10. The signs of time
A culture which does not improve the understanding of its time is a completely fruitless culture. In other words, we are in need, today, of a culture which enables us to formulate new problems in order to enter a world in which we confront the mutation in which we live, and, when I say “mutation”, I should actually say, the new “Renaissance”. Because we do not crumble, on the contrary, we enter another universe, and success will go to those who have discerned the signs of the time rather than to the romantics (who are fewer and fewer, it is true) who wallow in their nostalgia. And it is there that lies the stakes of anthropology. We no longer need a vision more or less transcendental of Man (humanism), but a scientific comprehension of the way in which man, anthropologically, functions.
It is thus a question of being in a position to consider a diagnosis of our time, even if that displeases some. Because I well know that I displease, quite simply because I generalise things. It is not meant to wound, but to crystallise, in order to make comprehensible to you the rigour of a thought which wants to be scientific. Our intellectuals have genius, that point is not in question. My difference with them it is that I do not have any, and this is why I need strength. And time passes (it has already been ten years since I had the immodesty to publish my “Introduction to the theory of the mediation”) and the urgency of the problem is increasing. Nobody can deny it. For this reason I will continue to systematically explain, yet again this year, the consequences of the theory worked out by Jean Gagnepain, and I will explain them in a manner more “mordicus” than ever, without paying attention to those who may be annoyed or upset.
Let us start, while breaking more than ever with the erudition, by examining current events. “That is the equivalent of the press”, you may think. Not so. If our teaching is worthless, the information is almost nonexistent, for the good reason that the teachers as journalists (in particular political observers) completely lack the model which would enable them to interpret what de Gaulle called the “adventures” of History. However, if we want these adventures to take on a meaning (and, again, what is the point of a science which does not try to bring understanding to the things of life?), we need a model (in the quasi mathematical meaning of the term), and it is this model, the Mediation Theory, that I will apply systematically. It is basically a new type of teaching which is not journalism insofar as it is constructed and that, each time, it refers to the principles which explain it. In other words, my intention is to formulate, not always solutions, but rather the specific problems, which give hope to finding solutions one day. Look at, for example, the crisis of the Socialist party. There are those who say: “They do not have a project”. Indeed, to have a project, one needs a viable model of mankind.
On the other hand, if one wants to say something, if not precise or final, at least which goes in the “direction of History”, as one says, one must exclude any reference to opinion. If I asked you “What is your opinion on phosphorus?”, you will not have one. On water, perhaps; you can say “Me, I like the sun more that the rain”. But nevertheless water, in itself, remains H20, and, on this point, there are no doctrines, no conflicts of theories. With the higher level of physics, of course, there may be three or four! But it stops there. And the same, physiologically, chicken pox is chicken pox. There cannot be any changes of heart on the subject, of reactions to it. If we do not need opinions on chicken pox or phosphorus, why should one want to systematically have opinions concerning man? When one speaks about policy, it is always a matter of opinion, opinions based on surveys. The surveys, certainly, are not worthless, but one can make a survey on just about anything. Someone could ask you “Do you think that love brings happiness?”. But what is love? And what is happiness? If one wants to truly study Social science, it is necessary to take the whole of it: one should renounce all opinions in advance (even if it is, sometimes, very difficult to not have them).
