‘De-exoticizing’ the Exotic: Victor Segalen’s Aesthetics of Difference

Khadija Belhiah

doi:10.17722/jell.v13i1.425

Abstract

If Segalen’s radical approach to the exotic has earned him the appreciation and the consideration of such authors as Michel Leyris, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Abdelkébir Khatibi, and others, it has gone almost unnoticed by Edward Said in his Orientalism, who mentions him only once in passing, and dismissively so, among writers who were not ignorant of “the wisdom of the east” such as Pound, Eliot, Yeats, Arthur Waley, Fenellosa, and Paul Claudel. Although Said does not inflict on Segalen the bad treatment he inflicted on some other French Orientalists, and in fact puts him alongside such ‘venerable’ figures as Pound, Yeats, and Claudel, one would expect him to make a more honourable mention of Segalen whose views on colonialism and exoticism were radically opposed to the then-accepted colonial views on such issues. Whether this was simply an oversight on the part of Said or an intended critical dismissal, it is, nonetheless, a fact that Segalen is becoming more and more ‘incontournable’, difficult to ignore, overlook, or dismiss, and this, for the exceptional views he expresses on the question of exoticism and colonialism.

Highlights

Segalen’s Essai sur l’Exotisme, Une Esthétique Du divers [sic], the posthumously published collection of often disjointed and fragmentary notes and letters to friends, has lately become a must in post-colonial studies
At times the outlandish nature of some of the declarations Segalen makes, the essay remains very clear in its purpose: it stands as a severe critique of alterity, difference within the ethos of imperialism and colonialism, and its attendant romantic conception of exoticism put forth by the sovereign western self
This tradition is represented by such nineteen-century writers, or as he calls them, ‘pseudo exots’, like Pierre Loti, Alphonse de la Martine, and George Sand, among others, who thought of nature as the reflecting mirror of their ego

Summary

Introduction

Segalen’s Essai sur l’Exotisme, Une Esthétique Du divers [sic], the posthumously published collection of often disjointed and fragmentary notes and letters to friends, has lately become a must in post-colonial studies.

Results

Conclusion