Insight: Mauss’s Memory By James Clifford

arcel Mauss’s erudition was the mot and passed it on to his friend. or anyone working to expand the recognized legendary. Claude Lévi-Strauss Unlike Durkheim, Mauss was less categories of the human spirit. For Mauss, Mreports that the audience would concerned to defend the specific terrain of the “mind” is neither a given product of the leave his lectures at the Collège de or than he was to build bridges intellect nor a biological , but the Ecole Pratiques des Hautes Etudes between diverse perspectives – psychological, rather a complex historical mix of shaking their heads: “Mauss knows sociological, ethnographic, historical – on psychological, emotional, social and political everything”! He could uncannily retrieve apt “l’homme total”. The scope of his interventions. An emergent ’s details from a seemingly limitless reading of anthropological vision was summed up best, ability to map and classify this totality is, he historical and ethnographic sources in a perhaps, in a famous intervention at the thinks, still precarious. And it has no choice dozen languages. A passing reference to Société de Psychologie in 1924. Discussion but to build its science on the assumption of earrings could trigger a fascinating half-hour, had turned to the philosophical problem of its own historical and cultural relativity. with unexpected asides, on earrings in identifying fundamental categories of the Unlike Lévi-Strauss, Mauss had no Polynesia, India, Australia, South America, human mind: organizing model, drawn from structural Africa, Ancient Rome, etc. Lévi-Strauss: , to order the vast diversity of The Aristotelian categories are not in human symbols and categories. Indeed, he In his work, and still more in his fact the only ones that exist in our teaching, unthought-of comparisons saw social, mental, or moral orders as minds, or that have existed in the tentative, constantly menaced by disorder, flourish. While he is often obscure by mind and have to be dealt with. the constant use of antitheses, produced by historical transformation or Above all it is essential to draw up ruin. This was particularly evident in his shortcuts and apparent paradoxes the largest possible catalogue of which, later on, prove to be the result work after the First World War shook his categories; it is essential to start with belief in the stability of civilized institutions. of a deeper insight, he gratifies his all those we are able to know men listener, suddenly, with fulgurating have used. It will then be apparent Mauss’s best-known work, The , intuitions, providing the substance that there have been and still are builds this awareness of disorder into its for months of fruitful thinking. quite a few dead, or pale, or obscure survey of one of humankinds basic means for An essay called “Techniques of the Body” moons in the firmament of reason. creating social stability: reciprocal exchange. gives a hint of Mauss’s oral style. Here are a Small and large, animate and Mauss portrays the fragility of agreements to few lines from what is essentially a long list inanimate, right and left have been give and receive. More disturbingly, he of the things people in different parts of the categories. Among those familiar to stresses the affinities between agonistic world do with their bodies: us, take as an example that of giving and violent competition, the thin line separating festival and war. Human sociality It’s normal for children to squat. We substance with which I have dealt in a highly technical way: how many – for the Durkheimian, human essence – no longer know how to squat. I depends on entering into relations of consider this to be an absurdity and vicissitudes has it not undergone? For example, it had among its prototypes, reciprocity: giving and receiving relatives, inferiority of our races, civilizations, , , visits, words, or any societies. […] especially in India and Greece, another notion: the notion of food. symbolic tokens binding the person to The notion that sleeping is something others, groups to other groups. But one natural is completely inexact.[…] All the categories are merely general cannot be related to everyone; there must be Nothing is more dizzying than to see symbols which, like other symbols, exclusions. a Kabylie come downstairs with have been acquired by humanity very slowly. We need to describe this Mauss’s survey shows that hospitality or babouches on. How can he stand gift-giving often have a dangerous side. They without losing his slippers? I’ve tried labour of construction. Indeed, this is one of the main chapters of sociology may be violently excessive like the Kwakiutl to watch, to do it, I don’t see how. . (This was the aspect of Mauss’s And I don’t understand either how understood from the historical point of view. For this labour was itself essay that most interested Bataille and which women can walk in their high heels. he would extrapolate in his curious work of […] complex, perilous, chancy. Humanity has constructed its mind by every “economics”, La part maudite.) For if Hygiene of natural body functions. Here means: technical and non-technical, most explicitly portrays exchange as a check I could list numberless facts.