Michael Sheringham
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198158431
- eISBN:
- 9780191673306
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198158431.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Michel Leiris is an autobiographer who elicits engagement from the reader through well-connected memories, words, and experiences. He writes with concern for otherness, desiring to become the other. ...
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Michel Leiris is an autobiographer who elicits engagement from the reader through well-connected memories, words, and experiences. He writes with concern for otherness, desiring to become the other. He is very clear in his expressions and is partial to small things. This chapter presents the work of Michel Leiris called La Regle du jeu, which consists of four volumes, all comprising a cornerstone of 20th-century autobiography.Less
Michel Leiris is an autobiographer who elicits engagement from the reader through well-connected memories, words, and experiences. He writes with concern for otherness, desiring to become the other. He is very clear in his expressions and is partial to small things. This chapter presents the work of Michel Leiris called La Regle du jeu, which consists of four volumes, all comprising a cornerstone of 20th-century autobiography.
Tim Watson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190852672
- eISBN:
- 9780190852702
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190852672.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
In this chapter I investigate the paradox that the writer who most vividly embodied the exchange between literature and anthropology during this period, Michel Leiris, worked hard to maintain ...
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In this chapter I investigate the paradox that the writer who most vividly embodied the exchange between literature and anthropology during this period, Michel Leiris, worked hard to maintain separate identities and spaces for his life as an anthropologist (working at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris) and as a writer and memoirist (working at home). While Leiris came of age professionally and aesthetically during the fertile interwar period in France of “ethnographic surrealism,” his anthropological writings in the period after World War II show a surprising fidelity to disciplinary protocols. The chapter argues that Leiris’s ethnography of the Francophone Caribbean, Contacts de civilisations en Martinique et en Guadeloupe, tries to subvert those protocols, turning from a social science survey into something like a novel of manners by the end. Ultimately, however, this literary turn falls prey to tropes of imperial romance that Leiris ostensibly seeks to undercut.Less
In this chapter I investigate the paradox that the writer who most vividly embodied the exchange between literature and anthropology during this period, Michel Leiris, worked hard to maintain separate identities and spaces for his life as an anthropologist (working at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris) and as a writer and memoirist (working at home). While Leiris came of age professionally and aesthetically during the fertile interwar period in France of “ethnographic surrealism,” his anthropological writings in the period after World War II show a surprising fidelity to disciplinary protocols. The chapter argues that Leiris’s ethnography of the Francophone Caribbean, Contacts de civilisations en Martinique et en Guadeloupe, tries to subvert those protocols, turning from a social science survey into something like a novel of manners by the end. Ultimately, however, this literary turn falls prey to tropes of imperial romance that Leiris ostensibly seeks to undercut.
Vincent Debaene
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226106908
- eISBN:
- 9780226107233
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226107233.003.0009
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Unlike many other French ethnographers, Michel Leiris published his “literary” work, L’Afrique fantôme, before his more scientifically oriented ethnographic texts. Yet, in this sprawling and ...
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Unlike many other French ethnographers, Michel Leiris published his “literary” work, L’Afrique fantôme, before his more scientifically oriented ethnographic texts. Yet, in this sprawling and introspective diary, Leiris constantly asserts that ethnographic research must end in failure. This chapter examines the broad stakes of L’Afrique fantôme and suggests that book’s interest lies less in the failure of the voyage it recounts than in the continuous sense of starting over and the ever deeper sense of movement that emerges in its pages. Leiris’s sense of disillusionment and his experience of the impossibility of continuing his journey as he had originally imagined it are formalized in a metaphor of theatricality that this chapter examines at length by considering how it is ultimately tied to Leiris’s utopian desire for a living document that is both rhetorical and anthropological.Less
Unlike many other French ethnographers, Michel Leiris published his “literary” work, L’Afrique fantôme, before his more scientifically oriented ethnographic texts. Yet, in this sprawling and introspective diary, Leiris constantly asserts that ethnographic research must end in failure. This chapter examines the broad stakes of L’Afrique fantôme and suggests that book’s interest lies less in the failure of the voyage it recounts than in the continuous sense of starting over and the ever deeper sense of movement that emerges in its pages. Leiris’s sense of disillusionment and his experience of the impossibility of continuing his journey as he had originally imagined it are formalized in a metaphor of theatricality that this chapter examines at length by considering how it is ultimately tied to Leiris’s utopian desire for a living document that is both rhetorical and anthropological.
