Controversies and Viewpoints Read online

  Anti-Development

  In Illich’s eyes, the sin of Marxism lies rather in its moderation than elsewhere. In his Tools for Conviviality, he writes:

  What interests me is not the opposition between a class of exploited men and a class of tool owners but the opposition involving, above all, man and the very structure of tools.

  Man is thus said to have sinned by submitting to the demands of social life, as allegedly confirmed by the ‘inhumanity’ of institutions, which Illich considers to be the embodiment of absolute evil.

  In agreement with Marcuse’s views on this, Illich asserts that institutions are subject to criticism because inasmuch as they ensure a better relation between men and the world that surrounds them, they objectively reinforce the latter in its current reality. In other words, it would be preferable to have genuinely intolerable institutions, since their presence would facilitate the advent of the revolution. Society is bad — to the very same extent that it is good.

  In passing, Illich displays his admiration for primitive societies, those where (historically speaking) nothing ever comes to pass:

  In certain tribes characterised by their small size and great cohesion, knowledge is divided very equitably: each person knows most of what everyone else does.

  The solution? To return to a ‘convivial’ — meaning more egalitarian — society, to ‘simpler’ social relations, to ‘poor tools’ and social homogeneity. To create ‘convivial centres’ verging on Fourierist phalansteries and renovated convents.

  To underdeveloped countries, anti-development is what Ivan Illich preaches:

  Poor countries will begin their reconstruction with greater ease if they are able to define some tooling limitation criteria.

  This is where we plummet into a completely messianic sort of vision. With things going from bad to worse, the world marches towards the Apocalypse. A Great Crisis shall soon come, one that shall strike down the modern Babylon of indecency by abolishing several millennia of exploitation. At that moment, light shall emerge from the chaos. Humanity, rendered angel-like, shall gain access to the heavenly kingdom of socialism. As for history, it shall be resorbed into the ‘Great All’, marking the end of Cain’s children and the return of good old Adam. And in this ‘convivial’ paradise, we shall witness the virtual renewal of the bread loaf multiplication miracle: ‘People will do more and more with less and less’, Illich writes.

  In Bukharin’s utopian communism, everyone is supposed to practice all available trades one by one: there are no more dentists, so go right ahead and pull each other’s teeth out. The same regressive doctrine is encountered with Illich, only this time, it is founded upon the myth of a ‘good nature’.

  Alain390 once said:

  To dream that ignorant and naïve populations were truly happy before the advent of policemen is still that: a dream.

  Indeed, Illich himself is dreaming. His conviction according to which ‘natural’ man was more in control of his environment than constructed man through his institutions betrays his complete ignorance of human societies. Illich longs to disregard the cruelty of primitive societies, the depressing fixity of ‘savage thought’ and the carnivore’s struggle for daily survival. Under the apparent generosity of Rousseau-like idealism, it is a return to the pre-human that he proposes. For the institutions that he denounces contribute to the very definition of man (including his prehistorical form). Illich’s convivial society is not even that of large primates. It would, at best, be an amoebic society.

  The excesses pervading Illich’s antimedical campaign have also earned him the most severe criticisms. Le Quotidien du médecin391 responded to his claims with a ‘counter-investigation’. A White Book of Pro-Medical Testimonies has additionally been published, and the French Order of Physicians has reacted as well. Mr Henri Laborit, a specialist in behavioural biology, declares:

  Just like everyone else, I, too, wish to discover this ideal society from which all human disease would be excluded. In the meantime, however, I would rather have myself and not just my sociocultural and professional environment looked at if, for instance, my stomach or bladder were punctured or I found myself stricken with meningitis.

