Néstor Perlongher and Mysticism: Towards a Critical Reappraisal

Author(s): Ben Bollig

Source: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 99, No. 1 (Jan., 2004), pp. 77-93
Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association
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 NESTOR PERLONGHER AND MYSTICISM:

TOWARDS A CRITICAL REAPPRAISAL

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 iden?
tities, 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 Sao 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 ho?
mosexuality, in particular the focus on the use of the body as personal property,
was one ofthe developments in Argentine post-dictatorship gay rights that Per?
longher 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 asom-
brosa, 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, bas-
tante 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
This articlewas writtenwhile the author was in receiptof an AHRB grantforstudy towardsa
Ph.D. at King's College, Universityof London.
1
J.J.Sebreli, 'La historiasecretade los homosexualesen Buenos Aires', in Escritossobreescritos,
ciudadesbajo ciudades(Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1997), pp. 275-370 (p. 370).
2 N.
Perlongher,O negociode miche:prostituicdoviril em Sdo Paulo (Sao Paulo: Brasiliense,
1987), p. 231.
3 Sebreli, 'Historia', p. 364.
4 Perlongher,Prosa plebeya (Buenos Aires: Colihue, 1997), pp. 85-90, firstpublished as 'La
desaparicion de la homosexualidad', in El porteno(Buenos Aires), 119 (Nov. 1991), 12-15. In
futurereferencesProsa plebeyawill be abbreviatedto Prosa.
5 O. Baigorria.'La Rosa Mistica de Luxemburgo', in Lumpenesperegrinaciones, ed. by A. Cangi
and P. Siganevich (Rosario de Santa Fe: BeatrizViterbo, 1996), pp. 175-81 (p. 178).

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78 Nestor Perlongher and Mysticism

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 over view 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 po-
lacos'. 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 bar-
roco without adopting complete barroco form, as in poems such as 'Preambulos
barrosos' and 'Formas barrocas'. The collection Parque Lezama included many
poems, such as 'Leyland' and 'Vahos', which alluded to the zones of homosex?
ual sex commerce in Sao 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 Sao 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 in?
volved 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 muchachos 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 desaparicion 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 identitv politics, as 'Gav Rights'
6 N.
Perlongher,Austria-Hungria(Buenos Aires: Tierra Baldia, 1980); Alambres(Buenos Aires:
Ultimo Reino, 1987); Hule (Buenos Aires: Ultimo Reino, 1989); Parque Lezama (Buenos Aires:
Sudamericana, 1990) (forconvenienceI referto the editionPoemascompletos(Buenos Aires: Seix
Barral, 1997), abbreviatedbelow as Poemas); O que e AIDS (Sao Paulo: Brasiliense,1987).
7 First published as 'Vicissitudes do miche', in Temas IMESC,
4 (1987). Informationon this
publicationand on otherfirsteditionsof Perlongher'spoetryhas been obtained fromthe edition
of Cangi and Siganevich.

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 BEN BOLLIG 79

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 ofen-
siva 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 recuperarcierta indis-
tincion 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 in?
spired by the author's experiences attending rituals ofthe Santo Daime religion,
where he took hallucinogenic drugs and participated in songs, dances, and cere-
monies. 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
iridiscencias enhebrando
en el etereo sulfilar:
un trazo
(deleble persistencia)
en el enroque de los magmas
en el cuadriculado del mantel
-mental, la sala
de entrecasa (arte kitsch)
8
(Buenos Aires: Ultimo Reino, 1991). For convenience,I referto the republicationin Poemas.

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80 Nestor Perlongher and Mysticism

compostelaba medianias
en el corset del voile, leve y violado.
Pero los voladitos
De los encajes del mantel urdian
Mas que un texto una forma, una figura
Boreal o suave, sus caireles
no dejaban de iluminar los resbalosos
voleos del minue, por las baldosas: una
desprendida y procaz, aranando sus pases
el inane, traslucido volar.
Por espejismos de piel viva
en el tiron de las mucosas
los rasgueos de la una
elevaban las cantigas
al cielorraso hueco, sublunar.

Recio el cantor, brunidas las guedejas,

dejo de mambo inflige al modular
intensidades en el cieno,
plastica
porosidad de la materia espesa.
En el dejo de un espasmo
contorsionaba los ligamenes
y transmitia a los encajes
la untuosidad del nylon
rayandolos
en una delicada precipitacion.
(Poemas, pp. 247-48)

The experience of the Santo Daime ceremony implies a poetics. Rather than
a text, a stable production of writing, the ceremony demands a 'forma'. The
latter is a broader concept, and Perlongher's poem, itself a text, demonstrates
the Daime ceremony as a collection of artistic manifestations: a dance ('los res?
balosos | voleos del minue'); physical sensations ('espasmo', 'contorsionaba');
songs ('cantor', 'cantigas'); and kitsch interiors and fabrics ('arte kitsch'). What
is interesting here is that as well as proposing an expansion ofthe poetic project,
from 'texto' to the apparently more inclusive 'forma', Perlongher draws on ele?
ments from his overtly sexual poetry. The 'cantigas' were the central element in
his un-anthologized poem 'Cantiga' (1981),9 where the song and dance offered
a provocative challenge to clear divides between the sexes. The ceremony in
the first poem of Aguas aereas I is filled with unholy dirt, e.g. the 'cieno'?mud
or slime?on which the dance takes place. The physicality of the poem is also
closely related to that found in Perlongher's earlier and distinctly sexual collec?
tion Par que Lezama (1990), which Perlongher wrote while he was researching
his thesis on male prostitution. For example, the 'enroque de los magmas', a
castling implied by the chequered tablecloth, recalls the poem 'Nostro mundo',
where 'magmas' were used as the layers of throats of men admiring adolescents
(Poemas, p. 214), while 'enroque' is used to describe the crossing ofthe legs of
a male prostitute in Al miche' (Poemas, p. 231). Alongside the kitsch details
XUL, 2(1981), p. 27.

