Marcel Jousse

chercheur, anthropologue, pédagogue

Category: Media library Page 1 of 2

Présentation about Jousse by International Dance Council – 2 Dec. 2023

By

On 16 November 2023

In Lectures

The International Dance Council is an international non-profit NGO, which has been a partner of UNESCO since its foundation in 1973. It has several thousand members (individuals and organizations) in 170 countries. They have launched the “Dance and Spirituality” program, which deals with the relationship between dance and artists and the spiritual.

Following France Schott Billmann’s suggestion, Marcel Jousse Association was contacted by the head of this program, Constantin Kontogiannis. Initial discussions led to the scheduling of a lecture by Titus Jacquignon. This is an excellent opportunity to introduce Jousse’s anthropological research to a milieu concerned with dances as a living cultural heritage to be recognized and preserved.

Marcel Jousse: Anthropology of Expression

Presentation by Titus Jacquignon, PhD in Language Sciences

Saturday, December 2, 4:00 pm (Paris time)

Draft agenda

Language: French, with English translation

Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9414526266

To register, write to DanceAndSpirituality@gmail.com

Publication of “Marcel Jousse, lecteur de Bergson”

By

On 20 September 2023

In Books

We are delighted to announce the publication by Editions du Cerf of this book by Elisabeth (Clara) Vasseur. It is derived from the doctoral thesis in philosophy she defended in December 2019 at the Institut Catholique de Paris under the title “Marcel Jousse, philosophe, Dialogue avec Bergson.”

Here’s the translation of the presentation given on the publisher’s website:

“Jousse – he found a seam, as they say,” confides Bergson in an interview with Lydie Adolphe.
The relationship that Marcel Jousse, researcher, teacher and churchman, maintained with the philosopher Henri Bergson throughout his forty-odd years of teaching is paradoxical, to say the least. Between admiration and rejection, Jousse claimed “his” reading of Bergson. Free and inspiring, often critical, even verging on caricature, this invigorating reading acts in return on the reader, whether a connoisseur of Bergson’s work or not. According to Jousse, the bodily-manual gesture, the global gesture, lies at the heart of the philosopher’s thought. Bergson plays out his thoughts with his hands, with his whole body, before throwing them into his books. Knowledge of the anthropological laws of oral style formulated by Jousse enables us to better grasp the particularity of Bergson’s style, which is close to Péguy’s and resembles the oral style of rhythmo-mimeurs. Jousse and Bergson: two names that left their mark on their era. The strong bond that unites the two thinkers is at the heart of this investigation – which could also be described as a “quest” – that is both philosophical and historical. This book joins the long list of “Bergson readers”, whether or not they are Bergsonians.

Élisabeth Vasseur has a PhD in philosophy and lives in Germany. She has contributed to making Marcel Jousse’s work better known, particularly in Germany.

This publication is the culmination of a long period of work by the author, which began in 2016 with the establishment of a co-supervision for her thesis between the Institut Catholique de Paris and the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt in Germany. Her research work was supervised by Professors Emmanuel Falque and Walter Schweidler. She also helped develop a link between the Association Marcel Jousse and the Institut Catholique de Paris, culminating in the reception of the Jousse archives by this institution, and the publication on this occasion of a volume of the journal Transversalités entirely devoted to Marcel Jousse.

Her work received financial support from the Association Marcel Jousse. Through this research, we felt it was important to continue forging links between Marcel Jousse, perceived as an unclassifiable Jesuit researcher, and the intellectual history of the 20th century. If, a century later, his work seems more the fruit of an isolated trajectory, it is important to emphasize that Jousse maintained numerous dialogues during his lifetime, directly or indirectly, with leading French thinkers and researchers of his time.

