Abstract

"Diderot et les autres: la politique de la mimesis" is an analysis of the politics of mimesis in Diderot. The dissertation is a reading of three closely related texts either inaugurated or completed in 1772: the Supplement au voyage de Bougainville, Sur les femmes and the Histoire des deux Indes. The first chapter, "Mimesis et mutisme," defines the economy of mimesis and the relationship the dialogical enunciation of the text entertains with the politics of making others speak,--in this case Tahitians and, more radically, Nature. The second chapter, "La femme animime," discusses Diderot's biologizing discourse on hieroglyphics and the hysterical imagination, a kind of zoographia. The third chapter, "Le sujet souverain," analyzes the operations required of he who would be the body's souvereign in the Histoire des deux Indes. These operations are seen to demand precisely that colonization of the non-European's place this work is consistently credited with denying and to require the end of History. The final chapter and conclusion, "La metropolitique," closely follows the capitalizing/colonizing operation of the Enlightenment philosopher's appropriation of all positions of enunciation and destination. This is attempted through the assumption of a position of global dominance destined to submit cultural difference to a vision of universal humanity. Only the philosopher, who functions as a general equivalent for commerce between the European male and his others, can comprehend humanity as such and render this diverse humanity into the technical media required for the expression of Nature. ;Reading Diderot through the recent work of Jean-Joseph Goux, Jacques Derrida and, especially, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe on the economics and politics of mimesis and the function of techne , I hope to call attention to the important contribution of Diderot to the destination of Western civilization as heralded in the French Enlightenment and to relate this contribution to the institution of a global economy in the Eighteenth-century