Travel Narratives of the French to Brazil: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries

Author(s): Michel De Certeau

Source: Representations, No. 33, Special Issue: The New World (Winter, 1991), pp. 221-226
Published by: University of California Press
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28.
29.
30.
31.

De Certeau, "Voyage et prison,"453. The musicalmetaphoris myown.

De Certeau, La Faiblessede croire,292, 302, 304.
De Certeau, "Ecritures,"in Michelde Certeau,13-14.
Francois Hartog, "L'Ecrituredu voyage,"in Michelde Certeau,127.

MICHEL

DE CERTEAU

Travel Narratives
of the French to Brazil:
Sixteenthto EighteenthCenturies
Subject
is situated at the intersectionof history
RESEARCH
THIS
PROJECT
and anthropology.It proposes to analyze a corpus thatcould be considered as a
series over the long term. This research continues work undertakenin history
and spiritualityin the sixteenthand seventeenthcenturies;possession
(mentalites
in the seventeenthcentury;religious thoughtand practicesin the seventeenth
century;Leibniz; linguisticpoliciesand theoriesat the end of theeighteenthcentury) and in anthropology(possession; sorceryand mysticism;the concept of
"popular culture";investigationsconducted in Brazil,Chile, and Argentinasince
1966; the regular teachingof historicaland culturalanthropologyat the Universityof Paris VII since 1972; the foundationof DIAL, a center for information
on Latin America).
The project presented here originates from several questions that could
receive answersthroughan analysisof the dossier:
1) The informationprovided by the Frenchon Indian ethnicgroups living
in Brazil and on Brazil itselfduring these threecenturiesof relationswithLatin
America puts into question the relationbetween systemsof interpretation(conceptual apparatuses, mythologies,grids of analysis,dominant ideas, and questions) and their historical contexts (institutional,economic, political, social,
professional,and religious).In definingthecorpus under studybya geographical
bipolarity,I hope to locate more easilythe modificationsthatwere introducedin
the productionof textsby changes relativeto the formsof contact(for example
between the Frenchand the Tupis), to the internationalsituation,to the recruitmentof "voyagers,"and so on, and thusto studywhichelementsaffectthe reproductionof a scientificand literarygenre thatgoes back to the medievalitinerarium
(stages in the knowledge of another world) as well as to the ancient odysseysof
pilgrims,heroes, and merchants,and how theybringabout thesechanges. In this

oftheFrenchto Brazil
TravelNarratives

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221

waywe can appreciatetheimpactof historyon a symbolicstructureof knowledge:

the voyage.
2) Travel narrativesalso constituteinterdisciplinarylaboratories in which
categories of analysis,scientificconcepts, and taxonomic systemsdemarcating
and classifyingobservationson social organization,linguisticand juridical formations,technologies,mythsand legends, geography,a new experience of the
body,as well as biological,zoological,and medical factors,can come intoplayand
interact.These areas of exchange and of scientificconfrontation(withinthe science of thattime) are collectionsset in the formof narratives(in a period when
collectionsof objectsand curiosities,likethewrittencollectionof informationand
knowledgetheorized,notably,byFrancisBacon, came intobeing). For thisreason
these narrativesare of interestto a historyof science: in them,mobile configurations of evolvingdisciplinesintersect,grow distinct,and become ordered; in
them,as in the archives,unitsbecome determinatewhichwillexercise theirconstraintson the sciences destined to express themwithinsystems.
thisliteraturerefersto modes in whichan account
3) As scientificnarrativity,
"represents"technicaloperations (observations,controls,rules, procedures) and
theirresults.At once a staging(fiction,in the English sense of the term)and an
ordering (discourse), travel narrativesofferto analysis various combinations
another form
between the practicesof scientificinvestigation(thatars inveniendi,
haunts
writers
from
for
methodus
which
of the quest
Rodolphus Agricola to
Leibniz and Jean-Henri Lambert) and theirfigurationsin a literaryspace-time.
In order preciselyto establishthe statusof thisscientific
writing,I willparticularly
of
the
series
of
the
narrative
a)
operations that characdescription
investigate:
terize a study (in comparing these accounts withother "histories"of scholarly,
medical, chemical discoveries,and so on);1 b) the imaginary,the beliefsand the
ideologies that a rationalitypostulates,produces, or critiques;c) the relationof
these representationsof itineraries(where the "works"of the researchers/voyagers are expressed through"portraits"of visitedsocieties)to the systemsof figuration of the period (thus the literaryaccounts, the cartographicprojections,
and the engraved scenes or figuresobedient to the rules of perspective,to the
hierarchicaltypes of "painting,"togetherform interlacingsof complementary
at once
writings).2How, under the name of travelnarratives,were these fictions,
models and representationsof scientificoperations,produced?
4) Through a specificinvestigation(of the series France/Brazil),it seems to
me possible to grasp the slow formationof whatwillreceivein 1836 the name of
"ethnology"-in other words, to delineate an archeology of ethnologyand to
show how a science of man is detached, modified,and specifiedbetweenthe rupture of the Renaissance and the end of the Enlightenment.The successivedefinitionsof ethnic differenceor of "superstition,"the progressiveelaboration of
concepts of "fable"or of "myth,"the distinctionsbetweenwritingand oralitywill
require special attention.3Indeed, thesedistinctionsinvolvestrategicelementsof
222

