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About
Marcel Jousse
The life and work of Marcel Jousse (1886-1961) were
inextricably intertwined. Indeed, he said himself:
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The Story of my Work
is that of my Life
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The Story of my Life is
that of my Work |
Born in 1886 in rural France to poor, illiterate
parents, Marcel Jousse would proudly lay claim to his paysan –
peasant – status. He remembers coming to consciousness to
the rocking of his cradle and the rhythmic melodising of lullabies
and recitations of sacred texts by his mother and the village women.
These early childhood memories formed the beginning of his life-long
fascination with recitation, rhythm, memory and memorisation - and
with oral society and education in general. He studied ethnology,
anthropology, psychology and religion. He saw his early memories,
his intuitions and his acquired knowledge confirmed when he was
sent, in 1917, as a distinguished and experienced artillery officer
to prepare American officers for war duty: it was there, in the
United States, that he became very much aware of the living Amerindian
gestual and oral tradition.
Combining these experiences, Jousse explored the field of experimental,
ethnic and differential psychology among the oral traditions of
the world and set out to create an awareness of the universality,
complexity and sophistication of knowledge taught and learned spontaneously
in societies without scribal or alphabetic writing. A pioneer with
ideas and insights far ahead of his time, he set himself unavoidably
on a collision course with the most venerable and fashionable disciplines
of the moment. He was convinced that:
- the tools of Greco-Latin philology were inadequate instruments
of discovery and understanding of the mechanisms of Oral-style milieus;
- experimental and experimentable science needed to replace bookish
modernist exegetic hypercriticism;
- ‘prelogism’ of the sociology school was Eurocentric
and racist;
- the prevailing static anthropology had to be replaced by his dynamic
anthropology;
- in philosophy, all those academics who have addressed the problem
[of intelligence] were not equipped to resolve it because they were
not equipped to study Life. Bergson made a fundamental error when
he said: ‘Intelligence cannot understand Life’: it is
our way of conceiving science and our analytic dissection of it
that cannot espouse the sinuosities of life. It is not intelligence
that cannot comprehend Life: what is inept is our definition of
intelligence - and that … is a completely different thing.
The clerical milieus of the thirties were rabidly opposed to his
claim for a continuum from Judaism to Christianism, for Christianity
rooted in Judaism. Jousse’s biblical exegesis took into account
both the oral period of the Gospels and the culture into which they
were born. He demonstrates that the Gospels are not texts originally
written in Greek, but Hellenistic encodings of the Aramaic Targoum,
which were indefatigably memorised and orally transmitted over consecutive
centuries ever since the Judaists of Jesus’ time, thereby
implying memorial record and oral tradition by Jesus’ disciples
and by Jesus himself. It is propositions such as:
We must follow a new line of stepping-stones leading to the ‘knowing’
paysan, which will demonstrate that Christo-Latinism is nothing
other than an infinitely restricted, multiple dissection of the
immense living treasure-house of Iéshouaism, which evoked
responses such as that of his Superior, Léonce de Grandmaison,
General of the French Jesuits: “You are right. I know all
too well that you are right and yet, it is my whole training which,
in me, rebels against what you are saying.”
Jousse’s holistic insights inevitably extended far beyond
the confines of biblical exegesis, into the arenas of the origin
and development of language, learning theory and practice, movement
theory, reading and writing, the role of culture and tradition,
the nature of oral composition and performance, and their roles
in the complex fabric of ethnic and anthropological behaviour. As
the product of a living oral culture and an authentic Oral-style
person - he used to say “I am illiterate by training”
- Jousse offers a theoretical perspective of the thinking and perceptions
of an ‘insider’, simultaneously recording the retention
of his Oral-style consciousness and his quantum leap from an oral
milieu to advanced academic literacy in one gifted lifetime. In
so doing, he demonstrates the fallacy of the dichotomy between the
‘oral’ and ‘literate’ mind, with the associated
connotations of ‘oral = primitive’ and ‘literate
= complex’.
His insights into the role and significance of oral performance
in Oral-style cultures were corroborated by the field research of
Parry and Lord, and extend beyond into as yet unexplored territory.
His demonstration of the legacy of the Mishnaic memory in the transmission
of oral teaching anticipates Neussner’s Judaic study The
Memorised Torah (1985). His exposition
of the origin and development of language and its indivisibly integrated
role in human behaviour, both individually and species-specifically,
synthesises much of prior, and anticipates subsequent, relevant
literature. Aspects of his perceptions of the processes of learning
anticipate aspects of the theories of Chomsky, Lenneberg, Piaget
and Vygotsky and manifest uncanny resonances with Stanislavski,
Montessori and Laban. His remarks on sound-symbolism anticipated
Janis B Nucholl’s Sounds like Life.