Rémy Guérinel, for example, showed the importance of his links with his masters at the Collège de France, psychologist Pierre Janet and Abbé Rousselot, founder of experimental phonetics, two important but somewhat forgotten figures.
Clara-Élisabeth Vasseur has had the courage to tackle the philosophical and historical links between Jousse and Bergson, the most renowned French philosopher when Jousse began teaching in 1931. As she explained in a 2020 presentation (available on video for association members), she didn’t do “the thesis on Jousse and Bergson” but “a thesis” on the subject, hoping to arouse interest and be followed by others. With only 3 years to complete her project, she had to choose certain paths and discard others.

Yet her work is not lacking in ambition: the author draws on a sound knowledge of both Bergson’s and Jousse’s work; but she has not stopped at a comparative exegesis of the writings of these two thinkers. In an investigative approach, she has also sought to cross-reference and link what Jousse says about Bergson in his lectures, what Bergson’s collaborator Lydie Adolphe says about Jousse, and traces of this intellectual relationship preserved in the archives of both, published along with other unpublished material in the book’s appendix. The reader will find numerous extracts from lectures on Bergson given by Marcel Jousse at the Sorbonne. One of these lectures is entirely devoted to Bergsonian intuition.

It is to be hoped that this book will help to foster a dialogue between those interested in the work of the anthropologist of gesture and those interested in the work of the philosopher!

Thomas Marshall

Member of the Board of the Association Marcel Jousse

Just published : The Forgotten Compass

By

On 24 November 2022

In Academic work, Books

It is an event. The Forgotten Compass – Marcel Jousse and the Exploration of the Oral World is the first collective book devoted to the actuality of Marcel Jousse’s work in the academic field of biblical scholarship. It brings together contributions in English from eight international specialists and also gives voice to Jousse himself through the text of two of his lectures. Marcel Jousse’s work in this field is like a “compass” that the book proposes to rediscover.

Context

This book is published as part of a specialized collection that aims to renew this field of research: Biblical Performance Criticism Series. Like Marcel Jousse in his time, this collection makes the following observation:

“The ancient societies of the Bible were overwhelmingly oral. People originally experienced the traditions now in the Bible as oral performances. Focusing on the ancient performance of biblical traditions enables us to shift academic work on the Bible from the mentality of a modern print culture to that of an oral/scribal culture.” [i.e., where writing belongs to scribes]

It follows the publication in this collection in 2018 of Memory, Memorization, and Memorizers: The Galilean Oral-Style Tradition and Its Traditionists, a collection of texts by Jousse edited and translated into English by Edgard Sienaert, with a foreword by Werner Kelber. This volume will also be published in 2023 in its French version by the Cerf editions.

Edited by Werner Kelber, Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at Rice University (Texas, USA) and Bruce Chilton, Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Bard College (New York State, USA), The Forgotten Compass is the culmination of several years of work. A milestone was the seminar on Marcel Jousse and Oral Theory held on November 26, 2019 at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in San Diego. Organized by Werner Kelber, the high quality of this seminar was unanimously appreciated by the participants. So much so that the decision was made to transform the trial into a collective work. 3 years later, it is done!

Abstract

“As form criticism arose, the French anthropologist Marcel Jousse developed a hermeneutical paradigm, global in scope and prescient in its vision but opposed to the philological paradigm of biblical studies. While the philological methodology came to define modernity’s biblical hermeneutics, Jousse’s rhythmically energized paradigm was marginalized and largely forgotten. Although Jousse has left relatively few traces in writing, many of his more than one thousand lectures, delivered at four different academic institutions in Paris between 1931 and 1957, have been edited and translated into English by Edgard Sienaert. The Forgotten Compass surveys Jousse’s views on biblical tradition and scholarship, documenting the relevance of his paradigm for current biblical studies. What distinguishes Jousse’s paradigm is that it is firmly established within the orbit of ancient communications and deeply rooted in Jewish tradition. The Forgotten Compass challenges readers to come to appreciate the print Bible’s lack of fluency in the very sensibilities privileged by Jousse’s paradigm and to raise consciousness about the multivocal, multisensory culture in which the biblical traditions emerged and from which they drew their initial nourishment.”  (source : Wipf and Stock)

