Tell me about your Voyage: Michel Leiris

Authors

  • James Clifford Universidade de New Jersey (EUA)

Keywords:

Michel Leiris, L’Afrique Fantôme, Narrative, Experience

Abstract

Th e article examines Michel Leiris’ L’Afrique fantôme (1934). Leiris traveled as Dakar-Djibouti mission “secretary-archivist” in order to produce its story and to record its results. But if this story was already inscribed before it is written, because of the inescapable colonial narrative, Leiris get rid of it through the ephemeral day-to-day of his journal, the denial of a romance. However, a trip has to be told. Seeking another way to tell, it is noticed at his writing a surreal-ethnographic tangle, in which is undermined the assumption that self and other can come together in a coherent and stable narrative. As Leiris himself says in his prière d’insérer, “it’s up to the reader to discover the germs of a coming consciousness attained only well after the return.”

Author Biography

James Clifford, Universidade de New Jersey (EUA)

Formado na Universidade de Harvard, onde produziu uma monografia em História sobre o antropólogo Maurice Leenhardt, torna-se mais tarde referência no que ficou conhecido como o movimento “pós-moderno” na antropologia, destacando-se entre suas obras os livros Writing Culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography, com George Marcus (University of California Press, 1986), e The predicament of culture: twentieth-century ethnography, Literature, and art (Harvard University Press, 1988). Atualmente, é professor emérito da Universidade de New Jersey (EUA).

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How to Cite

Clifford, J. (2014). Tell me about your Voyage: Michel Leiris. Revista De Ciências Sociais (Social Sciences’ Journal), 44(2), 137–149. Retrieved from http://periodicos.ufc.br/revcienso/article/view/848