From Representation to Evocation: Tracing a Progression in Jean Rouch's Les magiciens de Wanzerbé, Les maîtres fous,and Jaguar

In this article, I describe and analyze the ways in which the Other is represented in three of Jean Rouch's earlier films. After briefly outlining Rouch's relationship to the cinema of Robert Flaherty, I look closely at Les magiciens de Wanzerbé [1948], Les maîtres fous [], and Jaguar [], and argue that these films exhibit a progression from a conventional, colonialist mode of documentary practice to a more open, polyvocal, collaborative form. I conclude by suggesting that this transition constitutes a shift from the attempt to represent that which can never be adequately represented to the evocation of it.     

The “ethnographic surrealism” of Jean Rouch

Using James Clifford's notion of “ethnographic surrealism,” this paper focuses on the “surrealist” features of the film work of Jean Rouch. First, drawing extensively from an interview held with Rouch in May 1988, I outline the influence that the “ethnographic surrealism” of the 1930s had on Rouch. I then go on to discuss “surrealism” in Rouch's use of the camera, choice of subject matter, techniques of narration, and relationship to his subject. I conclude by demonstrating that Rouch's current work at the Cinémathèque Française and the Comité du Film Ethnographique offer excellent examples of his ability to cross disciplinary boundaries and thus extend the original spirit of “ethnographic surrealism” into the present.     

Jean Rouch and the Birth of Visual Anthropology: A Brief History of the Comité international du film ethnographique

The true scope of Jean Rouch's international activities for the advancement of visual anthropology is little known. Few in the field today are aware that he was for more than 10 years the driving force of the Comité international du film ethnographique, where he was secretary-general as of 1958. It is thanks to his initiative, backed by UNESCO, that the first anthropologist–filmmakers were able to present their films (and often see them hotly debated) in Paris, Brussels, Prague, Venice, Florence, and Locarno. He was, together with sociologist Edgar Morin (with whom he would produce the influential film Chronique d'un été), one of the collaborators of the Florence Festival dei Popoli, then entirely devoted to ethnographic and sociological films. Here Luc de Heusch, closely associated to Jean Rouch throughout those intrepid times, chronicles the seminal years of visual anthropology.     

