By SERAPHIM PIETROFORTE*
Tertuliana Lustosa deserves support for at least five reasons, all of them quite educational
On October 17 of this year, at the Federal University of Maranhão, Tertuliana Lustosa, during the seminar “Gender Dissidences and Sexualities”, caused astonishment when she stood up and, while reciting poetry, exposed her buttocks. At the event, the Brazilian professor performed in a similar way to the artist Günter Brus, who, in an even more radical act, at the “Art and Revolution” event, promoted by the Association of Austrian Socialist Students in 1968, cut himself, urinated, defecated and masturbated while singing the Austrian national anthem. That said, it is worth briefly explaining why Tertuliana Lustosa deserves support for at least five reasons, all of them quite educational.
Develop theoretical and aesthetic points of view
In principle, the title of an event should suggest, to those who may be interested, the topics discussed; consequently, in a debate called “Gender Dissidences and Sexualities”, the presence of gays, lesbians, transsexuals, transvestites, etc. is expected. After all, discussing gender and sex directly concerns such communities, whose own bodies and ways of life are involved in this discussion, whether they are academics, like Tertuliana Lustosa, or not.
Furthermore, unlike religious sects and far-right parties, where nothing is controversial and the same dogmas are always repeated, the public university aims to be plural, therefore, with a view to addressing various social discourses, including those of kleptocratic politicians, such as Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring and Albert Speer, or religious fanatics, such as Pastor Jim Jones, Reverend Moom and the healing medium João de Deus. In this way, if the university visits human misery in social analyses and criticism, it also expresses beauty, art and protest.
As for aesthetics, it is worth remembering the positions of the Performing Arts, Body Art and, opportunely, Brazilian Porn Art, carried out in the 1970s by Eduardo Kac, Bráulio Tavares, Leila Míccolis, Glauco Mattoso and Paulo Leminski, among many artists. It is not, however, a matter of reviewing the history of those movements, but of inserting the performance by the teacher and composer Tertuliana Lustosa and the visual artist and performer Günter Brus, mentioned at the beginning, in broader historical circumstances, consequently, capable of authorizing them. Thus, for those who do not remember the history of art, it is worth remembering the past to understand the present and reach the future; for those who do not yet know, learn by consulting books and teachers.
Still on the subject of aesthetics, as well as ethics, Tertuliana Lustosa's class vehemently expresses the fight against ugliness, disseminated by religious fanatics and the extreme right. Currently, Brazil, once recognized for the beauty of both the land and the Brazilians, continues to cultivate ugliness; here are just four examples of this decadence: (i) our music, so rich and plural, has been reduced to clumsy styles derived from country music, an exclusive product of the cultural industry, replacing social and political reflections with rudimentary romantic complaints.
(ii) Revolutionary politicians, guided by integrity, such as Carlos Lamarca and Carlos Marighella, find themselves replaced by vote-getters, present in the public sphere only during election cycles and who do not hesitate to falsify documents or blatantly defame opponents; (iii) Umbanda, a religion born in Brazil, famous for its dialogue with caboclos, cowboys, gypsies, scoundrels, prostitutes and other excluded people, is losing ground to necrophiliac sects, worshippers of death, whose leaders usually support advocates of torture and other crimes.
(iv) Our customs, slowly and regrettably, give way to neo-Pentecostal values, guided by horror. That said, when Pablo Vittar or Tertuliana Lustosa perform, exposing breasts, hips and other parts of the body, duly well cared for, the hideousness of fascists and religious fanatics looms scandalously.
Countering private education
In their protests, fascist politicians and religious fanatics rushed to attack the public university, accusing it of defending unimportant, immoral, etc. agendas using public money; some, armed with delusional convictions and manic thoughts, went so far as to impose the Bible as the only bibliographical source worthy of reference. Above all, contrary to the people's right to free public education, supposed representatives of the people rose up opportunistically to, using the legitimate activities of UFMA, shamelessly favor private education.
Still on this topic, it is worth remembering that private schools hide, above all, a capitalist business, importing profits instead of teaching and research. Before passing the public exam at FFLCH-USP, in the area of linguistics, I taught classes at private colleges; in one of them, the board, following orders from the sponsors, recommended not to fail students, after all, without failure, without evasion, therefore, without deficit. Finally, one wonders what kind of public representative defends such institutions, mercenarily defaming and slandering the public university.