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 BEN BOLLIG 8l

of tablecloths and 'arte kitsch', Perlongher is also reliant on transvestite voca-

bulary for his portrayal of the ceremony, in particular the description of the
fabrics as becoming 'nylon', the material, alongside Banlon, closely related to
the dressing-up ethos of many poems in Parque Lezama, and the 'corset del
voile', another travesti tool. While he may be describing a mystical experience,
at this stage the ceremony he evokes is as physical and dirty as in his earlier
poems, and there is no radical change from his earlier poetics except for the
overt subject matter.
Moreover, this poem displays what Leo Bersani refers to as 'self-shattering
jouissance'.10 Bersani identifies this dynamic in S/M, which he also calls the
'impulse of self-dissolution'.11 Perhaps this is one way of characterizing Per?
longher's 'salida de si'. The ecstasy that Perlongher identifies in the rituals of
Santo Daime is also that found in the cosmic ecstasy identified by S/M prac?
titioners in Bersani's conception. Both, vitally, make the subject unfindable; as
Perlongher wrote in his essay on ecstasy and poetry, '^Adonde se sale cuando
no se esta?/iAdonde se esta cuando se sale?' (Prosa, p. 150).12 The question is
unanswerable, for the masochistic jouissance and the 'salir de si' ofthe mystical
ceremony both deny the very self of the 'se'.
This same aesthetic is found in Perlongher's final collection, El chorreo de
las iluminaciones.13 Prior to Perlongher's death, he had broken with the Santo
Daime religion as he felt that it could not offer the medical help that the latter
stages of AIDS required. Perlongher had been awarded a Guggenheim scholar?
ship for a project uncompleted at the time of his death, an auto sacramental or
mystery play, which Sara Torres, in an interview with the sociologists Rapisardi
and Modarelli, claims was heavily influenced by the Christian mystics.14
The first poem in the collection, 'Tema del cisne (I)', draws on modernista
techniques and classical mythology, while continuing the aesthetic of anthro?
pological risk exhibited in many of the poems in Aguas aereas:

Undoso el que avanzara por los rizos

del espejo laqueado, su pezcuello
docil al mando del cendal declina
rayado el rutilar de su plumaje.
Quien por interrogar las inestables
corrientes donde anega su pellejo
arruga de nerviosas denticiones
la quilla que traslucida corria
por parques de reflejos azulados,
impavido el azor, la crista altiva,
arriesga el hundimiento en ese anclaje.

10 L.
Bersani,Homos (Harvard: Harvard UniversityPress, 1995), p. 94.
11
Bersani,p. 96.
12 First
published as 'Poesia y extasis' in La letraA, 3 (1991).
13 Published as a collection of four poems (Caracas: Pequena Venecia, 1992), and later as a
collectionof thirty-onepoems in Poemas.
14 F. Rapisardi and A. Modarelli, Fiestas,banosy exilios: losgaysportenosen la ultimadictadura
(Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 2001), p. 200.

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82 Nestor Perlongher and Mysticism

Porque, por mas que mirese a los hados,

no se retarda la fatal carrera
si tempestuoso pie pisa la pluma.
(Poemas, p. 297)
The swan, the modernista bird par excellence, as in Dario's 'Yo persigo una
forma' (1901), where the curved neck represents the unanswerable question for
the poet who cannot but question, is an image drawn from the symbolist poetry
of Baudelaire and Mallarme. Perlongher here offers an image ofthe questioning
that he has carried out in his poetry and anthropology: the swan, cipher for the
poet, is adrift on the dangerous waters. Perlongher reframes his earlier projects
within a mystical intent ('mirese a los hados'), and also within a morbid sense
of inevitability ('no se retarda la fatal carrera'). Difficulty is seen in terms of
darkness and waters, an experiment of going into the powerful unknown. This
unknown may well destroy the poet in painful and unexpected ways.
This returns us to Perlongher's earlier comments on force and form in poetry:
Esa desestructuracion del frenesi dionisiaco arrastraria la identidad individual en la
nebulosa afectual de los cuerpos (y, por que no, de las almas) en amalgama. Empero,
ese fervor dionisiaco, en la medida en que librado a si mismo es [. . .] un 'veneno'
que conduce a la pura destruccion, precisaria de la armonia del elemento apolineo que
le diese una forma, para poder mantener la lucidez en medio del torbellino. (Prosa,
p. 165)15
The begrudging ('por que no') use of 'alma' demonstrates Perlongher's para-
doxical position, in between the physical and the spiritual; 'frenesi' reminds
the reader of an earlier poem of the same name that contains elements drawn
from the Brazilian carnival (Poemas, pp. 105-08),l6 and in which grammar,
words, and syntax collapsed in a pure Dionysian frenzy. Now, however, in deal?
ing with the overwhelming forces let loose by death, Perlongher?inspired by
Nietzsche's Das Geburt der Tragodie (1872)17?has to use a clearer and more
organized form. This necessity accounts for the use of the sonnet, clearer syn?
tax, the image of the swan, and a logical method similar to his essays in a poem
that reflects on a poetic project that has met its fatal end. It also explains an ad-
herence to form that is not entirely strict, given that the forces in operation are
strong enough to annihilate the poetic project. Death is accepted as inevitable
and the real physical effects of AIDS?'la fatal carrera', 'tempestuoso pie'?are
drawn harshly into focus.
Santa Teresa's ideas on the mystical experience are of help here, particularly
with regard to pleasure and pain:
Era tan grande el dolor [ofthe mystical experience] que me hacia dar aquellos quejidos
y tan excesiva la suavidad que me pone este grandisimo dolor [. . .] No es dolor corporal
sino espiritual, aunque no deja de participar el cuerpo algo, y aun harto [. . .]. Pues
tornando este apresurado arrebatar el espiritu es de tal manera que verdaderamente
parece salir del cuerpo y por otra parte claro esta que no queda esta persona muerta, al
menos ella no puede decir si esta en el cuerpo o si no, por algunos instantes.18
15 First published as 'La forcede la forme:notessur la religiondu Santo Daime', in Societes,29
(1990).
16 First
published in Alambres.
17 e.g. F. Nietzsche, The Birthof Tragedy,trans.by S. Whiteside(London: Penguin, 1993).
18
J.Marti,Diccionariodelpensamiento de Santa TeresadeJesus(Valencia: Edicep, 1981), p. 395.