Ethnographic surreality,possession and the unconscious

In the Second Manifesto of Surrealism, issued by André Breton in 1929, surrealism was described as “a total recuperation of our psychic strength by a means of none other than vertiginous descent into ourselves, systematic illumination of the hidden places and progressive darkening of the other places, a perpetual walk in the forbidden zone”. Surrealism sought to represent the unconscious and forbidden zones of the psyche, of the body, of the noumenal world within, which offered access, for surrealists, to energies and intuitions repressed by “civilized” modes of perception. For Jean Rouch, the significance of surrealism, of automatic writing and ciné‐transe, rested in the potential escape they offered from the formal constraints of conventional film and of conventional perception and observation. In his celebration of ciné‐transe, and of the technological apparatus that makes it possible, it is possible to detect his desire for a freeing‐up of the constraints of consciousness—a desire to “write with the body”, to dream, to tap the unexplored power of the unconscious in its overturning of “reality”, of system, and of convention. As a phaneroscopic “wide‐angle lens”, surreality aimed to document the scientifically unexplainable, the immense experiential overload of ritual possession. It attempted to make visible, in the movement between observation and participation and across disjunctive points of view; the crossings‐over into the unconscious world by which possessed Songhay dancers gained access to powers of phaneroscopic perception. By adopting filmic techniques which follow the surrealist practice of creating “verbal and visual collage”, in which randomly‐generated images, emerging out of a trance‐like state (of “automatic writing” or "ciné‐transe"), are juxtaposed in indeterminate and polyphonic relations with each other in an attempt to disturb or destroy patterns of perception which are confining, rationalistic, linear, or restricted to conscious phenomena, Rouch believed he could create powerful representations of the unknowable. This paper relates the phaneroscopic practice of ethnographic surrealism to psychoanalytic models of the unconscious. In a discussion of Rouch's interpretation of the Hauka spirit cult in his film Les Maîtres Fous, the paper argues that the neo‐Freudian paradigm which allowed him to depict the Sohghay's weekend Hauka rites as a parodic reversion to “savagery” (which both reversed the hierarchy of colonizer/colonized and enabled participants to experience a therapeutic release from the traumas of colonization) has been challenged by Lacanian and post‐Lacanian “re‐readings” of Freud that call into question the extent to which the unconscious can be equated with a pre‐linguistic state characterized by disjunctive “primitive” and “instinctive” energies. The surrealist longing for a rupture of the symbolic order of Western rationalism and a return to the “imaginary order” of the unconscious is confounded in the Lacanian conception of the unconscious as a zone inhabited by the “discourse of the Other”. However, the work of Gillès Deleuze and Félix Guanari [1977] provides a means of conceptualizing the unconscious in terms that avoid simplistic binary logic (phenomenon/noumenon; signifier/signified; subject/object; conscious/unconscious; civilization/savagery). The unconscious is not the “unrepresentable” Other of consciousness; it is a schizophrenic phaneron, a signifying “machine”, a transgressive producer of “group fantasy”. Rejecting both Freud's Oedipal model (the unconscious as primal imagery or “ghostly signifieds"), and the Lacanian notion of the unconscious (as a play of “empty signifiers"). Deleuze and Guattari argue that the unconscious cannot be accounted for in terms of the individual child and its entry into language any more than it can be conceived of as the domain of the primitive. On the contrary, the unconscious is constituted as “group fantasy”, as collective public memory which need not be reduced to elemental (Oedipal) signifiers: “all delirium possesses a world‐historical, political and racial content”. The schizophrenic embodies the public nature of unconscious meaning, since schizophrenia is primarily a communication disorder in which an individual never sees himself in terms of a linguistically‐generated “selfhood”, and fails to adopt the “false” identity which is offered to him in the language of the Other. Schizophrenia is characterized by a refusal to treat some meanings as superior to others, to remain within the bounds of a stable identity, or to distinguish between material (noumenal) things and actions and their (phenomenal) meanings. The schizophrenic unconscious treats all experience as signs, registering language in the same way as the body registers physical stimuli. Thus “meanings in the unconscious are simply meanings as workings of the body” [Harland 1987:174–175]. The schizophrenic as a model for the unconscious holds several implications for those interested in representing the experiential power of public rituals, for the public meanings in circulation during such rituals are material and noumenal, and are registered on the bodies of the dancers as they transgress boundaries and pass beyond consciousness. Rouch's surreality attempted to inscribe this unconscious production of public meaning as it was manifested in the movements of the ritual and in the movements of the camera‐body.     

Knowledge as the source of progress: The Marshall family testament to the “Bushmen”

There can be no doubt that the Marshalls’ testament to the “Bushmen,” particularly Elizabeth's The Harmless People and John's The Hunters, played a major role in shaping a public image of humankind's ancient ancestors, especially in the United States. John has said, correctly I believe, that simply by being made known through his family's efforts, Khoisan‐speaking “Bushmen” were brought into the surviving ethnographic record that intrigued a growing number of anthropologists as well as the general public at the beginning of the 1960s. I offer here a preliminary account, based on archival materials, personal letters, etc., of the paradigms and politics that underlay their efforts. I begin with an examination of the extent to which Laurence Marshall must be seen as the inspiration for and the driving force behind the family project, then turn to a consideration of J. O. Brew's role in it. Although this was an ethnoarchaeological project from its beginning, Brew's role has been wholly unappreciated, but cannot be exaggerated; he was, in terminology appropriate to the business nature of the case, Chief Executive Officer to Laurence's Chairman of the Board.