Sound-symbolic Grammar: Performance, and
Cognition in Pastaza Quechua (1996) and much of what he perceived
about intelligence and memory has been, and is currently being,
identified and specified in neuro- and cognitive psychology, e.g.
David Rubin’s Memory in Oral Tradition
(1985). His concepts of mimodrama, mimism and mimemes as the origin
of idea generation both anticipated and extend ‘meme theory’,
e.g. Susan Blackmore’s The Meme Machine
(1998). Jousse’s perception that the anthropos is an ‘indivisible
complexus of geste’, an ‘imbricated’ and ‘intussuscepted’
being, anticipates the identification in 1972 of the operation of
the neuro-peptide transmitters by bio-physicist Candace Pert. Jousse’s
further advocation of the reliability and authenticity of the ‘insider’
perspectives, of human beings as ‘laboratories of awareness’,
anticipate the preoccupation with reflection as a reliable and valid
tool for scientific and scholarly investigation particularly in
the humanities, the social sciences and education (Schön, Killen
inter alia). Jousse also identified the impossibility, unreliability,
impracticality and invalidity of mono-disciplinary scientific investigation
of human and environmental situations, and advocated the ‘joining
of forces’ anticipating the move towards inter-, cross- and
multi-disciplinary thinking in the latter half of the 1900’s.
Vatican II, in reforming the liturgy, restored to the laity the
option of taking communion in the hand as well as receiving communion
in both forms of bread and wine: half a century earlier, Jousse
had furnished the anthropological justification for this restoration
of tradition.
A synthesis of his early research appeared under the title
Le Style Oral rythmique et mnémotechnique des verbo-moteurs
in 1925 (English translation 1990: The Oral
Style). In 1930 he published graphic examples of the application
of the laws that govern communication and memorisation in the oral
tradition and its transmission in Ancient Palestine and more particularly
in Galilee (The Parallel Rhythmic Recitatives
of the Rabbis of Israël). Between 1931 and 1950, ten
mémoires appeared, essays which trace the stepping stones
of his life-long exploration of the laws that govern communication
and memorisation in oral cultures. Posthumously, Jousse’s
research was published under the title L’Anthropologie
du Geste in three volumes. These volumes and his other published
essays are available in English translation as The
Anthropology of Geste and Rhythm. Human Mechanics and the Galilean
oral style tradition. Jousse’s last texts, dictated
during the last four years of his active life (1954-1957) have been
published as Dernières Dictées:
Notes sur l'élaboration de la tradition de style oral Galiléen
et sur son émigration hellénistique and appear
in English as Memory, Memorisation and Memorisers
in Ancient Galilee.
Jousse was however first and foremost a teacher and a performer.
He delivered, from 1931 till 1957 over one thousand lectures at
the Sorbonne, at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes and at the Ecole d’Anthropologie.
These lectures were ‘performed’, without script save
a general plan, taken down by professional stenographers and later
typed out by Jousse’s assistant, Gabrielle Baron. They are
now available on two CD’s. As Jousse always introduced his
lectures by references to concrete occurrences of the day –
social, political, religious, in books, newspapers, posters …
- these lectures also constitute a most useful and riveting archive
of the period.
All this notwithstanding – or because of it - in his own lifetime
Jousse’s initial whirlwind success soon turned into isolation
and even, within his own Jesuit order, ostracism. As a result, his
work has remained little known, not least in the English-speaking
world. Yet, his insights into such familiar and troublesome issues
as culture, ethnicity, pedagogy, spirituality, among many others,
are complex and profound, and authenticated with disciplined academic
zeal. The topicality and relevance of his seminal thought, concepts
and vision mark them with all-embracing globality and timelessness.
He was truly, as the philosopher, Jacques Madaule observed in 1976
“one of those prophetic geniuses who have the gift of perceiving,
half a century before everyone else, some of the governing lines
of the future”.
In 1931 – forty-five years earlier – after Jousse had
delivered his first lecture at the Sorbonne, Henri Delacroix, Dean
of Letters, remarked similarly on the newness of Jousse’s
scientific method and terminology. But he warned him about the slowness
with which his work would be absorbed and applied – and imitated
if not plagiarised. Perhaps, it is not too far-fetched to suggest
that we are the generation for whom Jousse’s insights will
provide direction for the future. If we are to recognise the mutual
effect of orality and literacy upon each other, if we are to harness
the strengths of both for the (re)discovery of cultural and personal
identity, the engendering of social-cultural tolerance, and our
anthropological commonality, then we will need the gifted insights
of Marcel Jousse.
