By JOHN KENNEDY FERREIRA*
Considerations on performance at the Federal University of Maranhão.
Introduction
Contrary to what Tertuliana Lustosa insinuates (in the article “Educating with the ass”), the anal issue is an ancient topic, as much as pleasure as scientific research: Emperor Julius Caesar was known as the best man to his women and a girl to his men, the term pederasty was the name given to the current pedagogue, since education in antiquity involved relationships between teacher and student. Socrates, for example, was an excellent pederast.
In the 1898th century (Foucault), “pederasty” was somewhat sidelined, but it continued to exist, even “as” institutionalized: the cabin boys on the caravels were young men who served as relief for the sailors. The poet Walt Whitman, in the 120th century, wrote several odes to virile love and Oscar White and his text on socialism (XNUMX), dedicates a section to pleasure between peers, a century earlier, Marquis de Sade in his XNUMX days of Sodom, has several passages on the subject.
I think that the person who opened the doors to a scientific debate was Sigmund Freud in his “First Psychoanalytic Concepts”, published between 1893 and 1899; the first Constitution to accept the “homosexual issue” was the Soviet Constitution of 1924 and, surprisingly, medicine has a field that studies the anus: proctology. In other words, it is an old debate, with thousands of contributions. To say that it is a taboo subject is to corroborate studies that show that students (and also some teachers) are unable to read a book or conduct research, remaining in the sphere of common sense, an extension of their own ego or life’s TikToks.
Between public and private
In 1936, the inaugural lecture at the University of Salamanca was invaded by Francoist soldiers, led by General Millán-Astray, who shouted at the top of his lungs “Down with intelligence, long live death”. The rector, the philosopher Miguel Unumano, took the floor and, in front of weapons and horses, made one of the most beautiful and heroic defenses of science and the University.
This feeling of the death of reason and the attack on science has returned strongly from the right with the crisis of civilization and neoliberalism in recent years. The University and science are undergoing severe criticism and there have been many ministers, secretaries, media outlets, intellectuals and politicians who have thrown their weapons and horses against knowledge and the university as a place of chaos. This attack on the right is more recent, but there is also an attack from the left that comes from the long-standing postmodernism, with the relativism of knowledge and the impossibility of knowing the truth, in this way of thinking everything is knowledge and wisdom. This adage fits neoliberalism and privatization like a glove.
I confess one thing, I am old, I am from the generation that formed PT, CUT, UBES, UNE, etc., that fought (and fights) for human rights, understanding that a person can exercise their individuality (sexual orientation, belief, etc.), without bothering and without being bothered, for this reason public law should (and must) protect private law.
The University is a public space, an appropriate place for the development of knowledge and science. Having a course on the Marquis de Sade does not mean that we will practice sadism; We can study the fall of Rome, however, it does not mean that people should do it. fellatio with horses or playing the harp while Rome burns (valid for the Amazon and Pantanal today);
Or a course on the Inquisition without burning students and colleagues; or drug studies without having to get high... in other words, a university studies, researches and acquires knowledge on a subject, whatever it may be, it could be about transvestites, transvestites, assholes, spaceships or cancer.
Individual manifestations, such as being a transvestite, gay, or a neo-Pentecostal prostitute, within an institution present themselves as diluted and institutionalized individuals. Let me explain: transvestites and prostitutes do not go to university to hang out, drug addicts do not go to university to sell or buy drugs, religious people do not go to preach... they go there to exercise their right to study, knowledge, and science.
The university, like any institution, has its representations. Nothing prevents an academic center, union or collegiate body from recognizing women's right to vote, fighting for the end of slavery, whether against the Vietnam or Gaza wars, for drug discrimination, for the right to one's body, etc.
The student who showed her vulva to the conservative Theodor Adorno did so in a context: because there was a political demonstration to recognize the right to have relationships between couples in the dormitories of the University of Nanterre. The girls who burned their padded bras at the University of Berkeley did so for women's right to their bodies; the students who fought against the dictatorship and occupied the rectory of USP did so against authoritarian educational rules; and today, the students from much of the world who graffiti walls and occupy university premises to protest the genocide in Gaza do so for political purposes.
All of these demonstrations were political and have gone (and will go) down in history as being political, aiming at improvements and recognition of real demands from the academic world and society.
I went to Rio in 1998 to attend a meeting and I was very curious to go to a funk party, demonized by the conservative media. I spoke about my desire and two companions took me to a funk party in Realengo/Madureira, we stayed for about two hours, deafening noise, warm beer... anyway, I didn't see anything special, something for poor young people with no leisure area.
Years later I saw mayors, including Fernando Haddad, seeking to organize the space for pancadão, they signed agreements with traditional and declining clubs, many even closed in the outskirts, building an adequate space so that the noise in the streets could be overcome and people could enjoy themselves and others could sleep peacefully.
This solution to the problem was shown through a short film, in which funk artists (such as the excellent Claudinho and Bochecha), community leaders, people from the neighborhood, etc. are heard. The short film in question was part of a study by UFRJ, but several universities have developed studies pointing out solutions.
The girl, Tertuliana (possibly a tribute to the moralist and Christian socialist theologian, Tertullian), was just hedonistic and wanted to cause trouble, and she did!!
If she and the group in question wanted to do that performance in a private space, like a house, a bar, a cabaret, that would be their problem, and they would have all my support and solidarity, but when we read that “The event is aimed at activists in social movements and researchers from different areas of knowledge, teachers in basic and higher education, high school students, undergraduate and graduate students, technicians from educational institutions and education professionals in general”, in a public university, that is our problem!
On my former From this point of view, it represented just one facet of the hypersexualization imposed by neoliberalism on women (and other erotic and identity groups), in addition to being a godsend for the defenders of the New Secondary Education and the School Without Parties.
On September 17, the far-right (Olavian) group “Brasil Paralelo” released a (well-made) film showing that public money was spent on nonsense such as drugs, sex and anything but knowledge and science. At the same time, it shows that knowledge is acquired in private universities (presenting the private system in the US as a counterpoint), and suggests the privatization of Brazilian universities as a solution.
This girl and this study group reinforce the arguments of the extreme right, because in the girl's performance there is no research, there is nothing other than her freedom of private opinion. an influencer, as any hedonist wanted and managed to acquire “followers” for his social networks, creating a national repercussion. The far-right politician, Nikolas Ferreira (and others) launched his weapons and horses and placed UFMA in the Education Committee, and will go to the plenary of the Chamber, a serious situation.
In the extremely difficult campaigns where there is a second round between the left and the right, the sealing performance will be promoted as an example of “left-wing” education. For ordinary people, this mockery will be shown as “being” the teaching at the university, which those involved in question have strengthened in the name of their selfish and “anarcholiberal” principle, privatization.
*John Kennedy Ferreira Professor of Sociology at the Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA).
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