Viajar é impreciso, a errância de Maryse Condé

Abstract

Between the journey and the destination, there is an itinerary that turns the beginning and the end into unpredictability. Confessing, in the autobiographies Le coeur à rire et à pleurer (1999) and La vie sans fards (2012), her pursuit of self, Condé reveals, in a way, the development of her search for freedom, for cannibalism as a traveling, writing and life companion. She calls her series of displacements "journeys of discovery" and what she discovers with this movement is that there is no destiny, but the certainty of change. Difference is the key that repeats itself no matter where you are. Unlike the "discovery" of the colonizers, which means "taking possession", the discovery of Condé, from whom so many things had already been taken, takes on another meaning, that of being castaway. Along a path, also followed by Frantz Fanon, Condé distances herself from perspectives of similarity and homogeneity, especially those that depend on imagery. Among the possible ways to reach an expression of the self that are arranged and instructed by literary orders and disorders (by Aimé Césaire, Édouard Glissant…), Condé seeks to articulate her freedom "beyond" them. From her cannibalism, expression would come from the continuous and inevitable feeding of the exteriors (breaking conventional boundaries, borders), which combust with itself, in a kind of exchange. In this search for "freedom", the rush to be "beyond", to deviate from order and disorder, inevitably ran through the issue, or issues, of women. Audre Lorde, who recognizes poetry not as luxury but as a necessity for women, consequently, thinks that "sanctuaries" of feelings are a safe house for difference. Condé's "foreignerness" also echoes in Glória Anzaldua. Condé reveals herself in Le coeur and La vie sans fards through her route, her itinerary, and her movement. Finally, we can note that the imprecision of the journey breaks the edges of order and disorder, opening rizhomes for, possibly, freedom.