Choses d'apparat: The poetics of dress in Michel Leiris's L'Afrique fantôme

Abstract

Abstract Michel Leiris's treatment of clothing in L'Afrique fantôme, his diary account of his journey through Africa as part of an ethnographic expedition, demonstrates how dress habits constitute a value-laden system. Clothing belongs to a category of objects, which includes talismans and masks, that Leiris calls 'choses d'apparat' because of their tendency to acquire a ceremonial significance. As such, they mark indelibly the travellers' first impressions of the men and women they encounter. Leiris's substantial body of autobiographical writing shows that his interest in clothing is not limited to his travels but goes back to his most distant childhood memories, in which items of dress acquire a distinct theatrical significance. The present study examines the descriptions of dress in L'Afrique fantôme in terms of what they reveal about the respective attitudes of the European travellers and local populations they meet. It explains also how dress habits function as a bearer of cultural values and as a mediator in situations of intercultural contact. It shows finally how dress plays a key part in Leiris's critique of exoticism and colonial stereotypes, by means of which he engages in a different kind of human exchange than that practiced by his scientifically trained colleagues.