Inventing an interstice: les Français d’Asie, the canonisation and the location of Franco-Asian culture

Abstract

Abstract

This article focuses on the Belle Époque activities of an understudied literary and artistic grouping, Les Français d’Asie (1909–1914), led by Albert de Pouvourville, and uniting some of the key figures of the cultural and political sphere of that period, including Pierre Loti, Camille de Saint-Saëns, Claude Farrère and Albert Sarraut. Drawing on unpublished archives and period press, the author proposes to retrace the history and workings of Les Français d’Asie as a case study into broader questions surrounding the amalgamated cultural identities and discursive authority over them in the years leading up to the Great War. The grouping’s conception of Franco-Asian literature and its social and aesthetic role, the consecration of Jules Boissière (1863–1897) as its founding father and the growing links between artists and colonial administrators all shed light on the personal and political agendas driving their professedly disinterested promotion of East Asia through literature and art. These activities also chart the emergence of the figure of the colonial writer as an expert knowledgeable in and empathetic towards the native cultures, and capable of reaching a broad audience.