Essay on Exoticism: An Aesthetics of Diversity

Exoticism and Diversity are for Segalen, not merely ways of experiencing the Orient, or the Exotic, but a philosophical stance on the nature of the Self and its relationship to the world around it, and its relationship to itself.

Segalen starts with two fundamental laws on the back of which he proposes his ideas:

Law 1: (Schopenhauer's Law of Representation) Every object presupposes a subject.
Law 2: (Jules De Gaultier's Law of Bovaryism) Every being which conceives of itself necessarily conceives itself to be other than it actually is.

The Exot is someone who is aware of the acute difference between himself and the other, between subject and object, and between his true nature, and his view of his own nature. This Segalen calls show more 'Diversity'.

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> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Segalen-Essai-sur-lexotisme/104713

> Victor Segalen, NOTES SUR L'EXOTISME (revue du Mercure de France, mars et avril 1955).
— Id., STÈLES, Peintures, Equipée, édition revue et augmentée de nombreux textes inédits, préface de Pierre-Jean Jouve (Le Club du Meilleur Livre, 1955).
— Id., RENÉ LEYS, roman (éd. Plon, 1950).
Se reporter au compte rendu de Hubert JUIN
In: Revue Esprit Nouvelle Série, No. 232 (10/11) (NOVEMBRE 1955), pp. 1794-1800