Paradoxes of Intimacy: Play and the Ethics of Invisibility in North-east Brazil

Abstract

AbstractIn this article I examine ordinary ethical practices that underpin intimate relations in the Brazilian state of Maranhão. I focus ethnographically on jealousy and seduction as complementary forms of play, which simultaneously affirm and challenge such aspects of emotional relatedness as trust and love. I argue that since a measure of concealment is inherent in both these play-forms, they render invisible those actions that challenge conventional moral injunctions, such as sexual infidelity. I consequently offer an ethnographic theory of ‘invisibility’ by which opacity, uncertainty and paradox become intrinsic to the emergence of intimate relations as ethical practices in their own right.