SELECTED QUOTATIONS BY MARCEL
JOUSSE
On defining his Anthropology as Holistic...
The anthropos is not something one
cuts up into small pieces.
The habit of observing and re-playing the great mimodramatics of
things and of being in a state of supple flexibility and responsiveness
to the interactions of the singular and multiple reality, prepares
the researcher for great scientific syntheses.
Under the pretext of specialisation, the
social milieu offers us no more than a sliced-up reality: psychology,
ethnology, linguistics, etc. The experience of one single holistic
reality of dynamic complexity convinces us of its genuine uniqueness,
but our inability to study such holistic complexity compels us to
dissect it. Anyone accustomed to mimodramatics will collect all
the cut-up specialisations, and will re-play them in syntheses ...
Synthesis implies the search for acute and fine detail. Whoever
has a feeling for synthesis knows well that it is but an imbrication
of extraordinarily fine precision. Which is why one is astounded
to see that the greatest synthesists were, at the same time, the
most subtle analysts. It is a mistake to believe that a feel for
synthesis precludes a sense of precise detail and a capacity for
sharp analysis. On the contrary, false synthesising mechanics is
what makes us drift away from normal conclusions. The true observer
synthesises first, for he can observe nothing which is not part
of a whole. But then he goes back to verify and confirm each one
of the gestes in detail. That is the moment of verification.
Those savants were not equipped to study
Life. Thus it is that all those who posed the problem posed it without
resolving it, and even Bergson himself said: "Intelligence
cannot understand life." That was an error. It is our way of
conceiving science and our cutting-it-up that cannot espouse the
sinuosities of life. One sees the frightening heresy against intelligence
posed by Bergson. The whole of Bergsonism should be reviewed. It
is not intelligence that is inapt to the comprehension of life,
it is our way of defining intelligence, which is a completely different
thing. Thus at a given moment, the world lurched, which has given
rise to a variety of crises: crisis in everything, crisis of religion
with modernism, crisis of the social milieu ... We need to position
stepping stones, in the sense of a new orientation towards the 'knowing'
paysan, and to show that Christo-Latinism is no more than an infinitely
restricted cutting-up of an immense living richness which is Iéshouaism
On defining his Anthropology as Interdisciplinary...
[Concluding sentence of all posted announcements of Jousse's lectures]:
The aim of Marcel Jousse's anthropological
work is to search for a link between the disciplines of pedagogy,
psychology, ethnology ...
| Experimental
Psychology is beginning to make contact with ethnology, linguistics
and experimental phonetics. At scholarly meetings, such as those
of the Philosophical Society, Messrs Brunot, Delacroix, Dumas,
Janet, Lévy-Bruhl, Mauss, Meillet, Pernot, Piron, Vendryes
exchange views on the subject. These specialists draw conclusions
on co-operative projects, such as the Masters Course on Language
and Thought taught during the last two years at the Sorbonne.
It seems that the time has come to try to view certain complex
problems in a less restrictive way. |
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Laplace has said: "Discoveries
consist in the bringing together of ideas susceptible to being
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| connected, which have hitherto
been isolated". |
Science has becomes so complex
nowadays, that in order to advance into some new sector, we must
employ the method of modern warfare: the joining of forces.
On defining his Anthropology as Dynamic...
The Anthropology of Geste will try to grasp
man's struggle with himself and how he has fashioned his first tool
out of his very own body with the expression of the mimismological
geste. For the first thing that he formed was not a static tool,
but the dynamic tool of his expressive, miming body: the tool of
geste preceded the tool of stone. The static tool was studied, but
not what constituted the set of tools which fashioned living thought.
What constitutes the elevated scientific and practical value of
this method is that it relies exclusively on the profound laws of
the psycho-physiology of the essentially rhythmic human geste. Man
is not purely spirit: he is flesh and spirit. The degree to which
the teacher, whether of music or otherwise, embraces and exploits
the living interdependency of these two factors will decide the
speed and retention of what is learned.
It seems that our western science is afraid of life. When man and
his expression is the subject of study, our western civilization
is not interested in the living gestes of man, but only in their
dead remains. That is why ethnography, and likewise anthropology,
began to work and organise their methods based on dead tools. All
the human sciences started off statically, because it is easier
to come to terms with a dead and motionless object than with a moving
and living being. That is also why historical phonetics focused
on inert, printed letters at the outset of its study. We had to
wait for a paysan-genius such as Rousselot to introduce an astonishing
new technique which captured living language at its moment of action
from human mouths, instead of inert graphics.
