Cristina Rosa

Department of World Arts and Cultures

UCLA

(Estados Unidos/Brasil)

This paper performs a theoretical analysis of sexual, racial and national identifications based on the life of Brazilian’s subculture icon, the infamous Madame Satã or “Madam Devil” (1900-1976). The research unpacks the displacing tension among the concepts of African ancestry, Brazilian nationhood, and Latino masculinity situated on the (subaltern) body of Satã (born Joao Francisco dos Santos), whose queer behavior, violent actions and derisive passion initially subverted the configuration of the post-colonial “standard body”, confronting racism and homophobia, and then influenced the imagination of the nation’s “heteronormality.” The overall goal of this presentation is to discuss a case in which the artificiality of Western hegemonic discourse of race and sexual politics has been contested through (individual) subversive actions and embodied practices. 

The paper centers specifically on post-colonial politics of race, sexuality and gender present in Brazil. Its conclusions, however, shed light and are pertinent to queer scholarship in the Americas, in general. The departure point of this choreographed study is the director Karim Ainouz’s dark and erotic film “Madame Satã” (2003): an account of the “devil’s” early life, embedded in Rio de Janeiro 1930's bohemian "tropical veil" of glitter, crime, drugs and overt sexuality. From this excessive simulacrum, I conjure up a spiral path to deconstruct the different narrations and personas layered over Satã’s corporeality, through his autobiography, police reports, carnaval songs and countless anecdotes. This investigation adopts queer studies and performance studies lenses, to understand how the figure of Satã has been a) first identified as a delinquent and a pervert, during most of his life; b) secondly, imagined as a key-figure of Brazilian national mythology, during the end of his life; and c) thirdly, represented as a uncanny individual of dis-orienting depth and complexity, after this death. 

Circling in the midst of images of a capoeira fighter, a homosexual lover, a rotten beast, a subversive king, a beauty queen, an abject, among others, I dive in a dance of derision, syncopation and cunningness to arrive at the physicality of (t)his naked truth. This research is informed by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s concept of “subaltern body” (“Can the Subaltern Body Speak?” 1996); Jens Richard Giersdorf’s concept of “standard body” (“Why Does Charlotte Von Mahlsdorf Curtsy? Representations of National Queerness in a Transvestite Hero," 2006); Michael Foucault’s concept of “delinquency” (Discipline and Punish: The Birth of The Prison, 1995); Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s concept of “signifying” (The Signifying Monkey, 1988) and James Green’s concept of “homosexual subversive body” ("O Pasquim e Madame Satã, a “Rainha” Negra da Boemia Brasileira," 1996). KEY WORDS: Masculinity, race, sexuality, queer studies, national identity, Afro-Atlantic performativity, derision.

About Cristina Rosa

Born in Brasilia, Brazil, Cristina Rosa is a scholar and a visual artist, with a Master degree in Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is currently engaged in her doctoral research in culture and performance studies at UCLA, where will have advance to candidacy by Spring 08. Rosa's research currently focuses on movement analysis and construction of identity through dance and performance within African Diaspora and Circum-Atlantic spheres.