ABSTRACT |
The exotic project, invented as an ideological instrument for
colonization, consisted of a nineteenth-century literary and
existential practice that posited another space, the space of an Other,
outside or beyond the confines of “civilization”. This exoticism was
naturalized by means of the discourses of anthropology and of the
adventure novel which created the image of the savage as underdeveloped
and of his culture as lacking the fundamental values of a rational
society. With the emergence of Surrealism in the twentieth century, the
Surrealist interest in the primitive as the agent for deconstructing
rationalism, this exotic project turn to a more post-colonial course.
This
paper attempts to analyse the way in which this Surrealist primitivism
is still working in the short stories written by the American Rikki
Ducornet, mainly in her depiction of Egypt. In the tale “The Chess Set
of ivory” (1997) Ducornet uses the Egyptian land, the Egyptian people
and culture as a psychological scenario for the protagonist, a girl
becoming a woman, to reach her new self.
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