Abstract

Truffaut, impersonating/performing Dr. Itard, represents multiple layers of autobiographical content through allusions to film history, his life, cultural ideals, colonial upheavals, and critiques of the Enlightenment. Instead of the optimism critics have seen in this film, I suggest that it offers a criticism of colonialism and the Enlightenment through a convoluted autobiographicality that shifts its central subjectivity from Itard to Victor.

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