Herodotus, First Orientalist ? – Conclusion
Questioning the responsibility of Herodotus in the Orientalist project is asking the question of alternatives. Saïd himself seems to praise the curiosity and adventurous mind of Herodotus. Herodotus’ very presence in the debate is also liable to his enterprise of not only travelling to foreign places, but also of maintaining records of them…
Tag: Foreigner
Two Frenchmen in the Orient – Introduction
There was everywhere amongst Orientalists the ambition to formulate their discoveries, experiences, and insights…
– Edward Said, Orientalism
Two Frenchmen in the Orient – Part 1
The genesis of a diary. I did not even look for being a foreigner. The travel as coincidence. No need to repeat that I was not feeling ‘good in my own skin’, as the French formula says…
Two Frenchmen in the Orient – Part 2
The most recurrent – and delightful – materials found in Flaubert’s stories from Egypt are precisely the author’s reflections on the very act of writing. Flaubert basically writes about writing. … But one would not deny that there is also a more humanistic interest in the project of travelling…
Two Frenchmen in the Orient – Part 3
Since I have been abroad, quite a few travelers have gotten in touch with me. Whether friends who had promised (often in vain) to pay me visit, or complete strangers, they show an enthusiasm that reminds me, not without nostalgia, of my early days here…
The Language of Foreignness – Introduction
“I could not live in India: I don’t know the language.” Foreign language is for many the first thing to which foreignness is synonymous. Being a foreigner would mean not just living in a foreign country, but more immediately, more stressfully, living in a different and foreign linguistic environment…
The Language of Foreignness – Part 1.2.1
In Being and Time, Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) argues that human life is profoundly marked by its existence in time. The human being (Dasein, “being-there”) is “thrown in the world” (Sein-in-der-Welt), a world which is in time. Temporality is a source of angst and worry since it is the plane of realization of the fundamental incompletion of Dasein…
The Language of Foreignness – Part 2.1
“India… what a beautiful country.” An awkward situation; the flagrant exposition of one of India’s many calamities before our eyes. My friends are Indians, born in this country and they are its foreground actors as young citizens of the democracy…
The Language of Foreignness – Part 2.2
And as for the language, well I don’t know. English is comfortable, or rather, comforting. A foreign language, for the one who always found himself to be the foreigner. The easy foreign language, so foreign that it is even foreign to most people one encounters in India. Funny thing. And foreign to me, indeed. A safe terrain to express my thoughts…
The Language of Foreignness – Part 2.3
Spring 2013. The never-ending heat of Manipal has fallen for a few hours. Early evening at End Point Road, for a session of frisbee. The decreasing attendance of our classmates pushed some of us to resort to other players. A community of foreign students from Malaysia comes at an impressive regularity, almost everyday, and seems to end up always very numerous – fifteen, sometimes twenty players…