Against the Robots

Emmanuel Di Rossetti’s travel diary


Diversity

I don't know if, like me, hearing the word "diversity" (which has replaced the word "Other ") makes you feel nauseous. Victor Segalen is an author who acts as a remedy for this nausea.

A fine example is Jules Boissière who, a Provençal and a member of the Félibrige movement, wrote his finest Félibrige verses in Hanoi.

This is true diversity, which delves into itself to welcome the other. But to delve into oneself, there must first be a self! The speeches of politicians who constantly invoke the word "diversity" create a great void before them and stir it up all the more audaciously as they try to convince others and themselves, but they have lost sight of it and violate it as soon as they utter the name.

It is only possible to speak of diversity by listening to oneself, to one's innermost being. This is what it means to be sensitive to diversity. Those who gorge themselves on diversity without making this effort are merely naive "creolizers" or globalists in disguise.

Victor Segalen, Essay on Exoticism, an Aesthetics of Diversity. Fata Morgana Editions.


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