Acknowledgments
1. Discourse or Intercourse: The Political Economy of Truth
2. Tracing the Myth of Tahiti
Islands, Paradise, and the West
Utopias and Noble Savages
Emerging Discourses of the South Pacific Other
Buffon and Rousseau: Science, Philosophy, and Racism
3. Bougainville: Actualizing Tahiti
Description: Island Gardens and Fair Females
Analysis: Laboratories and Guinea Pigs
4. Discursive Sedimentation: Enchantment and Racism
An Interlude with the Savage
Lawyers, Journalists, Theologians, and Plagiarizers: Salon Literature
A Piece of Wood in One Hand, a Dagger in the Other
Gunboat Diplomacy in Tahiti and Exotic Literature in Paris
5. Dreamers and Pilgrims
Anthropology, Business, and Guns
Loti: Desiring the Other
Gauguin: Inscribing the Other
Segalen: Speaking for the Other
6. (De)Regulating the Myth
Assimilation: Institutional Control and the Colonization of the
Mind
Authoritative Reports and Poetic Songs: Two Sides of the Same
Coin
TOMB: Tourism, Media, and the Bomb
7. Toward a Literature of Liberation
Collaboration or Resistance
Writing: Technological Colonialism or Collective Empowerment
Maohi Literature in French
The Vahine Replies
Toward a Literature of Liberation
Notes
Bibliography
Index