« Des Cannibales » de Montaigne : Renaissances, Lumières, Modernités

Montaigne’s « Des Cannibales » : Renaissance, Enlightenment, modernity

Abstract

The essay « Of Cannibals » has dominated Montaigne Studies in the
past 40 years. Postcolonialism and the ethical turn, allied to romantic consumerism
of the exotic, found there a treasure trove. But Montaigne finds in the cannibal’s
ethos not a true heteronomy but familiar classical models. Politically the essay is
humorously subversive but ends by postulating an abyss separating Amerindians
from Europeans. To study historically the essay’s pivotal role, I go back to Rousseau’s
‘auto-ist’ anthropology and to Lévi-Strauss’ spiritual affinity to it.Both these thinkers
fall far short of Montaigne’s essayistique mode of thought. In contrast, Diderot, a
thinker of the immanent, in his materialism, dialogism, and humor presents in his Supplement a precise ecological analysis of the exotic, exempt from ontological and political fantasies. I show that Diderot was the closest to Montaigne, and
that, echoing each other, both offer us a model for a materialist and self-conscious
ethnography of a serious vintage.

Keywords : Montaigne, Diderot, Rousseau, Lévi-Strauss cannibals, anthropological
materialism