Diversity, Crossing of Cultures and Travel: Anthropology, Literature and Philosophy

Abstract

In this essay I propose to analyse the concepts of "Culture", "cultural diversity", "multiculturalism", "Exoticism", "primitivism" in the context of representation or the symbolic representations of the other in Literature, Philosophy and in European Anthropology. The new approach to symbolic anthropology, inaugurated by Clifford Geertz and James Clifford, calls into question the superiority of the West in understanding and interpreting other cultures. In this essay, we will analyse the concept of cultural diversity based on the works of Pascal, Montaigne, Rousseau, Diderot and Chateaubriand, taking Tzvetan Todorov's work as a point of reference. We will analyse the experience of the encounter with other cultures, and the contrast between culture and civilization, civilization and barbarism.