Abstract or Keywords
In 1781 Rétif de La Bretonne (1734–1806) published the unusual pamphlet Lettre d’un singe aux êtres de son espèce, bookending his work of proto-science fiction, La Découverte australe par un homme volant. Rétif decries the barbarous actions of humans through his hybridized protagonist César Singe, described as a ‘singe-Babouin-métis’. His letter takes up debates around the soulless animal and chattel slavery, but more largely lambasts enslavement by first overturning the nascent Enlightenment idea of humanity and secondly by questioning the primacy of scientific discourse over speculative imagination. Through the hybrid simian’s pen, Rétif mobilizes arguments against human destruction and enslavement, exposing essential questions surrounding power and ethics that remain relevant today, forecasting the future radical politics of antiracism.