The Melancholy of the «Redskin». Aesthetics and moral in French anthropology in the second half of the 19th century

Abstract

Based on the theoretical and methodological indications provided by the Geneva critic and historian Jean Starobinski in his analysis of melancholic figures in the 19th century, this study focuses on the presence of the figure of the «Redskin» or «Savage» of North America in French anthropology of the same period. Starting from the observation of its melancholic character, the origins of this figure and its attributes will be reconstructed, and its moral and epistemological function in physical anthropology, in the emerging palaeoanthropology and in colonial ideological discourse, will be analysed. This path will be an opportunity to question the complex relationships between scientific and aesthetic languages in European modernity.