On defining his Anthropology as Experimental...
The path of my scientific experimentation
can be no more than a broken line. I have neither the time nor the
means to draw a continuous line. But little by little, these dashes
will join up into an increasingly complete line as and when the
studies of my successors, working according to my methods but adjusted
idiosyncratically, multiply. The source of scientific method is
neither external nor ready-made: one creates one's own method partly
by oneself and partly through adapting the methods of others to
suit one's own circumstances and proclivities. There is also a personal
equation in methodology: the master's role is that of a pathfinder
only.
From a methodological point of view, the positions which I am defining
for you are reliable approaches to research. Have I discovered everything
there is to be discovered? Alas, I have worked far too extensively
to give you a facile assurance that research can ever have a final
result. I continue to work towards an ever-receding goal ...(...)
I will never know the essence of the phenomena. I can only access
solutions which attempt to bring us closer to the ultimate phenomena
... My role is not to exhaust the questions, which is impossible
anyway, but to show you their complexity ... I do not pretend to
reach the end of the path. I can only say: 'This is the way to go'.
But have you noticed, I have not defined
rhythm.(...) I think that it is very bad method to define a biological
phenomenon before having seen it functioning. This is why wholly
metaphysical definitions of rhythm include those which do not square
up at all with the reality of the facts.
On defining his Anthropology as Objective...
I am accused of logomania, but I do no more
than label each of the facts I observe with a name that allows us
to discriminate meaning.
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I knew, as did Jean-Pierre
Rousselot, one of the founders of Experimental Phonetics, |
that the careful observation of nature always
yields more than we expect, and so I had only one fear: that I might
imagine rather than observe.
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I have also relied for
the greatest possible degree of help on all those modern scientific |
techniques which have, fragmentarily but experientially,
touched upon the complex problem of human gestual expression. It is
important that physiology, neurology, rhythmology, anthropology, psychology,
psychiatry, phonetics, linguistics, ethnology, etc., with their respective
methods and more or less perfected tools (movie film, phonograph records,
recorders of every kind), collaborate with each other. To the impartial
observer, these disciplines provide factual information that is rigorously
void of every subjective influence.
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For an objective terminology
of these different techniques, I tried to borrow terms that
would |
create a precise vocabulary, one that fits
the facts that, until now, have not always been sufficiently analysed
or scientifically isolated. Consider how poor geometry would be if
we spoke only of 'straight lines' and 'circles'. Now, in the science
of man, we are very often still pegged at the level of 'straight lines'
and 'circles'. Stop and think, for example, to what different, and
even contradictory, realities authors can apply the word rhythm.
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The immediate adoption
by others of a certain number of terms in my vocabulary has
shown me how |
urgently those dealing with the anthropology
of human expression in any of its forms have needed a richer and
clearer terminology.
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Science begins with precise
language. |
On defining his Anthropology as Concrete...
I created the word 'algebrose' from terminology
which already existed. We can perform no scientific function at
present without algebra, in which a voluntary process of simplification
takes place and signs are assigned meaning by consensus.In algebrose
the signs or words, which are gestes, can mean 'anything' because
we have lost contact with what is real in relation to them. We live
by a system in which all gestes are diminished and degraded, be
they corporeal, manual or laryngo-buccal or graphic, because they
are emptied of their original concretism.
The mechanism of abstraction, which has its origin in a concrete
object, may well become algebrosed through overuse. When this happens,
one can no longer access the meaning of gestes or words, but one
is left with empty automatic gestes which are devoid of all meaning,
even those which are religious.
Our liturgy has lost the conscious connection with its mimodramatic
origin. It has become mechanical or aesthetic instead of being intelligible.
I understand why there are people who are deserting their churches,
and their religion. There is no longer any life there. There are
no longer any significant gestes that can be understood. Everything
has become disassociated, so that people are living out misconceptions,
and end up rejecting everything. One cannot live forever in a state
of inconsistency! Either religion must become scientific, or it
will become a dilapidated and abandoned shell ... We have lost the
sense of the expressive geste and too often we content ourselves
with algebrosemes. We have to regain a deep consciousness of the
greatness of the primordial signifying geste.
Our liturgy is fashioned entirely with gestes that we no longer
understand. All the sacraments have become pure algebrization for
us, whereas, they are, in truth, composed of a marvellous and logical
concretism, albeit according to Israel's milieu ... The Semitic
tradition continues to be supported by the anthropological mechanisms
to this day.