  Stripped of all borrowings, banalities, hasty generalisations and truncated statistics, Illich’s work essentially comes across as highly superficial and extremely mediocre. Compared to those of Althusser, Marcuse and Lévi-Strauss, his writings (written in collaboration with the students of the CIDOC) strike us as nothing more than an add-on piece. What they express in a radical (and imaged) fashion is, at most, the rejection of challenges and one’s anguish in the face of the very realities that our age’s various apocalypses feed on. Mr Max Gallo392 writes:

  What Illich’s admirers seek in his words are not argument-based demonstrations. They believe in the battle between Good and Evil and are driven by a nostalgia for a perfect world whose return they hope to experience. And that is all a matter of faith. But why is it that Illich feels compelled to disguise this faith as social science?

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  Tools for Conviviality, an essay by Ivan Illich. Seuil, 160 pages.

  Deschooling Society, an essay by Ivan Illich. Seuil, 192 pages.

  Celebration of Awareness, an essay by Ivan Illich. Seuil, 129 pages.

  Energy and Equity, an essay by Ivan Illich. Seuil, 64 pages.

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  Edgar Morin

  ‘Man can neither be reduced to his Homo faber technician aspect nor to his Homo sapiens rationalistic side’, Edgar Morin writes. ‘When contemplating the true face of man, one must consider the myths, celebrations, dances, singing, ecstasy and love… One must not reject his affectivity, neurosis, disorder, and vagaries as being “noise”, residue and waste. The real essence of man is to be found in the Sapiens-Demens dialectic’.

  Displaying long but thinning hair, a domed skull, a pair of glasses and a thick-lipped rictus, Mr Morin, a researcher at the CNRS, belongs to the concerned leftist theoretician species.

  The book he published in 1973 is entitled Le paradigme perdu: la nature humaine.393 In contrast with a ‘syntagm’, linguists define a ‘paradigm’ as an element class (Saussure’s394 ‘associative groups’) allowing one to assemble a unit. This does not, however, render the book’s purpose any clearer.

  In order to grasp Mr Morin’s discourse, one must, in fact, situate it in the context of currently ongoing discussions regarding the very status of human beings.

  For centuries on end, a purely metaphysical perception of nature seemed to justify a ‘divide’ not only between men and animals, but also between life and the inanimate. Countering this conception of things, contemporary scientists have applied themselves to demonstrating that man is equally part of the animal world, that living systems are all related and that life, which emerged from lifelessness, is nothing but ‘organised matter’.

  Owing to this, some have been very quick to fall into a new illusion which consists in stating that since one can equate the different levels of reality to one another, there is ‘no fundamental difference’ between them. Such is the view of reductionism, which emphasises the similarities and neglects the differences.

  By means of a debate on ‘emergent properties’ and ‘sudden qualitative leaps’, it is also the question of limits that finds itself posed. There is an entire current of trendy ideas that would like to use the fact that nothing is absolute as a pretext to say that ‘nothing exists’ or that ‘everything is of equal worth’: since every definition is based on consensus, one should allegedly renounce definitions and ban consensuses. The specious aspect of such argumentation is immediately obvious.

  There is no ‘D day’ that would mark a child’s entry into adulthood, yet there are still both children and adults. Likewise, both Europe and Asia exist, as do Whites and Blacks and the Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The absence of ‘boundary markers’ in space-time does nothing to alter a plural reality which, indeed, is founded upon the relative and the contingent.

 
Homo Demens

  There are diverging viewpoints among ideologists when it comes to identifying the specific traits of the human phenomenon.

  Mr Morin’s ‘paradigm’ represents an attempt to take stock of the lessons that can be drawn from the most recent scientific findings in the fields of biology, ethnology, etc. With this intention in mind, he has spent several months in the United States. The results of his efforts are, unfortunately, rather disappointing.

  Admittedly, his observations are not all questionable — far from it. Unlike Mr Lévi-Strauss, Mr Morin has the merit of not restricting his research on man to sociocultural archaisms. Furthermore, he demonstrates the sophisms pervading reductionism rather well. In the first part of his book, which is in all likelihood the best one, he reminds his readers that ‘we ourselves are primates as well’; that, among our ‘inferior’ brothers, hierarchy, classes, families and natural selection are the law; and that society, far from being an ‘alienating’ privilege characterising mankind, is a very widespread form of self-organisation in living systems.

