Abstract
La Chaumière indienne is a short philosophical tale by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, published in 1791. It depicts the encounter between an English scholar and an Indian outcast, a face-off between the learned culture of the European Enlightenment and the " simple heart " of a despised and rejected man who has found happiness far from cities and civilization. A reading of this now-forgotten but much-read work sets us on the trail of the invention of the figure of the pariah in European culture, where India, more fantasized than real, serves to think through the ambivalences of emancipation. In the name of the universal, philosophers denounce a situation of injustice. But should the outcast rebel or seek in his misfortune the source of a more authentic happiness, outside human society ? Beyond the situation in India, presented as the archetype of hierarchical society, the theme of the pariah allows us to question the status, in Enlightenment thought, of discriminated groups and slaves in particular. We will then see how African-American abolitionists, at the end of the 18th century, developed an emancipatory discourse, articulating equal rights and an evangelical discourse nourished by the renewal of the Protestant faith.
