I am going to begin, by giving you a quick historical perspective, in so far as, in our world culture and writing link has begun to unravel, we can not quit letters to continue. But they do like a progressive displacement.
If you look French through ages, you will quick understand that that information is certainly connected to the conditions that are culturally ours. Nicely, we need to be aware that it is what we lately said: “In the Middle Ages, there had been French texts which were worth. There was, for example, the Roland’s song, etc.” Medieval university has completely ignored these French texts, even those produced by Rutebeuf or Villon. And, why did the Middle Age deliberately put aside these texts? Simply because this was not made to know, but, as Nietzsche extremely nicely said: it was the “gay science,” or the anti-science, the science utilized to protest, not recognized by the university: the science of that time, and until the XVI century, was Latin, French and these sciences had been not far more than a gay science.
When was the 1st displacement, which led the birth of “French literature,” effectuated? In the Renaissance, when the “Modern Times” were appearing with Rabelais. If Rabelais is ludicrous, “Gallic,” a pig and everything you want, it is due to the fact he was just rehabilitating the medieval gay science, but in French. It was a quite excellent revolution: prior to, French texts had any status, from now on, they have one. Of course, there had been a few years that it was being ready. There was a pre literature, a “protohistory” literature, if I can say, represented by those that has been known as the significant Rhetoric men, which rhyme in French and who began to try to place their productions into the refined society. But Renaissance is a breath of oxygen it is the French all fronts, the gay science carefully promoted.
But what has accomplished this gay science promotion? At the beginning, it was liberation, with all the excesses that all liberation has: a actual passion! Nevertheless, small by little, the passion had decreased, and this was the birth of what we have called “literature,” which consisted to express even the most significant issues in French, issues of that time, the science of that time. But this was not the science of the university, which continued to be expressed in Latin, but, in some way, a science for university, which was passed in French. In these circumstances, you understand that texts such as those of Madam de La Fayette, the tragedies of Racine, or the comedies of Moliere were literature, as well as the speech of the Descartes’ method, the thoughts of Pascal or the spirit of the laws of Montesquieu. When we see Descartes’ writings included in the XVII° manuals of literature, we can see this: “What can the speech of the technique do for literature?” Well, the answer is that because Descartes expressed his approach in French. It was the same, with Pascal. There are undoubtedly several illegible things on his writings, but it was the theology in French. Do you understand now that what makes excellent a tragedy of Racine, Descartes, Pascal or Montesquieu, was that these authors expressed in French a science that, considering that the middle age to the XVIII° siècle, would not interest anybody, simply because the science was written in Latin. We ought to see the “French literature,” as a phenomenon in the margin of university, and practically in conflict with it. If you want to see like this, university was the science of the “right,” and literature, the science of the “left””: this literature consisted to speak like a “decent man,” and not like an old grimoire reader, and this was not a science the identical as the one of the university. You realize, in these circumstances, why the ancestors of our existing “human sciences” are the psychological novelists, the classical theater, the moralists’ writers, etc. We see these texts as works of art. They had definitely this character-here too, but they had mainly this certain nature of represent a science in separation with the University of that time, and not only 1 that was worth as a university science but one that had hoped too nicely exceeds it.
When was the second displacement, which superintended the birth of our “human sciences,” effectuated? In the XIX°, that was the époque of Balzac and the realism. From the realistic movement, things are beginning to evolve. Literature becomes a “literature of message.” From that time, who has worked with sociology for example? Zola. It is the thesis message, if I dare to say: novel to thesis, theater to thesis, written by philosophers (at university, at this time there was a long time that we haven’t think!)
And we are in the third displacement, this means: the culmination of thoughts (this indicates the end of literature), like Sartre: read what he tells in Situations of the “committed literature.” From the moment where literature has been committed, this is no much more than a war weapon, this is no far more than a gay science (it is even terribly sadder!) and this is no more literature, it became an additional thing (it belongs to you to name this as you want). “And right after Sartre, you will ask me, what remains of the French literature?” The answer is: nothing. It is Byzantine I mean the “new novel”, the “absurd theater,” the “new criticism.” Nothing! 1 day, a person asked me what is left of the French literature because the end of the second war (1945) to now. My first reaction was, precisely, to answer “nothing!” And then, right after a carefully thought, I replied: “perhaps the words of Sartre, and the memories of Hadrian of Marguerite Yourcenar.” You need to admit that this is not really much! You must conceive that French literature is dead, when the Science of men born.
