A invenção das fronteiras platinas a partir do relato de Arsène Isabelle

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the representations produced by French traveler Louis Frédéric Arsène Isabelle about Platine America based on his travelogue, written after his expedition through the region between 1830 and 1834, and published in 1835. From the perspective of cultural history and travelogue studies, I understand the work as a discursive construction permeated by 19th-century ideological categories, such as the ideas of civilization, barbarism, modernity, progress, and savagery. The central problem is to analyze how these representations contributed to the invention of symbolic, cultural, and identity boundaries in the southern Platine region. The study articulates different dimensions: the intellectual trajectory of the traveler, the political and social context of both Europe and America in the 19th century, the narrative codes of the travelogue genre, and the subsequent circulation of the work. The main source used is the version Viagem ao Rio da Prata e ao Rio Grande do Sul, published by the digital library of the Federal Senate in 2006. As support, versions from 1943 and 1983 are also analyzed, whose paratexts are analyzed as devices that shaped the reception of Isabelle's work in the region. The results show that Arsène Isabelle invented an image of the region based on his 19th century European cultural universe, reinforcing its hierarchies and classifications, especially in the opposition between civilization and barbarism. His description of the gauchos, presented as savage, violent, and responsible for the region's backwardness, dialogues with debates constructed a posteriori by Platine historiographies and literature. This reinforces the argument that Isabelle's representations were disseminated and received in different spheres. The research thus highlights how a European travelogue can act as a mechanism of power, producing meanings, legitimizing hierarchies, and acting in the historical invention of the Platine frontiers.