Charles Melman has recently pointed out the long-lasting consequences of the social trauma embodied in the colonization of Brazil by the Portuguese (Melman 93). One of these consequences, strongly associated with the violence involved in the annihilation of the native cultures, is a difficulty in the implementation of the function of the symbolic father, which results in problems concerning agreed-upon rules and procedures, something that affects the organization of social relationships as a whole.
The lack of a firmly established symbolic father-function in this type of society would seem to generate a strong demand for a real father to appear and solve all the problems. It has been argued that one consequence of this demand is the tendency to welcome dictatorship in Brazilian political life.
It would also appear that this psychological structure would affect not only members of the native cultures but also members of the Portuguese culture, who in such a structure would be in a subjective position vulnerable to the unlimited jouissancethat assails subjects who have inadequate anchoring points in the symbolic order. Paulo Freire, in Pedagogy of the Opressed has described with great accuracy how an oppressed people develops an identification with the oppressor. As a result of such identification, this proximity with unlimited jouissance became a model for the whole society, as can be seen in a character like Vadinho in Jorge Amado’s novel Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos. Vadinho, who represents in many respects the ideal Brazilian (he doesn’t work, has many women, plays cards every evening, and is very good at sex) dies on the last day of Carnival, in the middle of an orgasm.
With the arrival of the African slaved population, the situation became even more complex. The slaves, in becoming part of the production system, supported the possibility of unlimited jouissance for the Portuguese. On the other hand, they also became a source of symbolic references: living on farms, but forming communities of up to a hundred members (something that did not happen in the United States, where the farms required a much smaller number of workers), they succeeded in maintaining their traditions.
The permanence of an African symbolic reference system in a society that could not keep unaltered its inherited Portuguese symbolic order indicates the degree of ambivalence connecting these two populations. The African symbolic order has to be taken into account if one wants to understand the mixture of races, cultural traits, and religions that is so typical of many Brazilian cultural phenomena today.
The historical function of music in the African symbolic order is particularly noteworthy in relation to the psychological function of music in Brazilian culture today. During the second half of the eighteenth century, some Brazilian administrators wanted to forbid drumming as a way of exhibiting control over the African population. The attempt failed. The farmers wanted the drumming to continue, because it helped to increase the slave population, dancing, singing, and sex were all part of the same activity.
A psychoanalytic approach to music should help us understand its function as part of the symbolic order.
(published in 1996, JPCS v. 1, n. 1, p. 140-142)
(to be continued…)
Colloquium: Contemporary Brazilian Music and Thought 