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 BEN BOLLIG 83

The paradoxes (pain or pleasure, body or soul, in or out ofthe body) reveal the
difficulty in presenting the mystical experience logically without collapsing into
nonsense. Santa Teresa explained the physical aspect of the mystical experience
in very visual terms:

Porque verse ansi levantar un cuerpo de la tierra, que aunque el espiritu le lleva tras si
y es con suavidad grande, si no se resiste [. . .]. [Dios] le tiene tan grande [amor] a un
gusano tan podrido, que no parece se contenta con llevar tan de veras el alma a si, sino
que quiere el cuerpo, aun tan mortal y de tierra tan sucia como por tantas ofensas se ha
hecho.19

The acceptance of the low ('gusano, 'tierra, 'sucia', 'cuerpo') by the high
('espiritu') is reminiscent of many of Perlongher's earlier poems, where sex?
ually obscene themes are mixed with Golden Age and modernista techniques,
and also the masochistic relationship between the 'top' and the 'bottom' Bersani
describes in the S/M performance.
Comments on the Christian mystics made by Jacques Lacan may allow us
to reframe Perlongher's mystical poetry. Discussing the notion of a specifically
feminine jouissance, Lacan observes, 'being not-whole, she has a supplementary
jouissance compared to what the phallic function designates by way of jouis?
sance [. . .]. There is a jouissance that is hers that belongs to "she" that doesn't
exist and doesn't signify anything.'20 Women, Lacan argues, and 'bright people
like Saint John ofthe Cross [. . .] can also situate [themselves] on the side ofthe
not-whole [...]. They get the idea or sense that there must be dijouissance that
is beyond. They are the ones we call mystics. It's like for Santa Teresa?you
need to go to Rome and see that statue by Bernini to immediately understand
that she's coming.'21 For Lacan, then, there is a certain sexual contact with God
to which the mystic and the woman are privileged: 'it is insofar as her jouissance
is radically Other that woman has more of a relationship to God than anything
that could have been said in speculation in antiquity following the pathway
of that which is manifestly articulated only as the good of man'.22 This late
work by Lacan demonstrates an attempt to link feminine sexuality?the extra,
non-phallic jouissance of the woman?to contact with God. What is interest?
ing, above and beyond Lacan's esoteric specul(um)ations, is that Perlongher,
although not through direct reference, is reflecting a move in French thought
that reappraised the mystics. Santa Teresa's insistence on the inseparability of
pleasure and pain in the mystical experience, placed in the mould of French
psychoanalysis, offers a formulation close to the masochistic mysticism above,
whereby, despite its potentially lethal effects, suffering becomes potentially di?
vine. However, this masochistic mysticism, as we shall see, is fundamentally
linked to the imminence of death.
Perlongher's masochistic aesthetic, however, also appears in his earlier poems.
19 Santa Teresa de Jesus,Obras de Santa TeresadeJesus,ed. by P. Silveriode Santa Teresa CD,
9 vols (Burgos: El Monte Carmelo, 1915), 1, 148.
20
J. Lacan, The Seminars ofJacques Lacan. On FeminineSexuality. The Limits of Love and
Knowledge.Book XX. Encore 1972-73, ed. by J.-A. Miller, trans.by B. Fink (London: Vintage,
1998), pp. 73-74.
21
Lacan, p. 76.
22
Lacan, p. 83.

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84 Nestor Perlongher and Mysticism

An examination of 'Herida pierna', from Austria-Hungria (1980), can help trace

connections between the two mystical stages, and also allow us to consider
further whether Perlongher's mystical poetry presents as dramatic a change as
the commentators above might lead us to suspect:
Coser los bordes de la herida? debo? puedo? es debido?
he podido? suturarla doliente ya, doliendome
rastreramente husmeando como un perro
oh senor a sus pies oh senor con esa pierna
atada amputada anestesiada doblada pierna
[...]
O estoy? ando? metiendo los estiletes en el muslo
para que arda para que mane
haciendole volcar lechoso polvo en la enramada
ampliandola estirandola
[? ? ?]
No me hagas caso, Morenito, no la hagas
asi, tan prominente y espantosa la herida lo que hiende
la penetracion del verdugo durante el acto del suplicio
durante la hora del dolor del calor
de la sofocacion de los gemidos
impotente como potente bajo esa masa de tejidos
arbitrarios como bandidos asaetados por los chirridos
Quiero pues? deseo, pues? despues?
[? ? ]
Debo chupar? mamar? de ese otro seno herido
desangrado con la pierna cortada con la daga
en la nalga ah caminar asi, rauda cual rafaga
montanas de basura magicas y luminosas
ser lucida? ahora, hoy?
tumbada cual yegua borracha cual chancha echada
cual vaca animal animal
No me hagas caso, Morenito: ve y dile la verdad a tus padres.
(Poemas, p. 47)