For this reason it is useless to ask you, the question: “Which are his opinions?”. During my life, I have worn many labels: fascist, libertarian, Maoist, “right wing”, “left wing”, etc No more of that! This is why I can, for example, speak freely to you about the current “crisis” with the P.S. It is not at all a crisis of the P.S., but a general crisis of the parties. Firstly, the situation was convenient: there was “the right-hand” side and “the left”, and it was this antagonism which made them “hold” together. Now there is no “right”, how can there be a “left”? And reciprocally, as there is no longer a “left”, there can no longer be a “right”! “How is that, you may say, and what about the U.M.P?”. It is no more to the right than the others are to the left. All that it is finished. If one of the two poles of antagonism disappears, the other disappears at the same time. This is a constant! What balanced the “liberal capitalism” of the West, if not, the “State capitalism” in the East? Think of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I lived that. Nobody, in old Europe, was delighted, except a few living in denial. All the others were saying “What will happen now? It is over!”. And indeed, it was finished. There is no longer a need for an “anti capitalist” movement (of which type of capitalism do we refer moreover, State? Liberal? Industrialism? Economic? Financial?). Like everyone in the West knows (or rather feels), it is rotten, everyone’s busy running around frantically filling their pockets. I would say: “It is normal, the boat’s sinking”. Still another example, closer to home: the antagonism of Faculties of letters and Faculties of science. Faculties of letters are dying. Well, Faculties of science will die at the same time, since it is their antagonism (inherited from the Renaissance in the XVI century) which made them both “stand”! I could multiply the examples ad infinitum, from the most macroscopic level to the most microscopic level. There was, in our civilization, a good old antagonism between man and woman. It no longer needs to exist either. All that is gone! But it is that which is enthralling! At all levels, we are obliged to invent a new world if we want to survive. And when I say “us”, I do not think only of the Occident, but of humanity as a species!
They seek to frighten us with a whole heap of trifles like the melting of the glaciers, climate warming, the atomic bomb, etc. For my part, I do not think that mankind, if it must perish (which is highly probable), will perish due to mans cupidity, economics or technique, but quite simply because he risks, one day, giving up “making the man”. I often say: “Nothing is ever acquired by man, not even his humanity!”. But if we lose our humanity, we lose ourselves as a species, because of this neoteny which makes us animals that cannot survive in a natural environment. I am not teaching you anything new here. We all know, since the beginning of the XX century that we are neotenic animals, i.e. able to reproduce in a larval state. From the point of view of evolution, we are larvae – and here is what Lamarck (nor, a fortiori, his English translator, Darwin), never says. From the point of view of evolution, we represent a rupture, a failure, and thus each one of us has the responsibility for the whole species. You see the formidable stakes of an authentic anthropology! However, for those of us restrained in the Occident, I do not believe at all either in our “decline”, to speak like Spengler, but rather with our new rise. And even in the Occident I believe that France can play a considerable part in this rise. The world awaits a sign from us.
However, can one say that the human side will always resist in man? To tell the truth, in the long run, no one knows. When referring to the “death of civilizations”, in the past, one would be inclined to answer in the affirmative (after each “death”, there is resurrection!), but with what we know of evolution a negative answer may be more appropriate. Let us say that man is always “in deferment”, and that, from this point of view, it is completely pointless to think in terms of “Progress”. If I referred to Lamarck, it is because we do not include/understand anything of that so called, at the end of XIX century, “transformism”, or “evolutionism” if one does not replace these concepts in the context of our “Century of Light”, where one spoke about “Natural history” (see Buffon), History that one could conceive only as a continuum which led of course to the top of the evolutionary ladder, namely the French of the XVIII century! It is there that Historians seek constantly, even today, “to glue” the ruptures. However, what is interesting, anthropologically, is not so much continuity, but the solutions of continuity, and it is certainly a solution of continuity which inaugurates the man, i.e. the existence of an animal perfectly unsuited to its environment, a “pipedream”, to some extent, to speak like Pascal. It is this “dream” which we should take into account.
It is enthralling, but also somewhat distressing. However do you believe that with the death of the Empires and, more recently, in the XV century, in France, people were not distressed? For them, also, everything was finished! However, the wheels set to turning yet again. What is a little more alarming is when the change, the mutation, happens on a global level. But what does that change on the level of the processes? Take, for example, the death of Michael Jackson. That was the globalisation of what? Hysteria quite simply, but hysteria has never changed nature as much! H2O remains H20. Admittedly, there is more, in this phenomenon, because who was Michael Jackson? Neither child, nor adult, neither man nor woman, neither black nor white, in short, a symbol of a formidable border “crisis”, as much cultural as natural, by which, you know, is characterized any change (it is not a question of the Crisis, with a capital letter, that is a mediationist concept, contrary to what I wrote in my glossary at the end of my Introduction…). At the bottom, it is a crisis of identity, comparable, mutatis-mutandis, with the crisis of the German identity under the III Reich. Look at the person of Hitler, and especially the face. Hitler also was neither man nor woman, neither child nor adult, etc It is the same crisis of identity, but on another scale. Nothing is new under the sun, in the end. As Schopenhauer said, “semper idem, sed aliter”: it is always the same thing, in spite of a varying appearance, in other words, if one goes back to the process. Nothing new, with the proviso of having the correct glasses to see the process!