Oppose moral and dogmatic guidelines
For religious fanatics, there is no dialogue, there is only the delirious monologue of a supposedly unique and nefarious god... it would be good for such worshippers to better understand the history of religions – a university discipline –, especially the topic of Gnostic communities, which proliferated at the beginning of the so-called Christian Era.
According to those Gnostics, a divinity as described in the Bible, wrathful and violent towards humans, who prevents them from knowing, capable of asking them to sacrifice family members and, herself, of handing over her own son to be tortured and killed at the hands of her enemies, seems, in fact, the god of evil and lies; even at that time, the following are cited: Gnostic Gospels, all apocryphal, considerably distinct from the Synoptic Gospels.
Now, such controversies, which are beneficial in any domain of human knowledge, including religious knowledge, indicate, above all, the relativity of any doctrines; from this perspective, Bible It turns out to be just another among many religious texts, capable of provoking, in many, disgust and horror.
According to the uneducated, young people and teenagers should disregard the lessons of their teachers, replacing them with the sermons of pastors, who are even more uneducated. It is worth remembering that pastors, with impunity, similar to Nazi-fascists, preach: (a) the extermination of gays, lesbians and other dissident sexualities; (b) persecute other religions, accusing them of demonic activities; (c) insist on censoring academic freedom; (d) defend torture and murder as solutions for public safety, delegitimizing human rights, therefore, without recognizing social injustices... now, it is worth asking the obscurantists what kind of pastoral teaching is this, imbued with hatred, evil and stupidity, to replace the words of true teachers.
Distinguishing between progressives and conservatives
It is worth adding that it is not a question of dividing people into reactionaries, therefore ignorant due to lack of education, and progressive intellectuals, always ready to defend freedom; far from it, ideologies are not simply resolved, and the dialectic between revolutionaries and regressives must become more complex.
To this end, it is well known that societies are formed by opposing and contradictory discourses; such discourses, instead of correlating biunivocally, constantly intersect. Thus, it is explained why someone is a renovator in socioeconomic issues and, at the same time, a fundamentalist in moral issues; it is also clarified how the same contents are covered by various forms of expression, some of which are contrary to each other – followers of Christian rock, for example, wearing jeans and leather clothes, although they seem liberal, express the same contents as less advanced pastors, dressed in jackets and ties.
In view of this, if Tertuliana Lustosa scandalizes religious fanatics and fascists, but also shocks university professors, especially in the humanities, left-wing politicians and even other gender dissidents, the time has come to reflect on why there is so much indisposition towards sex and art.
Art has always been shocking, and it is not just the nude performers of the 20th and 21st centuries who prove this; Girolamo Savonarola, another fanatical pastor, burned works of art during the Renaissance – Sandro Botticelli’s works narrowly escaped the same fate, due to the nudity of Aphrodite and other Greek deities. Therefore, those who are sensitive to art should at least try to understand Performance Art and Body Art before turning against them and their demonstrators… there is nothing like reflecting on ideological coherence, body and meaning.
Let the reactionaries console themselves
In conclusion, it is worth confronting those who, in opposition to the teacher's attitudes, accuse her of favoring the right and conservatives with her behavior. Well, it seems that such conceptions, in fact, contribute to the right, precisely because they belong to reactionary judgments; once again, reflections on coherence are invoked, because being progressive or revolutionary demands remaining alert, including against moralistic ideologies internalized in an alienated way.
Religious fanatics and the far right do not need provocations from teachers or transsexuals to attack those who disagree with them; if there is no reason, they invent, invent, defame... if pastors or fascists are offended by nudity, they can console themselves. Finally, fighting against private ownership of the means of production is certainly more shocking than any nudity; if we are going to revolutionize, we should revolutionize everything, including customs dictated by religious fanaticism.
*Seraphim Pietroforte is a full professor of semiotics at the University of São Paulo (USP). Author of, among other books, Visual semiotics: the paths of the gaze (Context). [https://amzn.to/4g05uWM]
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