The poem creates a relationship of guilt and humiliation between the narrator
voice and other subjects, e.g. the 'verdugo', a torturer or executioner, and family
members. The narrator voice is placed repeatedly in subordinate positions, as
various animals and a naughty child, and is the object of violence, being cut,
bled, and suffocated. This relationship is highlighted as one of impotence to
potency. The position is also characterized by dirt and sordidness, e.g. the
'polvo' and 'basura'. Alongside this violence and ritualistic humiliation, we
read surprisingly esoteric vocabulary, e.g. the 'montanas de basuras magicas
y luminosas'. This magical, luminous material stands in keen contrast to the
dirty subservience that dominates the poem.
This aesthetic is also found in the work of Jean Genet. In many of his works
Genet proposes a form of mystic humiliation, generally related to homosexu?
ality and transvestism. In the novel Our Lady of the Flowers,22, Genet writes:
Divine [a transvestite] died holy and murdered?by consumption. (p. 51)
[Darling] walked down the Rue Dancourt, drunk with the hidden splendour (as of a
treasure) of his abjection [. . .] (p. 70)
23 Trans. by B. Frechtman(London: Paladin, 1988).

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 BEN BOLLIG 85

His life is an underground heaven thronged with barmen, pimps, queers, ladies of the
night, and Queens of Spades, his life is a heaven. (p. 73)
Slowly but surely I want to strip [Divine] of every vestige of happiness so as to make a
saint of her. (p. 82)

Genet's technique, like Perlongher's, is to ally the low, dirty, and humiliated
with the mystical, so that the underworld becomes an ascent to the divine. In
Perlongher's poem the flashes of light within the scenes of abjection and hu-
miliation are a glimpse of an unspecified divine. Both works, however, while
remarkable in their courting of the marginal and abused, do not necessarily
offer a radical challenge to the structures of domination?be they sexual or
economic?that frame such positions. While Perlongher reveals the sordid at-
traction of humiliation, there is a strong suggestion that this aesthetic may
accept the structures whereby such humiliation is imposed rather than sought.
In the wider context, while the adoption by members of the gay-rights move?
ment of terms such as 'faggot' and 'dyke' as affirmative has the powerful effect
of rendering harmless a term of abuse, it does not challenge the dominant social
order's ability to invent and impose such stigmatizing language. As Bersani
suggests, 'resignification cannot destroy'.24 He offers a critique ofthe aesthetic
of mystical humiliation through S/M found in authors such as Genet:

Masochistic jouissance is hardly a political corrective to the sadistic use of power,

although the self-shattering I believe to be inherent in that jouissance, although it is
the result of surrender to the master, also makes the subject unfindable as an object of
discipline. Psychoanalysis challenges us to image [sie] a nonsuicidal disappearance of the
subject?or, in other terms, to dissociate masochism from the death drive.25

Problematically, then, Perlongher's mystical masochism does not challenge

structures of violence and power, but in fact willingly subscribes to and repli-
cates them for the purposes of sexual pleasure. This movement, while subver-
sive at a surface level, suffers the key problem of being ultimately complicit
with death.
On the evidence of these intertextual references I would argue that Per?
longher's 'mystical turn' is by no means as sudden as many commentators
attempt to suggest, and that the physical intensity of Perlongher's earlier work,
although abounding in references to the sordid and painful, still contains an
aesthetic whereby humiliation and suffering are, perhaps problematically, per?
ceived as having divine qualities.

Mystical Withdrawal

In Aguas aereas there is another aesthetic that does differ from Perlongher's
earlier work. After Poem XIX, where the ceremonies and visions reach their
ascetic and ascendant conclusion with the vision of a god (Poemas, p. 273),
Poem XX marks a change by creating an Amazonian environment where a
journey is undertaken inland into the rainforest:
Bersani,p. 51.
Bersani, p. 99 (italic original).

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86 Nestor Perlongher and Mysticism

Zambullen la ondulacion chispas de espumas suave, verde

claro, en reflejos de magma vegetal que a la madera de la proa as-
tillan, al hacer restallar en el derretimiento de la luz. Ruido
de espumas y olor de aguas mareosas en el deslizamiento (todo se
vuelve lento) por el Purus y las madejas en remolinos entroncadas
que hacen de galeria a la hirsuta piragua

(Poemas, p. 274)

The poem describes a journey through the Amazon rainforest, 'por el Purus',
one of its rivers. Despite the absence of drug-related details?cups or purges,
for example?there still operates in this poem the same process of breaking
up monads that occurs in the ceremony poems. Lights and watery reflections
dominate the poem, while non-reflecting surfaces begin to reflect ('incrustacion
del palo') through the play of light on water, and light takes on the quality of
water ('derretimiento de la luz'). The poem therefore reveals a new sensitivity
of the ayahuasca user to synaesthesia.
The poem's Amazon journey also proposes a change in aesthetic compared
with earlier poems, as in Parque Lezama, or Perlongher's urban anthropology
in his thesis O negocio do miche. Whereas the work carried out in O negocio
do miche might be described as a drift?around the streets?and a movement
down?in terms of income, class, legal position, and physically onto the street,
down into nightclub basements or public toilets?into the city, Perlongher's
movement here is also a drift, in the kayak on the river's current, but one that
is characterized as up, towards the light and the divine, back to origins, away
from the city, and towards a periphery, less in terms of class or social position
than ofthe physical isolation ofthe religion's headquarters, away from the coast
and the southern cities that dominate Brazil politically and economically.
Poem XXI continues this Amazonian journey:

EL JUEGO DEL CLAROSCURO en la echada hojarasca, como un

calco, estampaba de ramilletes puntillistas la oscilacion de los an-
dariveles. Habia el peligro de la gran serpiente fluvial, la amenaza
sombria de la raya, la sonrisa desconfiada de los yacares y la raida
sombra de una tortuga al sumergirse entre las estelas alborotadas.
Todo tan leve y al mismo tiempo tan caliente, tan exhausto. Nos do-
blega con su inmensidad el cielo como un tapado celeste inspirado
en Femirama. Una sutil femineidad cincela con delicadeza los cuer-
pos trabajados (a tachas) de los que reman y sus gestos agiles como
panteras en el marihuanal. No es facil abstraerse en lo celeste cuan?
do estas superficies bronceadas nos deslumbran con su acento de
canto. Sin embargo, se tiende a lo sublime, sublime resplandor.
(Poemas, p. 275)

Despite the sexual abstinence of members of Santo Daime, the poem describes
strong sexual attraction towards co-religionaries, described as 'superficies bron?
ceadas'. The same connections of desire between parts of bodies exist as in
earlier poems. What is more important is that the bodies of these rowers are
engaged in becoming-woman?'una sutil femineidad cincela con delicadeza los
cuerpos'. There is a play between the hardness of the bodies and the subtlety,
as attention to the blurring of differences, of femininity. As Guattari observed,

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 BEN BOLLIG 87

'If a man breaks away from the phallic rat race inherent in all power forma-
tions, he will become involved in various possible ways in this sort of feminine
becoming. Only then can he go on to become animal, cosmos, words, colour,
music.'26 For Perlongher Guattari's suggestion that the becoming-woman is the
first step in escaping phallocentrism, and with it the stratifications of normative
capitalism and heterosexuality, provides a guiding trope for his assessment of
the revolutionary possibilities that he detects in the religion.
I would suggest that in this poem Perlongher approaches the type of non-
sexual sexual relation that Bersani detects in the work of Andre Gide. Bersani
talks of 'nonrelational pederasty', whereby the necessity of a relation is elimi-
nated from sex.27 Unlike the shattering of the ego in S/M, which Bersani sug?
gests is complicit with death, or the sedentary couple, easily recoverable by the
state, this non-relational relation is neither easily stratified nor potentially fatal.
The sexually charged description of the becoming-woman of the rowers echoes
the sexually charged description of the miche in Parque Lezama and O negocio do
miche. Prostitution, and the nomadic wandering and anonymous sexual liaisons
that accompany it, and the Santo Daime religion, offer the same possibilities
for escaping the individual through desiring-connections. However, while the
former is both dangerous, through AIDS and frequent out breaks of violence
(Prosa, pp. 35-40),28 and increasingly accepted within the market place and
thus tamed of the possibilities for unleashing becomings that challenge the
dominant social order, the latter, organized through the structure of a religion,
and still ignored if not marginalized by the state in Brazil, represents a more
feasible alternative, distanced from the market, yet relatively safe.
The same aesthetic is also found in several poems in El chorreo. The title of
Albaniles Desnudos (I)' is drawn from a late nineteenth- and early twentieth-
century theme in painting used as a means for portraying the male nude;
previously in Western painting only the female nude was considered worthy of
the artist's attention:

Con temple atisbo desde la ilusion de los tules biceps lardos

lerdez de movimientos en el aire desnudo tachonado
de cuerpos que se tasan a la luz esplendida del cuelgue
de las cuerdas tonsado el halito frio de la brisa
vespertina agitando calzones desde lo alto de si, donde
se arroja.
Cata la turmalina rociada trepidez
de polvos que se echan al vacio desde arriba
de un mueble:
cuece andamios la costa
inefable su jalde borroneo,
en balde la cosquilla de la roca en la nube.
Vecina a las inspiraciones abre los brazos socorriendo
la distraccion de la pupila en las hamacas paraguayas.
Tizne del morenillo y el resbalar oleoso de los huevos.
Los huecos en la cima, el portland los rellena con su balde
26 F.
Guattari, Molecular Revolution(1977), trans. by R. Sheed (Harmondsworth:Penguin,
1984), p. 228.
27 Bersani,pp. 122-23.
28 First
published as 'Matan a una marica' in Fin de siglo,16 (1988).

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88 Nestor Perlongher and Mysticism

irguiendo toscamente las arenas del sueno en el serrallo.

Hay una confusion de abedules erectos, la contorsion, la
distorsion arquean
arqueros apostados en las almenas liminares
cuyo salto doblega al malandrin en el torneo deseante.
Y humeda flecha moja la entretela sudada.
(Poemas, p. 301)29

