I am going to start, by giving you a quick historical perspective, in so far as, in our world culture and writing link has begun to unravel, we cannot stop letters to continue. But they do like a progressive displacement.
If you look French through ages, you will quick understand that that knowledge is obviously connected to the conditions that are culturally ours. Well, we should be aware that it is what we recently said: “In the Middle Ages, there were 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? Because this was not made to know, but, as Nietzsche very nicely said: it was the “gay science,” or the anti-science, the science used to protest, not recognized by the university: the science of that time, and until the XVI century, was Latin, French and these sciences were not more than a gay science.
When was the first 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 because he was just rehabilitating the medieval gay science, but in French. It was a very great revolution: before, French texts had any status, from now on, they have one. Of course, there were a few years that it was being prepared. There was a pre literature, a “protohistory” literature, if I can say, represented by those that has been called the major 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 done this gay science promotion? At the beginning, it was liberation, with all the excesses that all liberation has: a real passion! However, little by little, the passion had decreased, and this was the birth of what we have called “literature,” which consisted to express even the most serious things in French, things 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 method do for literature?” Well, the answer is that because Descartes expressed his method in French. It was the same, with Pascal. There are certainly many illegible things on his writings, but it was the theology in French. Do you understand now that what makes good a tragedy of Racine, Descartes, Pascal or Montesquieu, was that these authors expressed in French a science that, since the middle age to the XVIII° siècle, would not interest anybody, because the science was written in Latin. We must see the “French literature,” as a phenomenon in the margin of university, and almost 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 same as the one of the university. You understand, in these circumstances, why the ancestors of our current “human sciences” are the psychological novelists, the classical theater, the moralists’ writers, etc. We see these texts as works of art. They had certainly this character-here too, but they had mainly this particular nature of represent a science in separation with the University of that time, and not only one that was worth as a university science but one that had hoped too well 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 starting 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 means 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 more than a war weapon, this is no more than a gay science (it is even terribly sadder!) and this is no more literature, it became another thing (it belongs to you to name this as you want). “And 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! One day, someone asked me what is left of the French literature since the end of the second war (1945) to now. My first reaction was, precisely, to answer “nothing!” And then, after a carefully thought, I replied: “perhaps the words of Sartre, and the memories of Hadrian of Marguerite Yourcenar.” You must admit that this is not very 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 since Bacon, it was born what he called 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 Modern Times). People sometimes ask me this question: “How is it that, after having done your humanities studies, then you devoted to linguistics, and then to anthropology?” You understand that the only thing that I was interested in life was the answer to this question: What is a man (with a tiny letter)? Literature gave me the first answers, then I started to be engaged to what are the highest antiquities and the first real science of Man (thinking that language was natural in men), to be exact 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 perfect consistency. I close parenthesis here and I return to my business.
You understand 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 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 because instead of deconstruct the text, they took it globally (it was the famous “text explanation”), but it should have different specialists who would have treated those texts with different methods: 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, more or less intuitive of a series of “chosen pieces.” But it is true that such as education would require, 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 while I was a student (a superior student, it is true). But, believe me, I do not regret this: I am proud to believe, I am proud of passionate my students of License while explaining them… “The rabbit and the turtle”! I have never stopped to teach them to read, but wearing another glasses (already!) This is why I have always 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 little to do with the spirit formation. What really counts are the glasses, this means what some people call the method. That is why I think that literary texts cannot be successfully used in higher education.
Is it necessarily to remove the teaching of French Literature in our secondary education like some people, not without reason, want? I will answer: “no”, for the simple reason that, nobody (only a barbarian) is going to burn files. But if we do, we should also burn all our museums! But a museum, we can range that, we can range a few stops before to select certain oeuvres. I could take another example: the metropolitan. You go in the train and you browse the line, with the intention to stop in a few stations. Take again, these small 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 small tourist trains and then I return to visit that or that monument which interested me the most. In other words, what French Literature teachers should 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 good 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 quite quickly understood, that at the same time that “human sciences” were 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 were parts, shortly 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 first letter, and no longer a capital letter, as it was the case in humanism which never ends to die. Then, some of these literary specialists of “human sciences” derive in decorating a man to try to make an object that looks scientific. They have taken from science, not its formalization requirement, but its language and its appearance, no more or less. Thus, some psychologists, baptized “Neuropsychologists,” put up with white blouses, have their laboratories, measure, online, etc. However, in those “labs,” it is certain that they are attempting to check “data”, but of the data which is never defined! Sociologists they make statistics! And they do not have a model underlying the phenomena that they describe, they cannot do anything but describe them (and not to explain). But how can they describe them? With numbers (all the same it makes them more intelligent). But statistics are like computers. If the data that we trust to computers is silly, it is certain that the computer will deal with this silliness (computers are ready to work with anything). It is the 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 small m) is there and it is as virgin as it entered. It is true that these “human sciences” have nothing to do with science but outside the flattering of a simply testify to the claim of literary that have not been able to build scientifically their object.
