Abstract
In a letter to his wife written during the Dakar-Djibouti ethnographic and linguistic mission (1931-1933), French writer and ethnographer Michel Leiris expressed his interest in carrying out an ethnography of the Spanish bullfight. This idea never materialized. This article, guided by conjectural reasoning, describes the factors that would impede the realization of this idea in the French ethnological project if it had been taken further. I argue that it is not enough to understand the ethnographic methods current at the time and the position of Leiris in relation to them; it is also necessary to examine the marginal and ambiguous status of Spain both in ethnological epistemology and in European identity, two symbolic systems that are deeply imbricated.
Key words:
Spanish Bullfight; French ethnology; Europe; Interwar years; Epistemology