REPRESENTATIONS

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Westernculture,enact classificationsthat referback to the social divisionsthat

organize knowledge,and, conversely,are divisionsthathave structuredthe social
agency of science.
5) Finally,since these accounts enter into the more general categoryof a
itis importantto ask,startingfromBrazilian
scienceof the Other or "heterology,"
sources in particularor fromthe confrontationof differentdocuments: a) how
of anothersociety,forexample, thatof theTupi, resistedoccidental
the specificity
of other societies
codifications;b) how the fragmentsof a particularhistoricity
(with,notably,differingrelationsto time,to space, and so on), elementscapable
of inscribingthese societies withina duration, a memory,and a space of their
own, were firstbroughtinto use; c) how,in the textof the ethnographicproject,
oriented initiallytoward reduction and preservation,are irreducible details
(sounds, "words,"singularities)insinuated as faultsin the discourse of comprehension,so thatthetravelnarrativepresentedthekindof organizationthatFreud
posited in ordinarylanguage: a systemin whichindices of an unconscious,that
The historyof voyages
Other of the conscience,emerge in lapsusor witticisms.4
would especially lend itselfto this analysis by toleratingor privilegingas an
"event" that which makes an exception to interpretativecodes. In so doing, it
would constituteonlyone varietyamong manycontemporaryformsof heterological voyages.
Constitutionof the Corpus
Fundamentally,the materialof the corpus willbe provided byvarious
referenceworks.5My researchbears onlyon thenarrativesof travelers,and notexcept for textsunavailable elsewhere-on the innumerable recueilsor histoires
generalesdes voyagesthat attempt,as compilationsor anthologies,to repeat the
ancient cosmographic model or to constitutea totalizationof the encyclopedic
type.6The proposed research will extend thus fromthe voyage of Paulmier de
Gonneville (1504) to the voyages of Alexander von Humboldt (1799-1804):
although the latterauthor was not French,his textswillbe explored because they
marka rupturein the conceptionof ethnologicexploration.In France,thissame
divisionis traced by the worksof Demeunier (1776), Volney(1795), Degerando
(1800), and Jauffret(1803) on ethnology,7and also by the new definitionthen
ou scigiven to "anthropology"(for example, in A.-C. Chavannes'sAnthropologie
encegeneralede l'homme,
1788).
Since thisresearchconcernsan analysisof reportson the actual encounterof
a differentsociety(whatwillbecome a "terrain"at the end of the eighteenthcentury)witha typeof discourse(the narrative),I willprivilegetextsthattreatIndian
ethnicgroups, even iftheirprogressiveeffacementand overlappingwiththe colof the voyagers (and how
onizers, half-breeds,and mulattosin the observations
TravelNarratives
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223