This does not mean that it does not present any interest. Because, who spoke of the man, until the middle of the last century? Well, literature did. For the reason that given that Bacon, it was born what he referred to as the naturalist philosophy by the time of the Renaissance, and from this philosophy it comes the issues of our “nature sciences.” And to make a science of Man (with a capital letter!) this creature quasi divine, was excluded. Consequently, literature (history and philosophy included), has filled the historic role of conservatory of the man (“pre human sciences,” or, the gay science of Contemporary Times). People sometimes ask me this question: “How is it that, after having accomplished your humanities studies, then you devoted to linguistics, and then to anthropology?” You recognize that the only factor that I was interested in life was the answer to this question: What is a man (with a tiny letter)? Literature gave me the very first answers, then I started to be engaged to what are the highest antiquities and the 1st actual science of Man (thinking that language was natural in men), to be precise it is grammar, called “linguistic” when I was teaching, linguistics took me, logically, to anthropology. You see that there is, in my route, an intellectual and a ideal consistency. I close parenthesis here and I return to my enterprise.
You recognize that when somebody says to you, “I teach French literature” (from Rabelais to Sartre!) It became completely clichéd (it is good to be on museum) and, above all, how would you like to put all of these works in the exact same cart? This is ridiculous!
In the other hand, we must see that the texts we continue to call “literary” are a mass of determinisms. That is what I blame to my childhood teachers simply because rather of deconstruct the text, they took it globally (it was the renowned “text explanation”), but it really should have different specialists who would have treated those texts with diverse approaches: there is, indeed, in the literary text the sociologist works, the psychoanalyst, the historian, the psychologist, the linguist, etc. In a single literary text there is a lot for what to devote a full year, the year which would be more informative as the exam, a lot more or much less intuitive of a series of “chosen pieces.” But it is true that such as education would demand, of the professor in French Literature, a series of knowledge and a synthesis gift which is quite unusual! You can believe me, this is what I have tried to practice whilst I was a student (a superior student, it is accurate). But, believe me, I do not regret this: I am proud to believe, I am proud of passionate my students of License even though explaining them… “The rabbit and the turtle”! I have never stopped to teach them to read, but wearing one more glasses (already!) This is why I have often thought, and continue to believe that the question of programs and schedules have no interest (this is the kitchen ones.) The content, in a general way, have too small to do with the spirit formation. What really counts are the glasses, this indicates what some folks call the technique. That is why I believe that literary texts cannot be successfully employed in greater education.
Is it necessarily to eliminate the teaching of French Literature in our secondary education like some folks, not with out reason, want? I will answer: “no”, for the basic reason that, nobody (only a barbarian) is going to burn files. But if we do, we really should also burn all our museums! But a museum, we can range that, we can range a couple of stops prior to to select specific oeuvres. I could take an additional example: the metropolitan. You go in the train and you browse the line, with the intention to stop in a couple of stations. Take again, these tiny tourist trains you make the “historic” tour of a city marking the time of stops before that or that monument. You all are going to laugh, but when I arrive in a city that I do not know I borrow these tiny tourist trains and then I return to go to that or that monument which interested me the most. In other words, what French Literature teachers ought to propose in the end of secondary school, it is a perspective tour. But this perspective tour could be proposed by both the gym coach, why not, if he has great taste and if he knows how to read the Michelin Guide of literature and can catch the interest of his students!
That says, I have really rapidly understood, that at the same time that “human sciences” had been taught in our “Faculties of Letters and human sciences” (it is the “and”, here, that is significant here), were always and only just literature, although they had been parts, shortly right after my studies of Philosophy License. It seems that these “human sciences,” taught in our Faculties of letters have an objective: the man with a small very first letter, and no longer a capital letter, as it was the case in humanism which by no means ends to die. Then, some of these literary specialists of “human sciences” derive in decorating a man to attempt to make an object that looks scientific. They have taken from science, not its formalization requirement, but its language and its appearance, no a lot more or much less. Thus, some psychologists, baptized “Neuropsychologists,” put up with white blouses, have their laboratories, measure, on-line, etc. However, in those “labs,” it is particular that they are attempting to check “data”, but of the data which is by no means defined! Sociologists they make statistics! And they do not have a model underlying the phenomena that they describe, they can’t do anything but describe them (and not to explain). But how can they describe them? With numbers (all the exact same it makes them a lot more intelligent). But statistics are like computers. If the data that we trust to computers is silly, it is particular that the personal computer will deal with this silliness (computers are ready to function with anything). It is the exact same in statistics: you will have silly answer in respond of a silly question.
Finally, haven’t taken anything from science but the appearance, I mean computing, statistics or laboratory, the object “man” (with a tiny m) is there and it is as virgin as it entered. It is accurate that these “human sciences” have nothing to do with science but outside the flattering of a basically testify to the claim of literary that have not been able to develop scientifically their object.
