Pierre Naville (1 February 1903 – 24 April 1993) was a French
Surrealist
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to ...
writer and
sociologist.
[Stubb, Jeremy]
Obituary: Pierre Naville
''The Independent'', 3 June 1993. He was a prominent member of the "Investigating Sex" group of Surrealist thinkers.
In politics, he was a Communist and then a
Trotskyist
Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a ...
, before joining the
PSU. He led a career as an occupational sociologist.
Early life
Naville was born in 1903 in Paris, to a family of Swiss Protestant bankers.
Surrealist from its earliest times
In 1922 he founded the avant-garde periodical ''L'œuf dur'' (''The Tough Egg'') together with
Philippe Soupault
Philippe Soupault (2 August 1897 – 12 March 1990) was a French writer and poet, novelist, critic, and political activist. He was active in Dadaism and later was instrumental in founding the Surrealist movement with André Breton. Soupault in ...
,
François Gérard
François Pascal Simon Gérard (, 4 May 1770 – 11 January 1837), titled as Baron Gérard in 1809, was a prominent French painter. He was born in Rome, where his father occupied a post in the house of the French ambassador, and his mother was It ...
,
Max Jacob
Max Jacob (; 12 July 1876 – 5 March 1944) was a French poet, painter, writer, and critic.
Life and career
After spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic ca ...
,
Louis Aragon
Louis Aragon (, , 3 October 1897 – 24 December 1982) was a French poet who was one of the leading voices of the surrealist movement in France. He co-founded with André Breton and Philippe Soupault the surrealist review ''Littérature''. He ...
and
Blaise Cendrars
Frédéric-Louis Sauser (1 September 1887 – 21 January 1961), better known as Blaise Cendrars, was a Swiss-born novelist and poet who became a naturalized French citizen in 1916. He was a writer of considerable influence in the European mo ...
.
He was co-editor with
Benjamin Péret for the three first numbers of ''
La Révolution Surréaliste
''La Révolution surréaliste'' (English: ''The Surrealist Revolution'') was a publication by the Surrealists in Paris. Twelve issues were published between 1924 and 1929.
Shortly after releasing the first '' Surrealist Manifesto'', André Bre ...
'', founded the Bureau de Recherches Surréalistes in (1924 and participated in surrealist activities with
André Breton before eventually opposing Surrealism because of his political divergences from the emerging Surrealist orthodoxy.
Politics
In 1926, Naville married fellow surrealist
Denise Lévy.
[A. Cuenot]
NAVILLE Denise, née KAHN Denise
''Maitron'', version posted on 30 November 2010, last modified 11 December 2020. Accessed 21 December 2020. That year he joined the
French Communist Party
The French Communist Party (french: Parti communiste français, ''PCF'' ; ) is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism. The PCF is a member of the Party of the European Left, and its MEPs sit in the European Un ...
(PCF), for which he managed the publication ''Clarté''. He was a member of a delegation that visited
Leon Trotsky
Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...
in Moscow in 1927. He returned convinced by Trotsky's arguments and was expelled from the Communist Party in 1928 for
deviationism. From this point onwards, he and his wife participated in the life of the French
Trotskyist
Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a ...
extreme left and notably its publications. However, he became less and less convinced by Trotsky's position, and broke with the group in 1939. He then organised attempts to create a
Marxist left, devoid of Communist and Trotskyist trappings, through a publication called the ''Revue Internationale''.
Initially passing through the PSU, Naville continued to search for a modern left in the PSG, then the UGS, before taking part in the re-establishment of the Parti Socialiste Unifié (PSU) under the
Fifth Republic. He remained loyal to this party in spite of his opposition to the "realists" (
Gilles Martinet,
Michel Rocard
Michel Rocard (; 23 August 1930 – 2 July 2016) was a French politician and a member of the Socialist Party (PS). He served as Prime Minister under François Mitterrand from 1988 to 1991 during which he created the ''Revenu minimum d'ins ...
) and showed total rejection of
François Mitterrand.