Contents

Preface
List of Contributors
1. The Work of Marcel Jousse in Context | Werner H. Kelber | 1
2. Mimism and the Ancient Biblical Recitatives | Marcel Jousse | 54
3. The Anthropology of Mimism, of Memory, and of the Invisible | Edgard Sienaert | 71
4. An Oral Perspective on Proverbs 31:10–31 | Mark Timothy Lloyd Holt | 104
5. What Use is Jousse? Oral Form as a Mnemonic Device in the Hodayot | Shem Miller | 127
6. Sound, Memory, and the Oral Style | Margaret E. Lee | 150
7. Jousse, Oral Composition, and the Gospel of Mark | Joanna Dewey | 180
8. Origin and Techniques of the Biblical Recitations | Marcel Jousse | 198
9. The Au/Orality of the Aramaic Gospel | Bruce Chilton 211
10. Marcel Jousse, the Synoptic Problem, and the Past and Future of Gospel Studies | Matthew D. C. Larsen | 234
11. Conclusion: Implications of the Work of Marcel Jousse | Werner H. Kelber | 258

Epilogue

In order to give the public an overview of the important issues addressed in the book and the perspectives it opens up, Werner Kelber has given us permission to share the pages that close the book.

Download this extract (6 pages)

Buy online

Somes appreciations on the book

“Experience the excitement of discovery—of an author whose work may well change your way of looking at the Bible. This book lets Marcel Jousse speak for himself but also allows us the privilege of accompanying major scholars as they step out of their routine to engage critically and enthusiastically with Jousse. Unsurprisingly, Jousse taught in Paris. Perhaps surprisingly, he was a Jesuit priest.”

—Bernhard Lang, University of Paderborn

“This excellent introduction to the French ethnographer Marcel Jousse’s pioneering and groundbreaking work on orality and memory within the Palestinian Jewish milieu of Jesus enables readers to (re)discover his contributions to the study of the New Testament and modern intellectual history. Combining two of Jousse’s lectures with an introduction and critical assessments, the book indicates his avant-garde ideas and their relevance for contemporary scholarship.”

—Catherine Hezser, SOAS University of London

“What a joy this volume is for anyone interested in orality! Though focused on biblical studies, it equally appeals to communication or media ecology scholars by its introduction of the work of the anthropologist Marcel Jousse to new generations. Seeing and hearing Jousse in the context of his work makes him come alive and opens up additional ways of thinking about how people interact with their communication environments.”

—Paul A. Soukup, SJ, Santa Clara University

“The Forgotten Compass points the way to a paradigm more fully suited to the Aramaic Targumic world of Rabbi Jeshua of Nazareth. A global anthropologist and contemporary of Rudolf Bultmann, Jousse offers a robust, full-bodied approach to the Scriptures, at once very old and very new. Jousse is a treasure trove indeed for younger scholars especially who seek alternative pathways to discovery.”

—Randolph F. Lumpp, Regis University, emeritus

“Jousse used an argument from the astronomer Laplace: great discoveries occur when previously distant concepts finally meet. The Forgotten Compass is one of those rare events. This magnificent collection constitutes a true reencounter, where Gospel studies come again face to face with the investigation of the traditions of oral style. The intellectual gestures of both sides will create a current able to irrigate the unified field of biblical studies and oral traditions.”

—Gabriel Bourdin, Institute of Anthropological Research

“Marcel Jousse was well known for his groundbreaking study of oral tradition and memory. To celebrate this work and to probe further its significance and ongoing relevance for biblical studies and Jesus research, editors Werner Kelber and Bruce Chilton have assembled an impressive roster of scholars who assess Joussean thought. Rich with insight, these essays move forward in positive ways the study of orality.”

—Craig A. Evans, Houston Baptist University

“Anthropology of gesture” published in Italian

By

On 18 November 2022

In Books

We are pleased to announce the news of the publication, in August 2022, of L’antropologia del gesto by Mimesis Edizioni, under the direction of Antonello Colimberti.

