Table Of ContentAcknowledgements
I would like to thank my supervisor David Parkin for
his continuous support and encouragement throughout the
writing of this thesis, to Jean Jamin for his inspiration
and trust, to Paul Rabinow for his valuable criticisms, to
Michel Leiris for his interest and cooperation in my work,
and finally to Wolfgang Stengl for the photographs in
chapter seven.
I am indebted to them all for their help and enthusiasm.
C.M.D. London 1988
School of Oriental and African Studies, London.
6
Outline of the Argument
The problem of exoticism and eroticism in the
representtion of the other in French anthropology is
immense and consequently I have not aimed to reach a
definitive conclusion. Instead I have tried to circumscribe
these two notions by presenting moments in the construction
of anthropological knowledge: on the one hand the exotic and
erotic objects of the 1930s, and on the other the position
of this process of objectification in terms of
anthropological concerns both then and now.
The thesis therefore progresses through a number of issues
in order to provide the reader with a variety of approaches
to the main topics. In chapter one, vision is the dominant
metaphor. The Mission Dakar-Djibouti is presented through
and sponsored by (intellectually as well as financially)
visually spectacular events, and is associated with the
panoptic methodology of Marcel Griaule. In chapter two, the
object is the center from which ethnographic, exotic, and
erotic representations are constructed. Chapter three
searches for exoticism in the emergence of an idea of
ethnography. With chapter four the idea is linked to the
illusion of the traveller's hopes in a uphantom Africa, an
ambivalent idealization of the object of desire, epitomized
during that period in the exotic woman. William B.
Seabrook's accounts of his numerous journeys then provide
the exotic and erotic other of Western popular
presuppositions in a particularly succinct form. In chapter
six on Parisian exoticism, the exotic and erotic are seen as
7
focussing on the self in a questioning of the limits of
corporeal identity. The incompatibilities between fieldwork
and the poetic journey are discussed in chapter seven, and
in chapter eight the image is reintroduced in a discussion
on the role of the visual in anthropology.
The ethnographic context is vital for understanding the
processes involved in eroticism and exoticism. It enables
us to contemplate the exotic and the erotic as
transformations of these processes themselves and only
comprehensible through them. We can therefore distinguish
four interrelated phenomena: eroticism! the erotic!
exoticism! the exotic. These fall in turn into two
categories or modes denoted by their adjectival Vicu) or
nominal (isin) forms but which can only be analyzed if
their relationships to one another are disclosed,
questioned, imrnaterialized in the same instance as they
offer reifications, objects, and an illusion of
uauthenticityw . There is alternation: between on the one
hand the adjectival construction of a positivity which
enables identification and, on the other, the equally
conscious attempt (especially in the case of eroticism), to
break down the urge for anthropomorphism, to return to the
idealized source in nothingness, in linforme (Bataille),
in the depths of the dubious, the impure fermentations" of
thought (op.cit.).
U SI le inal allume en mol une allgresse itrangre, je laiine
a' mon excuse comme un exotisme, un exode, un exil, un
exorcismeu (M. Jouhandeau in MDocumentsw 1929!5).
8
Eroticism has no positivity. It can only question, or
rather provide a frame from which questioning can be
initiated. It allows the subject to indulge in both a
public and a private phenomenology of the self, by offering
the guise of two separate discourses whilst often only
providing the former. It is this area in which gender plays
a decisive role and through which eroticism is linked to
sexuality but which I shall not be discussing in the
following pages. 'Sexual pleasure', writes Luce Irigaray,
is engulfed then in the body of the Other. It is 'produced'
because the Other, in part, escapes the grasp of discourse'
(1985:97). Eroticism is enmeshed within its own self-
reproductive and self-finalizing discourse yet it must be
considered in terms of the representations it offers on
sexuality, a sexuality which is related to the identity of
the 'anthropos", and in our study, to the delimitation of
this 'anthropos" in the emergence of French ethnology in the
1920s and 30s. Psychoanalysis is another area, which like
gender, I have chosen to marginalize in the study, a
decision which one is forced to take when the material
proves to be so vast.
From the beginning of this research I found it impossible
to begin with the topics themselves without experiencing the
desperation of a limitless object and the reverse danger of
reifying in order to reduce, essentialize, and remain blind
to the constructedness of such semantically opaque terms.
But in many cases the movement which went from the
conception of an idea to its perception as a material object
was similar to the manner in which ethnographic knowledge in
9
the 1930s in France was itself constituted (cf. Chapter
two). In order to approach eroticism tangentially and
therefore to allow for heterogeneity and a variety of
approaches, I decided to locate it as closely as possible to
a particular set of conditions which in turn would reflect a
process of polarization and distraction (the dialectics of
eroticism). It is here that uDocumentsu, a magazine
published in the late 1920s could offer the location for an
analysis of all the pertinent themes: eroticism, the erotic,
exoticism, the exotic, and last but not least: anthropology.
Therefore the relationship between artists (intellectuals)
and ethnologists in France during that period can be
considered as part of an intellectual exchange which only
finds a fixity in the resulting representations. In this
sense it is not ultimately necessary to insist on the
conscious cross-fertilization between the various groups
(cf. Clifford, 1981) because the historical specificity
relevant to the themes involved a wider spectrum in which
institutionalization in various forms took place (i.e.,
modernism, ethnology, travelling, tourism, etc.). It is
more important to try and define the ethnographic gaze of
the time in terms of the exotic and the erotic as
representations of a wider discourse on eroticism and
exoticism.
