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

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

paleontologist Paleontology, also spelled as palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of the life of the past, mainly but not exclusively through the study of fossils. Paleontologists use fossils as a means to classify organisms, measure geolo ...

, paleoanthropologist, and

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

with an interest in

technology Technology is the application of Conceptual model, conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word ''technology'' can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible too ...

and

aesthetics Aesthetics (also spelled esthetics) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty and taste (sociology), taste, which in a broad sense incorporates the philosophy of art.Slater, B. H.Aesthetics ''Internet Encyclopedia of Ph ...

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 the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

under the supervision of

Marcel Mauss Marcel Israël 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 sociolo ...

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

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

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 ; ''MNAAG''; ) is a Parisian art museum with one of the largest collections of Asian art outside of Asia that includes items from Cambodia, Thailand, Viet Nam, Tibet, India, and Nepal, among other countries. Foun ...

. 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 a national art museum in Paris, France, and one of the most famous museums in the world. It is located on the Rive Droite, Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement of Paris, 1st arron ...

, including the

Venus de Milo The ''Venus de Milo'' or ''Aphrodite of Melos'' is an Ancient Greece, ancient Greek marble sculpture that was created during the Hellenistic art, Hellenistic period. Its exact dating is uncertain, but the modern consensus places it in the 2nd ...

and the

Winged Victory of Samothrace The ''Winged Victory of Samothrace'', or the ''Niké of Samothrace'', is a Votive offering, votive monument originally discovered on the island of Samothrace in the northeastern Aegean Sea. It is a masterpiece of Greek sculpture from the Helleni ...

. He also participated in the

French Resistance The French Resistance ( ) was a collection of groups that fought the German military administration in occupied France during World War II, Nazi occupation and the Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy#France, collaborationist Vic ...

, for which he received the

Croix de Guerre The (, ''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 awarded during World ...

, the Médaille de la Résistance and the

Légion d'honneur The National Order of the Legion of Honour ( ), formerly the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour (), is the highest and most prestigious French national order of merit, both military and Civil society, civil. Currently consisting of five cl ...

. 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 ...

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

Collège de France The (), formerly known as the or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment () in France. It is located in Paris near La Sorbonne. The has been considered to be France's most ...

. 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 b ...

of the

Centre national de la recherche scientifique The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 eng ...

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 Prehistory, prehistoric, including earlier technologies. About ...

, 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

biped Bipedalism is a form of terrestrial locomotion where an animal moves by means of its two rear (or lower) limbs or legs. An animal or machine that usually moves in a bipedal manner is known as a biped , meaning 'two feet' (from Latin ''bis'' ' ...

ality freed the hands for grasping, and the face for gesturing and speaking, and thus that the development of the

cortex Cortex or cortical may refer to: Biology * Cortex (anatomy), the outermost layer of an organ ** Cerebral cortex, the outer layer of the vertebrate cerebrum, part of which is the ''forebrain'' *** Motor cortex, the regions of the cerebral cortex i ...

, of technology, and of

language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...

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 Deoxyribonucleic acid (; DNA) is a polymer composed of two polynucleotide chains that coil around each other to form a double helix. The polymer carries genetic instructions for the development, functioning, growth and reproduction of al ...

and the individual memory of the

nervous system In biology, the nervous system is the complex system, highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its behavior, actions and sense, sensory information by transmitting action potential, signals to and from different parts of its body. 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;Peeters (2013), pp. 12–13. See also 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was a French Algerian philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in a number of his texts, ...

discusses Leroi-Gourhan in ''

Of Grammatology ''Of Grammatology'' () 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 engaged with linguistic and semiotic id ...

'' (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 volumes o ...

and psychiatrist

Félix Guattari Pierre-Félix Guattari ( ; ; 30 March 1930 – 29 August 1992) was a French psychoanalyst, political philosopher, Semiotics, semiotician, social activist, and screenwriter. He co-founded schizoanalysis with Gilles Deleuze, and created ecosophy ...

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 founder of the political and c ...

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) (an earlier translation of ''The Hunters of Prehistory'': see below). *''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 *''André Leroi-Gourhan on Technology: A Selection of Writings from the 1930s to the 1960s.'' Edited by Nathan Schlanger; translated by Nils F. Schott. New York: Bard Graduate Center, 2024.

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 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 French archaeologists French male non-fiction writers French philosophers of technology 20th-century French male writers