Mimesis Edizioni is part of the same group as Editions Mimesis in France and other companies publishing in Italian, English and German. Their works cover all fields of human and social sciences, arts, architecture, political essays…

This translation covers the first volume of Marcel Jousse’s posthumous work, entitled L’anthropologie du geste, which was originally published in French in 1969 by Editions Resma, before being reprinted by Gallimard in 1974. Gallimard’s 2008 paperback reprint brought together the original 3 volumes under the same title. The Italian translation of the other 2 volumes is also underway. Jousse’s collaborator, Gabrielle Baron, has brought together the beginning of a synthesis written by Jousse at the end of his life, as well as other short texts published during his lifetime, which he referred to as “memoirs”.

As Edgard Sienaert, who published an English translation of the same texts and shared some thoughts on the subject (Nunc magazine, 2011), knows from experience, this is a delicate undertaking. These texts fall outside our culture’s established canons of an intellectual work. For Jousse, the transition to the written word is in fact a second stage, from crystallization in algebraic formulas to a living teaching, in which he gives all of himself, in interaction with his audience. So there are 2 Jousse: in his texts and in his lectures. In the former, we have the advantage of conciseness, which can be an obstacle to his intelligibility; whereas in the latter (via their transcriptions available in digital format) we have the advantage of a mastered and richly illustrated oral improvisation, which represents a considerable corpus to peruse if we wish to have an overall vision (as Titus Jacquignon has done in recent years for his doctoral thesis, or Edgard Sienaert a few years ago with a collection of lecture extracts).

Ultimately, the challenge for the reader is to admit, as a consequence of the anthropology of mimism, that Jousse’s thought no longer exists, strictly speaking, since his death! He has passed on to us, through the subjective mirrors formed by his sentences (oral or written), the task of reflecting within ourselves, individually and through collaboration between us, our human condition: “the primordial, inexhaustible volume is within you, in the awareness of your deepest being.” (lecture at “École d’anthropologie”, 12/11/1951). Understanding the human condition, which is indissolubly universal in its potential and singular in its realization by each people and each individual, is a project that can be driven by a wide variety of objectives. All these trajectories have a single point of departure: the totality of what your experience has enabled you to “record” unconsciously.

That’s why Jousse talks so much about himself: he takes responsibility for a radically 1st-person point of view. If we understand this posture, then we can read his words as a double invitation:

  • An invitation to make an effort of “intellectual sympathy” to try to perceive the world as he perceived it, through the struggles that were his, in his time. A sympathy that cannot aim at fusion, but at best at resonance (according to Natalie Depraz);
  • An invitation, too, to detach ourselves from Jousse’s words and turn our attention to reality, in a new way, and if possible going beyond what he was able to say about it.

Thomas Marshall

 

Here are a few lines proposed by the publisher to introduce the issues at stake in this book (translation from Italian):

The figure of Marcel Jousse appears in our century as that of a true occult Master, whose influence has remained underground, but therefore deeper and more effective. Jousse is quite rightly the precursor of this turning point in the forms of representation of the human sciences, especially anthropology, which represents the most critical and creative achievement of our time. This turnaround represents a radical questioning of the traditional model of monological and authoritarian writing, centered on the notion of “author” and on frontal, flat, uniform, Euclidean representation, in favor of polyphonic and multi-perspectival models. The current conflict, both inside and outside cultural institutions, is played out on these profound, even political choices, where different ways of understanding “scientificity” are measured and confronted. The revival of interest in Marcel Jousse’s work, after the attack and momentary historical defeat it suffered at the hands of the academic institutions of the time, is linked precisely to this underlying theme: the inclusion of experimentation not only as an object but as a method and content of the human sciences.

 

Here is a translation into French by Régine Marie Porcher of some of the articles that were published to report on the book:

Article dans Lo Spettacoliere, 15/08/2022

Article dans L’Avvenire, 26/08/2022

Article dans La Difesa del Popolo, 20/09/2022

Article dans la revue Doppiozero, 11/11/2022

 

Find out more on the publisher’s website

Marcel Jousse y la antropologia del gesto in Revista Pelicano

By

On 6 September 2021

In Journals

Marcel Jousse y la antropologia del gesto : An article in Spanish by Gabriel Luis Bourdin, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, published in the Revista Pelicano in August 2016.

