The Enlightenment in Paradise: Bougainville, Tahiti, and the Duty of Desire

Bougainville has been read both as rampant mythologist and objective anthropologist. I argue that these conflicting accounts of the Enlightenment explorer correspond to two contradictory discourses concerning the Tahitian woman in Voyage autour du monde (1771). Discourse 1, the origin of the "New Cythera" theory, is integrationist and describes all Tahitians as sexually switched-on pleasure-seekers and women as variations on Venus and Eve. Discourse 2, more analytic, differentiates men from women more markedly and suggests that the spontaneous feminine hedonism of Discourse 1 is contrived and choreographed. Out of the crossover of real and hyperreal, a paradox is created: the duty of desire. This is projected in a third proleptic or prophetic layer of discourse, part of a pervasive triangle of thought that anticipates three key scenes: pornographic, psychoanalytic, and revolutionary.