Figuring the East: Segalen, Malraux, Duras, and Barthes

The book explores the complex relationships that Victor Segalen, André Malraux, Marguerite Duras, and Roland Barthes had with Eastern cultures, stemming from their dissatisfaction with modern European values. Each author's unique background influenced their interactions with (post)colonial ideologies, revealing both complicity and resistance. Through an "off-center" reading of their Eastern texts, the work challenges simplistic postcolonial binaries, offering a nuanced understanding of the authors' ambiguous constructions of the Orient.