Certeau cannibale ? Les ressources de la « relation “ethnographique” »

Abstract

It is difficult to resist the force of attraction generated by the Italian readings of Lery, Montaigne, Lafitau and Jules Verne. These readings seduce, mainly by their mode of refraction: by endorsing the ethnologists’ discourse. Now Certeau's four alter ego, such as he ventriloquists them, precisely thematize this very question of "the other": the other, the savage, as a puzzling subject of cunning appropriation and as a matrix, providing a "site" to the writer. The present article, conceived in the purpose of disenchantment, circulates between this model of the ice gallery and the model of the Russian dolls - to consider finally the reciprocal engendering of Michel de Certeau, the "ethnographic literature" and its "good savages".