  He also quotes the words of Serge Moscovici,395 who views the hominisation process as ‘the human becoming of hunters and not as a future manhunt’.

  Last but not least, what he highlights — and with good reason, I might add — is that the development of the brain goes hand in hand with ‘rejuvenation’, meaning the extension of the prepubescent period during which a child needs to be ‘supervised’ (which explains the reason why man is an ‘animal that can be trained’).

  None of this is, however, anything new. On this level, Edgar Morin contents himself with intersecting, albeit with a certain delay, the works of Huxley, Tinbergen, Lorenz, Eibl-Eibesfeldt, etc. This is what he writes:

  Ever since Darwin, we have only acknowledged the fact that we are the sons of primates, but not that we are primates ourselves.

  Moreover, when demonstrating that ‘life is a system of permanent reorganisation founded on a logic of complexity’, he omits to mention the fact that increasing complexity goes hand in hand with differentiation and, therefore, inequality.

  The truth is that despite his declared intentions, his point of view is still distorted by an egalitarian, universalistic and one-dimensional conception of the cosmos. It is as if he feared that, by drawing the logical conclusions from the facts he imparts, he would discover truths that he would be unable to bear.

  He thus only envisions free will, a characteristic of man, from the perspective of the latter’s impulses.

  This specificity, he writes, lies in the fact that man is an ‘animal endowed with foolishness’. Homo sapiens thus becomes Homo demens, whose originality is found in a ‘dimension of folly’. This results in several naïve statements, including the following one:

  Despite the ethnocultural diaspora, all human beings express themselves essentially through smiles, laughter and tears.

  Indeed, tackling the issue of the differences between men, Mr Morin declares them to be ‘epiphenomenal’. They are all cases of ‘efflorescence’. In his eyes, the only thing that matters is the fact that they all ‘stem from the same anthropo-sociological foundations’. He adds:

  It is the very same Homo sapiens that underwent a worldwide diaspora by infinitely diversifying himself on the cultural level.

  What he fails to realise is that these cases of ‘efflorescence’ are precisely what enriches mankind. And he remains unaware (or feigns ignorance) of the fact that, when it comes to man’s origin, it is the polycentric theory that is gaining ground on a daily basis, and it seems ever more likely (as shown by Weidenreich’s work, which was subsequently expanded by Coon and Thoma) that man’s raciation took place prior to the sapiens stage.

  In point of fact, Mr Morin does declare that ‘our love of other races must be manifested physically’.

  Elsewhere, his admittedly highly abstract rigour gives way to sheer flights of fancy, for instance when highlighting the fact that the ancestors of the Homo sapiens species simply ‘seceded’ from their own species one day, desisting the forests so as to settle in the savannah. He writes:

  It thus seems that the abnormal, the rejected, the heimatlos,396 the adventuresome and the rebellious are the initiators of the hominian revolution.

  Meta-Micro-Mega

  This rather pithy turn of phrase brings to mind the books which Mr Morin dedicated to the neo-communards (Mai 1968: la brèche397 ), to the hippies (Journal de Californie398 ) and to other ‘abnormal, rejected and heimatlos’ people. His book thus takes on the shape of a self-serving persuasion plea.

  What Mr Edgar Morin wants, in fact, is to reconcile the science of today with his lifelong instincts. He writes:

  The purpose is to simultaneously change life, transform the world, revolutionise the individual and unite mankind, and attain a meta-micro-mega society whose expression stretches from inter-personal relations to world order.

  This programme can be summarised with one single heartfelt appeal: ‘Praised be the bastards, the genuine representatives of the Anthropos!’.

  Science, you say? I think not.

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  Le paradigme perdu: la nature humaine, an essay by Edgar Morin. Seuil, 251 pages.