Psycho-sociology of work
Appointed director of research at the
CNRS in 1947, he worked with
Georges Friedmann
Georges Philippe Friedmann (; 13 May 1902 – 15 November 1977), was a French sociologist and philosopher, known for his influential work on the effects of industrial labor on individuals and his criticisms of the uncontrolled embrace of techn ...
at the Centre d'études sociologiques, dedicating his work to the psychosociology of work, and the study of
automation
Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, namely by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines ...
,
industrial society, the psychology of comportment, and the strategists and theoreticians of war, notably
Carl von Clausewitz
Carl Philipp Gottfried (or Gottlieb) von Clausewitz (; 1 June 1780 – 16 November 1831) was a Prussian general and military theorist who stressed the "moral", in modern terms meaning psychological, and political aspects of waging war. His mo ...
. He supervised the French translation and publication of the complete works of Clausewitz.
Existentialism
He was the primary other contributor mentioned at the end of
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and lit ...
's ''
L'existentialisme est un humanisme
''Existentialism Is a Humanism'' (french: L'existentialisme est un humanisme) is a 1946 work by the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, based on a lecture by the same name he gave at Club Maintenant in Paris, on 29 October 1945. In early translations, ...
'' (''Existentialism is a Humanism''), criticising
existentialism
Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and valu ...
.
Honours
The laboratory of research in social sciences and management at the
University of Évry Val d'Essonne
The Université d'Évry Val-d'Essonne (''Université d'Évry Val-d'Essonne'' or UEVE) is a French public university located in Évry-Courcouronnes, Île-de-France, and is one of the founding members of Paris-Saclay University.
The UEVE is expecte ...
bears his name.
Works
Surrealist
*''Les Reines de la main gauche'', 1924
Political
*''La Révolution et les Intellectuels'', 1926
*''Les Jacobins noirs (Toussaint-Louverture et la Révolution de Saint-Domingue)'' with
Cyril Lionel Robert James
*''La Guerre du Viêt-Nam'', 1949
*''Le Nouveau Léviathan'', 1957–1975
*''Trotsky Vivant'', 1962
*''Autogestion et Planification'', 1980
Sociological
*''De la Guerre'', translated from
Carl von Clausewitz
Carl Philipp Gottfried (or Gottlieb) von Clausewitz (; 1 June 1780 – 16 November 1831) was a Prussian general and military theorist who stressed the "moral", in modern terms meaning psychological, and political aspects of waging war. His mo ...
with
Denise Naville
Denise Lévy, née Kahn, later Denise Naville (1896-1979) was a French writer and translator.Isabelle KalinowskiDenise Naville traductrice in Françoise Blum, ed., ''Les vies de Pierre Naville''. Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2007. Active ...
and
Camille Rougeron
*''La Psychologie, science du comportement'', 1942
*''Psychologie, marxisme, matérialisme'', 1948
*''La Chine Future'', 1952
*''La Vie de Travail et ses Problèmes'', 1954
*''Essai sur la Qualification du Travail'', 1956
*''Le Traité de Sociologie du Travail'', 1961–1962
*''L'État entrepreneur: le cas de la régie Renault'' with
Jean-Pierre Bardou,
Philippe Brachet and
Catherine Lévy, 1971
*''Sociologie d'Aujourd'hui'', 1981
Others
*Memoirs (''Le Temps du surréel'', 1977)
Books about Pierre Naville
*''Des sociologies face à Pierre Naville ou l'archipel des savoirs'' – Centre Pierre Naville
*''Les logiques de la découverte et celles de l'action par Pierre Rolle'' in: ''Pierre Naville, la passion de la connaissance'' – Michel Eliard, Presses universitaires de Toulouse-le-Mirail, 1996
References
External links
Obituaryby
Ian Birchall
Ian Birchall (born 1939) is a British Marxist historian and translator, a former member of the Socialist Workers Party and author of numerous articles and books, particularly relating to the French Left. Formerly Senior Lecturer in French at Mid ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Naville, Pierre
1903 births
1993 deaths
20th-century French writers
French surrealist writers
French sociologists
French communists
French socialists
French National Centre for Scientific Research scientists
French male writers