[…] mystical and non-mystical; making on violence and potential war, it also shows Finally, it must be understood that use of its mind (senses, feelings, “normal” social contexts in which giving dancing while embracing is a product reason) making use of its body; appears to go haywire, where the agonistic of modern European civilization. This taking advantage of chance choices, element takes over. Here, the equilibrium should show you that things quite things and times; taking advantage of model of exchange tips over into the natural for us are historical; they may nations, their accomplishments, their experience of pure spending, ludic or violent horrify everyone else in the world ruins. excess. Mauss’s model of social order does except us. not exclude this ever-present reality. The Our general concepts are still stakes remain high. His story of reciprocity Mauss was Emile Durkeim’s nephew and unstable and imperfect. I sincerely always contains an “or else” – like the chief inheritor of the Année Sociologique believe that by concerted efforts, Kwakiutl he cites: tradition after 1917. Until 1941, as an coming from opposite directions, our influential university professor, he psychological, sociological, and Part of the ceremonial opens with the inspired several generations of historical sciences will someday be “ceremony of the dogs”. These are anthropologists and sociologists. Mauss wrote able to attempt a description of this represented by masked men who or contributed to classic studies of , painful history. And I believe that the come out of one house and force their social morphology, primitive classification, best philosophy will perhaps be way into another. They commemorate prayer, sacrifice, reciprocity, and the category inspired by this science, this the occasion on which the people of of “the person”. His ideas also ricocheted in awareness of the present relativity of the three other tribes of Kwakiutl the literary and artistic world. For example, our reason. Allow me to conclude proper neglected to invite the clan something said at a lecture, “taboos are made thus. which ranked highest among them, the Guetela who, having no desire to to be broken”, crystallized ’s This founding statement of modern theory of transgression – at least according remain outsiders, entered the dancing anthropology (in Lévi-Strauss’s reading) has house and destroyed everything. to ethnographer Alfred Métraux who heard much in it that could also attract a surrealist, The prehistorian André Leroi-Gourhan, (Leroi-Gourhan) For a period of two if it still existed, a dusty heap, uncatalogued remembers his teacher as “a man of inspired years when I was attending nearly all somewhere in the Musée’s labyrinthine confusion… [who] managed to concentrate his courses it was agreed that a basements? a number of crucial things in very few comrade and I – a Russian Jew, Yes, I was told when I went to look, of articles”. In an interview Leroi-Gourhan was Deborah Lipschitz, who died in the course, the Mauss collection was catalogued asked what he recalled of his teacher’s Nazi deportation – would take notes long ago. Also, the record of its contents is speech: in turn and in a way that would let us missing. No way to tell the things that were His silences, if I may put it thus. I compare them to determine the real kept and those discarded. But would I like to can’t provide an imitation; so many content of Mauss’s teaching. And we see what remains in storage? years have passed, and I have an never managed to construct anything coherent because it was too rich and Some metal shelves in the dark, covered idealized image of Mauss; but he con- with dust. Resting on them, a series of structed his sentences in a way that always ended up at the horizon. Later, a record of his course was wooden drawers of different sizes evidently suggested things without declaring once belonging to a single large cabinet: them inflexibly. His discourse was all published by a group of former students. Well, there was a total Mauss’s fichier de travail, his working card- articulations and elasticity. Most of file. his sentences came up empty, but it divergence between what they noted was an emptiness that invited you to and what Deborah and I took down. The drawers are numbered 1-15, with build. That’s why I said the most This is the secret, I believe, of the two missing. They are stuffed with cards, 8 x characteristic things were his silences. real spell cast on his followers. 121/2 centimetres in size. The cards are I have one small story to add to, and no annotated across the short end (but He was especially amazing when we sometimes the other way) in small, smudged did textual explications on authors doubt further confuse, Mauss’s memory. It started in a conversation with Denise script, often abbreviated and barely legible. who had worked in Siberia on the Most of the cards merely record a citation. Giliaks or Goldies. I remember Paulme, the ethnographer from Africa responsible for publishing some of Mauss’s Occasionally a theme is registered. Larger sessions at Hautes Etudes – there cards, 15 x 9 cm., mark off the categories. were never more than ten of us, and lectures under the Cours d’ethnographie. yet! We gathered around a table like Paulme was reminiscing about her teacher Taking inventory of half a drawer I count this one, not quite as long; Mauss who, even as a Professor at the Collège de 700 smaller and 128 larger cards. Sometimes translated from German to French France, always retained something of the bon they are arranged alphabetically, sometimes with commentaries that drew élève – brilliant, enthusiastic, chaotic. not. A