I then turn to the political arena of prehistory—of the living and the dead—that became as important as the arena of its field sites in the 1960s. The Marshalls were thrust into dormancy by academically more powerful rivals who publicly and privately contested their work, but there can be little doubt that their record critically influenced reawakening anthropological interest in hunting societies. Indeed, struggles to be the proprietary heirs to the Marshalls’ “Bushman” legacy ricochetted off the walls of academia from Cambridge (US) to Berkeley to Johannesburg to London to Cambridge (UK).

Finally, I consider the mythic underpinnings of the Marshalls’ work, and conclude that while Elizabeth, in The Harmless People, presents the least occluded view of the Marshalls’ Kalahari, seen as a whole John's “Bushmen” films reveal the expanding of a sensitive consciousness not only to a gestalt of life but to the complexity of filmic (re)presentation and to the limitations of audiences to comprehend what is presented. Collectively, his films constitute important ethnographic documents. They are not, however, dependable documents of the objectified peoples made subjects in the films, but faithful documents of the filmmaker/ethnographer situated in the discourse of a distorted modernity at the time they were made. They permit us to draw inferences about the species of colonial ideology that was pervasive at that time.     

Utilisation des spectres polliniques recueillis sur Agrotis (Scotia) Ipsilon Hufnagel (Noctuidae) comme indicateur des migrations

Dans le but de préciser Ies désplacements migratoires de Agrotis ipsilon, des analyses polliniques ont été réalisées a partir de lavage de têtes entières (surface, trompes et antennes) de papillons mâles sur neuf échantillons correspondant à neuf piégeages effectués en Camargue (France) entre le 28.III et le 05.V.1989 et sur un piégeage d'individus mâles et femelles le 20.IX.1989 au Col du Glandon (2000 m, Savoie, France). Les traitements chimiques classiques de la palynologie ont été appliqués à des groupes de 10 têtes par piégeage donnant une image pollinique de la population.

Les résultats obtenus mettent en éevidence des quantités de pollens recueillies et une richesse taxonomique largement suffisantes pour l'établissement de spectres polliniques. Elles attestent la présence de pollens de plantes à pollinisation entomophile mais aussi anémophile (35%). Les taxons rencontrés appartiennent à la flore locale (Tamarix, Matthiola, type Genista, Brassicaceae, Gentianaceae, Rosaceae et Saxifragaceae) et lointaine (Citrus, Eucalyptus, Ostrya, Castanea, Betula, Alnus et Hedera). La reconnaissance dans les spectres polliniques des genres appartenant au citronnier, clémentinier, charme-houblon ou à l'eucalyptus suggère une migration sud-est/est a partir de la Corse ou de la région Alpes-Cote-d'Azur. Une migration sud (Afrique du Nord) est suspectée par la présence de pollens en dehors de leur période de pollinisation (Olea et Castanea). Dans l'état actuel de nos observations, il n'a pas encore été possible de mettre en évidence des taxons nord-africains. Les ressources nectarifères ont pu être précisées: Salix, Citrus, Eucalyptus, Ligustrum, Castanea et Brassicaceae.

Pollen analysis were carried out on moths [Agrotis (Scotia) ipsilon] collected on two sites in south-east France, one near the Mediterranean sea (Camargue), the other in the Alps, at 2000 m altitude. A spring migration from east and south-east (Corsica and the French Riviera) was found at the Camargue site, while a possible fall migration from the North (Lyon area) appeared in the Alps. In addition, the analyses indicate that moths visit certain nectariferous floral sources.     

An ethical solution to the problem of legal indeterminacy: sharīʿa scholarship at Egypt's al‐Azhar

This article explores the importance of ethical discipline in resolving the ambiguities characteristic of legal interpretation. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among religious scholars at Egypt's al‐Azhar, I demonstrate that traditional Muslim educational techniques are structured with the aim of imparting a particular set of dispositions (modelled on those of the Prophet) by enjoining meticulous and constant imitation of the Prophet's personal habits (sunna). By transforming themselves into living replicas of the Prophet, jurists believe that they acquire the ability to mirror his textual interpretations.     

Discursive Formation,Ethnographic Encounter,Photographic Evidence: The Centenary of Durkheim's Basic Forms of Religious Life and the Anthropological Study of Australian Aboriginal Religion in His Time

Historical research on the work of Émile Durkheim has often been confined to textual analysis aiming to reconstruct his research in the context of anthropological discourses at the turn of the 20th century. As radical changes in the visual culture of the late 19th century shaped the formation of anthropology as an academic discipline, the ambition of this article is to elaborate the ways Durkheim's use of ethnographic data and visual material formed the foundation of the theoretical and methodological design of his approach to religion. By tracing features in his Basic Forms that emphasize visual material and prioritize religious practice, I submit that the photographic evidence given in Spencer and Gillen's account of Aboriginal religion allowed Durkheim to theorize religion primarily through ritual. Photography, as a visual means of representation, enhanced the study of religion by focusing on ritual without necessarily demanding consideration of its mythical narratives and cosmological accounts. Based on a thorough analysis of his Basic Forms, this article argues that Durkheim used the photographs of the Aborigines of Central Australia systematically and that this use of photographs consequently guided his ethnographic depiction and his selection of theoretical concepts and methodological procedures.     

Les Spectres Polliniques des Miels de Différentes Régions Phytogéographiques de la Province de León (N.O. de l'Espagne)

Les analyses polliniques ont été effectuées sur 40 échantillons de miel qui proviennent des deux grandes régions phytogéographiques situées dans la province de León (N.O. de l'Espagne). La densité pollinique (grains de pollen/g de miel), est de moins de 10.000 grains/g dans 27 échantillons, de 10.000 à 50.000 grains/g dans 12 miels et de 50.000 à 100.000 grains/g dans 1 seul cas.

Treize miels monofloraux ont été typifiées: 3 de châtaignier (Castanea sativa) 1 de bruyère dont 4 d'Erica sp, 2 d'E. umbellata et 1 d'E. arborea, 1 de tournesol (Helianthus annuus) et 2 de lavande (type Lavandula pedunculata). Les autres miels sont tous multifloraux.

Dans l'ensemble des miels analysés, 122 formes de pollen on pu être identifiées. Les types polliniques Erica australis, Genista florida, Lotus corniculatus, Trifolium repens, Mentha aquatica, Plantago lanceolata, Poaceae, Prunus, Rubus ulmifolius et Salix fragilis ont été identifiées dans 80% des échantillons provenant des deux régions phytogéographiques alors que ceux de Cistus ladanifer et de Lavandula pedunculata sont typiques des seuls miels de la région Méditerranéenne. Dans la région phytogéographique Eurosibérienne, les communautés végétales les mieux représentées dans les spectres polliniques ce sont celles à gênets, à bruyères et à épineux. Dans les miels de la région Méditerranéenne il y a également une bonne représentation des genêts, des bruyères et des épineux qui font cependant partie d'associations végétales différentes comme l'indique la présence de Lavandula pedunculata, Lavandula sampaiana et Cistus sp.     

Darwin and barnacles

In this essay, I discuss the origin of Charles Darwin's interest in cirripedes (barnacles). Indeed, he worked intensively on cirripedes during the years in which he was developing the theory that eventually led to the publication of The Origin of Species. In the light of our present knowledge, I present Darwin's achievements in the morphology, systematics and biology of these small marine invertebrates, and also his mistakes. I suggest that the word that sheds the most light here is homology, and that his mistakes were due to following Richard Owen's method of determining homologies by reference to an ideal archetype. I discuss the ways in which his studies on cirripedes influenced the writing of The Origin.     

Book Notices

The South Asiatic Olethreutini (Lepidoptera, Tortricidae), by A. Diakonoff Les Guêpes Sociales (Hymenoptera, Vespidae) d'Europe Occidentale et Septentrionale, by Delfa Guiglia     

The anthropologist as photographer: The visual construction of ethnographic authority

“The Anthropologist as Author"—Clifford Geertz's formulation is emblematic of a theme of anthropology in the 1980s, ethnographic writing. Ethnographic photography, however, was barely a subject of consideration. Reviewing Evans‐Pritchard's The Nuer, a book widely re‐read in the writing culture debate, this article investigates not only the author's visual construction of ethnographic authority. It also reveals ethnographic photography as a medium, which can undermine this authority in a subtle yet compelling manner. Thus concentrating on the medium itself this paper investigates the uneasy relationship between photography and anthropology, and proposes an approach to ethnographic photography that goes beyond the questions of representation.¹     

DEVELOPPEMENT EMBRYONNAIRE IN VITRO,EN MILIEU ARTIFICIEL DEFINI DE DEUX PARASITOIDES OVOLARVIPARES,PHRYXE CAUDATA ET LIXOPHAGA DIATRAEAE (DIPTERA,TACHINIDAE)

Les utérus sont prélevés par dissection des femelles âgées soit de 2 jours (P. caudata), soit de 2 à 4 jours (L. diatraeae); ils contiennent alors des oeufs qui viennent juste d'être fécondés. Ces utérus sont placés aseptiquement sur des milieux de culture pour observer l'embryogénèse éventuelle des oeufs. Un milieu physiologique simple (Y) et un milieu nutritif complet (M) sont testés sous deux formes, liquide ou gélifiée avec 0,5% d'agarose. Chez les deux espèces le développement embryonnaire complet a pu être observé in vitro. Les meilleurs résultats, qui fournissent le même pourcentage de larves qu'in vivo, sont constatés avec le milieu M agarosé. Sur les milieux liquides le rendement en larves est inférieur de moitié environ par rapport aux milieux gélifiés correspondants. Avec les milieux simples Y, mème si un fort pourcentage de larves est obtenu (Y agarosé), celes-ci meurent rapidement. Seul le milieu M permet d'obtenir des larves d'excellente viabilité et aptes à se développer. La composition du milieu, mais aussi les possibilités respiratoires offertes aux oeufs agissent sur l'embryogénése.     

Ultrastructure de l'endostyle de l'ascidie Microcosmus claudicans Savigny

Résumé L'endostyle de l'Ascidie Microcosmus claudicans (Savigny) contient 8 types cellulaires groupés en bandelettes longitudinales. Les cellules I sont mucipares et ciliées; les cellules III et V ciliées sont vectrices du mucus.Les cellules II et IV des bandelettes glandulaires sont très riches en ergastoplasme et renferment des grains de sécrétion apicaux d'aspect analogue. Les cellules VI également riches en ergastoplasme se distinguent des précédentes par leurs grains de sécrétion en forme de batonnet. Les cellules VII. iodophiles, sont caractérisées par leurs nombreux grains de lipopigment et leurs filaments intracytoplasmiques.Les fonctions des cellules II, IV, VI et VII sont inconnues.     

Comparaison de la composition génétique de trois isolats du baculovirus de la polyedrose nucléaire du lépidoptèreSpodoptera littoralis

Trois Baculovirus isolés de larves deSpodoptera littoralis atteintes de polyédroses nucléaires au Maroc, en Egypte et dans un élevage à Lyon ont été comparés par analyse de leurs génomes avec des enzymes de restriction. Les variants génétiques contenus dans les populations virales sont obtenus après isolement de clones en culture cellulaire. Sur 27 clones analysés par les endonucléases on observe 11 variants avecEco RI, 3 variants avecBam HI et avecSac I et un type unique avecHin dIII. Les 3 virus Maroc, Egypte et Lyon sont différents, mais appartiennent à l'espèce B définie parCherry & Summers (1985). Summary Three Baculoviruses were isolated fromSpodoptera littoralis larvae infected with nuclear polyhedrosis (NPV) collected from Morocco, Egypt, and a from laboratory culture at Lyon (France). Their genomes were compared by restriction endonuclease analysis. The genotypic variants contained in the viral populations were obtained after isolation of clones in cell culture. Among the 27 clones analyzed by restriction endonucleases, 11 variants were observed withEco RI, 3 variants withBam HI andSac I, and one unique type withHin dIII. These 3 viruses “Morocco”, “Egypt”, and “Lyon” are different, but belong to type B ofS. littoralis NPV as defined byCherry & Summers (1985).

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avec la collaboration technique de BéatriceChebli.     

Alternative Cultural Heterotopia and the Liminoid Body: Beyond Turner at ConFest

This article takes issue with Victor Turner's influential, yet essentialist, category of the limen. While acknowledging Turner's continuing significance in the analysis of public events, I draw upon detailed ethnography of one of Australia's contemporary pilgrimage centres, the alternative lifestyle event ConFest, to reconfigure his project. Although ConFest may prove to be an exemplary field of liminality, as a decidedly contested and sensuous landscape, it demands re‐evaluation of the implicitly consensual and non‐carnal limen. I offer the concepts of alternative cultural heterotopia and liminoid embodiment, with the purpose of fashioning new directions in the study of alternative lifestyle, and other public events. Attending to contemporary pilgrimage research, spatial analysis and applying the ideas of Michel Maffesoli and Hakim Bey, this is a post‐structuralist contribution to the anthropology of public events.     

E. E. Just's broad,yet hidden,influence on modern cell and developmental biology

This year, 2019, marks the centennial of embryologist E. E. Just's discovery of what is known as the fast block to polyspermy. Just's observation of the subtle changes that occur at the egg's surface during fertilization (and in experimental parthenogenesis) led him to postulate that the egg, and indeed every cell, possesses a property he called independent irritability, which represents the cell's ability to respond in a physiologically‐relevant way to a variety of signals or triggers. In this paper, I argue that Just's concept of independent irritability informed his contemporary Johannes Holtfreter as Holtfreter attempted to explain the phenomena of embryonic induction and competence and that Holtfreter, in turn, influenced Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart in their formulation of the theory of facilitated variation. Just's influence is especially evident in Gerhart and Kirschner's presentations of what they call weak linkage—a property of living systems that allows core processes and components to be mixed and matched in different ways to generate novel traits. Unfortunately, the connection between Holtfreter's work and Just's has remained hidden. This paper gives examples of phenomena that exhibit weak linkage, and it lays out the case that Just's concept of independent irritability, through Holtfreter, Gerhart, and Kirschner, has broadly infiltrated modern cell and developmental biology.     

ANALYSE QUANTITATIVE DES LIPIDES,DES SUBSTANCES AZOTEES ET DU GLYCOGENE CHEZ LA LARVE D'UN INSECTE PARASITE OVO-LARVAIRE PHANEROTOMA FLAVITESTACEA (HYMENOPTERA,BRACONIDAE)

Après un développement endoparasite, la larve de Phanerotoma flavitestacea Fischer devient ectoparasite et sarcophage des chenilles d'Anagasta kuehniella. L'analyse chimique de la larve ectoparasite in toto, avant et après ingestion de l'hôte d'une part, des ressources alimentaires du parasite constituées par la chenille d'autre part permet de dresser un bilan biochimique. Le poids sec de la larve, ainsi que les lipides, les substances azotées et le glycogène subissent une augmentation importante et significative au cours de la phase sarcophage, en un temps relativement court. Les taux de conversion de la nourriture ingérée en substances du corps ont des valeurs élevées, ce qui indique que la larve ectoparasite assimile avec un très bon rendement les matières ingérées. Il faut également noter la nature nettement lipidique du catabolisme au cours de cette phase. Les résultats acquis sur la composition qualitative et quantitative des constituants du parasite sont discutés également en relation avec son alimentation.