The Space and Debate about the Identity in <em>El Viaje Sedentario</em> (1994) by Gonzalo Celorio

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to study space/time in El Viaje Sedentario (1994) by Gonzalo Celorio, at the same time, to link these spatio-temporal manifestations as part of the debate on identity. For this purpose, literary geography was taken as a theoretical basis: Bajtín and Ottmar Etter's studies on the chronotope and literature in movement. The research proposes the analysis of the movements made by the protagonist throughout the text and the way in which the referents spatio-temporal are closely related to the process of constructing an identity. Finally, it is demonstrated that spaces described in El Viaje Sedentario (1994) are related to the increasing need to identify oneself within a group, for example, the architectural vestiges that are still preserved in Mexico City, and that represent the historical evolution and identity of a people. Thus, Mexico as a whole is visualized as the chronotope of the encounter where present and past converge and where layers of meaning and histories accumulate, from colonial times to the present.