Sexual Positions: Caveats and Second Thoughts on "Categories"

Author(s): Roger N. Lancaster

Source: The Americas, Vol. 54, No. 1 (Jul., 1997), pp. 1-16
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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The Americas

54:1 July 1997, 1-16

Copyright by the Academy of American
Franciscan History

SEXUAL POSITIONS: CAVEATS AND SECOND

THOUGHTS ON "CATEGORIES"*

am deeply honored to be asked to address the Co

Latin American History, especially on the topic o
studies.' As a way of discussing gay studies in Latin
me reflect on my ethnographic research on gender an
Nicaragua. Because I am an anthropologist, I will focus o
ethnographic representation. But ultimately and, I thi
these problems open to historical questions as well. Firs
reprise of my arguments about male same-sex relation
in Life is Hard and elsewhere.2

Most Anglo-American contexts construe as "a homose

* Many thanks to Dennis Altman, Ruth Behar, Samuel Col6n, Micaela di

Duberman, Jeff Escoffier, Licia Fiol-Matta, Jean Franco, Marcial Godoy, Ram
Gutmann, Donna Guy, Robert Irwin, Luiz Mott, Richard Parker, Vincent P
Linda Seligmann, Brett Williams, Carter Wilson, and Patricia Zavella-for f
ment, and intellectual liveliness.
1 This talk, "On Gay Studies in Latin America," was given as the lunc
Conference on Latin American History during the 1997 meetings of the A
Association in New York City (January 3). A different version of this talk
conference on Crossing National and Sexual Borders: Queer Sexualities i
sponsored by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS), The Gra
City University of New York, and the Albert Schweitzer Program in the H
University (3-5 October 1996). A few phrases and paragraphs appeared in m
Homosexualities in Latin America (And Other Places)," American Ethnolog
1997), 193-202.
2 Roger N. Lancaster, "Comment on Arguelles and Rich," Signs, 12 :1 (Au
192; "Subject Honor and Object Shame: The Construction of Male Homosex
Nicaragua," Ethnology 27: 2 (April, 1988) 111-125; Life is Hard: Machism
Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua (Berkeley: University of California Pres
Should All Turn Queer?' Homosexual Stigma in the Making of Manhood an
Revolution in Nicaragua," In Richard Parker and John Gagnon, eds., Co
Approaches to Sex Research in a Postmodern World (New York: Routledge,

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 2 "CATEGORIES"

who has homosexual inter

sire and practice, the ro
same-sex intercourse are
stigmatized homosexual
"bottom," "active" and "p
and combinations, "homos

By contrast, in Nicarag
America), homosexual ac
equivalency" or by a "log
course, what is both mark
same-sex intercourse, es
course. Defined as the anal-receptive party, and understood-
according to a pervasive cultural syntax-as "passive," feminized, and
disempowered, the coch6n ("queer") occupies a distinct position in
Nicaraguan sexual culture.

Both semiologically and to some extent sexually, "cochones" and

"men" define each other, each necessary to the making of the other.
At the discursive level, and according to the prevailing tautology, a
"real man" is all that a coch6n is not. Thus the directive, "No seas
coch6n," is self-explanatory; it is to say, "Be a man." At the sexual
level, acts taken up in this cultural medium imply that one partner is
stigmatized, while the other escapes stigma. That is, homosexual in-
tercourse is not especially problematic for the "active" party, as long
as he enacts singularly phallic principles-as long as he remains the
inserter, and as long as homosexual relations do not interfere with his
masculine prerogatives vis-a-vis women.

Consider some of the implications of this mapping of male bodies,

this allotment of access and accessibility. Male, but by definition not
masculine, and posited as an object put to use by another, the coch6n
occupies a position around and through which power flows. His body
thus marks an important transfer point in gender and sexual relations:
a position central to, yet vacated of male power-the very picture of
what recent queer theory has treated under the rubric, "abjection."3 It
is the coch6n's abjection that renders (normative) "manhood" intelli-
gible. In either the discursive or the sexual case: The machista's honor

3 See Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York:
Routledge, 1990) pp. 133-34, and various references in Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive
Limits of "Sex" (New York: Routledge, 1993).