Jonathan Evans
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474400176
- eISBN:
- 9781474426909
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474400176.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter focuses on Davis’s literary relationship with Michel Leiris. Davis has translated three of Leiris’s books, including two volumes of his autobiography La Règle du jeu. Davis’s translation ...
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This chapter focuses on Davis’s literary relationship with Michel Leiris. Davis has translated three of Leiris’s books, including two volumes of his autobiography La Règle du jeu. Davis’s translation strategy in this case is quite unusual and includes the retention of French words in the English text in order to keep chains of alliteration. The translation therefore breaks with convention in many ways. Davis’s work also contains stories that refer to Leiris, but the greatest point of affinity between them is how they both play with the poetic function of language, though through a series of close readings, it is shown that Davis uses this play to open up possibilities for reading while Leiris uses it as part of an autobiographical process.Less
This chapter focuses on Davis’s literary relationship with Michel Leiris. Davis has translated three of Leiris’s books, including two volumes of his autobiography La Règle du jeu. Davis’s translation strategy in this case is quite unusual and includes the retention of French words in the English text in order to keep chains of alliteration. The translation therefore breaks with convention in many ways. Davis’s work also contains stories that refer to Leiris, but the greatest point of affinity between them is how they both play with the poetic function of language, though through a series of close readings, it is shown that Davis uses this play to open up possibilities for reading while Leiris uses it as part of an autobiographical process.
Vincent Debaene
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226106908
- eISBN:
- 9780226107233
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226107233.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This book takes as its object of analysis the relationship between literature and anthropology in France during the twentieth century, a moment that marked ethnography’s rise to prominence as a field ...
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This book takes as its object of analysis the relationship between literature and anthropology in France during the twentieth century, a moment that marked ethnography’s rise to prominence as a field science as well as the discipline’s openness to literary modes of writing that stood alongside more conventional anthropological monographs. The book argues that this openness to literature served as a textual counterpart to the institutionalization of anthropology in France, which occurred after the discipline publicly cut its ties with travel writing as a literary genre in order to become a “serious” scientific endeavor. Chapters approach this paradox through a striking observation about ethnographic writing in France beginning in the 1930s: upon their return from fieldwork, many ethnographers produced two written accounts of their research experience, the first being a rather dry, scholarly monograph, and the second a more “literary” text that was much more difficult to classify since it was too aesthetically and philosophically stylized to be a pure ethnographic documentary of everyday life. The book demonstrates how these anthropological “second books” represent a uniquely French phenomenon and bespeak an engagement with a broader conversation between science and literature in France. Chapters engage a variety of texts, from Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes tropiques and Michel Leiris’s L’Afrique fantôme to works by Marcel Griaule and Marcel Mauss, ending with a reading of Roland Barthes’s anthropologically inspired criticism that points to how literature and the social sciences in France jointly created and participated in the same intellectual field throughout the twentieth century.Less
This book takes as its object of analysis the relationship between literature and anthropology in France during the twentieth century, a moment that marked ethnography’s rise to prominence as a field science as well as the discipline’s openness to literary modes of writing that stood alongside more conventional anthropological monographs. The book argues that this openness to literature served as a textual counterpart to the institutionalization of anthropology in France, which occurred after the discipline publicly cut its ties with travel writing as a literary genre in order to become a “serious” scientific endeavor. Chapters approach this paradox through a striking observation about ethnographic writing in France beginning in the 1930s: upon their return from fieldwork, many ethnographers produced two written accounts of their research experience, the first being a rather dry, scholarly monograph, and the second a more “literary” text that was much more difficult to classify since it was too aesthetically and philosophically stylized to be a pure ethnographic documentary of everyday life. The book demonstrates how these anthropological “second books” represent a uniquely French phenomenon and bespeak an engagement with a broader conversation between science and literature in France. Chapters engage a variety of texts, from Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes tropiques and Michel Leiris’s L’Afrique fantôme to works by Marcel Griaule and Marcel Mauss, ending with a reading of Roland Barthes’s anthropologically inspired criticism that points to how literature and the social sciences in France jointly created and participated in the same intellectual field throughout the twentieth century.