could thishave been otherwise,given the racial mixturescharacteristicof Portuguese colonization and the demographic hecatomb broughtabout by the Europeans) preventme fromlimitingthe corpus to textsthatspeak onlyof Indians. I
will add that,during mydifferentperiods of workin Latin America since 1966,
I have paid particular attentionto the vestigesof Indian cultures and to the
presentsituationof these groups.8
Likewise,it willbe necessaryto investigatethe relationsbetween travelnarrativesand contemporary"philosophers"(for example Jean de Lery and Montaigne, Bougainville and Diderot), mathematicians(see the exemplary case of
Cook), biologists(Lery and Wotton,forexample). On thisaspect of the problem,
substantialstudies already provide a foundation.9I will relyon manuscriptsin
the National Archives(colonial series),the Archivesof the FrenchOverseas Terof the colonies), and the Archivesof Foreign
ritories(deposits on fortifications
Affairs(memoirs and documents) only to illuminate particular dossiers. The
same will be true for the archives preserved at Lisbon (Biblioteca nacional), at
Porto (Museu de etnografiae hist6ria),at Rio de Janeiro (Institutohist6ricoe
geografico brasileiro), and at Recife (InstitutoJoaquim Nabuco de pesquisas
sociais), where I have made preliminaryinquiries,relyingon importantinformation fromBrazilian historians.?1

Methodology
There is an abundant scientificliteratureon this subject.1 The richness of these studies and of this accumulated material enables and calls for a
differentwayof reading and discussingthesetravelnarratives.In additionto the
research,whichaims to constructthe corpus definedabove (a corpus thathas not
been the object of any of the studiescited), I wishto indicatethreeconcernsthat
willhelp clarifymymethodology.
1) The firstinvolvesthe treatmentof the texts.The studiesthatI have published and the teaching that I have regularlyengaged in at the Centre international de semiotique in Urbino and in Paris since 1969 lead me to thinkthatit is
possible to associate a semioticanalysisof documentswitha historicalproblematic. As narratives,these textsparticularlylend themselvesto studiesconcerning
enunciation,the modalities and the functioningof the text. In this
narrativity,
I
work,a narrativeinstrumenway, hope to definea literarystructureof scientific
kind
of
in
sum
a
of
writingrelatingto the processof research
tality investigation,
Alain
Girardon nineteenth-century
more than to itsresults.The workof
diaries,
of Tzvetan Todorov on the fantasticnovel duringthe same period, or of Philippe
Lejeune on autobiographyalreadydemonstratethehistoricalinterestof thiskind
of analysis.
2) The identificationand the historicalvariants of this scientific"genre"
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authorize comparison with other kinds of narrativesof travel and discovery:

scholarly,chemical, astronomical,mystical,and so on. In this way, a kind of
research and discourse thatcrosses distinctfields,and opens the objectivepossibilityof interdisciplinarywork, becomes available. Between differentiatedsciences, a historicalcohesion appears thatconcernsnot onlypostulates,ideologies,
and objects of knowledgecommon to these sciencesbut a mannerof proceeding
linked to a manner of writing,that is to say,to a method. Doubtless, referring
resultsto the manner of "producing"them(thatis to say,to the discoveryand the
manifestationof these results)corresponds to an essential aspect of modernity,
to an historicizationof knowledge(whichprecedes theoriesof history).12
3) Finally,research already undertaken to elaborate a concept of "science/
fiction,"thatis to say not a reductionof science to fictionbut a mixtureof narrationand scientificpractices,leads me to tryto locate in travelnarrativesthe forms
that this combinationof the rules of literaryproduction and those controlling
scientificproductiontakes.The travelnarrativeoscillatesbetweenthesetwopoles
and permitsthe elaborationof a theoryof thisassociation:the travelnarrativeis
a text of observationhaunted by its Other, the imaginary.In this way it correIt appears to
sponds to its object, a "culture"haunted by its "savage" exteriority.
offera particularlyinterestingfield for the constructionof an epistemological
model that "legitimates"the actual functioningof the human sciences. Current
research(forexample at the Departmentof Philosophyat CambridgeUniversity)
on the relationbetween scientificdiscourse and metaphor,beliefand the imaginary(such as the workof Gerald Holton on the centralrole of themein scientific
creativity)suggesta promisingsimultaneityof workin thisdirection.13
Through the travel narrative,an ideal of science becomes available for
analysis,and with it a configurationof the ensemble of knowledge. But only a
local study,partialand precise,can permitthedetailed disassemblingof thesubtle
and the
mechanismsthat articulatebetween themselvesnarrativity,
scientificity,
of
each.
efficacy
-Translated by KatharineStreip
Notes
1. See, for example, the Ortusmedicinaeof Jean Baptistevan Helmont; Le Labyrinthe
du
mondeet le paradisdu coeurof Comenius, the heuristicnotationsof Girard Desargues
on his "projective"geometry,and so on.
1. I will rely here on the work of Erwin Panofsky,Francois de Dainville, and Jacques
Guillerme.
3. I have already studied thistheme in the case ofJean de Lery.See Michel de Certeau,
TheWriting
trans.Tom Conley (New York, 1988), 209-43.
ofHistory,
4. I have already dedicated two studies to the way in which Freud's contributioninter287-354.
rogatesand illuminatesthe workof the historian;see TheWriting
ofHistory,
5. See Georges Raeders and Edson Nery da Fonseca, Bibliographiefranco-bresilienne
(Rio
Travel Narrativesof the French to Brazil

