Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-2012
Publication Title
Journal of Transnational American Studies
First Page
1
Last Page
21
Additional Publication URL
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/2k72p3w7
Abstract
Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, this article examines the importance of place and gender within constructions of race politics in Carlos Castaneda’s series on shamanism. Championing a “separate reality” predicated on an indigenous worldview, Castaneda’s lessons invited transnational middle-class youth to "journey" alongside him to camposcape—an anachronistic and idealized countryside—as a means to escape the bourgeois values of their homelands and find spiritual fulfillment in a timeless and "authentic" Mexico. Castaneda’s work proposed new viable spaces of difference in Mexico, yet inscribed these spaces with a masculinist discourse that served to neutralize the gender trouble within the counterculture movement in both Mexico and the US.
Rights
This article was originally published in the Journal of Transnational American Studies. The author reserves all rights.
Recommended Citation
Sluis, Ageeth. "Journeys to Others and Lessons of Self: Carlos Castaneda in Camposcape." Journal of Transnational American Studies 4.2 (2012). Available from: http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/facsch_papers/298
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