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 ROGER LANCASTER 3

and the coch6n's shame are opposite

a transaction. To pun off what is m
term: the privilege of masculinity r
tion of the coch6n. And according to
acts reproduce power relations b
tions-all those sexual categories th
thereby allot power between and am

Thus configured, homosexual stigm

culinity. In this political economy o
stigma does is something other than
men and women. For a man does not fall to the status of a woman
when he fails to maintain a masculine performance; he becomes s
thing else: not a man, a failed man. In a narrow sense, then, the
"coch6n" designates anal-passivity; in a broader sense, it con
passivity, defeat, or failure in general, and thus conjures a terror
rules all men. In either case, the coch6n embodies masculinity in
and carries the categorical force of "spoiled identity" and "failed
hood.""5 So incessant is the clatter of this stigma, so coarse a
generalizations, that it even exceeds the realm of sexuality altoge
and comes to serve as a kind of general index of personal shortco
Cats that fail to catch mice, dogs that fail to bark, boys who fa
project an appropriate masculinity, and men who fail to maintain
signs of manliness: all are chided by the same invective: "coch6n

As I try to show in ethnographic detail, the notions of appropr

masculinity thus engendered spill over into quotidian understan
of agency, standing, personhood, and value. They thus affect, e
effect, a wide range of men's relations: with other men, surely, but
with women, with their families, and with their work-to say no
of the projection of appropriate masculinity in such public theat
the state. Now it is no small matter to systematically shape the d
sitions of men on so many grounds. The system of masculinity m

4 I hope I am not misunderstood as arguing that any kind of sex in any position either
implies a necessary social or political content. There is nothing inherently debased--or
"passive"-about being penetrated. Rather, what I want to highlight is how sex acts
politics in a social medium-and how they then, tautologically, come to enact the power r
they signify.
5 On how identity might be seen as "spoiled," see Erving Goffman, The Presentation of S
Everyday Life (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1959); on "masculinity in crisis," se
rice Berger, Brian Wallis, and Simon Watson, eds., Constructing Masculinity (New York
ledge, 1995).

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 4 "CATEGORIES"

vated, practiced, performed,

has consequences far beyond
sexuality ultimately affect ev

I do not want to claim great

just laid out. What I've done
and the insights of other L
ground, at an historical mom
have been influential on a
America-not just studies of h
culinity, gender relations, an
lytical synthesis has also bee
which raise good methodolog

Let me visit some of these qu

in my own work, and as a w
research in the field. A set o

1st Point. Overgeneralization

specification.

My arguments about active/passive roles in Life is Hard occasionally

make recourse to other Latin American contexts-reported patterns in
Honduras, published accounts from Brazil, and analyses of machismo

6 Dennis Altman, Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation (New York: New York University
Press, 1993 [1971]); Guy Hocquenghem, Homosexual Desire (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 1993 [1978]); Jonathan Ned Katz, The Invention of Heterosexuality (New York: Dutton,
1995); Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1990); Jeffrey Weeks, Sexuality and Its Discontents: Meanings, Myths, and Modern Sexu-
alities (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985).
7 For a very short working list, see, for example, TomBs Almaguer, "Chicano Men: A Cartog-
raphy of Homosexual Identity and Behavior," In Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale, and
David M. Halperin, eds., The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp.
255-273; Daniel Balderston and Donna J. Guy, eds., Sex and Sexuality in Latin America (New
York: New York University Press, 1997); Joseph Carrier, De Los Otros: Intimacy and Homo-
sexuality Among Mexican Men (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995); Matthew Gut-
mann, "Los hijos de Lewis: La sensibilidad antropol6gica y el caso de los pobres machos,"
Alteridades (Mexico City) 4:7 (1994) pp. 9-19, and The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in
Mexico City (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); Ian Lumsden, Machos, Maricones,
and Gays: Cuba and Homosexuality (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996); Stephen O.
Murray, (with additional contributions by Manuel Arboleda G. et al.), Latin American Male
Homosexualities (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995); Richard G. Parker,
Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions: Sexual Culture in Contemporary Brazil (Boston: Beacon, 1991);
Steve J. Stern, The Secret History of Gender: Women, Men, and Power in Late Colonial Mexico
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); David E. Whisnant, Rascally Signs in
Sacred Places: The Politics of Culture in Nicaragua (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1995).

