Michel Leiris was born April 20, 1901 in Paris, France. He went to school at the Sorbonne, which is the University of Paris and also at the School for Advanced Scientific Religious Studies. He became an active writer and was one of the leaders of the Surrealist movement in the 1920's. At the end of the 1920's Leiris used his university training as an ethnologist. From 1931-1933 he took part in the highly publicized ethnographic expedition across Africa called the Dakar-Djibouti mission. He brought a unique perspective to the mission, being both a surrealist writer and an ethnographer.
Leiris' experience as a diarist in Africa helped him become an excellent autobiographical and confessional writer. After his expedition in Africa he came back to France and took a position at the Museum of Man and started writing again. A book that received a lot of attention was his autobiography L'Age d'homme (Manhood) released in 1939. In this book he talked about personal degrading subjects such as his physical and moral flaws. Other noted works include, The Autobiographer as Torero produced in 1946, that compares the courage involved with writing to that of a Spanish matador and The Rules of the Game which has Leiris sharing memories of his childhood covering all subjects from humiliating experiences to contemplations of death.
Leiris continued to be interested in cultures in Africa, the Caribbean, and Central America and took part in extensive studies in Sudan and Ethiopia. His writing style continued evolving combining surrealism ideas, anthropological observations and commentary on a variety of subjects not always pertaining to the subject at hand. For example in his book L'Afrique fantome, a book about his later studies, Leiris used ethnographic field notes, details about his dreams, thoughts on racism, erotic fantasies and personal commentary to explain his experience (Winter, 1991).
Later in life, Leiris along with his wife, owned the Galerie Louis Leiris, an art institution in Paris. Leiris also served as director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research from 1935 to 1970.
References:
Biography.com 2003. http://www.biography.com 28 Feb. 2003.
“Michel Leiris.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Chicago, 2002.
“The Library.” April 2, 2000. http://www.kalin.lm.com/leiris.html 2 Feb.2003.
Winters, Christopher. International Dictionary of Anthropologists. New York: Garland Publishing, 1991.
Written by: Logan Pittsley
Edited by: David Gardner 2007