Nestor Perlongher and mysticism: towards a critical reappraisal.

Publication: The Modern Language Review

Publication Date: 01-JAN-04

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The apparent change in the poetry of Argentine writer and anthropologist Nestor Perlongher (1949-92) after the publication of his anthropological thesis on male prostitution (1987) and the emergence of AIDS in Brazil, whereby he turned his literary and academic attention towards mysticism, has caused consternation amongst critics. Concerns focus on the abandonment of his earlier politico-sexual radicalism and on the influence of the New Age movement, in particular the Brazilian drug religion Santo Daime, on his work.

The influential Argentine writer and gay-rights activist Juan Jose Sebreli attacked Perlongher's last works:

Con respecto a la obra de Perlongher [...] la parte desdenable es la derivada del surrealismo heterodoxo de Georges Bataille, de Michel Foucault y de Gilles Deleuze. Lamentablemente esta influencia fue la predominante en su ultima epoca, llevandolo del demonismo a la mistica y aun al esoterismo. (1)

Sebreli criticizes Perlongher for his reliance on authors who denied sexual identities, and for focusing on the flow and force of desire in society, as Perlongher insisted at the end of his thesis on male prostitution in Silo Paulo, O negocio do miche [The Business of Male Prostitution]. (2) While Sebreli does not insist on a homosexual identity, his insistence on the body as property of an individual reveals key ideological differences with Perlongher. (3) Sebreli's conception of homosexuality, in particular the focus on the use of the body as personal property, was one of the developments in Argentine post-dictatorship gay rights that Perlongher abhorred. In fact, it is possible to detect in Perlongher's abandonment of homosexuality as a theme for his writing in 1991 a response to the increased insistence on the notion of homosexuality as identity. (4)

Osvaldo Baigorria also exhibits some concern in his essay on Perlongher's mysticism:

Su vinculacion con el Santo Daime inaugura la fase final, mas controvertida o asombrosa, de ese viaje sobre el filo de la identidad personal. Al contrario de lo que puede pensarse, su enfermedad no parece haber tenido influencias sobre esta nueva direccion de sus intereses: Perlongher descubre que es HIV positivo en el 89, en Francia, bastante despues de haber conectado con la iglesia del Santo Daime. Y su 'devenir bruja' habia comenzado aun antes. Por los anos 87/88--al mismo tiempo en que escribia sus principales ensayos sobre el neobarroco-- comienza a tomar ayahuasca o yage [...]. (5) Baigorria is attempting to deny the link between Perlongher's discovery that he was HIV positive and his mysticism. My aim in this paper is to analyse Perlongher's last two collections closely in order to detect the similarities to and differences from earlier collections. This analysis displays three aesthetics in Perlongher's last works: mystical masochism, mystical withdrawal, and mystical purpose. While Perlongher's poetics and techniques do not differ in these two collections, and the first of the three aesthetics is present in his earlier work, the latter two demonstrate a change in Perlongher's writing, a change which I believe to be linked to those caused by AIDS in the possibilities for the use of sex as an oppositional political tool.

A brief overview of Perlongher's earlier poetry will facilitate the analysis that is to follow. Perlongher's first collection, Austria-Hungria (1980), contains many poems that allude, often through slang terms and literary references, to the secretive practices of homosexuals and transvestites in Argentina during the 1976-83 dictatorship, as in poems such as 'El polvo' and 'La murga, los polacos'. His second collection, Alambres (1987), included poems, such as 'Ethel' and 'Daisy', that combined the elaborate performance of transvestites with a sordid background drawn from the streets of Buenos Aires. The collection Hule (1989) cultivated elaborate geometric forms that echoed the Golden Age barroco without adopting complete barroco form, as in poems such as 'Prefimbulos barrosos' and 'Formas barrocas'. The collection Parque Lezama included many poems, such as 'Leyland' and 'Vahos', which alluded to the zones of homosexual sex commerce in Silo Paulo. This was also the subject of O negocio do miche (1987), which applied Deleuze and Guattari's theories on nomadology to the underworld of Silo Paulo. Perlongher is also renowned for the essay O que e AIDS (1987), a critique of the clinical and judicial reaction to the emergence of AIDS. (6)

Mystical Masochism

Although Perlongher did not know he was HIV positive when he became involved with esoteric religions, he exhibited an awareness of the radical way that the virus had changed the possibilities for sex as a form of political resistance in the postscript to the essay 'Avatares de los nmchachos de la noche' (Prosa, pp. 45-58), (7) where he described his work on male prostitution as a 'piece of archaeology'.

This change in perspective in Perlongher's work is revealed most strikingly in the essay 'La desaparicidn de la homosexualidad masculina', where he signed off completely from the subject of male homosexuality. In this essay Perlongher does not deny the real repression of those practising homosexuality, but rather suggests the danger of normalization through identity politics, as 'Gay Rights' becomes just another committee within the apparatus of state power (Prosa, pp. 85-90). Perlongher's turn away from sexuality accompanies an apparent disillusionment with the treatment of sexuality, not only by the state but also by the promoters of gay rights themselves. He wrote:

?Que pasa con la homosexualidad [...]? Ella simplemente se va diluyendo en la vida social, sin llamar mas atencion de nadie [...] Al tornarla completamente visible, la ofensiva de normalizacion [...] ha conseguido retirar de la homosexualidad todo misterio, banalizarlo por completo. (Prosa, p. 88)

The phrase 'ofensiva de normalizacion' allows Perlongher to link disparate elements of the sexuality debate: both state power normalizing through medical and disciplinary measures and the protestors trying to present homosexuality as not deviant, but normal. The effect is equal on both sides: homosexuality is accepted, but no longer interesting. And with the introduction of the condom and the Anglo-style gay-gay couple, we have what Perlongher calls, borrowing his terminology from Deleuze and Guattari, and Foucault, a replacement of the 'sociedad de disciplina' with a 'sociedad de control' (Prosa, p. 88).

Perlongher's response to the perceived dead end of AIDS and safe sex was worked out with reference to Georges Bataille's Eroticism:

Bataille distingue tres modos de disolver la monada individual y recuperar cierta indistincion originaria de la fusion: la orgia, el amor, lo sagrado. En la orgia se llegaba a la disolucion de los cuerpos, pero estos se restauraban rapidamente e instauraban el colmo del egoismo [...] del puro cuerpo [...]. En el sentimiento del amor, en cambio, la salida de si es mas duradera [...] Pero solo en la disolucion del cuerpo en lo cosmico (o sea, en lo sagrado) es que se da el extasis total, la salida de si definitiva. (Prosa, p. 87)

The use of tense is key here: the devastating effects of AIDS have placed the orgy in the past tense. Love, and the sacred or the mystical, both options carrying less of the fatal risk, are in the present tense. With the loving couple ending up in sedentary individualism (Prosa, p. 56), only Bataille's third option remains as an attack on the 'monada individual'.

Perlongher's fifth and penultimate collection, Aguas aereas (1991), (8) was inspired by the author's experiences attending rituals of the Santo Daime religion, where he took hallucinogenic drugs and participated in songs, dances, and ceremonies. He also undertook a journey to the religion's headquarters, the Ceu de Mapia colony in the Amazon. Perlongher's mysticism in Aguas aereas cultivates a poetics that draws heavily on the sexual elements of his earlier poems, as is the case with the first poem of the series:

RECIO EL EMBARQUE, airado aedo riza u ondula noctilucas...

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