The Experience of Travel, (De)territorialization and Conflict within Luís Cardoso’s Narratives

Abstract

In Luís Cardoso's narratives, the movements, effective or symbolic, are
powerful and succeed in highlighting all kinds of polarizations: ethnic and religious
differences; social and political divides; the myth and fact; the possibility and the
impossibility. The exercise, which is presented here, analyzes the evolutionary trajectory of
the male Cardosian characters (Takas, Lucas Santiago, Pigafetta and Evaristo de Aquino) in
the light of the previous binomials and, also, framing such displacements in different planes:
that of the journey itself; the fragmentation of the self; identity and exile. It is believed that
the analysis of the different characters makes it possible to revisit a polyphonic mosaic on
what were the experiences and experiences of many Timorese in the last quarters of the 20th
century and in the first decades of the present century.