This page intentionally left blank FIRST PUBLISHED IN FRANCE UNDER THE TITLE MARCEL MAUSS © LIBRAIRIE ARTHÈME FAYARD, 1994. ENGLISH TRANSLATION © 2006 BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PUBLISHED BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 41 WILLIAM STREET, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY 08540 IN THE UNITED KINGDOM: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 3 MARKET PLACE, WOODSTOCK, OXFORDSHIRE OX20 1SY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA FOURNIER, MARCEL, 1945– [MARCEL MAUSS. ENGLISH] MARCEL MAUSS : A BIOGRAPHY / MARCEL FOURNIER ; TRANSLATED BY JANE MARIE TODD. P. CM. INCLUDES BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES AND INDEX. ISBN-13: 978-0-691-11777-5 (CLOTH : ALK. PAPER) ISBN-10: 0-691-11777-2 (CLOTH : ALK. PAPER) 1. MAUSS, MARCEL, 1872–1950. 2. ETHNOLOGISTS—FRANCE—BIOGRAPHY. 3. ETHNOLOGY—FRANCE—HISTORY. 4. SOCIOLOGY—FRANCE—HISTORY. I. TITLE. GN21.M38F6813 2005 305.8'0092—DC22 [B] 2004061957 BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE PUBLICATION OF THIS BOOK HAS BEEN AIDED BY THE FRENCH MINISTRY OF CULTURE— CENTRE NATIONAL DE LIVRE. THIS BOOK HAS BEEN COMPOSED IN 10/12 BERKELEY MEDIUM PRINTED ON ACID-FREE PAPER. PUP.PRINCETON.EDU PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 CONTENTS Introduction 1 PART I: DURKHEIM’S NEPHEW 7 CHAPTER 1 Épinal, Bordeaux, Paris 9 CHAPTER 2 Student at the École Pratique des Hautes Études 37 CHAPTER 3 Rites of Institution: Early Publications and Travel Abroad 56 PART II: THE TOTEM AND TABOO CLAN 81 CHAPTER 4 In the Cenacle 85 CHAPTER 5 Citizen Mauss 96 CHAPTER 6 Rue Saint-Jacques 113 CHAPTER 7 Journalist at Humanité 123 CHAPTER 8 Collective Madness 133 CHAPTER 9 A Heated Battle at the Collège de France: The Loisy Affair 149 CHAPTER 10 Not a Very Funny War 168 PART III: THE HEIR 185 CHAPTER 11 (The Socialist) Life Goes On 189 CHAPTER 12 A Burdensome Inheritance 215 CHAPTER 13 The Institut d’Ethnologie 233 vi CONTENTS CHAPTER 14 Sociology, a Lost Cause? 246 PART IV: RECOGNITION 259 CHAPTER 15 A Place at the Collège de France 263 CHAPTER 16 Where Professors Devour One Another 276 CHAPTER 17 Enough to Make You Despair of Politics 303 CHAPTER 18 The Time of Myths 315 EPILOGUE: The War and Postwar Years 333 Notes 351 Index 427 INTRODUCTION M ARCEL MAUSS is the object of great admiration. Georges Condomi- nas called him “the father of French ethnography.”1 “The Gift,” re- quired reading for any anthropology student, is his “most deservedly famous” work, as Claude Lévi-Strauss has noted.2 It is, in Georges Gurvitch’s words, a “true masterpiece.”3 The intellectual legacy bequeathed by this great scholar, long unappre- ciated by everyone but anthropologists, is now available to the academic community. Sociologie et anthropologie (Sociology and anthropology), a collection of half a dozen of Mauss’s writings, was published in 1950, the year he died. In the late 1960s, Presses Universitaires de France brought out selected works under the title Mauss;4 and, more important, a three-volume edition of his works was issued by Minuit in those same years.5 These edi- tions, however, include only the scholarly works. His many political works, which, as Denis Hollier lamented, were extremely dispersed, have also re- cently been collected.6 In a few sentences, Henri Lévy-Bruhl expresses the essence of what we need to know about a man who was his teacher and friend: “Mauss is known primarily as an ethnologist and a historian of religion”; “Mauss despised all dogmatism”; “Mauss knew everything”; “Mauss was teeming with ideas”; “Mauss was the epitome of dedication”; “Mauss did not leave behind any general overview.” And in only a few lines he retraces Mauss’s “original and attractive physiognomy”: “Physically large and with a good build, his face framed by a light brown beard; regular features; sharp, shining eyes. His conversation was sparkling, though his voice was somewhat hollow and his manner of speaking slow. In his remarks there was often some paradox by which he himself was sometimes taken in.”7 Lévy-Bruhl is discreet about Mauss’s personal life: “His was a scholar’s life and displays few prominent traits.”8 But he immediately adds: “This is not the place to talk about the man his friends and loved ones will forever mourn for his great kindness, sensitivity, and gentleness. . . . It is fi tting to say, however, that his kind-heartedness was to some extent prejudicial to his scholarly output.”9 Little is known about the man: a few short biographical accounts are devoted to him but he has never been the object of a true intel- lectual biography.10 To write the intellectual biography of a scientist is to focus on his charac- ter—a unique set of abilities, habits, temperaments, and physical and m ental strengths11—but also to write the history of the people and disciplines associated with him (in this case, the history of religion, ethnology, and so- ciology). In addition, as Mauss’s former student André-Georges Haudricourt 2 INTRODUCTION suggests, it is to grasp the subject’s work in its context.12 Such a project is ambitious, not to say perilous, especially if we wish to be complete. This was the wish Mauss himself formulated when he wrote an obituary for the English anthropologist James Frazer: “A work of art may be merely sugges- tive. The history of a scientist, however, must be truthful and everything must be said in it.”13 One’s interest in Mauss’s life increases as one moves away from the man and toward his environment and his