Constantly pushed back, the limits of the known world have always fascinated and worried the West. Conducive to the imagination and to travel, these places were first of all strange to then be widely explored and dominated. Political, exotic or magnetic, the distant order space and provide information on those who project themselves there.
Before any momentum of travel and setting in motion of the body and of men, there is a focal point, a horizon that intrigues and goes beyond, takes and embarks. Thus, for a long time, the distant have nourished the imagination of sailors and walkers, naturalists or discoverers, traders or explorers. In this fragile and uncertain balance, between reality and imagination, scholarly curiosity and a spirit of conquest, attraction and repulsion, a desire to know, but also a fear of learning what is out there, in the distance…
“A story from far awayis the name of the latest book just published by the French historian and philosopher Georges Vigarello, who never stops digging into the history of the body and its representations in the West. And with this fascinating, richly illustrated book, the body is never far away; since Georges Vigarello comes to question the springs of its setting in motion as well as the pain of the flesh suffered along the way, in this unsatisfied quest that Westerners have always had for the distant. Also, it opens up sagacious reflections on the forced servitude that these same Westerners have orchestrated over time, on lands and beings from afar, between slavery, colonization and exploitation.
A crossing of bodies, fears and dreams from elsewhere, but also of dominations, this is what this very beautiful book offers, full of maps and old engravings representing sea monsters, fantastic Edens or “savages” necessarily naked. cannibals and foils. By bringing together the distant, the West has turned the world upside down and changed the course of history.
