ABSTRACT
Michel Leiris's essays can in certain interesting respects be thought through as an internal rather than exteriorized version of the non-place described by Marc Auge. In relation to our conceptualization of Leirisian critical consciousness, the ultimately political agenda of the Eloge necessarily relegates alterity to the progressivist function of supporting solidarity and the emergence of 'la Creolite'. Leiris's critical writing is a historically and technically important appreciation of the visual art, music, literature and critical debates at the heart of the twentieth-century avant garde. Edward Said's approach would seem to parallel Leiris's on several counts, then, including on the most abstract level of identificational conformity, as well as in its politico-aesthetic attendance to the fact that 'cultural experience or indeed every cultural form is radically, quintessentially hybrid' and thus requires 'affiliated criticism'.