The poem exhibits a play between metaphorical base (it is a poem that could
be described as being about sexual relationships with proletariat men) and a
drift away from that base; here the effect is achieved through long comma-
less enumerations (lines 1-5), an accumulation of nouns ('la turmalina rociada
trepidez | de polvos'), and the inflation of clauses through conjunctions and
prepositions ('abre los brazos socorriendo | la distraccion de la pupila en las
hamacas paraguayas').
The poem's language juxtaposes two quite distinct fields: the mercantile
body at work ('albaniles', 'biceps', 'calzones', 'polvos', 'mueble', 'portland',
'arenas') and the classical in register and theme ('temple', 'ilusion', 'tonsado',
'vespertina', 'serrallo', 'arquero', 'almenas', 'malandrin', 'torneo', 'flecha'). The
mercantile elements are dealt with in Perlongher's thesis: for example, 'cuerpos
que se tasan a la luz esplendida del cuelgue' recalls 'la conversion de las inten-
sidades libidinales en signos monetarios'.30 There is in parallel in the poem a
'sintaxis de la piel' and a 'gramatica de los cuerpos' that connect the body to
exchange value.
The poem's ending thus defies a unified reading; it has elements that can
be read as sexual metaphors or as a barroco castle scene ('abedules erectos',
'humeda flecha'). The last line offers several possible readings; intriguingly,
its two elements offer literal readings, each of which calls for a metaphorical
reading of the other. Therefore
humeda flecha [arrow] moja la entretela [i.e. bloodies the guts]

or

humeda flecha [i.e. ejaculation] moja la entretela [wets the lining, where 'entretela' is a
synonym of 'forro', and therefore condom].

An irresolvable tension is thereby created between two possible readings, just

as the 'arqueros' are stationed on 'almenas liminares': that which is supposed
to divide in what Perlongher called the 'sistema significante despotico' (Prosa,
p. 96)31 is instead placed in an unstable, liminal and dynamic shuttle. Impor-
tantly, this shuttle is between sex and death, pleasure and pain. Again this
returns us to the mystical experience, aided by the effect of distancing the sub?
ject matter, e.g. the 'ilusion' and 'sueno', together with vision: 'atisbo', 'pupila'.
It is this physical distance from the sexual act itself that changes the tone of
the poem. Perlongher described the anthropological immersion of his research
and the Doems in Paraue Lezama that dealt with nrostitution as a form of nar-
First published in Diario de poesia, 22 (1992).
N. Perlongher,Laprostitucionmasculina(Buenos Aires: Edicionesde la Urraca, 1993), p. 108.
First published as the prologue to Caribe Transplatino(Sao Paulo: Illuminaras,1991).

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 BEN BOLLIG 89

ticipative observation.32 Here we have a nostalgic and physical distance in the

consideration of potential sexual partners.
This distance, framed by Perlongher's own isolation through sickness?he
was bedridden while writing many of the poems in El chorreo?is commented
upon by Leo Bersani. Bersani argues that writers such as Marcel Proust, Andre
Gide, and Genet, although by no means gay-affirmative, can offer a radical chal?
lenge to homophobia and the society in which it predominates through their
attacks on conventional relations between persons, in particular through their
desexualization of the erotic, or, in other words, through their ability to com-
plicate received social classifications and expand the possibilities of pleasure
beyond genital sexual contact. In the case of Gide's novel Ulmmoraliste (1902),
Bersani detects what he calls 'a nonsuicidal disappearance of the subject'.33 To
explain this, one might call on Perlongher's earlier poems and anthropology. If
the behaviour of the client seeking the dissolution of his ego in the exchange
with the miche is potentially masochistic, it is also suicidal with inherent risks
of violence. With the appearance of AIDS, sex becomes very visibly unsafe. So
in comparison with the development of the mystical masochism we detected
in Perlongher's poems that interacted with the work of Genet et al., these late,
distanced poems offer a different aesthetic. As Bersani suggests, the strange re?
lationship that Gide's protagonist undertakes in observing beautiful Arab boys
without ever engaging in sexual intercourse is a form of 'nonrelational ped-
erasty'. This 'eliminates from "sex" the necessity of any relation whatsoever'.34
For Bersani, this circumventing ofthe couple or interpersonal relationship, also
in Genet's Funeral Rites,35 offers a new possibility, that of 'turning away from
the entire theater of good',36 and of 'declining to participate in any sociality at
all'.37 Despite the seemingly nihilistic connotations, this turning away from the
relational relation, the community and the intimately conjoined couple, has a
radical potential: bodies project 'out of themselves, out of any absorption in
each other'.38 What is important for our reading of Perlongher's work here is
that the combination of a sexually distanced sexuality and the overriding mysti?
cal background allows Perlongher to formulate in these last poems possibilities
for anti-social socialization that move beyond his sexual aesthetics in purpose
and dynamic, while maintaining the sexual vocabulary and tone.

Mystical Purpose
This turning away is taken a step further in the most mystical poems of Per?
longher's last two collections, specifically those which demonstrate a mystical
purpose. After a series of poems in verse that describe the Daime ceremony and

32 M. Eckard and E. Bernini,'Nestor Perlongher:el negocio del deseo', ESPACIOS de Critica

y produccion,10 (1991), 82-86.
33 Bersani,p. 99, quoted more fullyabove at n. 26.
34 Bersani, pp. 122-23 (italic original).
35 Trans. by B. Frechtman(London: Faber & Faber, 1973).
36 Bersani, p. 163.
37 Bersani, p. 168.
38 Bersani,p. 165.

