Exemplum, anti-conquest and heterotopias of Dawson island in florecillas silvestres. Territorio de Magallanes By Mayorino Borgatello

Abstract

Among the several examples and principles that allow us to read the representations of the Magellan Region from the concept of heterotopia (Foucault 1967), there is the concept of heterotopia of deviation which is strongly related to the historical experience on the shores of the Strait. This article explores the relationship between this conceptual variant and the representations of Dawson Island in the book Florecillas salvajes. Territorio de Magallanes (1920), by the priest Mayorino Borgatello. I claim that the work shows the Salesian Mission and the Selk’nam Indians confined in it using the conventions of the ‘exemplum’, and proposing the enclave as a redoubt of good living and dying. The Dawson Island Mission would be, thus, a heterotopia of deviation and compensation at the same time, where natives would have ‘reached human perfection’ and gained ‘paradise’. The heterotopic mark “that Christianity left in the physical and cultural space and geography” (Foucault 1066) of Magallanes, and the representation of the Salesian experience on the island -which in the book summons the idea of “anticonquest” of M. L. Pratt-, erase the marks of this historical experience. Here, paradise and history configure the painful juxtaposition of impossible spaces on the island, which is also a characteristic of heterotopias.

this historical experience. Here, paradise and history configure the painful juxtaposition of impossible spaces on the island, which is also a characteristic of heterotopias.