Gide's Africa
1997; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 14; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/3189755
ISSN1549-3377
Autores Tópico(s)African history and culture studies
ResumoFrom the rise of an Africanist discourse in France during the mid-nineteenth century, Western representations of Africa have imagined a continent that has little to do to with an historical, social, or geographical reality.' Such idealized representations, shaped by Western imaginations and desires, have most often reflected the prevailing commonplaces of the period. The gesture of reaching out toward an exotic Other has brought the West face to face with nothing other than itself and its desire. In particular, during the early part of the twentieth century, the intellectual Left in Paris fetishized Africa and so-called primitive cultures as an imaginary antidote to their alienation from bourgeois metropolitan life. I will examine a specific instance of this Africanist discourse found in Gide's L 'Immoraliste (1902) and his Voyage au Congo (1927). Gide's idealization of Africa in L 'Inmoraliste illustrates a common Parisian imagination of an exotic primitive culture, while his travelogue Voyage au Congo documents the slow and painful unraveling of the French writer's cherished ideal. The nature of Gide's primitivist fantasy and its subsequent demise will be the subject of my analysis in what follows. In L 'Immoraliste, Michel recounts his travels south with his new wife, Marceline, in the first person. The newlyweds begin their honeymoon with a visit to Tunis, where Michel stops to view ancient ruins. As a philologist and scholar of ancient history, he is drawn to the architectural ruins in Tunis, which he arrogantly
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