On the Margins of Essay Reflection, the “Insular Subject” Trying to Keep afloat Among Scars of History

Abstract

This work addresses the construction of otherness through the landscape in works related to geographical displacement in paths permeated by contexts of violence and authoritarianism at the end of the 20th century, produced by Claudio Magris: Danube and Microcosmos. Based on travel literature scholars (Monga and Ette), as well as theorists such as Collot and Jullien, for whom landscape mediates diversity and translates subjectivity, Magris' work shows the image of a man fragmented in the face of the setbacks of history, and whose exit corresponds to a search for “desubjectivation”. Far from being a minor genre, travel literature is fundamental to current literary studies, where the action of rethinking oneself and knowing how to live together are resources capable of effectively transforming an increasingly transnational world, where, as Kristeva warns, it is imperative that each individual recognizes the “foreigner” who lives in himself.