Displacement of the I/Eye: Gaze and masculinity in some Augusto D'Halmar's travels

Abstract

This paper offers a reading ofAugusto D'Halmar's Sombra del humo en el espejo and "Andamos para no llegar" based on the hypothesis that in these texts the subject is constructed through displacement. The orientalist discourse and on the other hand of the discourses on decadence and degeneration are the ideological contexts out of which such an unstable subject is formulated. The traveller, and specifically the male traveller, functions as the trope from and through which the above mentioned discourses are articulated. In these texts the male traveller bears the mark of a difference —his gaze which places him within a different fraternity.