Abstract
The work of the french Jesuit, anthropologist and linguist Marcel Jousse (1886-1961) is one of the most significant and unique creations of anthropological thought of the twentieth century, and, curiously, one of the least known to the skilled reader in anthropology topics and language sciences.
The objective of this presentation is to witness the perennial validity of the new science of gesture and mimism, created by Jousse in the first part of the twentieth century. L’anthropologie du geste (1974) is a compilation of three essays that epitomize Jousse’s thinking and research. It was composed on the basis of a draft systematization of Jousse scientific teaching, which is primarily oral. They were incorporated into that synthesis several of his memoirs, first published separately. This article refers another main source for the study of the work of Jousse, which are called the oral Courses, that were stenotyped by professionals in this type of recording and later transcribed in french by G. Baron. These courses were taught by Jousse between 1931 and 1957 at Sorbonne, the School of Anthropology and other important institutions of higher education in France.

Download the article of Revista Pelicano

Call for papers on the anthropology of gesture

By

On 3 June 2021

In Academic work

Gabriel Bourdin, professor of anthropology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, invites to answer a call for papers for the journal Mundaú, published by the Universidade Federal de Alagoas in Brazil.

He is coordinating, with a colleague from this university, the dossier for issue 11 of the journal, which will be published in late 2021, on the theme of the anthropology of gesture.

Articles should be submitted by July 30. They can be written in Spanish, Portuguese, French or English.

Here is the presentation of the theme:

Translation of the instructions to authors

Would you like to send contributions to the journal? We invite you to visit the About the Journal section and read the available section policies and author guidelines. Authors must register on the website before submitting an article. If you are already registered, simply log in and start the 5-step submission process.

Purpose and scope

Mundaú is a biannual electronic journal edited by the Graduate Program in Anthropology of the Institute of Social Sciences of the Federal University of Alagoas. It publishes articles in continuous flow and in the form of thematic dossiers. Its objective is to contribute to the anthropological debate, to the advancement of research and to the dissemination of articles by specialists in the field, gathering themes and issues of contemporary debate in the discipline. Revista Mundaú is open to the collaboration of researchers from universities and national and international research institutions in the field of anthropology, in the form of articles, in Portuguese, Spanish, English and French.

Peer review process

The publication of articles is conditioned by the approval of peers and, if so, by compliance with their recommendations. The originality of the treatment of the theme, the coherence and rigor of the approach, its contribution to the social sciences and the thematic line of the journal are taken into account. The names of the reviewers will remain confidential, and the names of the authors will not be revealed to the reviewers.

Open Access Policy

This journal offers free and immediate access to its content, following the principle that making scientific knowledge freely available to the public enables a greater democratization of knowledge on a global scale.

Guidelines for authors

1. The journal Mundaú accepts for publication unpublished articles in the social sciences that are not simultaneously presented in another journal. Reviews of works or themes from the region are also accepted, when they are related to the thematic core of the respective issue.

2. The publication of the works is conditional on the approval of the referees and, if so, on the fulfillment of their recommendations. The originality of the treatment of the theme, the coherence and rigor of the approach, its contribution to the social sciences and the thematic line of the journal are taken into account. The names of the reviewers will remain confidential, and the names of the authors will not be revealed to the reviewers.

3. Articles are published in Portuguese, Spanish, English and French. The maximum recommended length is 40,000 characters, including spaces. The articles are accompanied by an abstract of 150 words maximum in Portuguese, French, English and Spanish, in which the objectives, methods and conclusions of the work are synthesized, and a list of 3 to 5 key words, separated by periods and with the first initial in capital letters.

