Exoticism and the Spread of Disease on Pacific Islands

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

I co-organized an international conference on exoticism (June 3-5, 2022), with 23 speakers at Sophia University. We will include selected contributions in an anthology, to be published by Fink (Germany) in 2023. For the book, I prepared an introductory history of the concept of exoticism from the 18th century to the present. While Anglo-Saxon post-colonialism sharply criticizes exoticism, the Francophone tradition celebrates exoticism as an art of living. I also elaborated a study on sexual exoticism comparing Pierre Loti and Robert Mueller against the background of the spread of venereal diseases on Pacific islands. Archival studies in Europe have shown that medical discourse functions as a counter-discourse to sexual exoticism. Exoticism thus turns out to be a highly controversial field.