Provincialiser l’Europe « par l’intérieur » Les ouvrages de James Baldwin et Vincent O. Carter sur la Suisse

This article studies two African American examples of provincialising Europe “from the inside”, James Baldwin’s essay Stranger in the Village and Vincent O. Carter’s The Bern Book, both set in 1950’s Switzerland. It investigates how these texts reverse the ethnographic gaze at the “other” and use the rural Swiss scenario to imagine Europe as historically backward. While the authors differ in their intentions, both acts of provincialisation leave the superiority of European high culture intact.