4. Articles are submitted anonymously, in plain text and without the use of sophisticated formatting resources, via the journal’s web page. For submission and follow-up, it is necessary to register in the access area, provide information about your academic background, the organization and field in which you work, your full mailing address, and, if you wish, to indicate up to two most relevant recent publications.

5. The Mundaú journal offers two modes of submission: for specific thematic dossiers, within predefined deadlines, or as a single text. Texts for thematic dossiers are evaluated en bloc and the decision is announced after the submission deadline; single texts are evaluated in continuous flow and their approval is conditioned by the concrete prospect of publication.

6. The salient points of the text are in italics. Footnotes, when essential, are short and substantial, numbered sequentially and without specific formatting.

7. Graphs, figures and tables are sent in a separate file, with program and version identification; they cannot exceed the size of the journal page (16.5 x 11.5 cm). The sequential numbering and title, as well as the source of the data, are inserted in the text as placeholders.

8. Reference notes are inserted in the text, according to the following model: (AUTHOR, year, p. xx), (AUTHOR1, year, p. xx; AUTHOR2, year, xx) or (AUTHOR; AUTHOR, YEAR). If there is more than one work by the same author in a year, it is accompanied by a sequential letter of the alphabet. Example: (AUTHOR, 1998a; 1998b).

9. References are listed at the end of the document in alphabetical order and without numbering, in accordance with NBR 6023.
Examples:

(a) book: FAMILY NAME, Name. Title in bold. Edition. Place of publication: Publisher, year.

For example: FERNANDES, Florestan. A revolução burguesa no Brasil: ensaio de uma interpretação sociológica. 3. ed. Rio de Janeiro: Guanabara Publishers, 1987.

b) chapter: FAMILY NAME, Name. Title of the chapter. In: SURNAME, N. (org.). Title of the book in bold. Edition. Place of publication: Publisher, year. p. xx-yy.

For example : McCARTHY, Thomas. Practical discourse: on the relationship between morality and politics. In : CALHOUN, C. (Org.). Habermas and the public sphere. Cambridge: The Mit Press, 1992. p. 51-72.

c) article: FAMILY NAME, Name. Title of article. Title of periodical in bold, v. year-or-volume, n. number-or-issue, p. xx-yy, year.

For example: BENHABIB, Seyla. The decline of sovereignty or the emergence of cosmopolitan norms? Rethinking citizenship in times of instability. Civitas, v. 12, n. 1, p. 20-46, 2012.

d) electronic publications: follow the model above, according to their genre, plus DOI or full address and date of reading.

DIAS, Bruno. Approved the resolution on research ethics in the humanities and social sciences. In: Page of the Brazilian Association of Collective Health. April 15, 2016. Available at: https://www.abrasco.org.br/site/noticias/formacao-e-educacao/aprovada-a-resolucao-sobre-etica-em-pesquisa-nas-chs/17194/. Accessed on: January 2017.

10. All literature should be submitted for DOI verification at http://www.crossref.org/SimpleTextQuery/.

11. If there is more than one author, the editors will be informed of each person’s contribution to the text from research to final writing.

12. The author will inform, with identification, the source of funding for the research and potential conflicts of interest.

13. The spontaneous submission of articles and the subsequent acceptance of their publication automatically implies the transfer of the rights of the first publication to the journal Mundaú. The copyright remains the property of the author. Any subsequent reproduction, by any means whatsoever, may only be made after prior agreement between the magazine and the author and with the citation of the source.

14. The concepts expressed in the articles are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board.

Conditions of submission

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check the submission for compliance with all the items listed below. Submissions that do not meet the standards will be returned to the authors.

The contribution is original and unpublished, and is not under consideration for publication by another journal; if not, a justification must be provided in the “Comments to the Editor” section.
The submission file is in Microsoft Word, OpenOffice or RTF format.
The text is single-spaced; it uses a 12-point font; it uses italics instead of underlining (except in URLs); figures and tables are inserted in the text, not at the end of the document as attachments.
The text follows the style standards and bibliographic requirements described in the Guidelines for Authors on the About the Journal page, and the bibliographic information is correct and complete.
The instructions available in Ensuring Blind Peer Review have been followed (author identification has been removed from the text and “document properties”).
The submission is accompanied by information regarding the academic background, organization, and field in which they work, as well as the author’s and author’s complete email and mailing addresses, source of research funding, and potential conflicts of interest.

