Resumen

FLORES, Enrique. Zamé or the utopia. LiminaR [online]. 2021, vol.19, n.2, pp.37-56.  Epub 27-Sep-2021. ISSN 2007-8900.  https://doi.org/10.29043/liminar.v19i2.840.

This article builds on broader research into the Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, by fray Bartolomé de las Casas, from the point of view of “cruelty.” It focuses on the analysis of two long passages from the History of Sainville and Léonore —integrated, in turn, in the “philosophical novel” Aline and Valcour—. Reading the Supplement to the journey of Bougainville, by Denis Diderot, continuously in contrast to, or in (distant) relationship with, the work of Las Casas, we see that it describes the vision of what the ethnologist Pierre Clastres calls the “spirit of the wild laws,” its anarchy and cruelty, in the utopia of Zamé, king of the fabulous island of Tamoé, in the Southern Seas, and in the less well-known dystopia of the cannibalistic kingdom of Butua, in the Gulf of Guinea.

Palabras llave : chronicles; Conquest; Bro. Bartolomé de las Casas; Marquis de Sade; Denis Diderot; Louis Antoine de Bougainville.