Abstract
Abstract This paper analyzes the travel journal of Madeiran author Maria Celina de Sauvayre da Câmara, De Nápoles a Jerusalém [From Naples to Jerusalem],3 dated 1899, from a Cultural Studies perspective. The present study focuses on pilgrimage, a physical and spiritual journey, as a ritualistic and mystical performance which, by means of staging and writing, composes a practice that allows physical and spiritual deterritorialization and reterritorialisation and the negotiation, through the sacred and through religion, of tolerances, concessions and availabilities of the subject regarding the acceptance of the Other’s religious difference, giving rise to new senses. The treatment of pilgrimage as a means of promoting contact with the Other(s), leading to deep processes of self and hetero-knowledge linked to rituals that contemplate sacred and profane space(s) and time(s) and binomial or culturally constructed representations, wherein discourses of power emerge, is inextricable in this discussion. The travel journal is a testimony to the articulations between sacred and profane and a mechanism perpetuating hegemonic and orientalist discourses derived from intrinsic relations and practices of power in the sociocultural context of individuals. We envisage pilgrimage as a transforming practice and a means of (re-)cognition and (re)construction of the Self/Other, through a personal and sacred/profane cartography promoted by writing and exalting the feeling of religious community.
Highlights
The present study focuses on pilgrimage, a physical and spiritual journey, as a ritualistic and mystical performance which, by means of staging and writing, composes a practice that allows physical and spiritual deterritorialization and reterritorialisation and the negotiation, through the sacred and through religion, of tolerances, concessions and availabilities of the subject regarding the acceptance of the Other’s religious difference, giving rise to new senses
We have selected the travel journal of Madeiran writer Maria Celina de Sauvayre da Câmara4 as corpus of our analysis, for it brings up a set of central themes and issues in Cultural Studies
Cultural Studies is a field that makes possible reflection on questions related to identities and the deconstruction of discourses, behaviors and relations of power surrounding the social body
Summary
We have selected the travel journal of Madeiran writer Maria Celina de Sauvayre da Câmara as corpus of our analysis, for it brings up a set of central themes and issues in Cultural Studies Taking as object this 1899 travel diary, entitled From Naples to Jerusalem, we intend to study the representation of the Other and pilgrimage as a ritualistic performance linked to the sacred, intermediated and staged by writing and, loaded with discourses of power that emerge, in a naturalized way, from the author’s contact with other cultures. The author’s pilgrimage, a personal and intimate journey, gradually makes way for the integration with other religious communities, made possible by the contact and understanding of the Other when confronted with its non-instrumental, inner and sacred dimensions
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