Para Ingles Ver: Sex, Secrecy and Scholarship in the Yoruba-Atlantic World
J. Lorand Matory Paper Excerpt: Not only ditties, like Pedrito’s, but also clichés reveal social history. The Brazilian expression para inglês ver (“for the English to see”) describes acts of subterfuge and self-camouflage--presenting a façade to outsiders and dominant parties who might respond with contempt or punishment if they knew the truth. One story reports that the expression originated during the 19th century, after the British outlawed the maritime slave trade to Brazil in 1930 and slave traders developed means of camouflaging the slave ships to avoid capture by the British navy. The false appearance of an innocent maritime commerce was “for the English to see” (see esp. Fry 1982:17). That the English are chosen as the paradigm case of the critical outsider evokes both the specific power of the Anglo-Saxon gaze in the political history of Brazil and the general fact that national identities have always taken shape in a transnational context. |