Lecture: The Myth of the Island of Women

The Island of Women already existed in ancient times, but it was during the Age of Discovery that sailors passionately sought it out. Populated by women welcoming men who had been prisoners on ships for months, it remains by necessity nomadic and difficult to approach: as a space free of taboos, the Isle of Women cannot appear on maps. It revives the time before the Fall, a way of being in the world that could be described as “primordial”. During the crossing, the vigils and fatigue, the waiting and boredom, easily fuel the hope of this different land, a land beyond the Line, traditionally perceived as abolishing the ordinary laws of old Europe. Visitors admitted for a specific time, men enjoy illicit pleasures in the Western world. In 1298, Marco Polo located it in the Sea of Ethiopia, but it wandered across various oceans in the centuries that followed – before the myth found a lasting anchorage in Tahiti, where Bougainville stopped in 1768.

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