The good child comes back home: Gobineau taking refuge in family hierarchy

Abstract

An extensive bibliography assigns Arthur de Gobineau with a central role in the development of racialist philosophy. This position arose largely from the repercussion of his Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines (1853-1855). It is notable, though, that the work is much commented on, but little studied. An investigation of its background reveals that he does not elaborate a concept of race that different from that of lineage. His effort to construct a notion of 'race-species' collides with his apparent inability to escape from the 'race-lineage' model. This hypothesis is further substantiated when we compare his treatise on races with later works. In Les plêiades, published in 1872, he problematizes his racial perspective through the attempt to construct an individual hierarchy. However both the racial and individual approaches become dissipated in his fatalist pessimism. In his last work, Histoire de Ottar Jarl, published in 1879, he looks to combine these hierarchies - racial and individual. The book is a genealogical fantasy in which he places himself in a direct line of descent from the god Odin. With a tone of resignation, the fiction of his supposed origin summarizes his final attempt to found a distinction within the modern world: family hierarchy.