Having stated that, I repeat it, if we do not take anthropology into account, we are finished. But it is not enough to say: “we will do better”. Think about this! Since I am man (that has been quite a while now!), I well know what it is worth, a man! Consequently, I know very well that we will not do “better” than our ancestors. We will make man differently, that is all.
Here then is what I propose that you do this year: try to build the future, starting from an analysis of our problems, those you would like to suggest to me. Because you are in the middle of it, you and your children. We all have an interest, not to necessarily think the same thing, but together, to try to work out the models adapted to the formidable changes which we know exist. And since we are at the point of returning to school and academia, and that, if you have understood my meaning, it is a question “of making man”, you will also understand the absolute, considerable importance that it is necessary to grant, in any society, to education, and, therefore, to the “child”.
But does “the child” exist? Here is what we have to start by elucidating, elucidation which will serve as preamble, with our ultimate reflexions, and allow me to specify our future perspective.
Generally, I feel that the child is completely, or almost completely, manufactured: it is a pure and simple “artefact” of culture, we could say a product of civilization. It is certain that, when one speaks about the child, one believes that it is about a universal gift, so many good souls take their defence, referring to this or that civilization: “Look at them, those brutes, who make the children work at seven years old, do not send them to the school, prostitute them, reduce them to slavery, etc”, as if the child were universal of humanity. However the child, to tell the truth, does not have, culturally, any other existence than that of the parental relationship, or, more exactly, the child is human only as it is registered in the history and the company of their parents, and this inscription results in as many different types of children as types of civilization. I would have extreme trouble in counting them: they do not cease to multiply, diffract, converge, etc. Imagine, for example, what is the African child at their place (I say “child”, although it is not known if the pure concept of “the child”, purely European, is itself transposable in the majority of the African cultures). Even at the time of colonialism, when one preached, for example: “Go! All children of Chad, to the French school”. What a business! Because, what exactly did “the school” represent for the Chadians? Strictly nothing: they had a social system completely different from ours, and it is not generally known if ours was exportable, or even desirable to export. In short, the child is only what you make of it, and as there are innumerable civilizations, the child is always and everywhere different: one could quote the child king, the child soldier, the child of Mary, etc… What they all have in common, certainly, is to not be the “young”, as when one speaks of an animal’s “young”, no more than the woman is reduced to the female, nor the man, the male.
To be convinced of the existence of this quasi illusion which is the child, even in our European culture, it is enough to read one of the most intelligent books written on the subject, I refer to the work of Philippe Ariès, entitled: “The child and the family under the Old Ways”. The historian shows here that the child such as we know it, in France, was born around the XVII century. It is around this time, that a “childish universe”, sociologically autonomous, came into being. From this time the child was clothed in a particular way and given toys. With the Middle Ages, on the other hand, the child was clothed simply with what was too worn for an adult, in other words the concept of rompers did not exist! In addition the toy, which has such an economic importance today, did not always exist. Thus the doll, for example, was a fashion figurine intended for adult clothing display purposes, when the dress was made, one gave the miniature model to the children: “Go! Have fun with that, it will keep you quiet! ”.
Now what happens? Exactly the opposite: it is even surprising that mothers do not play with their daughters’ “Barbie dolls”, dolls that are only the economic exploitation of a “childish universe”, purely fantasy – without mentioning the educational qualities of the toy – or, more exactly, of the game, the toy being only a technical part of the game. In other words, the toy, if you want, as a miniature, is related to the idea that, sociologically, a child is a “non worker”, socially without output, and can therefore only play. What do we know? Let us look at child’s play, it is seldom amusing for them, don’t you find? In fact, when we say that the child “plays”, actually they devote themselves to a completely serious occupation. It’s dreadful! And when their mother prevents them from “playing” under the pretext of going to get some shopping, they answer with: “And my job? You don’t respect that?”. Maybe they don’t say it, but it is seen as such! In other words, the majority of time, the intervention of the adult in the child’s play is completely catastrophic, as catastrophic as the intrusion of the child in a game of bridge or chess between adults (they are not having fun either: they are playing!).
