André Leroi-Gourhan (; ; 25 August 1911 – 19 February 1986) was a French

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

paleontologist Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

paleoanthropologist Paleoanthropology or paleo-anthropology is a branch of paleontology and anthropology which seeks to understand the early development of anatomically modern humans, a process known as hominization, through the reconstruction of evolutionary kinship ...

, and

anthropologist An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...

with an interest in

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...

and

aesthetics Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed thr ...

and a penchant for philosophical reflection.

Biography

Leroi-Gourhan completed his doctorate on the archaeology of the North Pacific under the supervision of

Marcel Mauss Marcel Mauss (; 10 May 1872 – 10 February 1950) was a French sociologist and anthropologist known as the "father of French ethnology". The nephew of Émile Durkheim, Mauss, in his academic work, crossed the boundaries between sociology and a ...

. Beginning in 1933 he held various positions at museums around the world, including the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

and the Musée de l'Homme, as well as in Japan. Between 1940 and 1944 he worked at the

Musée Guimet The Guimet Museum (full name in french: Musée national des arts asiatiques-Guimet; MNAAG; ) is an art museum located at 6, place d'Iéna in the XVIe arrondissement, 16th arrondissement of Paris, France. Literally translated into English, its ful ...

. In 1944 he was sent to the Château de Valençay to take care of works evacuated from the

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...

, including the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. He also participated in the

French resistance The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régim ...

, for which he received the

Croix de Guerre The ''Croix de Guerre'' (, ''Cross of War'') is a military decoration of France. It was first created in 1915 and consists of a square-cross medal on two crossed swords, hanging from a ribbon with various degree pins. The decoration was first awa ...

, the Médaille de la Résistance and the

Légion d'honneur The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon ...

. In 1956 he succeeded

Marcel Griaule Marcel Griaule (16 May 1898 – 23 February 1956) was a French author and anthropologist known for his studies of the Dogon people of West Africa, and for pioneering ethnographic field studies in France. He worked together with Germaine Die ...

at the Sorbonne, and from 1969 until 1982 he was a professor at the Collège de France. In 1973 he received the

gold medal A gold medal is a medal awarded for highest achievement in a non-military field. Its name derives from the use of at least a fraction of gold in form of plating or alloying in its manufacture. Since the eighteenth century, gold medals have bee ...

of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

Technicity, ethnicity, milieu

In ''L'Homme et la matière'' 'Man and Matter''(1943), Leroi-Gourhan proposes the concept of ''technical tendencies'', that is, universal technical dynamics that operate independently of the ''ethnic'' groupings which are nevertheless the only forms through which these tendencies are concretised. The concretisation of the technical tendency in a particular ethnicity he calls a ''technical fact''. In ''Milieu et techniques'' 'Environment and Techniques''(1945), Leroi-Gourhan develops this into a general theory of the relation between the technical (as universal tendency) and the ethnic (as specific, differentiated concretisation). The human group, according to Leroi-Gourhan, behaves as though it were a living organism, assimilating its exterior milieu via "a curtain of objects", which he also calls an "interposed membrane" and an "artificial envelope", that is, technology. The milieu of the organism is divisible into the exterior milieu (geography, climate, animals and vegetation) and the interior milieu (the shared past of the group, thus "culture", etc.). This division enables a clarification of the concept of technical tendency. A tendency, according to Leroi-Gourhan, is a movement, within the interior milieu, that gains progressive foothold in the exterior milieu. Leroi-Gourhan contributed to the methods of studying prehistoric technology, introducing the concept '' chaîne opératoire'' (operational chain) which denotes all the social acts involved in the life cycle of an artifact.

Evolution, memory, program

Crucial to Leroi-Gourhan's understanding of human evolution is the notion that the transition to bipedality freed the hands for grasping, and the face for gesturing and speaking, and thus that the development of the cortex, of technology, and of

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...

all follow from the adoption of an upright stance. What characterises humanity in its distinction from animals is thus the fact that tools and technology are a third kind of memory (in addition to the genetic memory contained in DNA and the individual memory of the

nervous system In biology, the nervous system is the highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its actions and sensory information by transmitting signals to and from different parts of its body. The nervous system detects environmental changes th ...

), and thus a new form of anticipation, or programming. Anthropogenesis corresponds to technogenesis.

Legacy

The French philosopher

Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida; See also . 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in numerous texts, and which was developed t ...

discusses Leroi-Gourhan in ''

Of Grammatology ''Of Grammatology'' (french: links=no, De la grammatologie) is a 1967 book by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. The book, originating the idea of deconstruction, proposes that throughout continental philosophy, especially as philosophers en ...

'' (Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997, corrected edition), in particular the concepts of "exteriorisation", "program", and "liberation of memory." This discussion was particularly important in the formulation of Derrida's neologism, ''différance''. Leroi-Gourhan is frequently cited in the two volume collaboration by French philosopher

Gilles Deleuze Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( , ; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volu ...

and psychiatrist Félix Guattari entitled ''

Capitalism and Schizophrenia ''Capitalism and Schizophrenia'' (french: Capitalisme et Schizophrénie) is a two-volume theoretical work by the French authors Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, respectively a philosopher and a psychoanalyst. Its volumes are ''Anti-Oedipus'' ...

''. The hand/tool and face/vocalization couplings of Leroi-Gourhan play an important role in the development of Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of becoming and deterritorialisation. The French philosopher Bernard Stiegler gives an extensive reading of Leroi-Gourhan in '' Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus'' (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).

Bibliography

In French

*''L'Homme et la matière'' (Paris: Albin Michel, 1943). *''Milieu et techniques'' (Paris: Albin Michel, 1945). *''Le geste et la parole'', 2 vols. (Paris: Albin Michel, 1964–65). *''Les religions de la Préhistoire'' (Paris: PUF, 1964). *''Préhistoire de l'art occidental'' (Paris: Mazenod, 1965). *''Mécanique vivante: Le crâne des Vertébrés, du Poisson à l'Homme'' (Paris: Fayard, 1983).

English translations

*''Prehistoric Man'' (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957) (n.b. this appears to be an earlier translation of 'The Hunters of Pre-History', or a translation of an earlier version of the same work). *''Treasures of Prehistoric Art'' (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1967). *''The Dawn of European Art: An Introduction to Palaeolithic Cave Painting'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). *''Gesture and Speech'' (Cambridge, Massachusetts & London: MIT Press, 1993). *''The Hunters of Prehistory'' Trans. Claire Jacobson. New York: Atheneum, 1989 983

References

External links

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L'aventure humaine, 1970, INA archive {{DEFAULTSORT:Leroi-Gourhan, Andre 1911 births 1986 deaths French paleoanthropologists French paleontologists French archaeologists French anthropologists French Resistance members Recipients of the Legion of Honour Recipients of the Croix de Guerre 1939–1945 (France) Recipients of the Resistance Medal Members of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 20th-century French philosophers 20th-century archaeologists French male non-fiction writers 20th-century French male writers