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804768993
- eISBN:
- 9780804773430
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804768993.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
A confession is an act of pouring out personal memories and thoughts, an interpretation of the past, a reenvisioning of one's life, a reinvention of oneself. This chapter explores male confessions by ...
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A confession is an act of pouring out personal memories and thoughts, an interpretation of the past, a reenvisioning of one's life, a reinvention of oneself. This chapter explores male confessions by looking at the confessional texts of St. Augustine, Michel Leiris, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In particular, it examines perspectivity and redemption in St. Augustine's Confessions and Leiris's Manhood, as well as voyeurism, voyeuristic gazes, and male intimacies in the confessions of Leiris and Rousseau. The chapter also shows that Leiris's Manhood, Rousseau's Confessions, and the Dadaist manifesto “Men Before the Mirror” illustrate how important mirrors have become to male confessants in modernity, beginning with the Renaissance. Finally, it considers the danger and pleasure associated with confessional writings.Less
A confession is an act of pouring out personal memories and thoughts, an interpretation of the past, a reenvisioning of one's life, a reinvention of oneself. This chapter explores male confessions by looking at the confessional texts of St. Augustine, Michel Leiris, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In particular, it examines perspectivity and redemption in St. Augustine's Confessions and Leiris's Manhood, as well as voyeurism, voyeuristic gazes, and male intimacies in the confessions of Leiris and Rousseau. The chapter also shows that Leiris's Manhood, Rousseau's Confessions, and the Dadaist manifesto “Men Before the Mirror” illustrate how important mirrors have become to male confessants in modernity, beginning with the Renaissance. Finally, it considers the danger and pleasure associated with confessional writings.
Edith Wyschogrod
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823226061
- eISBN:
- 9780823235148
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823226061.003.0026
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
Two objections arise repeatedly in connection with Emmanuel Levinas's philosophy of language. First, if ethics is beyond language, then ethics remains silent, and ...
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Two objections arise repeatedly in connection with Emmanuel Levinas's philosophy of language. First, if ethics is beyond language, then ethics remains silent, and rationally derived moral norms are meaningless. Language has become a liability, a fall, and ethics an inchoate relation to the other. A second standard reproach directed at Levinas is that he disparages the aesthetic by relegating art and poetry to a status inferior to that of philosophy and, a fortiori, to ethics. When these objections are taken together, the problems that arise in connection with Levinas's view of religious language can be resolved, at least partially, because important clues for the interpretation of ethico-religious expression can be found in the uses of literary language. This claim can be established by turning to Levinas's treatment of contemporary French writers, specifically Marcel Proust, Michel Leiris, and Maurice Blanchot.Less
Two objections arise repeatedly in connection with Emmanuel Levinas's philosophy of language. First, if ethics is beyond language, then ethics remains silent, and rationally derived moral norms are meaningless. Language has become a liability, a fall, and ethics an inchoate relation to the other. A second standard reproach directed at Levinas is that he disparages the aesthetic by relegating art and poetry to a status inferior to that of philosophy and, a fortiori, to ethics. When these objections are taken together, the problems that arise in connection with Levinas's view of religious language can be resolved, at least partially, because important clues for the interpretation of ethico-religious expression can be found in the uses of literary language. This claim can be established by turning to Levinas's treatment of contemporary French writers, specifically Marcel Proust, Michel Leiris, and Maurice Blanchot.
Tim Watson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190852672
- eISBN:
- 9780190852702
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190852672.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
The introduction summarizes the process of decolonization in the British and French Empires and the role of the United States. Anthropology became a more professionalized discipline, raising the ...
