Flora Tristan’s story: tension between the being and seeming of a pariah

Abstract

In this paper, we will present Flora Tristan's travel narrative, Peregrinações de uma pária [Peregrinations of a Pariah] (2000 [1838]). The aim is to apprehend, from the sensitive aspects of the work, its enunciative project and, more specifically, the construction of its tensive arc (MANCINI, 2020). This is an effort to conceive the prejudices related to being a woman, especially with regard to the matrimonial sphere, understood from the militant's point of view. The usage of tensive semiotics will allow us to reflect on the atonal and tonic moments of the account of a nineteenth-century woman, conscious of her situation: having no right to divorce from her husband, to paternal inheritance, to be free. We emphasize, above all, an understanding of sensitive strategies to make the proposed enunciatee aware of the suffering faced by those on the margins of society, based on the degrees of veridiction and the notion of the beau geste. Here is the story of a pariah from society, not allowed to live as her true self.