Against the Robots

Only those who possess a strong individuality can feel the difference.

According to the law: every thinking subject presupposes an object, we must posit that the notion of Difference immediately implies an individual starting point.

Those who will fully experience the wonderful sensation will feel what they are and what they are not.

Exoticism, therefore, is not the kaleidoscopic state of the tourist and the mediocre spectator, but rather the vivid and curious reaction to the choice of a strong individuality over an objectivity whose distance it perceives and savors. (The sensations of Exoticism and Individualism are complementary).

Exoticism is therefore not an adaptation; it is not the perfect understanding of something outside oneself that one would embrace within oneself, but the acute and immediate perception of an eternal incomprehensibility.

Let us therefore begin with this admission of impenetrability. Let us not flatter ourselves that we can assimilate customs, races, nations, others; but on the contrary, let us rejoice in never being able to do so; thus reserving for ourselves the enduring pleasure of experiencing Diversity. (It is here that this doubt might arise: does increasing our capacity to perceive Diversity diminish our personality or enrich it? Does it steal something from it or make it more numerous? Without a doubt: it enriches it abundantly, with the entire Universe. Clouard says it very well: "This naturalism, we see, is not our debasement, nor our dispersion, nor an advantage that nature would obtain at the expense of human personality, it is the enlarged dominion of our mind over the world.").

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