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The introduction summarizes the process of decolonization in the British and French Empires and the role of the United States. Anthropology became a more professionalized discipline, raising the barriers to interdisciplinary conversations between anthropologists and other intellectuals and making it less desirable for colonial intellectuals to choose anthropology, as a significant number had done earlier in the twentieth century. Nevertheless, exchanges continued between literature and anthropology. I argue that the literary-anthropological dynamics of the 1950s and 1960s were prefigured by three examples in the 1930s and 1940s: Zora Neale Hurston’s fieldwork among African Americans in the US South, Michel Leiris’s account of Marcel Griaule’s 1930s anthropological expedition from Dakar to Djibouti, and the establishment of the Mass-Observation program to document British everyday life. The introduction analyzes Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes tropiques as a key text in the flourishing of a new literary anthropology in the 1950s.Less
The introduction summarizes the process of decolonization in the British and French Empires and the role of the United States. Anthropology became a more professionalized discipline, raising the barriers to interdisciplinary conversations between anthropologists and other intellectuals and making it less desirable for colonial intellectuals to choose anthropology, as a significant number had done earlier in the twentieth century. Nevertheless, exchanges continued between literature and anthropology. I argue that the literary-anthropological dynamics of the 1950s and 1960s were prefigured by three examples in the 1930s and 1940s: Zora Neale Hurston’s fieldwork among African Americans in the US South, Michel Leiris’s account of Marcel Griaule’s 1930s anthropological expedition from Dakar to Djibouti, and the establishment of the Mass-Observation program to document British everyday life. The introduction analyzes Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes tropiques as a key text in the flourishing of a new literary anthropology in the 1950s.
Vincent Debaene
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226106908
- eISBN:
- 9780226107233
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226107233.003.0007
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter situates ethnographic fieldwork in relation to changing conceptions of travel and travel literature in France. In the early twentieth century, grand voyages from the Romantic period fell ...
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This chapter situates ethnographic fieldwork in relation to changing conceptions of travel and travel literature in France. In the early twentieth century, grand voyages from the Romantic period fell out of favor and exoticist literature gained in popularity thanks to developments in the press and mass media. Chapter 6 examines how the idea of a “true” voyage became the site of an intense symbolic competition between travelers and how French anthropologists dealt with this competition. Highlighting the communicability of scientific discourse and its pedagogical relationship to a broad public, they sought to constitute their discipline against tourism and the exoticism of travel writing as a popular genre. Drawing on examples from Michel Leiris’s disillusionment with the model of cultural initiation in L’Afrique fantôme and from Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques, the chapter ultimately shows how both authors gradually realized that the commonly held idea of travel could not provide a framework for ethnography, and that anthropological fieldwork in fact implied renouncing the idea of the voyage.Less
This chapter situates ethnographic fieldwork in relation to changing conceptions of travel and travel literature in France. In the early twentieth century, grand voyages from the Romantic period fell out of favor and exoticist literature gained in popularity thanks to developments in the press and mass media. Chapter 6 examines how the idea of a “true” voyage became the site of an intense symbolic competition between travelers and how French anthropologists dealt with this competition. Highlighting the communicability of scientific discourse and its pedagogical relationship to a broad public, they sought to constitute their discipline against tourism and the exoticism of travel writing as a popular genre. Drawing on examples from Michel Leiris’s disillusionment with the model of cultural initiation in L’Afrique fantôme and from Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques, the chapter ultimately shows how both authors gradually realized that the commonly held idea of travel could not provide a framework for ethnography, and that anthropological fieldwork in fact implied renouncing the idea of the voyage.
Alison James
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- October 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198859680
- eISBN:
- 9780191892059
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198859680.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter examines the surrealists’ deployment of the verbal or photographic document as a model that is simultaneously poetic and anti-literary. The surrealists eventually depart from their ...
