Slaves & masters, by Gilberto Freyre, has established in Brazilian culture a positive view of racial miscigenation as one of the bases of the nation's stability and distinctiveness. This paper aims to reevaluate Freyre's theory of hybridity, showing how it results from an eroticized relation characterized by the sadism of whites and the masochism of blacks. This idea can be compared to Arthur de Gobineau's theses presented in his Essay on the inequality of human races (1853-1855), shedding light on the way Freyre's work is ambiguosly connected to an important representative of racialist thought.
Gilberto Freyre; hybridity; racialist thought; Gobineau; Slaves & masters