Abstract

PAPPE WILLENEGGER, Silvia. Crossing the Unknown. Perspectives from the Road. Hist. graf [online]. 2023, n.61, pp.161-204.  Epub Aug 28, 2023. ISSN 1405-0927.  https://doi.org/10.48102/hyg.vi61.485.

In 1934-5, two Soviets travel to the United States, commissioned to make a series of photo reports about “typical America”. The thematic structure of these issues is rather vague in an almost parallel publication, a book which contains much more travel notes. Texts, photographs, photo reports and the book that organize the travel experience, display a road trip that crosses internal borders, reveals differences, and invites a continually updated reading. Today, we not only observe those borders and differences, both visible and invisible; our reading also reveals our own political, social, ethnic, and cultural ruptures. The essay, in addition to studying a part of the trip and all it refers to later readers, influenced by their respective horizons, introduces theoretical aspects about at least two relevant historiographical subjects: the validity of the fusion of horizons, and a distinction that we will have to consider: the difference between ethnic identities and cultural identities.

Keywords : Road trip; Photo report; Borderline; Identity; Fusion of Horizons.

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