On defining his Anthropology as Novel...
| I was forced to create
a new discipline. One cannot overhaul a science overnight. I
believe that for many years to come there will be no single
person able to control all the techniques that I have controlled.
The convergence into a single focus of an appreciable number
of disciplines, which until now have been widely differentiated,
is needed. This is why a synthesis of my work will not be possible
for a long time (...) because it is not a question of carrying
on with one research tool only. One needs equipment that is
as living and as supple as life itself. |
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I realize again and again
the critical importance of terminology, and how we are caught
in the |
| vice of meaning which is
already socialized. No-one should be surprised when we, anthropologists,
create and use new terms. The fact is that all the current words
are socially contaminated. It is therefore necessary for us
to recapture each of these words and to carry out a preliminary
disinfection, in some way like that of Pasteur. Before we begin,
we have to disinfect the vocabulary. |
What we have to investigate
is something very much more profound than language, something much
more primitive, more virginally anthro-pological: the corporeal-manual
geste which is not yet transposed into the laryngo-buccal geste.
True human expression is not language, reduced to the geste of the
langue: it is the expression of the entire being ... In order to
enter into these mechanisms, we have to become conscious of what
primordial human expression is and study it in its virginity, its
genesis ... As we delve deeper into anthropology, we will see that
the true training of tomorrow will not be reduced to puny Graeco-Latin
classical formations, but will extend to embrace gestualism understood
functionally as a characteristic of eternal man.
On defining his Anthropology as Empathic...
I have pursued my work with the prudence
that should characterize all studies of ethnic milieux that differ
from ours, and especially those of the past ... Above all, we must
be wary of value judgements that threaten to distort our observations
...
It is imperative that one incarnates oneself in the mentality, this
is to say in the deep gestes, of these people which we have to date
failed to understand ... To ask them to immerse themselves in atrophy,
and to algebrose themselves in a Graeco-Latinist thomist theology
is courting failure. One can no longer hope to resolve human issues
with an adverb at the end of a syllogism. What is needed is an objective,
anthropological and ethnic study of what is played out in real situations
...
The facts of human Mechanics should not be narrowed down to our
petty classical education. I counter Graeco-Latinism with Planetarism.
I have enough evidence from all over the world, whether it be in
Asia, in Africa, in the Americas, to enrich all our gestes of Anthropoi,
in other words, enough evidence to help us to an awareness of what
is fundamental in Man.
| The younger people must
realise the new man within themselves, in other words, the anthropos
who, having become conscious of himself in his deepest ethnos,
reaches out towards others in fraternal interchange. |
| |
I am very happy to see
the emergence, universally, of civilisations which cannot be
termed |
| savage, or primitive, or
any other such term. These are civilisations. We must not attempt
the impossibility of understanding them; instead, we must understand
that we do not understand them, and that in itself will be a
step towards mutual appreciation which could develop into accord.
Some twenty years ago, I found myself on this very spot with
someone whom we would term a Chinese Mandarin, who told me:
'You are the first European whom I have met who understands
that you do not understand us'. |
When we compare our perception
and understanding of expression with those of these concrete civilizations,
we are metaphorically still in the primary grades.
In sum...
My
anthropology gravitates around two poles: |
respect
for life and respect for the individual. |
| The original and capital
sin of our Written-style civilisation is that it considers itself
singularly superior and unique, and believes, moreover, that
everything not recorded in writing, does not exist. Because
of this, anthropological facts are neglected, and, for the most
part, misunderstood. From this it follows that the human sciences
have not studied, in any depth, which aspects of ethnography
are anthropological, and instead they skim the surface of bookish
ethnicity. |
| |
Faced with this attitude,
I have tried to change the method. Instead of restricting my
field of |
| observation to the 'dead'
letters of texts, I here present a methodology which operates
first, and above all else, via the awareness of a 'living' tool:
the human geste. Since the Anthropos is nothing more, essentially,
than a complexus of gestes, the most penetrating and best-fashioned
tool available to analyse man is his own performance of his
own gestes. This is surely the 'tool to dismantle all other
tools', as it were. Moreover, this tool develops instinctively
within each one of us, and becomes increasingly polished as
our awareness grows. |
It is imperative that we study the living
in its living form, and exclude the study of dead books entirely:
we must add an in-depth study of the living, expressive and rhythmic
geste. Bookish man has said: "To know by heart is not to know",
not realising that this means wiping out ninety percent of the knowledge
of all human beings.
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