Infelicities: representations of the exotic

Abstract

When European travellers went overseas in the 16th century, they encountered unfamiliar lands, peoples and sights. These travellers had to re-present these encounters to Europeans for whom they stood for the unfamiliar - the exotic. But the exotic, according to the author of this work, is not something that existed prior to its discovery. Rather, he points out, it is the very act of discovery which produces the as such. Mason explores the texts, paintings, drawings, photographs and museum displays in which the has been represented from the early modern period to the present. He describes the unique iconography that Europeans developed to represent the and the means they employed to display it once artefacts were brought to Europe. In both instances, the object is taken out of its original context and given a meaning and significance it never had. To differentiate the exotic from the other, Mason says that in understanding the other there is engagment and interchange; in encountering the exotic it is a one-sided effort at understanding: the object never gives up its meaning. The title is taken from philosopher J.L. Austin, who used the term to refer to what happens when something goes wrong on the occasion of an act of utterance. For Mason, this doctrine of infelicities seems applicable to European encounters with the and the efforts to represent those encounters.

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