Passaporte para o estranhamento: Lygia Fagundes Telles e a nova China de Mao Tsé-Tung

Abstract

This study analyzes Lygia Fagundes Telles’s perspective on the so-called “New China” during her participation in the Brazilian delegation that visited the People’s Republic of China in 1960. Based on the chronicles collected in Passaporte para a China and A Disciplina do Amor, it investigates the perceptions, estrangements, and interpretations produced by the author when confronted with a country undergoing an accelerated process of social, political, and ideological reconstruction under the leadership of Mao Tse-Tung. The study articulates travel literature, cultural history, and representations of the other, examining how the chronicler, aware of her Western repertoire, confronts and reassesses stereotypes, affections, and expectations upon coming into contact with everyday life in China. The analysis addresses collective discipline, which was perceived in hygiene practices, aesthetic uniformization, control over private life, and policies of intellectual reeducation, highlighting how Lygia’s experience reveals both the mechanisms of the Maoist project and the limits and tensions of the foreign gaze.