Detailed Ethnicity: Perception and Gender in Travel Accounts

Abstract

In chapters 2 and 3 I discussed the manner in which representational coherence is established within a world that claims to espouse a universal worldview, identifying various processes that both demarcate and integrate difference as a symptom of universal reason and recognition. These processes are exemplified by Leibniz’s use of translation and by Wolff’s portrayal of Confucius and the Western philosopher as each other’s mirror or counterpart. Decades later, the Weimar court society produced erudite essays, novels, and plays projecting China as a superior model testing the limits of European Enlightenment and its formulation of community. Finally, anticipating Romantic models of transcendence, Enlightenment accounts suggested “accepting” death as the ultimate representation of finitude—by way of Chinese authority. In any case, the texture embracing China and Europe evolved from reading, from the preoccupation with books, ancient philosophies, and their reinterpretation in a European framework.