The work of the anthropologist Philippe Descola, professor emeritus at the Collège de France, has established itself as an essential reference, as has that of Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009), who directed his thesis. Like the latter, Descola knew how to combine erudition and conceptual inventiveness with captivating literary writing sprinkled with humor, as eminently demonstrated by his ethnographic story intended for the general public. The Twilight Spears. Jíbaro relations, upper Amazonia (1993), published in the same collection as sad tropicsby Lévi-Strauss (1955), “Human Lands” (Plon). A work that greatly contributed to pushing Descola towards ethnology.
The stays he made starting in the 1970s with his wife, the ethnologist Anne-Christine Taylor, among the Achuar – a group of jíbaros, who now prefer to call themselves “Aénts Chicham” – are today part of the great moments of the discipline. The “Cahier de L’Herne” who traces his career dedicates, in his own way, the protean reception of his work. Four key words give access to this thought.
Ontology
Since his training as a philosopher, Philippe Descola has maintained sustained attention to the theoretical foundations of the social sciences. If he follows the path of “structural analysis” opened by Claude Lévi-Strauss, he has criticized “the use that the latter made of the notions of nature and culture as analytical tools”he confided to “World of Books”, specifying: “But structural anthropology remains a source of inspiration for me. I worked to develop it in a particular area.. »
In particular, distinguishing, in Beyond nature and culture (Gallimard, 2005), four major “identification methods” that he names “ontologies” EITHER “filtering devices”that define various ways of inhabiting and perceiving the world: animism, totemism, analogism and naturalism, each of which reflects a type of relationship between the human and the “non-human.” Naturalism constitutes the regime of modern Western rationality, which radically distinguishes the human subject and nature, reduced to the state of an external thing that can be exploited without restrictions.
The anthropologist’s involvement in ecology for about ten years – in favor of the ZAD of Notre-Dames-des-Landes, for example – suggests that, for him, naturalism, the cause of the climate catastrophe, is indeed a historical stage that must be overcome. with all the urgency that environmental degradation requires, and no longer a simple “identification method” nor an instrument of method.
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