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90 Nestor Perlongher and Mysticism

visions, the sixth poem of Aguas aereas reverts to the prose form used in many
of the poems of Par que Lezama:
Acrilico (Acre Lirieo)* mas que esplendor volumen tornaluz
luz fria acuatica su raye (interseccion de elitros, choque o ba-
llet de vagalumes, niagara) de guante calza el espesor glaseando el
manati de una cuticula de nubes, cutis niveo, glostora de nivea, en
la ampulosidad del ademan glorioso disponiase el zarpe de la raya,
cuadriculado en vertigo, craquele, sin dejar de ser ruina, pegoteado
de babas, la rebaba de nacar estirada en el borde de su vaina de
vals, rispido enroque que trastoca los estremecimientos en connu-
bios, leves, alados, casi voiles, manaties sirena, bosques rio, pues el
milagro de su sobresalto, al cascar, en granadas, los aretes de espar-
to, les despertaba napas de titilante anade, vacio, vagabundo, su ter-
sura de plumas en el cauce azaroso, no nada sino que se deja llevar,
ser arrastrado, en el remolineo de las helices por el torrente panta-
noso, escandalo de espumas la ola orin, agua de porcelana en el
chorro de joyas, un portland numinoso al recubrir da vuelta al pul-
po como un guante, perla que se revela en goma o nace caucho, do-
lido por el acre o el acibar, en lenguas marejadas de un-unguento
encantado.
* Caetano Veloso.
(Poemas, p. 256)

Two fields of language are at play here. The first is that of the purge, the cere?
mony, and the visions; hence 'acre lirico' offers the bitterness of vomit and the
lyrical ordering of a hymn. We also have 'acibar', aloes, a bitter herb with purga-
tive effects, together with lights and illuminations ('tornaluz', 'luz', 'vagalume',
Portuguese for glow-worm). The second is distinctly sexual, particular those
elements that imply sheathing and ejaculation:
su raye [. . .] de guante calza el espesor
glaseando el manati
pegoteado de babas
la rebaba de nacar estirada en el borde de su vaina
agua de porcelana en el chorro de joyas
da vuelta al pulpo como un guante
perla que se revela en goma o nace caucho.
These are given a focus by the central cultismo 'connubios', a marriage couple.
One must be careful, though, not to say that Perlongher is writing here about
penises, condoms, and ejaculation. While 'manati' and 'guante' may be very
close to the type of slang used to describe sexual practices in many earlier
poems, as described above, they are not simply metaphors for the initiated.
This is revealed by the appearance of the 'anade'?which might be interpreted
as 'ano'?alongside 'su tersura de plumas en el cauce azaroso': too much duck
to be just an anus. The difference between this work and earlier poems is that
elements that might have been interpreted sexually are stripped of any street
context. Thus while words such as 'anade', previously sexually suggestive,
appear in these poems, they are orientated in a different direction. This new
direction is indicated by two other sets of vocabulary in the poem. The first is
related to flight: 'elitros', 'vagalumes', 'vertigo', 'leves', 'alados'. The second,
with which there is some crossover, is light. Therefore I would argue that while

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 BEN BOLLIG 91

the poetics and aesthetics of Aguas aereas XI are not radically different from
those displayed before, still concentrating on the movement of a middle-class
educated figure into a predominantly working-class environment characterized
by drugs, dirt, and intense physical sensations, the key difference is that whereas
in the earlier poems the movement within this territory had been traced down?
into the darkness, towards the genitals, or in the mud?now, while the dirt and
lowness may still be present, the poem is tracing a journey up and the poet is
facing in the opposite direction, turned towards the divine.
Similarly, in El Chorreo, Perlongher outlines another divine telos. 'Luz os-
cura' has for a title an oxymoron drawn from the mystical experience and an
epigraph from Santa Teresa ('recio martirio sabroso'), with its play between
pain and pleasure:
Si atrevesada por la zarza el pecho
arder a lo que ya encendido ardia
hace, el dolor en goce transfigura,
fria la carne mas el alma ardida,
en el blanco del ojo el ojo frio
cual nieve en valle torrido: el deseo
divino se echa sobre lanzas igneas
y muerde el ojo en blanco el labio henchido.
Funambulesca beatitud la suya,
de claroscuros, que al soltar el pliegue
de luz inunda el esplendor febeo.
lNo es resplandor que nos deslumbra, sino
una blancura suave y el resplandor difuso
que alto deleite da a la vista y no
la cansa, ni la claridad que se ve para ver
esta hermosura tan divina\
(Poemas, p. 304 (italic original))

The opening line recalls a rapture recounted by Santa Teresa:

Veiale [Jesus] en las manos un dardo de oro largo, y al fin del hierro me parecia tener
un poco de fuego; este me parecia meter en el corazon algunas veces y que me llegaba a
las entranas; al sacarle, me parecia que las llevaba consigo y me dejaba toda abrasada en
amor grande de Dios.39

The image is of opening oneself up to pain so as to achieve divine ends, thus

lending corporeal sensations a purpose other than the search for intensity. We
have discussed the problems that Bersani attributes to the supposedly death-
complicit nature of these aesthetics. However, Perlongher's poem is now in?
formed by a new purpose, and unlike the mystical poems of distanced relations,
exhibits a different teleological aesthetic; this is reinforced by the final verse, a
quote from Santa Teresa that exceeds the confines of the sonnet form in rhyme,
line length, and metre. Teresa's quote deals with the overwhelming bright-
ness of the mystical experience. Teresa Bielecki, a Carmelite follower of Santa
Teresa, observes:
Sex is disguised mysticism [...]. Eroticism, a preoccupation with genitality,is a deflec-
tion of real energy and the end of any mystical possibility [. . .]. Sex is a need, Eros is
Marti, p. 393.

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92 Nestor Perlongher and Mysticism

a desire [. . .]. Eros is the longing to enjoy such deep and wide-ranged dimensions of
relatedness?all originating from a critical center and tending towards an ultimate end.4?

