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The French missionary-linguist Émile Petitot (1838-1916) spent twenty years near the Arctic Circle in Canada, publishing numerous works on First Nations languages and practices. Over time, however, he descended into delirium and began to summon imaginary persecutions, pen improbable interpretations of his Indigenous hosts, and burst into schizoid fury. Delving into thousands of pages in letters and memoirs that Petitot left behind, Pierre Déléage has reconstructed the missionary's tragic story. He takes us on a gripping journey into the illogic and hyperlogic of a mind entranced with Indigenous peoples against the backdrop of repressive church policies and the emergent social sciences of the nineteenth century. Apocalyptic visions from the Bible and prophetic movements among First Nations peoples merged in the missionary's deteriorating psyche, triggering paroxysms of violence against his colleagues and himself. Whoever wishes to understand the contradictions of living between radically different societies will find this anthropological novella hard to put down.
About the author
Pierre Déléage is an anthropologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). He has conducted ethnographic research on shamanism among the Sharanahua in the Amazon, investigated the invention of writing systems by Indigenous peoples in North America, and explored the limits of scientific objectification.
Summary
The Anthropology of a Delusion. Delving into the obverse of the very texture of ethnographic inquiry, namely phantasmagoria which overwhelm the practice of participant observation, Pierre Dlage takes us through an enthralling journey across the long days and endless nights of the indigenous Arctic world, moving skilfully between ethnobiography and the analytic conundrums that arise in the scene of profound cognitive displacement. Whoever wishes to know the cost of knowing alien cultures will find this anthropological novella hard to put down.
