Carlota’s letters:

traits of subjectivity in the self writing

Abstract

Carlota Joaquina is a historical character, a subject of considerable speculation. Both historians and fiction writers were interested in her life and made impressions about it. However, most of the narratives that deal with her, especially those written by men, present a caricatured image, endowed with the most diverse pejorative characteristics. In this sense, the purpose of this research is an exercise in counter-discursivization, when analyzing the writing of the infanta herself, in her letters, published by the historian Francisca Azevedo (2007). It starts from the premise that the self writing, as postulated by Foucault (1992), reveals traits of subjectivity and, when it comes to the context and the role of the protagonist, it is worth highlighting the importance of her political positioning, as a way of instituting a new order in discourse, based on the concept of parrhesia or the courage of truth.