Glauco Mattoso
Related: sadomasochism - poetry
Profile
Born in São Paulo (Brazil) in 1951, Pedro José Ferreira da Silva (his birthname) completed a degree in Library Science but did not complete his Literature degree and later became a poet, assuming the heteronym of Glauco Mattoso, a play on words emphasizing the condition of glaucoma, a congenital illness that would progressively lead to the author's blindness in the early 1990s. In the 1970s, he was an essential member of the so-called "mimeographic generation" (a term that emphasized the amateur nature of production of early marginal poets) and participated as well in the movement known as "marginal poetry", maximizing non-commercial networks of poetry, a refuge of "cultural resistance" used against the military dictatorship in power at that time. He created the fanzine JORNAL DOBRABIL (a pun on JORNAL DO BRASIL, a daily newspaper, and the "foldable" format of a pamphlet, published as independent sheets). He collaborated in various venues of the alternative press, such as LAMPIÃO, a gay tabloid; PASQUIM, a humorous tabloid; ESCRITA, a literary magazine; CHICLETE COM BANANA, a comic magazine; TOP ROCK, a musical magazine; etc. The author proceeded to compose essays and literary criticism (published in books as well as in the pages of the literary supplement, CADERNO DE SÁBADO, of the São Paulo daily newspaper JORNAL DA TARDE). However, Glauco's work has always been centered within elements of underground culture and connected to themes of transgression, such as bizarre sex, S&M, torture, violence in tribal rock scene, and, especially, the taboo side of poetry, emphasizing its most scatological and satirical aspects. With the loss of his sight, the author has subsequently abandoned creative visual work (such as his former production of concrete poetry and comic stories) in order to dedicate himself to the composition of musical lyrics and to the production of records, in his capacity as member of an independent recording company. Working in collaboration with Dr. Jorge Schwartz, Professor, the University of São Paulo, he has translated the original poems of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, the best blind author in the twentieth century. Glauco's works of poetry have remained predominantly unpublished or sparsely published in books that have since gone out-of-print, literary supplements (to newspapers) or fanzines.
The Masochist and the Sadist: an Impossible Couple?
The common misperception that the sadist is the perfect partner for the masochist and vice-versa is systematically destroyed in the analysis of Deleuze and other philosophers. Most recently, Anita Phillips' long essay, A DEFENCE OF MASOCHISM, abruptly maintains that "the masochist and the sadist are an impossible couple" (11). -- Glauco Mattoso via http://sites.uol.com.br/formattoso/informative.htm [Jun 2004]Fetishism, Sadism, and Masochism
Before proceeding to examine boundaries between fetishism, sadism, and masochism established by thinkers such as Deleuze and Silverman and, of course, their poetic manifestations in Mattoso's CENTOPÉIA: SONETOS NOJENTOS & QUEJANDOS, it is necessary to examine two more general dimensions of fetishism: psychoanalytic theories and Marxist (commodity) fetishism. In some ways, Sigmund Freud's thoughts on fetishism, while necessarily taken up and criticized by feminists as completely male-centered, offer more insight and understanding than the stance maintained by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) today. Whether or not we accept the essential Freudian premise that a fetish is the outcome of the infant or child's denial of the mother's lack of a penis, the emotional and sexual consequences of such "disavowal," or object substitution, are significant. The 1987 edition of the APA's DIAGNOSTIC AND STATISTICAL MANUAL OF MENTAL DISORDERS (DSM-III-R) still defines fetishism according to parameters prescribed by nineteenth-century sexologists, such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Alfred Binet: "Recurrent, intense, sexual urges and sexually arousing fantasies, of at least six months' duration, involving the use of nonliving objects (fetishes) [...] usually by themselves" (pp. 282-3: 302.81). Not only is the magical half-year timeline highly problematic but the use of the word "nonliving" to definitionally characterize the fetish is a disturbing one. Objectification of the hand or the foot or the ear or the hair of one who is deemed sexually attractive may be just as likely to occur as the worship of a pair of underwear or a sock. In either case, simply because the sexualized articles of clothing or the enticing body part is physically separate from the whole body (the total person) who is the object of the fetishistic fantasies does not automatically imply a sense of lifelessness or even detachment in the erotic impulses generated. -- Glauco Mattoso via http://sites.uol.com.br/formattoso/informative.htm [Jun 2004]
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