It remained the sniper, Edgar Morin, who created great utilised of his concept of complexity. I do not say that he is silly, far from that, but I say that he thinks that we ought to forget every thing from the past and begin all over again: “The lost paradigm is definitively lost, but I will invent it all!” The result: it says absolutely nothing! For that reason, he refuges, like all the literary men, behind the complexity of men. “Study the phosphorus, ok! Analyze calves, it is already simpler, but, compared to a man, a calf is all the exact same easy. A man, he is significantly more complicated, subtler, he has much more ends!”
I was there, on my career when I had, like twenty years ago, the opportunity to meet Jean Gagnepain, and to be part of his disciples. When I met him I have quickly understood, that to preach a genuinely scientific understanding of the man, meant that we have to shoot down the principal obstacles to the advent of this new knowledge, beginning with these well-known “Faculties of Letters and human sciences.” Indeed, if, for example, you refer to the Renaissance, you can see that humanism has not been able to prevail only when, under the blows of Rabelais and business, Sorbonne’s lock has jumped. But at the time, the old “Sorbonicoles”, specifically as those of these days, wanted to reform themselves to adapt. But there had been others, a lot more realistic who understood that any reform was already condemned: there had to do something else. That is exactly what Jean Gagnepain understood.
In the age, which is no a lot more the age of humanism, but the age of the anti-humanism, I mean, the treatment of the man by man who presides over the emergence of a true man’ Science, it is time to turn into to be conscious of what is the principal obstacle to the beginning of this new era. The difficulty of training, not only for tomorrow, but also for nowadays, was by way of the kill of literature. Certainly, if the existing literature had turn out to be the enemies, it is following having been the most gorgeous fleuron of the humanism of the university. But, as Marx said although speaking of bourgeois, they have been a necessary evil they have played their historic role, the 1 of becoming the pre human sciences. From this point of view, the sciences called “soft” (psychology, sociology, political science) extend the historic role of literature (philosophy, lovely letters, and history included). This historic role has consisted to put men inside the fridge for far better study them, whilst waiting for science called “nature.”
I want to say that these “soft” sciences are being yield before the “hard” Sciences of the man, given that the function of this genius still too poorly recognized, Jean Gagnepain, which is the real founder of the experimental Science of the man. Let me explain that.
It is Freud which gave to Jean Gagnepain the notion of an explanatory clinic, in other words, a kind of clinic that allowed him to perpetually submit in question the theoretical model of the man that he has developed during nearly half century. That is absolutely fundamental. The 1, who truly won, in the psychoanalytic treatment, was Freud, which recognized that he had by no means healed everyone! Freud, fundamentally, became far more and much more intelligent and, in theory, far more and much more evil as he submitted his patients to his remedy. That is what has given to Jean Gagnepain the thought of a clinic that he wanted to be squarely experimental. He said that it was not due to the fact we alter of “object,” I mean, to “pass” from nature to man (constructing this “object” man, it is obvious) that we change scientifically: science must have, very first of all a coherent model, and also, a location of verification. It should be experimented somewhere, where the notion that the clinic had, in the man, was the only location of verification. To speak about this clinic, Jean Gagnepain referred typically the work of a mechanic. In a vehicle, it is rare that every thing is wrong at the same time: as soon as, it is the ignition, then the carburetion, etc. It is why he often compared himself to a mechanic who had learned the mechanical in repairing the failure of a automobile. Due to the fact, as in a vehicle, it is rare among the man that every thing is wrong at the same time. Nothing breaks down at one stroke: we by no means lose lucidity, but the reason could become an object of experimental science.
Talking about that, the theory of mediation is what we can indeed call a clinical anthropology. And the mediators (grouped together under the name of School of Rennes), of the same time, are the first in the world to bet in the need to establish a scientific approach to the man who gives himself, of course, a theoretical model, and, at the identical time, a location of experimentation. In other words, the link between theory and clinic is so fundamental, that can’t be separated one from the other…except, as I will do, most frequently, by convenience of exposure (and then we can not do every thing!)
I have spoken about Freud, but this does not mean that Jean Gagnepain unconditionally adheres himself to the psychoanalysis. It corrects the excesses. Excesses of verbosity, firstly since Freud had discovered the unconscious of the conscience representative, whilst there is also a technical “unconscious,” a social “unconscious” and a ethic “unconscious,” and this is why Jean Gagnepain replaces the idea of unconscious that is implied.
The second corrective is the service that he brings to the historicism in which Freud locked himself, the “stages,” the “regression”, historicism, etc. If you want to know, Jean Gagnepain is not for the Urszene (“primitive scene”,) but for the Grundszene (“fundamental scene”.)
