Ambivalent desire : the exotic black other in jazz-age France /
Brett A. Berliner.
- xii, 273 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-265) and index.
Tirailleurs Senegalais and the Making of the Grand Enfant -- Love and the Color Line -- Between Exoticism and Committed Literature: Batouala and the Struggle over the Black Soul -- "Savages" in the Garden: The Negre on Exhibition -- A Multivalent Sign: The Black Other in Colonial Photographs and Advertisements -- Mapping Boundaries of the Self and the Other: Lucie Cousturier and Andre Gide on Voyage in Africa -- La Croisiere noire: Heroism - in a Citroen! -- Ethno-Eroticism and Its Discontents: From the Bal negre to Paul Morand's Magie noire. Ch. 1. Ch. 2. Ch. 3. Ch. 4. Ch. 5. Ch. 6. Ch. 7. Ch. 8.
"The 1920s have long been known as an era of negrophilism in France, a time when everything associated with blacks and black culture became fashionable. The exotic appeal of the negre manifested itself in a variety of ways - from the popularity of jazz and celebrity of Josephine Baker to a flourishing of love across the color line - and contributed to the reputation of France as a racially tolerant society. Yet on closer scrutiny, Brett A. Berliner argues, it becomes clear that French attitudes toward blacks were at best ambivalent and the ideal of racial tolerance more myth than reality." "Through an analysis of popular imagery, exotic fiction, travel writing, and other cultural texts, Berliner shows how the representation and reception of blacks in post-World War I France embodied competing, at times contradictory, perceptions. On the one hand, African and Caribbean blacks were depicted as a source of cultural renewal and a means for celebrating life and sexuality. On the other hand, interracial relationships were seen as a threat to French civilization, a notion reinforced by grotesque advertisements, ethnographic exhibitions, and other aesthetically repulsive images of "primitive" blacks."--BOOK JACKET.