Foucault (parcialmente) vindicado no Brasil central: sexualidade como um dos fundamentos da vida

Abstract

By living among the Mebengokre (also known as Kayapó, of Jê language), it is easy to note the environment permeated with sexuality. It is a favourite topic of conversation and one of the main sources of pleasure. However, already in the mid-1990s, the men censored my conversations with the women about sexuality, designating them as “gossip” – useless for formulating projects or getting jobs. During a course for training bilingual teachers, in 2009, I was censored again, this time for introducing the homosexuality issue, with the allegation that it was a problem of “white people”. Mebengokre’s sexuality has already given rise to unrealistic issues, such as the character of a “paid sex specialist”, something that reverberated in the international literature. After half century of sparse references to Mebengokre sexuality, the issue regarding the possibility of dealing with it without an exotic perspective remains.