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 ROGER LANCASTER 5

in Mexico. Now and then, I borrow

that magnificent yet flawed trea
transpose into a different regis
conflicted tradition of Oscar Lew
they assume a uniform and conti
Conquest, and taking in the whol
regions, local traditions, class and
leagues Matt Gutmann and Roger
tive critics of this trope of region
the very least, this move, like the
ity," reduces complex and variabl
nail sketch. Surely, we must be on
tion.

And yet, we should also be ske

country, culture, or region, and o
ism that supports it. Although it
local conceptions of gender/sexual
systems have been part of a worl
enduring, recurring situations wit
been engaged in dialogue with oth
Wolf's useful analogy, then: cultu
balls," and it is almost never an e
and another ends, to specify wha
culture.10

Now most ethnographies, like ma

vincial in outlook. They attempt
characteristics, self-consistent ide
fix their subject matters: there, to
Borders are, of course, among the p
same time, those borders are there
abroad, intermarry with other Am
spanning countries and regions-n
money, people, and ideas. This is
standing tradition.

8 See Jean Franco's telling discussions of P

Representation in Mexico (New York: Columbi
9 Matthew Gutmann, The Meanings of Mach
temporary Sociology 23:1 (January, 1994), pp.
0o See Eric Wolf's arguments in the Introduct
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982

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 6 "CATEGORIES"

To return to the question

an approach of productive
doubtedly, in drawing on s
sexual cultures across Latin America do indeed hold certain features in
common. Ideas about masculinity and femininity, practices of activit
and passivity, and sensibilities of honor and shame all swirl within op
arenas-but they never add up to a singular Latin American "system
as such. Our treatments, whether ethnographic or historical, ought t
acknowledge both the general and the specific. On the one hand, w
should avoid the temptation to hypostatize certain regional "family
resemblances" into the set, posed portrait of a "Latin American Cul
ture." Between Nicaragua and Brazil, as between Guadalajara an
Mexico City, lie vast, changing worlds of difference. On the oth
hand, the cautious and qualified inspection of these resemblance
where they exist, might throw light on patterns of a transnational sort,
might open the door to histories less beholden to narrow conceptio
of the nation, and might provide the basis for local analyses in broad
global contexts. Such an approach might even suggest strategies for
transnational cooperation among gay organizations, feminist groups
AIDS advocacy organizations, and other social movements in Lat
America.

Still, our methods and understanding will not have advanced muc
if we engage only in debates on how to mark, bound, and delimit th
phenomena we study-that is, if we continue the interrogation along
these lines: "Is this a description that holds for sexuality in all of Lat
America? or does it describe a system of masculinity restricted
Nicaragua? or, perhaps, does it most strictly describe patterns that
occur in certain lower-income neighborhoods of Managua? .. ." Such
questions have almost outlived their usefulness. What has becom
increasingly evident is that we need fresh ways to historicize cultur
we need new approaches to local processes in global contexts. I take
good starting points the anthropological work of N6stor Garcia Can
clini, the textual analyses of Antonio Benitez-Rojo, and the late
marxist cultural studies approach sketched by the Latin America
Subaltern Studies Group." Following these leads, it would be a most
interesting task to try to understand culture in Nicaragua, ethnographi-