To summarize: eroticism offers the discourse through which
sexuality and power can be questioned. However, because of
its semantic ambiguity it alternates in its own position
within the wider discourse. On the one hand it offers what
Baudril].ard has called seduction': the order of
reversibility, of indetermination, built upon irony and
10
ambiguity in the perpetual seduction of the sign (1979:35).
On the other hand, it reinstates a totalising, hierarchical
and dictatorial form of power in which established
categories such as those of master and servant, male and
female, re-emerge. For Baudrillard, femininity is the
principle of incertitude which makes sexual poles va cillate
and oppositions impossible (ibid.:22). Bataille in
contrast, does not regard femininity as the specific aspect
of eroticism (i.e. as isomorphic of seduction), but relates
writing to the body through a process whereby
epistemological discontinuities are paralleled with the
rupture of limits in the physiological understanding of the
self. Eroticism therefore introduces a particular relation
to the object before it returns back to the self, the
subject. This requires distantiation however reductive. It
needs equally to locate its distance in terms of areas: the
most obvious locus being the body of the subject mirrored
through a process of negativity onto a chosen object. Here
ufetishismu
provides a synecdochic remove from the
integrality of the social person, allowing for a greater
investment on the part of the subject in personal fantasies.
Masks are congenial artifices in the paraphQne.lia of
eroticism. They offer the immediate dispossession of
identity and the equally simultaneous acquisition of an
other, the Other. But the subject behind the mask - and
here the process of eroticism reaches its ideal - can
neither reflect the true' self outwards nor is it able to
conceptualize this incapacity in terms of its self-
reflection. It may concede to a particular stereotype, a
particular geometrical constellation in which either
11
symmetry or asymmetry will predominate, but it cannot grasp
the otherness of its own transformation. This otherness is
perceived by the instigator, who in turn is seduced by the
object's recognition of its sense of immateriality. Playing
with dichotomies it dupes them in the moment of their
transformation, emphasizing shades, encouraging gradual
fading, idealistically hoping it will one day be able to
extend the seduction beyond ephemerality back to the
positivity it presupposes, in death. Eroticism therefore
offers the mystery necessary for an erotic elaboration in
which forms are redefined, the uabsoluteu symmetry of nature
is rejected, aestheticism and idealism are parodied, and
where the mask is made to embody the identity of the wearer
as surface and appearance rather than as a reflection of
depth.
The erotic. When the processual transformations in eroticism
are probleinatized (to whatever NieveiM of elaboration) the
erotic takes precedence. The erotic allows us to come to
cerms with eroticism, not in a tautological relationship but
as a representation, a 'materialization (however abstract)
of the particular dialectics of self and other. To render
an object erotic - to create an erotic object, - means to
make it other, in a very literal sense exotic, drawn from
the outside.
The exotic. The introduction of exotic elements into the
erotic allows for a greater reference to space and time.
For example with time, the exotic can be more specifically
12
characterized as being archaic, primitive, embryonic,
primal, etc. In each case the particular emphasis will be
expressed through the choice of phenomena qualified as
exotic in the formalization of desire. In uDocuments R the
exotic, more often archaic than primitive, is reflected in
the articles on prehistory, archeology, ancient religions,
numismatics etc. Another approach is one which places
greater weight on the infantile as an expression of the
indeterminacy of origin. Here in a quote from a novel by
Jean Perrigault the child-like exotic is mixed with the
mythical of fairytales: Le ne"gre nest pas un homme. C'est
un enfant qui aime les contes de f(es. In contrast for
Bataille it is the child who incorporates the fluidity of
perception, the perverse gaze of the ufetishistu, as yet
undiscovered and non-differentiated.
In many cases, the exotic relates to the public spectacle as
the erotic does to the private. Again, uDocumentsw provides
the material for such a generalization in its articles on
slaughterhouses, circus performances, Hollywood films,
music-hall revues, jazz, etc... as well as in its more
intimate problematizations of the boundaries of the self,
religion, belief, mysticism, and the 'ignoble.
When the exotic (and erotic) representations are relocated
within their cultural, historical, and social conditions in
terms of a process, it becomes possible once again to refer
to exoticism, as we did earlier with eroticism.
Exoticism has, in contrast to the specificity of the exotic,
a more general relationship to temporality. Its time-
consiousness works by perpetual suspension. Linked to the
13
introduction of incongruous phenomena it works towards a
redefinition of the anthropos, not so much in the grandiose
manner we associate nowadays with the film industry, but
very often in the perpetual creation of non-identities
through precisely a process of dichotomization. The
recognition of difference or otherness, appears in the split
second it takes for it to inetamorphosize once again, produce
yet another variation on what one would like to consider a
central theme, but which is nothing but the presence of the
previous transformation.
Exoticism idealizes countries, periods in time, women, men,
children, the aged, and in so doing it incorporates both the
'banal' associations of tourism (cf. Segalen) as well as the
more interiorized exoticism of the self. The Paris of the
1920s and 30s with its taste for dissonance, its interest in
the discovery of a new concept of visual and pictural
perception, its gradual dissolution of the fear of the 'Dark
Continent' encouraged by improvements in travelling,
appropriated an amalgam of exotic, archaic, or simply
nostalgic themes. These included oriental religions, magic,
body-language, the search for trance in jazz and musical
shows, and the the 'sauvagerie' of artistes like Josephine
Baker and the Black Birds. Exoticism was founded on
curiosity, on a desire for disorientation, a corporeal
(often erotic) flight towards a utopian sensation believed
to be 'primitive' but in actual fact part invention, part
discovery, and part projection.
14
CHAPTER ONE
1.5
