.”
Although I think this is very true in this case, it does not attenuate, but contrarily, enhances the fit of Butler’s argument. Stigmatization of favela is firm and the disruption must come from outside as explained. Moreover, for Vavá, gender norms in Coque are uniform. He does not like to talk about the fragmentation and division within Coque (for instance, he said everyone is treated equally in Coque). Coque is always a homogenous entity in his discourse. It is about Coque (or him) against others (e.g. corrupted politicians). He once told me he has no interest in the topic of race, religion, and sexual minorities because these are nothing to do with some people in Coque, even though he must have gone through the chasm in Coque and know Coque is never monolithic. Then and again, the question comes back to his different attitudes and disavowal. I ventured to ask this in the last
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interview in the last week of my fieldwork directly to Vavá. His frank answer made me surprised:
Yusaku: Do you use different languages when you talk about politics and talk with friends? Vavá: Yes, yes. Because politics involves many questions and is referred every day among friends. When I talk about politics with my friend, I talk that I already have a connection with a politician. But in day-to-day conversation…I talk things irrelevant to politics. Yusaku: How different? Vavá: Talking about politics in social media is oriented to the people. When I talk in a different form, I am involved in politics. I treat our lives as what we like to do, what we have fun, what we like to drink, beach, football, things not so related to politics. Yusaku: So, you think politics is something different from every day lives? Vavá: Yes. Day-to-day is something different but does not leave from everyday lives. Politics is implanted to each of us, day-to-day. At the moment I pay the fee of the bus, I'm doing the politics…politics here is portrayed as community politics and party politics …but I never talked about party politics with my friend. It is very chato [boring]. Party politics is boring. Not all people like, not everyone is willing to understand. But community politics is, the politics we talk, a canal [canal Ibiporã] need to be completed…
The answer was confusing at first because of his evasion of the direct answer to the question and a contradiction. On the one hand, he said everything is politicized. On the other hand, he said things he talks in his daily life are irrelevant to politics. Yet, I think the essence of this answer is condensed in the last part: boring party politics and interesting social politics. According to him, this is because community politics is directly related to their lives e.g. canal Ibiporã, whereas party politics is not. He also mentioned that his political posts on Facebook are party politics. Performativity draws out some points from this explanation. First, his gender identity was produced through this explanation. Butler (2009) writes gender is a “passionate comportment” therefore “you might decide on what kinds of sexual relations you want” but the choices are “in part already decided for you.” In this case, Vavá chose not to be a representative of LGBTs in Coque, but its bystander as his comportment: there is no wonder since he avoided talking about subcategories in Coque. However, he is also not able to be a full outsider due to his own sexuality. It is this moment the discourse of the uniformity of Coque cracks. The second implication is that performativity always contains a piece of the performative agency. What is that of Vavá in his attitudes? My answer is, succinctly, de-politicization of his sexuality. He knew politics was embedded in daily contexts, whereas he disavowed the relevance of his daily conversation in which highly intertwined with his casual and sexual attitude, to politics. In short, sexuality was not politics for him. Why? On the one hand, he is embracing a political aspiration in this politically contaminated world. He
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has to make political choices every day, over and over. On the other hand, he has cosy gay friends confronting this difficult reality together. This comfort zone is, however, gradually being overshadowed by addled politics in which stigmatization of favela is a mortal wound. The harder he tries to be a politician, the more he notices that his home is ball and chain for the dream. He had to solve this dissonance. The solution he found is, I argue, a thorough decoupling of his snug space and political sphere. In other words, his agency is to make a hard try to protect his sanctuary (a gay circle offering him essential repose) from relentless corrosion of politics. The seemingly ambivalent attitudes he held is a result of his full-force engagement and, at the same time, a solution to the collision between conflicting desires of being a politician and a part of his friends in Coque due to their substantial therefore pathetic irreconcilability.
5.4 Conclusion
This chapter is a case study of Vavá. In the first half, I analysed the case in terms of clientelism. I introduced his brief life history, political discourse, and connection with a political candidate. He presented himself as a bright figure facing up to the difficult reality, well equipped with a hopeful language. His behaviour in politics was in line with the discourse. However, he became taciturn when I asked about gender issue and disavowed the existence of the issue. Based on these observations, I argued that Vavá’s relation with Augusto is an incomplete clientelism “in embryo” even though some elements of clientelism were missing. For instance, Vavá opened up the gate to Coque for Augusto, but he did not mediate the distribution of materials and support. I wrote a further study with more nuanced interpretation in this field is needed, particularly with a focus of the forming process and the gender aspect of the network of the political broker. The ground for this argument is twofold: (1) Vavá and Augusto were both amateurs in politics (2) Vavá had a unique network of his gay and female friends in Coque. The latter half of this chapter dealt with a question of different attitudes, if not subjectivities, that Vavá held. I contrasted his behaviour in daily/political settings. In daily life, he is much more expressive about his sexuality, makes excessive vulgar jokes, and enjoys hanging out with his gay friends. He admitted he uses different languages for politics and daily use. I analysed his dual acts by performativity of Judith Butler who regards gender identity as a never-ending succession of the performances. From this, I elicited an account: his bright self-presentation is a pursuit for “an imaginary, impossible self.” Moreover, the big gulf between political and daily context is his device to offset the inconsistency between his own desire (to be a politician) and source of the sense of belonging (a gay community in Coque). Vavá makes use of variegated faces in different contexts. He loves whooping it up, making jokes, drinking, talking about politics, and is proud of Coque. I hope I have illustrated his adaptation to the intensified political circumstances clearly. I would not call it a metamorphosis as I first thought because it is not reflexive changes at all, but his constant struggle to find out the way to his promised land; I know this journey is made of numerous experiments of trial-and-error. We all are the travellers on this journey and incessantly tossed around the billow of fate.