1 N6stor Garcia Canclini, Transforming Modernity: Popular Cultures in Mexico (Austin: Un

versity of Texas Press, 1993), and Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Moderni
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995); Antonio Benitez-Rojo, The Repeating
land: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective, Second Edition (Durham: Duke Universi

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 ROGER LANCASTER 7

cally and historically, less in terms o

and more in terms of movement, m
how a changing global economy is
through everyday material practices
goods, ideas, and lives very much o
sight of just what hurts in the ongo
ism ... Very tentatively, I began t
flatter myself into believing that I c

Likewise, it has become increasingly

in Latin America less in terms of stable local identities and more in
terms of ongoing volatile processes. Something of the scope of this
project is hinted at by Dennis Altman in a recent paper on the "in-
ternationalization" of gay identities and by Richard Parker's ongoing
research in Brazil.12 Doing justice to this moving history, en cours,
implies an equally mobile writing strategy. It means trying to catch
tentative and always-partial identities, as they are really caught-up: i
the avalanche of urbanization, in the spin of international media im
ages, in demographic transitions, in the long, meandering marches of
various social movements, in new forms of exploitation and violence
no less than in new forms of creativity, in the effects of internationa
tourism, in the spread of gay and gay-friendly institutions, and in tu
and tow of vibrant, complex plaza cultures ...

The first temptation will be to chronicle the lives and words of those
who are most readily accessible but who are also in some respects leas
typical: movement people, articulate activists, educated and cosmo-
politan elites. The ongoing challenge will be to grapple, in detail, with
the life strategies of ordinary people in a postmodern world. For th
working-class youth who meets men in the cracked hull of the ruine
Managua Cathedral, for the lesbian couple that blends in with female-
headed and joint households in a Brazilian shantytown, for the "Z6-
calo boy" in Oaxaca who plays techno-pop cassettes on his boom-box,
for the undocumented worker in rural North Carolina who cruises
parks in a pick-up truck, the emergent ways of being are neither fully
local nor fully global; they neither reproduce "traditional" identities

Press, 1996 [1992]); Latin American Subaltern Studies Group, "Founding Statement," Boundary
2 20:3 (1993), pp. 110-121.
12 Dennis Altman, "Rupture or Continuity? The Internationalization of Gay Identities," Social
Text 14:3 (1996). See also Richard Parker, Beneath the Equator: Cultures of Desire, Male (Ho-
mo)sexuality, and the Emerging Gay Communities in Brazil (forthcoming, Routledge).

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8 "CATEGORIES"

nor do they import altoget

tities are enfolded with-b
race, class, and region. Per
identities flicker across tr
routes; they take up tempo
tems. Seen in a certain ligh
ceived traditions, but seen
altogether at home in an in
show us fresh perspective
and thus they necessarily
culture and identity.

2nd Point. Similarly, caref

thin line between sensationa

Franz Boas argued a centu

ference is less complacen
cultures are basically the s
poses a problem to be solv
than does the taken-for-gr
the twentieth century,
differences has defined m

As many critics have poin

difference also tends to "e
ogy of sexuality reproduc
pline. The allure of this re
incidental problem. The fo
bricated in a dense colonial
from "fetishism" in every
ern sexual tourism.14 They
nographic inquiry underta

To the point of my own w

strange and unrecognizable
gays and straights (or, per

13 Franz Boas, Race, Language, an

[1940]) and The Shaping of America
George W. Stocking, Jr. (New York
14 On this general topic, see essays
Zavella, Schein, Abu-Lughod, Povine
di Leonardo, eds. The Gender/Sexual
Routledge, 1997).