This approach to desire offers a radical alternative to Deleuze and Guattari's

view of it as flow, connection, and flight, the view that dominated Perlongher's
earlier works; Bielecki's mystical desire is a movement out of the body, but it
is logocentric and teleological. Nevertheless, Bielecki characterizes this experi?
ence as a radical attack on binary systems:

In Hebrew there are no separate words for 'body' or 'soul' [. . .]. Only in the mystical
experience is the dilemma of duality resolved. For to the mystic is given the unifying
vision of the One in the All and the All in the One [. . .]. Santa Teresa, the grand wild
woman of Avila, teaches us to live life in its total polarity: agony and ecstasy, warring
and wedding, madness and reason, masculine and feminine, action and contemplation,
discipline and wildness, fast and feast [...]. Life is not either-or but both-and.41

However, rather than replace the binary with the multiplicitous or the rhi-
zomatic, the new term is Oneness: a movement from Henri Bergson to Zeno.
Two aspects of Perlongher's poem suggest this change in perspective: the over-
whelming light in the poem ('luz', 'esplendor') and a qualifier for desire, delayed
over a line-end by enjambment for emphasis: 'deseo | divino'. As Bersani ob?
serves, S/M practitioners often speak about pain in terms of 'cosmic ecstasy'.42
Perlongher's extension of this is to inscribe pain totally within the framework
of religious teleology.
The poem Alabanza y exaltacion del Padre Mario', from El chorreo, takes
the form of a long prayer with refrains and imprecations for the divine and
priestly figure of the title. Much of the poem stands in radical contrast to
Perlongher's earlier poetics, particularly with regard to light and darkness.
Perlongher can also be seen dealing with the contradictions and paradoxes
thrown up by a meeting between experimental poetics and teleological religious
systems. This occurs particularly with Perlongher's treatment of the up/down
binary. Whereas in previous works Perlongher has moved down (to the anus,
the penis, the petticoats, or the sewer), here a change occurs:

Oh Padre
Curenos
la salud y las escoriaciones del alma y los pozos del trauma y las he-
ridas que hilan en el fondo de si de cada cual las babas de la sierpe
y nos enriedan la cabeza enrulada hasta hacernos perder toda ra-
zon y arrastrarnos enloquecidamente con el absurdo sueno de salir
por abajo bajando descendiendo sin ver que la iluminacion viene de
arriba como un soi que fijo sobre los ventanales de voile atravesan-
dolos de luz divina luz de la que irradian sus ojos claros ojos abrien-
do una vereda de fulgor en la tiniebla floreciendola.
(Poemas, p. 332)

Perlongher's becoming-mystic is posited on two very new premisses: up is good

and down is bad; there is centre to the universe, a source of all light and therefore
40 T. Bielecki,Holy Daring: An Outrageous
Giftto Modern SpiritualityfromSanta Teresa the
Grand Wild WomanofAvila (Shaftesbury:Element, 1994), p. 48.
41 Bielecki,pp. 99, 115.
42 Bersani,p. 93.

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 BEN BOLLIG 93

all goodness. This again offers a marked change to his earliest poems. There
is, furthermore, another key difference. Perlongher suggests a new element for
his poetics: the notion of curing. We have seen in Aguas aereas that Perlongher
cultivated an aesthetic of extreme physical sensations, while most of the poems
in El chorreo can be divided between those that suggest an anti-social sociability
and those that suggest a form of mystical masochism that seems to see death
as inevitable. This poem differs in that the poem seeks a cure. One can relate
this to Perlongher's late fascination with popular faith healing, an interest not
revealed in his writing outside this poem. However, as Perlongher's lifelong
friend Sara Torres points out, after his fascination with Santo Daime ended,
'vino su fascinacion con el Padre Mario, un cura sanador [. . .] de Gonzalez
Catan [a suburb of Buenos Aires], donde iba en peregrinacion cuando ya habian
comenzado los sintomas de la enfermedad'.43
The aesthetic of curing offers a contrast to Perlongher's early reaction to
AIDS. The essay 'Disciplinar os poros e as paixoes' (1985)44 and his book O
que e AIDS (1987) both attacked medical and judicial discourses that promoted
safe sex as a means of preventing the spread of HIV; however, in later interviews
Perlongher seemed to recant his early, combative stance:

La expansion de la enfermedad fue mucho mas grave de lo que 7 u 8 anos atras uno se
podia imaginar. Ahora es un momento para auxiliar a los enfermos y en el que la cuestion
de la muerte nos obliga a repensar el tema del hedonismo individual occidental. En un
primer momento mi reaccion fue decir: 'resistamos'. Ahora me doy cuenta de que en
muchos aspectos me equivoque. Y en relacion con la enfermedad, le tengo temor y
respecto, la tengo en cuenta.45

The change that Perlongher highlights is that AIDS moved from distant men-
ace to real threat, and with it death became a far more immediate threat. Bersani
criticizes the 'death-complicit' aesthetic of many gay theorists.46 However, the
question Perlongher's work raises is how one avoids being death-complicit
when death is brought into the closest possible focus and visibility by terminal
illness. Perlongher's last poems approach the near impossibility of answering
this question without recourse to metaphysics or mysticism.
In Perlongher's final collections, then, we can detect three key aesthetics:
firstly, the masochistic aesthetic of mystical suffering; secondly, the non-rela-
tional relation that questions conventional notions of sociability; and, thirdly,
poems turned completely towards the divine that react to imminent death. His
mystic poems are related to the end of possibilities presented by sex and pros?
titution, but still show the strong influence of the sexual and kitsch aesthetics
that he developed in his earlier poems.

King's College, University of London Ben Bollig

43 Rapisardi and Modarelli, p. 198.
44 Lua nova, 2.3 (1985), 35~37-
45 C. Ulanovsky,'El SIDA puso en crisis la identidad homosexual', Pdgina 12, 19 September
1990, p. n (interviewwithPerlongher).
46 Bersani,p. 97.

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