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225

de Janeiro, 1960); Anatole Louis Garraux, Bibliographie

bresilienne:
Cataloguedesouvetlatinsrelatifs
au Bresil,1500-1898, 2nd ed. (Rio de Janeiro,1962). It is
ragesfrancais
of course necessaryto add Edward GodfreyCox, A Reference
Guideto theLiterature
of
and
of
the
4
vols.
Travel,
(Seattle, 1935-38);
catalogue O
Bibliotheque nationale,Hissivererumafricanarum,
etnoviorbis. ..
toriaexotica,peregrina,
asiaticarum,
americanarum,
etnavigationes
variae,1500-1864. These twocollecitinera,seuperegrinationes
scriptores,
tions complete the two preceding and permitme to establishan initiallistof French
voyagesto Brazil.
6. See Franco Simone, "La Notion d'Encyclopedie: Elementcaracteristiquede la Renaissance francaise,"in Peter Sharratt,ed., FrenchRenaissanceStudies,1540-1570 (Edinburgh, 1976), 234-62.
7. See Sergio Moravia,La scienziadell'uomonelsettecento
(Bari, It., 1970).
8. See Michel de Certeau, "The Politicsof Silence: The Long March of the Indians," in
Discourseon theOther,trans.Brian Massumi (Minneapolis, 1986), 225-33.
Heterologies:
9. Urs Bitterli,Die Wilderund die Zivilisierten
(Munich, 1976); Sergio Landucci, Ifilosofie
i selvaggi,1580-1780 (Bari, It., 1972); Moravia,La scienziadell'uomo;Michele Duchet,
ethistoire
au siecledesLumieres(Paris, 1971).
Anthropologie
do Brasilna Europa (Rio de
10. See especiallyJose Honorio Rodrigues,Asfontesda historia
XVII
del
Brasil,
(Mexico City,1963); Flosiglo
Janeiro, 1950); Rodrigues,Historiografia
restan Fernandes, Organizacaosocial dos Tupinambd(Sao Paulo, 1963); Fernandes, A
funcaosocialda guerrana sociedadeTupinambd
(Sao Paulo, 1952).
11. Since the pioneering work of Atkinson,in particular,see the workof Baudet, Boxer,
Bucher, Gandia, Gerbi, Gove, Hanke, Buarque de Holanda, Manuel, Morison, Penvuepar l'Europe(Paris, 1976).
rose, Skelton,not forgettingthe catalogue L'Amerique
12. Here we can extend to scientificwritingthe perspectivesopened by Lucien Braun,
de la philosophie
Histoirede l'histoire
(Paris, 1973); Claude-GilbertDubois, La Conception
de l'histoire
en Franceau XVIe siecle(Paris, 1977); or byDonald R. Kelley,Foundations
of
ModernHistoricalScholarship
(New York, 1970).
13. The same is true for historicalworkssuch as Charles Webster,TheGreatInstauration:
1626-1660 (London, 1975); and BettyJ.T. Dobbs, The
Science,Medicine,and Reform,
Foundations
(Cambridge, 1975).
Alchemy
ofNewton's

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