sampling of categories: comparisons from every corner of the We spoke of his tragic end. As is widely- Sociological esthetics (100 cards) globe. His erudition was fantastic, known, Mauss spent the German occupation Primitive drawings (80) and we took it in without really being in isolation and emerged without full Animals (1) able to say afterwards how he had possession of his mind. A Jew and a socialist, managed to be so engrossing. he was a doubly marked man. Without Primitives (3) Mauss did not write books. His Oeuvres illusions, when the Germans approached Ornament (1) complètes (edited by Victor Karady) is Paris he gave up his teaching and took early Distinctive ornament (2) retirement as President of the Ecole Pratique composed of scholarly articles, essays, Tattooing (2) interventions at meetings, countless book des Hautes Etudes. In public he wore the reviews. Compressed classics like The Gift, Star of David stitched to his coat, with pride. Jewels (2 – with small pencil and A General Theory of Magic were But like many others during those years he drawings, apparently of necklaces) published in the Année Sociologique. His stayed out of sight. Close Jewish colleagues – Plastic arts (3 – Australian art, magnum opus, a dissertation on Prayer Deborah Lipschitz and – French popular art, Indonesian art) remained a collection of drafts, essays, scraps were deported to their deaths. Mauss saw the Japanese art (1) and notes. So did other synthetic works on reciprocity and collective discipline that had been the underpinning of both his sociology Kinds of ornament (8 – mostly Money and the Nation. Perhaps because so Australian references) much was connected in his encyclopedic and his crumble. He had once mind, Mauss could be easily sidetracked. before survived the decimation of a Basket ornamentation (2) And he was profligate with commitments generation. The new assault seemed to break Spiral (4 – from diverse locales, and loyalties. He lectured constantly and his spirit. mostly illegible) spent years bringing work by deceased When the Nazis entered Paris, Denise Figures (2) colleagues (Durkheim, Robert Hertz, Paulme told me, they set about requisitioning Music (1) Hubert) to completion. A dreyfusard and “available” apartments for officers’ quarters. socialist in the tradition of Jaurès, he wrote Mauss had acquired a rather large flat when Literature (no cards) for L’Humanité, took part in strikes, elections, he was appointed to the Collège de France. Popular literature (4 – one illegible, and the “popular university” movement. Evicted by the Germans, he moved in with one on Turkish and Rumanian Unlike his rather austere uncle, Mauss was his companion of many years, a woman of marionettes, two in German, on gregarious, bohemian, and something of a working-class origins who lived in a smaller folktales of Indonesia and Togo) bon vivant. dwelling nearby. But there was no room for Popular songs and rhymes (4) Mauss’s large library. Paulme and her Some recall Mauss as a loyal Legends and stories (200) Durkheimian. Others see a precursor of husband, the ethnomusicologist André . Some see primarily an Schaeffner (also Mauss’s student), were Fables (10) anthropologist, others a historian. Still among the friends who helped move his Transmission of fables (1) collection of books to the Musée de others, citing his rabbinical roots, training in Aesop’s fables (1) Sanskrit, and lifelong interest in ritual, ally l’Homme. him with students of religion like his friends The books, she said, were certainly still Parables (1) Hubert and Leenhardt. Some stress Mauss’s at the Musée. But she didn’t know whether Also noted (a partial list): Myths, bohemian iconoclasm, others his coherent, they had been fully integrated into its library. Meteorology, Weapons, Religion, socialist-humanist vision. Some see a brilliant Perhaps not – Mauss’s books were an odd Collecting, Phenomenology, armchair theorist. Others remember a sharp accumulation. His rule was not to acquire Definitions, Explanatory theories, empirical observer, able to inspire a anything available at the Paris University. Ancient theories, Truth (3 cards: generation of fieldworkers. The different (Professors had the run of the library stacks one illegible, two on Medieval versions of Mauss are not irreconcilable. But and enjoyed lenient borrowing privileges.) theology), Representations of Nature they do not quite add up. People reading and Since Mauss’s interests were unpredictable, (1 card: an article by K. Allen, “The remembering him always seem to find covering both high and low culture, I was Treatment of Nature in the Poetry of something of themselves. charmed by the idea of his library, a the Roman Republic”, Bulletin of the systematic collection of odds and ends. What Univ. of Wisconsin, 1899)… The drawers are numbered, not labelled. complex then the vision of “total social saisonnières des sociétés Eskimos: étude de Thus one cannot guess the file’s overall facts” may dissolve into a frustrating morphologie sociale” (1904). 