Isaltina Campo Belo: a foreign body in the line of flight

Abstract

The emergence of cultural studies in the field of humanities raised a range of concepts whose meaning is close to categorizations that arise from the field of geographical research. In consequence, it follows, in this aspect of literary studies, the assumption of a wide taxonomy of spatial connotation often eager to embrace a range of current phenomena whose occurrence is weaved under the insignia of mobility, travel experiences and diaspora, the unceasing traffic, and adrift identities. Having Susan Stanford Friedman (1998) as theoretical contribution, this study analyzes the figuration of a female body in travel in the fiction Isaltina Campo Belo by Conceição Evaristo. The critical investigation focuses on the narrative resources mobilized by the author with the purpose of representing a black lesbian female character, whose process of subjectivation, or self-discovery, is produced under the coercion of multiple oppressions, while this female subject activates different positions as she puts herself in transit, or in line of flight.