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This chapter examines the surrealists’ deployment of the verbal or photographic document as a model that is simultaneously poetic and anti-literary. The surrealists eventually depart from their initial understanding of automatic writing as a “snapshot” that captures uncensored thought. Instead, their writings of the late 1920s and 1930s increasingly frame a range of poetic and visual documents within a multi-layered ethnographic discourse, whether in prose texts that attend to urban experience (Aragon’s Le Paysan de Paris, Breton’s Nadja), or, on the margins of the official surrealist group, in the work of Bataille’s Documents magazine. Finally, Michel Leiris’s reflections on ethnographic display simultaneously reveal the importance of contextualizing evidence and highlight the problematic collection practices that transform indigenous artifacts into cultural “documents.”Less
This chapter examines the surrealists’ deployment of the verbal or photographic document as a model that is simultaneously poetic and anti-literary. The surrealists eventually depart from their initial understanding of automatic writing as a “snapshot” that captures uncensored thought. Instead, their writings of the late 1920s and 1930s increasingly frame a range of poetic and visual documents within a multi-layered ethnographic discourse, whether in prose texts that attend to urban experience (Aragon’s Le Paysan de Paris, Breton’s Nadja), or, on the margins of the official surrealist group, in the work of Bataille’s Documents magazine. Finally, Michel Leiris’s reflections on ethnographic display simultaneously reveal the importance of contextualizing evidence and highlight the problematic collection practices that transform indigenous artifacts into cultural “documents.”
Tim Watson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190852672
- eISBN:
- 9780190852702
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190852672.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter analyzes the early novels of Édouard Glissant set in Martinique, which are more anthropological than critics have realized up to now, as well as his early essays. Glissant studied ...
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This chapter analyzes the early novels of Édouard Glissant set in Martinique, which are more anthropological than critics have realized up to now, as well as his early essays. Glissant studied anthropology in Paris (where Michel Leiris was his adviser), and even though he was an anticolonial writer and activist, he turned in his literary work toward the human science that was most marked by its birth under colonialism, anthropology. The chapter ends by arguing that Glissant’s literary meditation, Soleil de la conscience, can be read as a kind of ethnographic chronicle of Paris in the 1950s, a Caribbean anthropology of the French Métropole.Less
This chapter analyzes the early novels of Édouard Glissant set in Martinique, which are more anthropological than critics have realized up to now, as well as his early essays. Glissant studied anthropology in Paris (where Michel Leiris was his adviser), and even though he was an anticolonial writer and activist, he turned in his literary work toward the human science that was most marked by its birth under colonialism, anthropology. The chapter ends by arguing that Glissant’s literary meditation, Soleil de la conscience, can be read as a kind of ethnographic chronicle of Paris in the 1950s, a Caribbean anthropology of the French Métropole.
Jonathan Evans
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474400176
- eISBN:
- 9781474426909
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474400176.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
The Many Voices of Lydia Davis shows how translation, rewriting and intertextuality are central to the work of Lydia Davis, a major American writer, translator and essayist. Winner of the Man Booker ...
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The Many Voices of Lydia Davis shows how translation, rewriting and intertextuality are central to the work of Lydia Davis, a major American writer, translator and essayist. Winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2013, Davis writes innovative short stories that question the boundaries of the genre. She is also an important translator of French writers such as Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris, Marcel Proust and Gustave Flaubert. Translation and writing go hand-in-hand in Davis’s work. Through a series of readings of Davis’s major translations and her own writing, this book investigates how Davis’s translations and stories relate to each other, finding that they are inextricably interlinked. It explores how Davis uses translation - either as a compositional tool or a plot device - and other instances of rewriting in her stories, demonstrating that translation is central for understanding her prose. Understanding how Davis’s work complicates divisions between translating and other forms of writing highlights the role of translation in literary production, questioning the received perception that translation is less creative than other forms of writing.Less
The Many Voices of Lydia Davis shows how translation, rewriting and intertextuality are central to the work of Lydia Davis, a major American writer, translator and essayist. Winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2013, Davis writes innovative short stories that question the boundaries of the genre. She is also an important translator of French writers such as Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris, Marcel Proust and Gustave Flaubert. Translation and writing go hand-in-hand in Davis’s work. Through a series of readings of Davis’s major translations and her own writing, this book investigates how Davis’s translations and stories relate to each other, finding that they are inextricably interlinked. It explores how Davis uses translation - either as a compositional tool or a plot device - and other instances of rewriting in her stories, demonstrating that translation is central for understanding her prose. Understanding how Davis’s work complicates divisions between translating and other forms of writing highlights the role of translation in literary production, questioning the received perception that translation is less creative than other forms of writing.
