Domestiquer l’Orient. La contre-histoire balzacienne de la domestication

Abstract

This article contributes to the history of animals and particularly to the history of the points of view on domestication. While the relationship to animals is still seen a territory of naturalness, this article shows, from Balzac’s short story Une Passion dans le désert’s example, that the relationships between men and animals are as social and political as those between men. The extraordinary encounter of a French soldier and a panther during the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt questions the contemporary thesis on domestication, creates an allegory of practical and fantasmatic relationships between colonizers and indigenous, while inventing other possible and alternative relationships between animals and men.

Keywords

• domestication
• animal history
• Balzac
• zoopoetic
• orientalism
• animal studies