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 ROGER LANCASTER 9

lization of Martians marooned on t

I am less certain that this point a
would like in my own writing thu

How, then, are we to avoid the tw

Orientalism" (and I include here w
orientalism or self-exoticization)
amalgamation" (and I include he
centers of North Atlantic imperia
the South-even some perspectives
this question open-ended, on the
it with this observation:

Just as my own attempts to make Nicaraguan conceptions of sexu-

ality intelligible to North American readers drew on a continuous
tacking between comparison and contrast, between claims that "Nica-
raguan culture is like North American culture" in some ways, and
"unlike it" in others, such games of give-and-take, of "selfing-by-way-
of-othering," go much deeper, spiral across long histories, and are
perhaps bottomless. That is to say, my Nicaraguan informants them-
selves made sense of their own beliefs and practices, diacritically, by
conjuring up images of what they believed to be typical features of
Anglo-American culture ... I cannot count how many times infor-
mants began a conversation by asking me: "Is it true what they say
about the United States?" This opening was followed by the inevitable
(and often contradictory) diacritical propositions: "-that men don't
beat their women, like here in Nicaragua," "-that North American
men aren't machistas, the way they are here in Nicaragua," "-that
parents allow their children to run wild, unlike here in Nicaragua,"
"-that people have sex in the streets, and have no sense of shame,
unlike here in Nicaragua ... ?" In this manner, my acquaintances were
always talking (whether accurately or not) about North American gen-
der roles, sexual practices, youth cultures, and so on; they were per-
petually resourcing these references in order to diagram some feature
of life in Nicaragua as they understood it. The one made the other to
stand out.

Although my presence in the field was surely part of what solicited

15 To steal a conceit from Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic
Books, 1973), p. 36.
16 Ruth Behar, personal communication.

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 10 "CATEGORIES"

this dynamic, I do not belie

historical and sociological dy
hood have long provided a
sometimes very much pres
One sees this "present abse
tations (against the "Yanqui
tions (of the godless Americ
conversations as well as in co
Nicaragua is intelligible to N
appears sometimes as a meta
bountiful land of exotic cul
imagination ... Perhaps a dee
nature of cultural propositi
fallacies of both "exoticizati
tention to these really-exist
authentic others, but entan
with each other: locked in a
self-conception, objects of
crossed that border, even be

Borders crissed and crossed

to think not just of border c
need new ways of thinking an
sameness.

3rd Point. Good analysis of gender asymmetry

will be unflinching in its descriptions of power-
making room for cacophonous voices and other p

Sometimes my descriptions of the brutality

North American and even Nicaraguan gay rea
devote so much attention to the entrenched natu
ries in everyday life, the reader sometimes come
unyielding contraption of power. As a gay man
braided for not writing something more upliftin

Now clearly, representation is both a social

When taken up by powerful institutions, when
nized groups, representations do indeed have
(That is, in effect, the gist of my argument: th

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 ROGER LANCASTER 11

cochones is, in a Foucauldian sense, "pr

been receptive to the very different no
picted in a text or analysis "enhance
violence; that those who dispassionatel
with it by way of some occult investm
creates more so than describes reality
of what Clifford Geertz has called "
dria"18-not only limit what can be d
logical extensions, they also constrain t
Unless credible links between represe
world effects can be specified, in detail
thinking.

I might add that some very dangerous nonsense has come from these
ideas, which tend to paralyze the critical capacities of social and cul-
tural theory in the name of a politics of speech. Certain postmodern
writers' invocation of such principles has signalled a default not just on
meaningful political engagements but even on good standards of ar-
gumentation and coherent representation. In a different vein, liberal
multiculturalism mistakenly proceeds from the assumption that repre-
sentation ought to promote the unity, self-esteem, and good feeling of
oppressed (and legitimately aggrieved) people-but in practice, edu-
cation for "pride" has largely served as an opiate, promoting nostalgic
and utopian myths rather than clear-eyed and useful analyses of social
inequalities. Finally, it is sometimes asserted that since gays, lesbians,
women, African-Americans, and other minorities have so often been
injured by stigmatizing speech-indeed, since discourse is the very
medium of discrimination and hierarchy-then liberation ought to be
understood as control over one's own self-representation. But if any-
thing I have been arguing here has merit, we are all caught up in each
others' representations, we are all implicated in each others' thoughts
and words, we are all embraced in each others' deeds. We have all
crossed over proprietary borders already. Representational propri-
etorship is not really possible, much less desirable.

