Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book demonstrates the inherent, circumstantial and speculative value of Michel Leiris's critical work. It presents Leiris's criticism as figuring the inherently fissured and plural nature of identity as postulated philosophically and ethically by a number of contemporary thinkers. The book examines the chronological account of Leiris's ambiguous adherence to successive literary movements, bringing out his micrological process of mimicry and mutation, as he triangulates contesting critical positions in order to construct a mobile, self-determining identity. It considers the speculative significance and value of the critical model in Leiris. Leiris's intellectual journey passed through many of the successive intellectual and aesthetic movements of the twentieth century as registered primarily in the Francophone world.