“Travelling Is Being and Seeing”: National Identity and Visual Strategies in Witold Gombrowicz and Jose Ortega y Gasset

This article explores Witold Gombrowicz within the context of Argentine literature by focusing on a particular tradition, namely travel-writing. Travel-writing is a privileged realm to scrutinize the rhetorical strategies whereby Europeans have “othered” foreign cultures, a process raising questions about cultural encounters, otherness and national identity. The article compares Gombrowicz's depictions of Argentina as an “immature” country, with those of another contemporary traveller, the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset. Whereas Ortega y Gasset is traditionally given the role of cultural referee in a culture which is thought to be inferior or minor, Gombrowicz makes the effort to dissolve that authority, deconstructing the Europe/central cultures, Latin America/secondary cultures opposition.