Les Dossiers du GRIHL ()

Certeau cannibale ? Les ressources de la « relation “ethnographique” »

  • Boris Lyon-Caen

DOI
https://doi.org/10.4000/dossiersgrihl.6856
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 2

Abstract

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It is difficult to resist the force of attraction generated by the Italian readings of Léry, Montaigne, Lafitau and Jules Verne. These readings seduce, mainly by their mode of refraction: by endorsing the ethnologists’ discourse. Now Certeau's four alter ego, such as he ventriloquists them, precisely thematize this very question of "the other": the other, the savage, as a puzzling subject of cunning appropriation and as a matrix, providing a "site" to the writer. The present article, conceived in the purpose of disenchantment, circulates between this model of the ice gallery and the model of the Russian dolls - to consider finally the reciprocal engendering of Michel de Certeau, the "ethnographic literature" and its "good savages".

Keywords