Tim Watson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190852672
- eISBN:
- 9780190852702
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190852672.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
Focusing on the 1950s and early 1960s, Culture Writing argues that the period of decolonization in Britain, the United States, France, and the Caribbean was characterized by dynamic exchanges between ...
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Focusing on the 1950s and early 1960s, Culture Writing argues that the period of decolonization in Britain, the United States, France, and the Caribbean was characterized by dynamic exchanges between literary writers and anthropologists. As the British and French Empires collapsed and the United States rose to global power, and as intellectuals from the decolonizing world challenged the cultural hegemony of the West, some anthropologists began to assess their discipline’s complicity with imperialism and experimented with literary forms and techniques. The book shows that the “literary turn” in anthropology took place earlier than has conventionally been assumed, in the 1950s rather than the 1970s and 1980s. Simultaneously, some literary writers reacted to the end of modernist artistic experimentation by turning to ethnographic methods for representing the people and cultural practices of Britain, France, and the United States, bringing anthropology back home. The book discusses literary writers who had a significant professional engagement with anthropology and brought some of its techniques and research questions into literary composition: Barbara Pym (Britain), Ursula Le Guin and Saul Bellow (United States), Édouard Glissant (Martinique), and Michel Leiris (France). On the side of ethnography, there is analysis of works by anthropologists who adopted literary forms for their writing about culture: Laura Bohannan (United States), Michel Leiris and Claude Lévi-Strauss (France), and Mary Douglas (Britain). The book concludes with an afterword that shows how the literature–anthropology conversation continues into the postcolonial period in the work of the Indian author-anthropologist Amitav Ghosh and the Jamaican author-sociologist Erna Brodber.Less
Focusing on the 1950s and early 1960s, Culture Writing argues that the period of decolonization in Britain, the United States, France, and the Caribbean was characterized by dynamic exchanges between literary writers and anthropologists. As the British and French Empires collapsed and the United States rose to global power, and as intellectuals from the decolonizing world challenged the cultural hegemony of the West, some anthropologists began to assess their discipline’s complicity with imperialism and experimented with literary forms and techniques. The book shows that the “literary turn” in anthropology took place earlier than has conventionally been assumed, in the 1950s rather than the 1970s and 1980s. Simultaneously, some literary writers reacted to the end of modernist artistic experimentation by turning to ethnographic methods for representing the people and cultural practices of Britain, France, and the United States, bringing anthropology back home. The book discusses literary writers who had a significant professional engagement with anthropology and brought some of its techniques and research questions into literary composition: Barbara Pym (Britain), Ursula Le Guin and Saul Bellow (United States), Édouard Glissant (Martinique), and Michel Leiris (France). On the side of ethnography, there is analysis of works by anthropologists who adopted literary forms for their writing about culture: Laura Bohannan (United States), Michel Leiris and Claude Lévi-Strauss (France), and Mary Douglas (Britain). The book concludes with an afterword that shows how the literature–anthropology conversation continues into the postcolonial period in the work of the Indian author-anthropologist Amitav Ghosh and the Jamaican author-sociologist Erna Brodber.
Jean-François Bert and Mathieu Potte-Bonneville (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816693238
- eISBN:
- 9781452950815
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816693238.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
As a transformative thinker of the twentieth century, whose work spanned all branches of the humanities, Michel Foucault had a complex and profound relationship with literature. And yet this critical ...
