André Leroi-Gourhan

Infobox Person
name = André Leroi-Gourhan


caption = Portrait of the French prehistorian André Leroi-Gourhan by José-Manuel Benito Álvarez
birth_date = birth date|1911|8|25
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death_date = death date and age|1986|2|19|1911|8|25
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other_names =
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nationality = Flag|France

André Leroi-Gourhan (August 25, 1911 – February 19, 1986) was a French archaeologist, paleontologist, paleoanthropologist, and anthropologist with an interest in technology and aesthetics 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. Beginning in 1933 he held various positions at museums around the world, including the British Museum and the Musée de l'Homme, 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 to take care of works evacuated from the Louvre, including the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. He also participated in the French resistance, for which he received the Croix de guerre, the Médaille de la Résistance and the Légion d'Honneur. In 1956 he succeeded Marcel Griaule at the Sorbonne, and from 1969 until 1982 he was a professor at the College de France. In 1973 he received the of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

Technicity, ethnicity, milieu

In "L'Homme et la matière" (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" (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.

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.

Influence

The French philosopher Jacques Derrida discusses Leroi-Gourhan in "Of Grammatology" (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's work has also influenced the French philosopher Bernard Stiegler, who gives an extensive reading of Leroi-Gourhan in "" (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).

English translations

*"Prehistoric Man" (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957).
*"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).