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 foss ...

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 kinshi ...

, 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 v ...

with an interest in technology 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 The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

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 documen ...

and the

Musée de l'Homme The Musée de l'Homme ( French, "Museum of Mankind" or "Museum of Humanity") is an anthropology museum in Paris, France. It was established in 1937 by Paul Rivet for the 1937 ''Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moder ...

, as well as in Japan. Between 1940 and 1944 he worked at the Musée Guimet. In 1944 he was sent to the

Château de Valençay Château de Valençay is a château in the commune of Valençay, in the Indre department of France. It was a residence of the d'Estampes and Talleyrand-Périgord families. Although it is part of the province of Berry, its architecture invites ...

to take care of works evacuated from the Louvre, including the

Venus de Milo The ''Venus de Milo'' (; el, Αφροδίτη της Μήλου, Afrodíti tis Mílou) is an ancient Greek sculpture that was created during the Hellenistic period, sometime between 150 and 125 BC. It is one of the most famous works of ancien ...

and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. He also participated in the French resistance, 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 aw ...

, 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 D ...

at the

Sorbonne Sorbonne may refer to: * Sorbonne (building), historic building in Paris, which housed the University of Paris and is now shared among multiple universities. *the University of Paris (c. 1150 – 1970) *one of its components or linked institution, ...

, and from 1969 until 1982 he was a professor at the

Collège de France The Collège de France (), formerly known as the ''Collège Royal'' or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment ('' grand établissement'') in France. It is located in Paris ...

. In 1973 he received the gold medal of the

Centre national de la recherche scientifique The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 ...

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 Prehistoric technology is technology that predates recorded history. History is the study of the past using written records. Anything prior to the first written accounts of history is prehistoric, including earlier technologies. About 2.5 million ...

, introducing the concept ''

chaîne opératoire Chaîne opératoire (; ) is a term used throughout anthropological discourse, but is most commonly used in archaeology and sociocultural anthropology. It functions as a methodological tool for analysing the technical processes and social acts in ...

'' (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 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), 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 th ...

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''. 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 Bernard Stiegler (; 1 April 1952 – 5 August 2020) was a French philosopher. He was head of the Institut de recherche et d'innovation (IRI), which he founded in 2006 at the Centre Georges-Pompidou. He was also the founder in 2005 of the polit ...

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 Year 983 ( CMLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * Summer – Diet of Verona: Emperor Otto II (the Red) declares war against the Byza ...

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