"And I now realize, in this state of Solitude, that (my theory of Exoticism) is much more vast than I first thought; and that it encompasses—whether they wish it or not— ALL MEN, MY BROTHERS—WHETHER I WISH IT OR NOT.”
SEGALEN Victor (2002). Essay on Exoticism. An Aesthetic of Diversity.
Durham, Duke University Press. P 62.
“Everything that makes the atmosphere of the stories of travels, explorations, adventures - mystery, love of danger and risk, nostalgia for purity and ideal beauty, dream of power and perhaps, above all, hope for a possibility of limitless transgression– all this integrates the new semantic configuration of the exotic. Other shades are gradually added: enigmatic, whimsical, bizarre, eccentric…” Ibid 3.
HELLER Leonid (2009). Décrire les exotismes : quelques propositions. Etudes des Lettres.
“... (In fact), exoticism is never a fact or the characteristic of an object: It is only a point of view, a discourse, a set of values and representations proposed by something, somewhere, or someone. To speak of exoticism is less to analyze an object than the discourse of a subject about it. The question "What is exotic?" is, in this sense, second to the question "For whom?"
STASZACK Jean-Francois, 2008. Qu’est-ce que l’exotisme ? Le Globe, vol.148
“Exoticism is a relativism…, what is valued is not a stable content, but a country and a culture defined exclusively by their relationship with the observer… (it is) a relativism caught up at the last minute by a judgment of value”
TODOROV Tzvetan (1989). Nous et les Autres La réflexion française
“ Exoticism is the acute and immediate perception of an eternal incomprehensibility (Segalen). What triumphs, then, is not the rule of difference and lack of differentiation but instead an eternal incomprehensibility, the irreducible foreignness of cultures, manners, faces, languages.”
BAUDRILLARD Jean (1993). The Transparency of Evil. Essays on Extreme Phenomena. London, Verso. P 167.