  ***

  Mr Morin’s ‘civilisational project’ is rather consistent with the perspectives mentioned (in a satisfied sort of manner) by Mr Jacques Ruffié399 in his essay entitled De la biologie à la culture400 (Flammarion, 1977):

  ‘Inexorably, mankind is heading towards generalised “milk-chocolatisation”, a vast intercommunicating gene pool, and planetary panmixia. This possibility was recently envisioned as part of a certain futuristic novel in which the earth, now largely panmictic and intermixed, is inhabited by a more or less uniform population comprising individuals of average height, swarthy skin and inconspicuously slanting eyes. White characteristics are virtually unrecognisable in this new global man’.

  Mr Ruffié, according to whom ‘patriotism represents a serious obstacle to the integration of mankind, and thus also to its progress’, adds:

  ‘If prehistoric man was part of a horde or tribe and historical man a member of a nation, post-historical men will, on their part, become citizens of the world. Having raised the anchor that bound him to animality, post-historical man will undoubtedly reach a new frontier. By crossing the latter, he shall be rid of the last traces of animal behaviour and shall only display humanised behaviour (sic). Wisdom should then triumph over folly, reason over passion, altruism over egoism, justice over exploitation and modesty over pride’.

  Talk about a dream!

  Viewpoints

  On France

  Gargantua’s France

  Folklorist Paul Sébillot once stated that ‘there is no popular character whose name is as universally known in France as his. It is encountered in both the langue d’oc and the langue d’oïl regions.401 Some of his adventures are thus recounted everywhere, so to speak’.

  The character in question is Gargantua.

  Considering the great diversity of the peoples represented in mainland France, one has often wondered if it is even possible to speak of ‘French folklore’. Mrs Nicole Belmont402 observes:

  It would appear that France, whose geographical boundaries and history border on the respective domains of Germanic-Scandinavian, Roman and Celtic mythology, lacks a mythological system of its own. It is even impossible to detect any remains of what may once have embodied such a system. And when France did eventually take shape as a nation, Christianity had long since established itself upon its territory.

  The myth of the ‘wild hunt’, which is very widespread in both France and Belgium (and is referred to as ‘chasse Arthur or Artus’, ‘chasse or Mesnie Hellequin’, and ‘chasse Gayère or Gallery’, depending in the region), is an example of this. Some of its motifs are encountered in the legends of Saint Hubert403 and Saint Eustace.404 The tale depicts a character who, accompanied by his hounds and retinue, is condemned to forever pursue game that always manages to escape.
Under the bright moon of a stormy night, he traverses the sky amidst great turmoil. Behind the ‘wild hunter’ (Wilder Jäger) figure, there are some who have identified the traits of the Germanic god Odin or Wotan.

  The Colline inspirée or ‘Sacred Hill’ of Sion-Vaudémont in the Lorraine region was, likewise, documented in 1150 AD as Wodanis Mons, meaning ‘Wotan’s Mount’.

  As for the myth of the ‘werewolf’, experts — including Stig Wikander, Mary R. Gernstein, and Przyluski — have shown that it relates directly to, by means of the social vestiges of ancient ‘warrior brotherhoods’, the conception of the outlaw espoused by Indo-Europeans.

  The French domain of legends is nonetheless of an astounding richness, with its rondes of fairies and elves, its ogres, its leprechauns, its conjurers and goblins, its wyverns and dragons, its sliding rocks that reveal hidden treasures, its men that shapeshift into beasts, its pagan heirlooms, its enchanted forests and its sunken cities.

  The Shapes and Consequences of Christianisation

  Following Charles Perrault,405 whose Tales (published in 1697) are almost exclusively of popular origin, contemporary folklorists and ethnographers have exerted themselves to compile, classify and analyse our legends, customs and sayings.

  Among them, those that are particularly worthy of mention are Pierre Saintyves (Emile Nourry); Paul Sébillot, who founded the Revue des traditions populaires;406 André Varagnac; and, above all, Arnold Van Gennep (1873–1957), whose monumental work entitled Manuel de folklore français contemporain407 (Picard) remains, however, unfinished.

  They all affirm that it is a pre-Christian France that looms and survives behind this framework of diffuse beliefs.

  Mrs Belmont notes: