Journal Article

The Choosers or the Dispossessed? Aspects of the Work of Some French Eighteenth Century Pacific Explorers

Elliott, Jane

1997

Overview

This paper links the work of eighteenth century French explorers with that being done by contemporary anthropologists. Good ethnographic writers are not necessarily limited by the texts they read before going into the field and, since the time of Bougainville, have actively evaluated what they saw against what they had read. Bougainville himself has been much underrated as an ethnographer and this paper accounts for the trivializing of his work. Furthermore, the paper makes it clear that there was not one unified attitude concerning the Other in eighteenth century France. In noting that abridged or re-written forms of the explorers' journals were extremely popular, the paper posits the idea that at any one time there is a limit as to how much We want to know about Them. Finally, the paper considers the role of the exotic in obliging the French to re-define the knowledge systems they were building in their own culture. In this context, the ethnographic text is seen as a provocation in proportion to the amount of the exotic world of ' other' it conveys.

• Publisher: University of Sydney,Sydney University Press,Blackwell Publishing Limited, a company of John Wiley & Sons, Inc,University of Sydney, etc,Blackwell Publishing Ltd
• Subject: 18th century / 18th century AD / Anthropology / Art exhibitions / Attitudes / Cultural anthropology / Cultural studies / Culture / Discoveries in geography / Eighteenth century / Ethnographers / Ethnography / Ethnology / Exploration / Explorers / France / French language / French literature / French people / French Polynesia / Historical source materials / History / History of anthropology / History of travels / Influences / Island life / Islands / Language history / Literary criticism / Literature / Louis Antoine de Bougainville / Memoirs / Pacific Region / Papua New Guinea / Public opinion / Scholarship / Sources and methods / Tahiti / Writers / Writing