The second precursor that Jean Gagnepain recognizes is Ferdinand de Saussure and his structural style of the verbal sign (in truth it is an anachronism: Ferdinand de Saussure has by no means utilised the word “structure,” he speaks of “system”.) The discovery of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) has been for Jean Gagnepain as for a lot of French intellectuals, a actual revelation, and a revelation that came late (toward the end of the 40s), whilst the famous general linguistics course date…from 1916! (It is to tell you how it works in French University!) Nicely, the well-known linguist Genovese is the 1st to have shown that, in the language anything was obvious, but that, under the phenomenon, there was yet another thing, that Jean Gagnepain baptized as “grammar,” for the object to the “rhetoric” which only, as we will see, is manifested in the phrase.
But it ought to be clear that the concept of “system” implementation of Saussure, and which was then called “structure” has been entirely perverted by the successors of Saussure, those that are known as “structuralists,” then “semiologists” and other people “semiotics.” All of these folks have given to sign an abusive importance: for them every thing is a sign! This is the full recovery! Jean Gagnepain gives to the sign a considerable significance too, but not at all in the exact same way that the structuralists do. He uses it as analogue, this means that the principle of explanatory sign, is worth, analogue, for the tool, the individual and the standard. That is, really quickly what Jean Gagnepain owe to Saussure.
Finally, it is the Marxist praxis which led Jean Gagnepain to the theory of an incorporated rationality. In other words, this concept of praxis, borrowed from Marx, has led him to ask the reality of the explanatory principle that is the reason, not from outside of the man, but in the man. And it is even the distinction between the sciences called “of man” and the sciences known as “of nature.” All of two belong to the identical rationality, but it is discovered that, in nature, there is no reason anywhere: it is the man who explains it in the other hand, the man has reason, it is even 1 of the characteristics of the “object” (the man) to be study scientifically. So if the sciences referred to as “the man” can not be that science in double (talking about mathematics), because the rationality is, at once, at the thinker and in the object that he studied. At the exact same time, it is crucial to make this incorporation of the rationality in the object even (the man) if that is the 1 who we want to study scientifically.
Among those who have preceded Jean Gagnepain, which has pushed this reality all alone, it is Marx which, as you know, history was not the truth of the “professional” historian (if he is historian of France, art, literature, etc. ) but of the historian that we all are. What had Marx envisaged, consciously? A theory of a man and as the man was defined by history, it was required to deal as scientifically as doable, by creating a historical materialism. Only again, as well as the semiology and the semiotics have played a tour to enjoy Saussure and have created ridicules the structuralism (including the 1 of Levi-Strauss) which became a new idealism, of the same Engels and Feuerbach have played the exact same turn to enjoy the historical materialism of Marx by pulling, as lengthy as they were able, to what has been called. Then materialism generalized, this means that the “materialism dialectic” (which Marx, aged and tired, has finished by subscribing), and which was for the entire evolution of the cosmos! In other words, the “materialism dialectic,” in producing dialectic a method for culture (this indicates for the man), and for the nature, it comes to a full materialism. In brief words, “materialism dialectic” drowned Marx, specifically as structuralism drowned Saussure.
That said, and to conclude, I would like you to say a word to describe my relationship with Jean Gagnepain. In a general way, I would say that the Master is neither one we respect, nor the one with which we break: we live from him. In other words, the Master, we do respect ever, simply because the respect is a sign of death. When I speak to you about Jean Gagnepain, I do exist. But where am I myself? But, it is not critical. This does not say that the memory of Jean Gagnepain is not, in itself, worthy of respect that we owe to human genius, but it can’t serve us, to me personally, and to you, via an intermediary, in the extent that we digested, where we are performing our case. Not a question we cannot quit a Master in history: this would be, gorgeous and well the “destroy” to go right after Sartre.
I would like to add that the Master, if he is a Master in thinking (which no longer exists in France for a long time) is not a teacher, on the contrary! Take Maître Albert, in the Middle Age: when Master Albert was confusing with the Sorbonne, he took his cliques and his claques and he did secession, I mean, that he took his neighborhoods on the place to which, in Paris, he gave his name: the Maubert plaza. He was installed there and he gave his cathedra outside, and every person followed him. He had the charisma, he drew crowds, he thought, and he was totally free.
Well, Jean Gagnepain, if you want, is the Master Albert of the man’ Science. You realize, in these conditions, that his thoughts can disturb, or even indignant, especially for the academia.
So significantly greater, if this thinking, that I will attempt to transmit to you (if you “us” made the honor to “us” follow) I invite you to reflection.
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