Sometimes, the situation calls for as sober a depiction as possible, for

nothing guarantees the success of our struggles. I believe that I would

17 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction. (New York: Vintage
Books, 1978 [1976]).
18 Clifford Geertz, Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author (Stanford: Stanford Uni-
versity Press, 1988), p. 77, 90.

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 12 "CATEGORIES"

be professionally and morally

ragua at the beginning of t
terms: The ravages of the U
of Nicaragua's fragile econo
litical catastrophe ... All thes
pessimistic conclusions on ev

And yet, for all that, I cann

ers expressed of my accoun
passages or re-trace certain
this talk). This panicked clau
tial and situated work: I hav
put and traced the hostile syst
I have not attempted to spe
social perspectives of coch
sometimes raise themselves i
strengths and the limitations
barrio popular-a focus wh
closet" during my fieldwork
very field experiences it ena
bore mute witness to my inf
of queers; I silently recorded
conversations with cochones
borhoods, at the margins of
this closet also affected the
claim to "see" one's own blin
this closet-effect rendered m
more unrelentingly somber
erwise have been.

I would be the first to say, then, that the resulting ethnographi

snapshot is only a partial (if necessary) picture, and that what is a
needed is an equally detailed study of Nicaraguan queers themselve
how they negotiate their lives and relationships under such circum
stances, how they understand their predicament, how they make o
break the received meanings around them. How they undoubted
inhabit certain categories not of their own making; but also how th
push the borders of those categories, and thus begin to fashion th
own meanings, to make their own histories.

4th Point. Sexual "systems" have "rules"--but sexuality, as creativ

human practice, is more than a law or grammar.

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 ROGER LANCASTER 13

This point, I believe, suggests cauti

cultural studies, according to which
ization of an idea, the enactment o
concept-through the wholly passi
proaches that have attempted to un
flictive realm sometimes posit a pe
ism. In Judith Butler's staging of Fo
tion cites a code, every gender perf
my own rendering, the coch6n is im
unending circuits of discourse; lock
power.20

Now vernacular discourses about

prescriptive. And rightly, contempo
premise that discourse is at least par
speech, something happens in exces
something else happen. Problems ari
too literally-when experience of the
from public discourse; when existen
cursive domains; when, all too stra
"produce" the reality it narrates;
become songs sung in praise of the

By way of contrast, then, let me g

current research on how people mak
These are not necessarily uplifting,

An African-American acquaintance
plex and opportunistic relationship
York City. He tells me that he prefe
After a few encounters, he formed
Hispanic "machos" were far mor
"straights." He now seeks out pr
American men, and has gone so far
into a largely immigrant neighborh
says of his own sexual position. Thi
enactment of gender's grammar or
an African-American man doing pl

19 Butler, Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matt

20 For my attempt at a very different opening o
on the Transvestism of Everyday Life," in Dani
Sexuality in Latin America (New York: New Yor

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 14 "CATEGORIES"

to begin with? Whatever els

qualified notion of categoric
tures.

A Moroccan informant also tells me that he doesn't like gay men

sexual partners. He, too, prefers "straight men"-but (and he is ver
explicit on the point): heterosexual men who like to get fucked. Al
though he describes himself as the wife of a man (who is also legal
married to a biological woman), he plays the part normally associat
with the husband in bed. Curiously enough, he has formed the stron
impression that New York's Hispanic population provides an amp
pool of straight men who like to get fucked-a notion the exact inver
of the previous one, and which might set us on the trail of some vexing
and productive questions about the play of categories at the interstic
of cultures.