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As a transformative thinker of the twentieth century, whose work spanned all branches of the humanities, Michel Foucault had a complex and profound relationship with literature. And yet this critical aspect of his thought, because it was largely expressed in speeches and interviews, remains virtually unknown to even his most loyal readers. This book brings together previously unpublished transcripts of oral presentations in which Foucault speaks at length about literature and its links to some of his principal themes: madness, language and criticism, and truth and desire. The associations between madness and language—and madness and silence—preoccupy Foucault in two 1963 radio broadcasts, presented here, in which he ranges among literary examples from Cervantes and Shakespeare to Diderot before taking up questions about Artaud’s literary correspondence, lettres de cachet, and the materiality of language. In his lectures on the relations among language, the literary work, and literature, he discusses Joyce, Proust, Chateaubriand, Racine, and Corneille, as well as the linguist Roman Jakobson. What we know as literature, Foucault contends, begins with the Marquis de Sade, to whose writing—particularly La Nouvelle Justine and Juliette—he devotes a full two-part lecture series focusing on literary self-consciousness. Following his meditations on history in the recently published Speech Begins after Death, this current volume makes clear the importance of literature to Foucault’s thought and intellectual development.Less
As a transformative thinker of the twentieth century, whose work spanned all branches of the humanities, Michel Foucault had a complex and profound relationship with literature. And yet this critical aspect of his thought, because it was largely expressed in speeches and interviews, remains virtually unknown to even his most loyal readers. This book brings together previously unpublished transcripts of oral presentations in which Foucault speaks at length about literature and its links to some of his principal themes: madness, language and criticism, and truth and desire. The associations between madness and language—and madness and silence—preoccupy Foucault in two 1963 radio broadcasts, presented here, in which he ranges among literary examples from Cervantes and Shakespeare to Diderot before taking up questions about Artaud’s literary correspondence, lettres de cachet, and the materiality of language. In his lectures on the relations among language, the literary work, and literature, he discusses Joyce, Proust, Chateaubriand, Racine, and Corneille, as well as the linguist Roman Jakobson. What we know as literature, Foucault contends, begins with the Marquis de Sade, to whose writing—particularly La Nouvelle Justine and Juliette—he devotes a full two-part lecture series focusing on literary self-consciousness. Following his meditations on history in the recently published Speech Begins after Death, this current volume makes clear the importance of literature to Foucault’s thought and intellectual development.
Michel Foucault
Philippe Artières, Jean-François Bert, Mathieu Potte-Bonneville, and Judith Revel (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816693238
- eISBN:
- 9781452950815
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816693238.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
A presentation of the interrelation between language and madness through a discussion of several texts. The importance of the experience of madness in contemporary culture. The text discusses works ...
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A presentation of the interrelation between language and madness through a discussion of several texts. The importance of the experience of madness in contemporary culture. The text discusses works by Michel Leiris and lesser known writers of the 18th and 19th centuries, whose writing focused on the materiality of language – its shapes and sounds and the poetics of word play. The common focus on signs shared by both literature and madness.Less
A presentation of the interrelation between language and madness through a discussion of several texts. The importance of the experience of madness in contemporary culture. The text discusses works by Michel Leiris and lesser known writers of the 18th and 19th centuries, whose writing focused on the materiality of language – its shapes and sounds and the poetics of word play. The common focus on signs shared by both literature and madness.
Jane Marcus
Jean Mills (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781949979299
- eISBN:
- 9781800341487
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781949979299.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Alongside her analysis of Cunard’s memoir of George Moore, Marcus reads her 1954 account of travel writer, Norman Douglas, within the contexts of exile, English primitivism, and the exploitation of ...
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Alongside her analysis of Cunard’s memoir of George Moore, Marcus reads her 1954 account of travel writer, Norman Douglas, within the contexts of exile, English primitivism, and the exploitation of antiquities abroad by representatives of Western culture. The chapter examines the funding of ex-Surrealist Michel Leiris and his Djibouti Expedition to collect African art and artifacts alongside Cunard’s unfunded and publicly excoriated intellectual and literary project to collect Black voices and cultures in the Negro anthology. Marcus also addresses Cunard’s problematic reading of accusations against Douglas of pedophilia and a text “torn between the desire to tell and the desire to hide the secrets” of his life and her own.Less
Alongside her analysis of Cunard’s memoir of George Moore, Marcus reads her 1954 account of travel writer, Norman Douglas, within the contexts of exile, English primitivism, and the exploitation of antiquities abroad by representatives of Western culture. The chapter examines the funding of ex-Surrealist Michel Leiris and his Djibouti Expedition to collect African art and artifacts alongside Cunard’s unfunded and publicly excoriated intellectual and literary project to collect Black voices and cultures in the Negro anthology. Marcus also addresses Cunard’s problematic reading of accusations against Douglas of pedophilia and a text “torn between the desire to tell and the desire to hide the secrets” of his life and her own.