It remained the sniper, Edgar Morin, who made good used of his concept of complexity. I do not say that he is silly, far from that, but I say that he thinks that we must forget everything from the past and start all over again: “The lost paradigm is definitively lost, but I will invent it all!” The result: it says 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 easier, but, compared to a man, a calf is all the same simple. A man, he is much more complicated, subtler, he has more ends!”
I was there, on my career when I had, like twenty years ago, the chance to meet Jean Gagnepain, and to be part of his disciples. When I met him I have quickly understood, that to preach a truly scientific knowledge of the man, meant that we have to shoot down the main obstacles to the advent of this new knowledge, beginning with these famous “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 company, Sorbonne’s lock has jumped. But at the time, the old “Sorbonicoles”, exactly as those of today, wanted to reform themselves to adapt. But there were others, 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 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 become to be aware of what is the main obstacle to the beginning of this new era. The problem of training, not only for tomorrow, but also for today, was through the kill of literature. Certainly, if the current literature had become the enemies, it is after having been the most beautiful fleuron of the humanism of the university. But, as Marx said while speaking of bourgeois, they have been a necessary evil; they have played their historic role, the one of being the pre human sciences. From this point of view, the sciences called “soft” (psychology, sociology, political science) extend the historic role of literature (philosophy, beautiful letters, and history included). This historic role has consisted to put men inside the fridge for better study them, while waiting for science called “nature.”
I want to say that these “soft” sciences are being yield before the “hard” Sciences of the man, since the work of this genius still too poorly known, 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 idea of an explanatory clinic, in other words, a type of clinic that allowed him to perpetually submit in question the theoretical model of the man that he has developed during almost half century. That is absolutely fundamental. The one, who really won, in the psychoanalytic treatment, was Freud, which recognized that he had never healed anyone! Freud, basically, became more and more intelligent and, in theory, more and more evil as he submitted his patients to his cure. That is what has given to Jean Gagnepain the idea of a clinic that he wanted to be squarely experimental. He said that it was not because we change of “object,” I mean, to “pass” from nature to man (constructing this “object” man, it is obvious) that we change scientifically: science must have, first of all a coherent model, and also, a place of verification. It must be experimented somewhere, where the idea that the clinic had, in the man, was the only place of verification. To talk about this clinic, Jean Gagnepain referred often the work of a mechanic. In a car, it is rare that everything is wrong at the same time: once, it is the ignition, then the carburetion, etc. It is why he always compared himself to a mechanic who had learned the mechanical in repairing the failure of a car. Because, as in a car, it is rare among the man that everything is wrong at the same time. Nothing breaks down at one stroke: we never 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 same time, a place of experimentation. In other words, the link between theory and clinic is so fundamental, that cannot be separated one from the other…except, as I will do, most often, by convenience of exposure (and then we cannot do everything!)
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 because Freud had discovered the unconscious of the conscience representative, while there is also a technical “unconscious,” a social “unconscious” and a ethic “unconscious,” and this is why Jean Gagnepain replaces the concept 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 design of the verbal sign (in fact it is an anachronism: Ferdinand de Saussure has never used 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 real revelation, and a revelation that came late (toward the end of the 40s), while the famous general linguistics course date…from 1916! (It is to tell you how it works in French University!) Well, the famous linguist Genovese is the first to have shown that, in the language anything was obvious, but that, under the phenomenon, there was 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 must be clear that the idea of “system” implementation of Saussure, and which was then called “structure” has been completely perverted by the successors of Saussure, those that are called “structuralists,” then “semiologists” and others “semiotics.” All of these people have given to sign an abusive importance: for them everything is a sign! This is the full recovery! Jean Gagnepain gives to the sign a considerable importance too, but not at all in the 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 person and the standard. That is, very 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 idea 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 difference between the sciences called “of man” and the sciences called “of nature.” All of two belong to the same rationality, but it is found 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 one of the characteristics of the “object” (the man) to be study scientifically. So if the sciences called “the man” cannot be that science in double (talking about mathematics), since the rationality is, at once, at the thinker and in the object that he studied. At the same time, it is important to make this incorporation of the rationality in the object even (the man) if that is the one 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 fact 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 necessary to deal as scientifically as possible, by developing a historical materialism. Only again, as well as the semiology and the semiotics have played a tour to enjoy Saussure and have made ridicules the structuralism (including the one of Levi-Strauss) which became a new idealism, of the same Engels and Feuerbach have played the same turn to enjoy the historical materialism of Marx by pulling, as long 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 whole evolution of the cosmos! In other words, the “materialism dialectic,” in making dialectic a process for culture (this means for the man), and for the nature, it comes to a full materialism. In short words, “materialism dialectic” drowned Marx, exactly 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, 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 important. 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 cannot serve us, to me personally, and to you, through an intermediary, in the extent that we digested, where we are doing our case. Not a question we cannot stop a Master in history: this would be, beautiful and well the “destroy” to go 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 everyone followed him. He had the charisma, he drew crowds, he thought, and he was free.
Well, Jean Gagnepain, if you want, is the Master Albert of the man’ Science. You understand, in these conditions, that his thoughts can disturb, or even indignant, especially for the academia. So much better, if this thinking, that I will try to transmit to you (if you “us” made the honor to “us” follow) I invite you to reflection.