moi et l'autre dans Robinson Crusoe de Daniel Defoe et Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique de Michel Tournier

Daniel Defoe's seminal novel Robinson Crusoe reflects major philosophical currents of the Enlightenment and brings them to bear on diverse issues: scientific advances, new economic models, British colonialization, the relation of the Other to the self. But if Robinson Crusoe presents Friday as Other who fulfills a crucial role by helping Robinson as narrating subject successfully complete the journey of self-knowledge, Michel Tournier's postmodern revision, Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique , has a quite different teleological aim. Through constantly shifting narrative and theoretical perspectives Vendredi undertakes a forceful critique of key aspects of the Western tradition which Robinson Crusoe confidently hailed: Lockean and Cartesian reasoning, traditional framing dichotomies central to the Western tradition (Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel), modern conceptions of the thinking subject. Vendredi ultimately suggests the inability of the postmodern subject to know itself while simultaneously critiquing those Western traditions whose perspectives are founded on hegemonic globalization.