Michel Foucault
Philippe Artières, Jean-François Bert, Mathieu Potte-Bonneville, and Judith Revel (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816693238
- eISBN:
- 9781452950815
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816693238.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This consists of an interview with Michel Foucault by Jean Doat on madness and silence. The discussion, using excerpts from King Lear, Don Quixote, Rameau’s Nephew, and Artaud’s correspondence with ...
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This consists of an interview with Michel Foucault by Jean Doat on madness and silence. The discussion, using excerpts from King Lear, Don Quixote, Rameau’s Nephew, and Artaud’s correspondence with Jacques Rivière, focuses on madness and the awareness of madness by those afflicted. There are excerpts and a discussion of lettres de cachet, which were used to incarcerate people on the basis of little more than a complaint from a family member, neighbor, or the police.Less
This consists of an interview with Michel Foucault by Jean Doat on madness and silence. The discussion, using excerpts from King Lear, Don Quixote, Rameau’s Nephew, and Artaud’s correspondence with Jacques Rivière, focuses on madness and the awareness of madness by those afflicted. There are excerpts and a discussion of lettres de cachet, which were used to incarcerate people on the basis of little more than a complaint from a family member, neighbor, or the police.
Michel Foucault
Philippe Artières, Jean-François Bert, Mathieu Potte-Bonneville, and Judith Revel (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816693238
- eISBN:
- 9781452950815
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816693238.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
A discussion of the relation between language, the literary work, and literature. Foucault reexamens themes that appear in his writings on literature in the 1960s. During the first part of the ...
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A discussion of the relation between language, the literary work, and literature. Foucault reexamens themes that appear in his writings on literature in the 1960s. During the first part of the lecture, the modern experience of literature is described as the oscillation of language with itself, of which the literary work would be both the crystallization and the transgression. Foucault refers to authors that appeared frequently in his work throughout the sixties—Sade, Cervantes, Joyce—along with others less commonly associated with his research—Proust, Chateaubriand, Racine, and Corneille.Less
A discussion of the relation between language, the literary work, and literature. Foucault reexamens themes that appear in his writings on literature in the 1960s. During the first part of the lecture, the modern experience of literature is described as the oscillation of language with itself, of which the literary work would be both the crystallization and the transgression. Foucault refers to authors that appeared frequently in his work throughout the sixties—Sade, Cervantes, Joyce—along with others less commonly associated with his research—Proust, Chateaubriand, Racine, and Corneille.
Michel Foucault
Philippe Artières, Jean-François Bert, Mathieu Potte-Bonneville, and Judith Revel (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816693238
- eISBN:
- 9781452950815
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816693238.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
The second part of the lecture on literature includes a discussion of the work of the linguist Roman Jakobson and the theme of a “structural esotericism” capable of affecting the way language is ...
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The second part of the lecture on literature includes a discussion of the work of the linguist Roman Jakobson and the theme of a “structural esotericism” capable of affecting the way language is encoded. The relationship of the literary work to criticism.Less
The second part of the lecture on literature includes a discussion of the work of the linguist Roman Jakobson and the theme of a “structural esotericism” capable of affecting the way language is encoded. The relationship of the literary work to criticism.
Michel Foucault
Philippe Artières, Jean-François Bert, Mathieu Potte-Bonneville, and Judith Revel (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816693238
- eISBN:
- 9781452950815
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816693238.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
In this two-part lecture series, Foucault addresses the notion of literature and claims it begins with the work of Sade. Other written works may have existed, which were significant for their time, ...
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In this two-part lecture series, Foucault addresses the notion of literature and claims it begins with the work of Sade. Other written works may have existed, which were significant for their time, but they were never a part of what might be called literature as it is known today. For Foucault, the self-consciousness and self-awareness that typify literature begin with Sade.Less
In this two-part lecture series, Foucault addresses the notion of literature and claims it begins with the work of Sade. Other written works may have existed, which were significant for their time, but they were never a part of what might be called literature as it is known today. For Foucault, the self-consciousness and self-awareness that typify literature begin with Sade.