age. The environment was made up of new academic disciplines (ethnology and sociology) and of a school of thought, the Durkheim school; the age was the long period extending from 1872 to 1950 and marked by two major wars. Through his writings, his teachings, and his political action, Mauss found himself at the center of the intellectual and political life of his country and of Europe—in the “witch’s cauldron,” to use his expression. One cannot speak of Mauss without mentioning his uncle Émile Durkheim, head of the French school of sociology:14 Mauss himself acknowledged that it was impossible to separate himself from the work of the school. “If there is any personality, it is submerged in an intentional impersonalism. The sense of work in common, as a team, the conviction that collaboration is a coun- terforce to isolation, to the pretentious search for originality, may be what characterizes my scientifi c career.”15 Mauss embodied better than anyone that ethic of research characteristic of all who participated in the great collective adventure of Année Sociologique. His entire scientifi c life was organized around the journal, and most of his large body of writings took the form of notes, notices, and book reviews. Little has been known about the dynamic of the team of young research- ers surrounding Durkheim, a group usually portrayed as a cult. Access to Mauss’s personal archives, and in particular to his correspondence, now makes it possible to shed light on this founding moment in the history of the human sciences.16 In observing the exchanges, arguments, and differences of opinion Mauss had with all concerned, we may draw a more accurate portrait of the Durkheim school and present the specifi c contribution of each of its members. It is true that more than the others, Mauss found himself in a po- sition of dependence, “in Durkheim’s shadow,” as Condominas writes.17 His works, particularly his early writings, seem to be an “integral part of the col- lective work accomplished by the school of sociology.”18 But when we read Mauss’s writings as a whole, including the unpublished texts, we are led to qualify that assertion of his orthodoxy: the nephew always called himself a Durkheimian, but he was one in his own way. Mauss had little interest in developing systematic theories but preferred “to work on his materials,” to establish a few valid generalizations, and then “go on to something else.”19 Like Durkheim, Mauss was an ardent defender INTRODUCTION 3 of positive science, believing only in the facts. He shared an evolutionist conception of history and attributed a heuristic value to the study of the elementary (or primitive) forms of social facts. He applied himself to the analysis of the social functions of institutions and to the study of the mecha- nisms of social cohesion. And through his work on the ritual manifestations of religious life, he contributed toward a theory of the sacred. He acknowl- edged that “the innermost fount of social life is a set of representations”; he joined the vast Durkheimian enterprise whose object was to study the “human mentality.” And yet Mauss cannot be easily confi ned to a single category. He moved from one discipline to another, took an interest in a host of questions, and, though following in his uncle’s footsteps, also managed cautiously to mark himself off from him. He acknowledged that society is built on solidarity; but he believed that it also requires reciprocity for its survival. And though maintenance of the social order requires consensus, it also depends on the interpenetration of different social groups. Mauss’s position as nephew, disciple, and successor had one advantage: he was not compelled to lead the major battles, though there was no dearth of adversaries in academia. He could allow himself to open a dialogue with former enemies and attempt compromises, especially with psychologists. He was more interested in furthering knowledge than in defending a doctrine, and his attitude toward science—always both rationalist and empiricist— was less that of a professor who wants to transmit a body of codifi ed knowl- edge than that of a researcher aware of the limits of his methods who wants to collect new data and reduce ignorance about reality. As he liked to remind us, it is “the unknown that must be unveiled.” Even though Mauss never did fi eldwork, he was mindful of reality and familiar with all the e thnological research. It would be a distortion to see Mauss merely as the heir to the Durkheim legacy. After World War I, the burden of editing the vast and previously un- published work of Durkheim and his collaborators did fall on his shoulders. But he also pursued his own research in every direction, from the gift of “bodily techniques” to the idea of civilization and the notion of person. And though he relaunched Année Sociologique primarily out of a sense of obliga- tion to Durkheim’s memory, the Institut d’Ethnologie, which he helped to found in 1925, was not a specifi cally Durkheimian enterprise. There is a great temptation to seek a unifying principle in Mauss’s writ- ings. Victor Karady claims that his work holds together more as a result of “contingent circumstances than as the dialectic of a creative project and its realization.”20 This is a harsh judgment, since it assumes that the realiza- tion of a creative project owes nothing to circumstance. Yet it is true Mauss was often sorely tested—by the death of Durkheim and of Henri Hubert and by his own illnesses, for example—and faced many professional and