Anthologies of desire: where pleasure dares to speak

Abstract

Once anthologies are reflexes of an era in evidence and its themes, this article analyzes four literary works whose texts and authors were gathered around eroticism, a classic and recurrent topic in literature, especially in times ruled by authoritarianism, conservatism and fundamentalism. Erotic literature and its licentious speech positions itself as a transgression mechanism, while it criticizes old behaviors and promotes knowledge about the body, pleasure and the possibilities to use it. What’s the translator’s and organizer’s purpose in gathering texts from an erotic speech tradition, from different ages and cultures? What’s the importance of an erotic poetry anthology to Brazilian literature history? Why do minorities need to demarcate a territory and a speaker’s location in literature? This article offers a different reading of the erotic speech through anthologies as political acts, in which the canon is crossed, jumbled, revised and rethought on behalf of the urgent demands brought by contemporary productions and speeches. Our study starts from the works Antologia erótica em tradução (2006), organized by José Paulo Paes, and the Antologia da poesia erótica brasileira (2015), organized by Eliane Robert Moraes, and focuses on two anthologies of dissident minorities: Poesia gay brasileira – Antologia (2017), organized by Amanda Machado and Marina Moura, and Pretumel de chama e gozo: antologia de poesia negro-brasileira erótica (2015), organized by Cuti and Akins Kintê.