Take, still, the habitation. With the Middle Ages there were no differences between the habitation of the children and that of the adults. Look at the paintings of that time: you always have little ones underfoot. Why? Because the child did not exist. But from the moment when it was considered that there existed, sociologically, a “childish universe”, even if it were entirely manufactured, there were, gradually places for the children, and, gradually, under the British influence, one created, in the XIX century, the nurseries, then kindergartens and schools. And, better, what of our High Schools, Colleges and Universities, are they not alternatives of the nursery, i.e., in reality, types of ghetto!
You see that speaking, like one generally does, of “childhood” as a universal betrays from the start the point of view, very ethnocentric, at which one places oneself, because childhood is universal only in its biology – and even then, it is general and not universal, because the universal is opposed to the singular, and on the other, culturally, as I said to you previously, there are as many children as of societies. Consequently, you can speak about the child in general and you consider it only from the point of view of its biology, or you deal with the child as a reality of culture: at this time there is not a child in the world which is comparable to another for the good reason that there are only cultures, in the plural, i.e. there are only societies. Even in the case where, in some of these societies, one finds similar children’s problems, it is simply that these societies converged and that, consequently, the concept of the child results from their efforts of communication. But nevertheless the child is related to the culture and there are as many children as of societies. This is important if one wants to avoid the trap of too hasty generalizations, and the ridiculous comparisons which makes one speak about the African or Asian child like a European child.
It is not that all three do not have the same “rights”, but what exactly does the expression “rights of the child” mean: if the child does not exist, except biologically, if it does not exist as a specific reality, if it is not a species of sub-human who has its small, autonomous organization, how can it have rights? Actually, the problem has shifted! When one speaks about the “right of the child”, one should say “the rights of the potential person in them to leave childhood”, i.e. the right to grow up and be trained, agreed, but it is the potential person in them which has rights, exactly as it has the right to be cured if it is sick, the right to be punished, if it is delinquent, etc… the child has all these rights, but there is no reason to speak about the “rights of the child” as if the child were a species particular to the range of vegetables. If I said that the problem has shifted, it is, actually, because there is, in our society, a formidable resignation of the parents and teachers (we will certainly have the occasion to return to this point). It is clear, it seems to me, that instead of speaking about the “rights of the child”, it would be more relevant to speak of the “duties of the parents” or the “duties of the teachers”, and in particular, of a whole group of duties of assistance!
However, of this whole group of duties of assistance there can be autonomy of education only if there is the child. If there is no child, there is no education either. In other words, so that there is sociologically speaking, education, it is thus necessary that there is, sociologically speaking, a teaching career, buildings which one calls schools, and a particular aspect of this method of assistance which we will call, at this moment “pedagogy”. However, this career does not have anything absolutely inescapable: it is a phenomenon of culture which is not found everywhere: it is a function of a certain type of society, like ours, which recognizes autonomy in this “cultural species” that one calls “the child”. Consider what occurs in a time like ours which, at least in the Occident, tends to reduce the human to its biology. That the young of man like the adult comes from biology, but how is the young of man, biologically, different from an adult? Except when infected with chicken pox or measles, there is practically no difference. But just as we manufactured pedagogues, we manufactured pediatrists, and it is also, because the pediatrists exist, in our societies, that we say: “the child exists”.
Then you see the perspective in which I will place myself. It will be that which results from our convergences of Occidentalism, i.e., it is necessary to be aware, that all that I could tell you has nothing to do with what happens in Asia or Africa where the child, as we conceive it, does not exist. Take, to finish, the concept of “orphan”, which exists here. This concept is not transposable to Africa where the orphan does not exist, except for a certain Non Governmental Organization perfectly neo-colonialist (the Arch of Zoe, not to quote it)!
Connerie or human silliness? This is what, the next time, will hold our attention.