2) Oeuvres, in topic, if there was one. On a conservative awareness that everything is related to three volumes, edited and introduced by V. estimate, the thirteen extant trays from everything else. Karady, Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1968, Mauss’s file contain 18,000 small cards Mauss did what comparative sociology 1969, and 1969. This collection, containing divided by over 7,000 larger cards. does best, with an incomparable, even essays, reports, reviews, oral interventions, The number of categories is troubling. excessive flair. He unexpectedly illumined etc., is grouped under three thematic titles: I. one portion of the world by another; one Les Fonctions du sacré, II. Représentations Mauss lived until 1950, a sad figure. He collectives et diversité des civilisations, III. could become animated…but then would domain of society by another. Within the focus of an essay, a lecture, or a Cohésions sociales et Divisions de la sociologie. lose track and become confused. His 3) Manuel d’ethnographie, edited by Denise extraordinary mind seemed to be turning out conversation, he could brilliantly bring to bear his enormous learning, deepening a Paulme, Paris: Payot, 1947, a compilation of of control, starting up lucid, then course notes by Mauss’s students. discouraged, aimless. Little is generally topic, extending its ramifications. Mauss was known about his ailment, and most accounts an “anthropologist” whose subject was English translations: The Gift, pass over it quickly. Jean Cazeneuve in his ultimately “man”. And his complementary Introduction by E.E. Evans-Pritchard, short study of Mauss simply mentions “nine socialist-humanist vision of unity in diversity London: Cohen & West, 1954. Primitive years of half-sleep”. A terrible nine years. embraced virtually all cultures and all Classification (with E. Durkheim), One of Mauss’s former students, Pierre- epochs. Introduction by Rodney Needham, Chicago: Henri Chombart-de-Lauwe, who saw him in But there is always another side to such U Chicago Press, 1963. Sacrifice (with Henri 1946 told me that after a frustrating inclusive programs. For wholeness cannot Hubert), Introduction by E.E. Evans- conversation of fits and starts Mauss’s avoid selection and taxonomy – an Pritchard, London: Cohen & West, 1964. A parting admonition was: “Il faut publier”! irreducible arbitrariness. “Mauss knows General Theory of Magic, Introduction by D.F. Make sure you publish! The younger man everything”, said his wondering students. But Pocock, New York: Norton, 1972. Sociology sensed a scholar with many projects to bring might not knowing so much become a and Psychology: Essays, trans. Ben Brewster, together, an enormous knowledge still to painful disorder when the categories London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979. communicate, but lacking the capacity or proliferated and the pegs of memory slipped, Seasonal Variations of the Eskimo, occasions to do so. A mind fully aware of its when the reciprocal contexts in which Introduction by James J. Fox, London: own ruin. Mauss’s marvelous knowledge could be Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979. Mauss’s disarray had medical, moral and spoken and heard, taught and learned, were Also cited in this essay: Claude Lévi- sociological causes. I would like merely to swept away by an abrupt history? Strauss, “French Sociology”, in Twentieth add a dimension suggested by the disturbing Century Sociology, G. Gurvitch and W. card file with its 18,000 references and James Clifford is Professor in the History of Moore, eds., New York: Philosophical nearly half as many categories. Consciousness Department, University of Library, 1945. Alfred Métraux, “Rencontre California, Santa Cruz. avec les ethnologues”, Critique 195-96 One of Mauss’s most elusive and (1963). Claude Lévi-Strauss, “Introduction”, influential ideas, enunciated in The Gift and Sources in Sociologie et anthropologie, above. Georges elsewhere, was that of the “total social fact”. The published work of Mauss is Bataille, La part maudite [1949], Paris: According to this doctrine, crucial human Editions de Minuit, 1967. André Leroi- institutions – gift exchange for example – contained in three collections: 1) Sociologie et anthropologie, Paris: Presses Universitaires de Gourhan, Les raciness du monde (Interviews should be seen simultaneously as “religious”, with Claude-Henri Roquet), Paris: Pierre “political”, “economic”, and “social” facts; la France, 1950. This volume, preceded by an important “Introduction à l’oeuvre de Belford, 1982. Jean Cazeneuve, Mauss, Paris: moreover, one must not forget their “legal”, Presses Universitaires de la France, 1968. “cosmological”, “aesthetic”, “ecological”, and Marcel Mauss” by Claude Lévi-Strauss, “morphological” aspects. To understand contains “Esquisse d’une théorie générale de See also, , “The Spirit of such “total” phenomena means to tie them la magie”(1902), “Essai sur le don” (1923), the Gift”, in Stone Age Economics, Chicago: into the whole fabric of human culture, to “Rapports réels et pratiques de la psychologie Aldine, 1982. Michèle Richman, Reading multiply their connections with other et de la sociologie” (1924), “Effet physique Georges Bataille: Beyond the Gift, Baltimore: institutions. But there is a limit to the chez l’individu de ‘l’idée de mort sugérée par Johns Hopkins U Press, 1982. James number of interpretive contexts one can la collectivité” (1926),”Une catégorie de Clifford, “On Ethnographic Surrealism”, bring to bear. And if the outline of the l’esprit humain: la notion de la personne, Comparative Studies in Society and History “institution” in question (be it gift exchange, celle de ‘moi’” (1938), “Les techniques du 23/4 (1981). prayer, magic, or the nation) becomes unduly corps” (1934), “Essai sur les variations