88 Epilogue and Acknowledgements
Epilogue and Acknowledgements
The march was a sheer flop. It had been announced that the march starts at 15, but less than twenty people were present at 16 and thirty at 17. Some were distributing handouts, but most of the people were in a small circle and only chatting with each other. One young white man told me that he is a member of leftist party PSOL [Partido Socialismo e Liberdade: Socialism and Liberty Party], which explains his presence at the place. It was the march dedicated for Marielle Franco: a city councillor of Rio de Janeiro from PSOL assassinated at March 14, 2018. Marielle was born and grown up in a favela in Rio. She got elected in 2016 despite many obstacles for the Brazilian politics of being a woman, single mother, black, poor, and lesbian. She was known for her forthright criticism of difficult topics such as police killings and women discrimination and, more importantly, as “a symbol of the politics we believe in” for not a few Brazilians (The Guardian, 2018e). The breaking news that she was shot, therefore, deeply disappointed and incited them to the protests. Stalcup & Larkins (2018) argued her rise and death are “flip sides of the same coin,” that is, a backlash of the Brazilian society. In chapter 2, I wrote that Bolsonaro is just a “symptom” of this reality. Then, what about Marielle: is she also a symptom? In other words, “You can’t kill Marielle” (Stalcup & Larkins, 2018) in a real sense? A search for hope is, nothing to say, one of the too many never-ending questions with which social science is saddled. I wrote about Coque, joke, gender, election, corruption, Vavá, politics, but it was sometimes difficult to find the hope, for instance, when its precious sparkle was impotently gunned down by the ruthless bullet. What I barely managed is to remember the initial flash that, again, the stigmatization of favela is in the eye of the beholder – so does hope. In other words, we can teach ourselves the way to seek hidden treasure. It is, in my understanding, not about being positive, but rather, to be nicely negative because we ought to look at the darkness first to find the light slashes it (or is it a bit too sophistry?). I would like to close this thesis with my sincere acknowledgements to the people helped me to have fruitful fieldwork, that is, holding this nicely negative attitude. First and foremost, I appreciate all the people I met in Coque – Daniel, Patricia, Aderbal, Nado, Ruama, Juan, Andreza, Didi, Roberval, Batatinha, Brenda, Wellington, Emanuel, Jessica, Sonha, this list goes on and on – and informants like Iri and Adreano. Especially, I would like to thank Vavá for being a patient teacher of Brazilian way of living and his opinions, and Jucelia for cooking me a tasty meal every day with a spice of pleasant (and philosophical) conversation. I am looking forward to seeing you all soon. Furthermore, I would note hearty words of gratitude for my supervisor Pieter de Vries and an advisor Sven da Silva. Pieter introduced this attractive place and always gave me suggestions for the breakthrough. Despite him being busy with own research, Sven perseveringly listened to my often basic questions. It is my honour to have done my fieldwork with you two. Lastly, I would be grateful to my parents and Heiwa Nakajima Foundation for giving me financial support. I wish this thesis would deliver (all or at least some of) you a glimpse of hope, however small it may be, as I received from you.
89 Appendix
Appendix
A: interview list
09-17-2018 Eolidiz (from AMPAC [Associação de Mãe, Pai e Adolescente do Coque: Association of Mother, Father, and Adolescents in Coque]) 09-19-2018 Daniel (from ACC, Vavá’s friend) 09-19-2018 Rose (from NEIMFA) 09-20-2018 Vavá (1) 09-25-2018 Amanda & Alta (from Revelar.si) 09-26-2018 Théo (a resident of Coque) 10-02-2018 Vavá (2) 10-09-2018 Maria (from Library in Coque) 10-10-2018 Adreano (from LGBT committee of PT) 10-15-2018 Gabriel (from ACC) 10-17-2018 Catarina (from Revelar.si) 10-18-2018 Didi (from ACC) 10-24-2018 Monique (working as a nurse) 10-26-2018 Iri (from Secretaria de Justiça e Direito Humano [Secretary of Justice and Human Rights]) 10-30-2018 Nelson (from PSL) 10-31-2018 Vavá (3)
90 Appendix
B: Map of Coque
91 Appendix
* Compaz is at the other side of Joana Bezerra Station
92 References
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