Although both of these arrangements draw on the logic of polarized

categories-' 'activity"-"passivity," "masculinity"-"femininity," even
"straight"-"gay"-neither of them should ever happen under its rules.
Sexual practice is more complex than the enactment of a norm, the
realization of a code, or the performance of a script. As creative be-
ings, people bend rules, disperse grammars, reinscribe codes, and im-
provise practices. Any approach that forgets this forgets much of what
is creative, sensuous, and playful in culture-but also much of how
manipulation, trickery, and circumvention play out: both within cul-
tures and at their busy borders, both within identities and at their
openings to experience.

I conclude this series of caveats, then, with four provisos. Each of

these appears in Life is Hard, but they have not always been noticed,
and perhaps are not given enough weight there.

First, although it is sometimes useful to depict local conceptions of

sexuality as a self-consistent system, any such a system has been part of
the world market, engaged in exchanges with other sexual cultures, for
centuries-indeed, to some extent culture only appears as a system
because it engages in a dialogue with other ideas and practices. Sys-
tems, no less than categories, are dialogically-constituted: at the cross-
roads of culture, history, and political economy. Any attempt to un-
derstand a sexual system must dialectically go beyond it: both to other
sexual systems, and to social practices of a non-sexual nature.

Second, although he is defined in popular discourse as "anal-

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 ROGER LANCASTER 15

passive," and although this sexual posi

semiotic sponge for passivity and acqu
say that all cochones are in fact passiv
putative sexual rules dividing machist
followed. Between discourse and prac
innumerable slippages. This "slippag
stood as at least part of the pleasure of s
the cynical, and the street-wise are alwa
they say in Brazil: "Nobody knows wh
Or, as the pervasive maxim goes-an a
of one-sided positional claims: "El que
rendered, for our purposes: "He who t
on top"]. And here, among slipping s
even the "terror" of abjection can b
render its own kind of pleasure. A N
available almost everywhere) marks o
perversity of the perverse: "What you
hardest."

Third, although much of what I have written analyzes the obstacles

to effective homosexual politicization in Nicaragua and points up the
conservative effects of homosexual stigma for masculinity in general, I
do not want to suggest that cochones are without politics, agency, or
creativity. In their personal relations, they might in fact be strong or
weak, acquiescent or manipulative, savvy or gullible. Socially, as the
butt of community humor, cochones walk a thin line between public
indulgence and social ostracism. Some learn to play off this treacher-
ous border without quite crossing over in that no-man's land of abjec-
tion. Politically, cochones might identify with the deepest Catholic
conservatism, the richest tradition of Nicaraguan leftism-or the
equally-potent tradition of protective indifference. This situation gives
rise to a covert politics of some complexity, where resistance and even
defiance are woven into everyday interactions. And in the past several
years, the outlines of a gay and lesbian politics have begun to take
shape in Managua among a small but dedicated core of activists.

This leads to my fourth and final proviso: If we are to avoid the

tendency toward categorical reduction and reification-which is, after
all, the cultural force of the categories we analyze-then we must

21 Richard Parker, Bodies, Pleasures, and Passions.

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 16 "CATEGORIES"

perpetually historicize our no

agency, and person. To be c
venture a mild provocation he
dismal for gay studies in Latin
elaborating, qualifying, and qu
dichotomies in male same-sex
still since the first posing of
challenged the framework of
America; the AIDS epidemic
sexual uncertainties across th
politics combine with new re
unpredictable ways-among Pr
movements for social reform
are taking hold in major citie
time, paramilitary death squa
sexual activists in places as
Janeiro .... Events will not s
ethnography worthy of the
events, in play; among forces
happenings that cannot quite
matic diagrams. Likewise, an
would join these questions, not
but at the site of volatile contentions: where shades of situational
nuance outrun ossified meanings, and where even the most reified of
categories turn themselves over to cunning manipulations, bold power-
grabs, semiotic slippages-and thus also yield to the open-ended play
of histories in the making.

Then let our scholarship on such matters aspire to be as intelligible

as politics requires, but also as subtle as reality demands.

George Mason University ROGER N. LANCASTER

Fairfax, Virginia

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