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Names and addresses provided to the journal will be used exclusively for the services provided by this publication and will not be made available for other purposes or to third parties.

A new life for the Jousse archives

By

On 9 April 2021

In Archive documents, Association

On March 31, 2021, the Jousse archives were received by the library of the Institut Catholique de Paris. They will thus be preserved and classified by professionals, then made accessible to researchers, for a better knowledge of his life and work.

After making available to the public all the transcriptions of his lectures, the Association Marcel Jousse has once again taken a major step forward for the posterity of Jousse’s work.

These seven boxes of archives include documents on Jousse’s life and research, as well as on the work of his collaborator Gabrielle Baron after his death, leading to the creation of the Association Marcel Jousse.

Élisabeth d’Eudeville, secretary of the association, has been very persistent for many years in the search for an institution that could receive these archives. An agreement was finally reached with the Institut Catholique de Paris… and the context of the COVID epidemic had again postponed this transfer. So that’s it!

We will keep you informed about the work of valorization which will be carried out under the responsibility of Guillaume Boyer, curator of the ancient and patrimonial collections.

The next event is the planned publication in April of a special issue on Marcel Jousse of the ICP academic journal, Transversalités.

To be continued!

A new book of Marcel Jousse published in English

By

On 13 October 2018

In Books

Memory, Memorization and Memorizer. The Galilean Oral-Style Tradition and Its Traditionists

published by Cascade Books (Eugene, Oregon, USA) in the Biblical Performance Criticism Series.

It is a selection of Marcel Jousse’s conferences, composed, translated and commented by Edgard Sienaert.

The foreword is written by Werner H. Kelber, New Testament researcher, retired from Rice University (Texas, USA).

The lectures of Marcel Jousse available for download

By

On 20 April 2018

In Jousse's lectures, Jousse's lectures

As president of the Marcel Jousse Association, I am pleased to present you the latest version of this body of rich texts.
With the intention of spreading more the living thought of Marcel Jousse, the association wanted to facilitate the work of researchers and practitioners in France and around the world, and this in several ways:

first by asking a specialized company to perform a correction of the texts resulting from digitization, available since 2003;
then by choosing to place all these texts under a Creative Commons license, allowing to promote the use and circulation in a suitable legal framework;
and finally, making them available for download from the association’s website.

We have a guide at your disposal to help you explore these lectures, which remain a life-giving inspiration for the present.

Edgard Sienaert

Honorary researcher at Bloemfountain University, South Africa

Download Jousse lectures!

The Marcel Jousse Association distributes via the Internet the 20 000 pages of Jousse’s lectures transcripts!
We have decided to promote their use and widespread distribution around the world through a Creative Commons license.
You will be able to download a file containing all the lectures, in 2 formats:

  • In pdf format, you have before you a scanned version of each course of Jousse, in its original transcription.
  • In doc format, you have a text version that reproduces the original with 99.9% reliability. Your reading and your work will thus be facilitated.

This second version was made at our request in 2017 by a specialized company.
We thank you for your financial contribution which will allow the association to finance new actions!
We will keep you informed of future developments related to Jousse courses.

Please contact us at webmaster [at] marceljousse.com:

  • if you encounter technical difficulties when registering,
  • if you live in a country with a high standard of living gap with the euro area.

Note: The form below is managed by a secure French payment platform, HelloAsso, which allows to collect online memberships for associations. We use it here for the payment of a one-time contribution, in exchange for access to the downloading of documents. The platform does not charge a transaction fee and will solicit you to tip a free amount.

It is possible to pay:

  • by credit card (the transaction is immediate – a “3D secure” authentication system is required);
  • by SEPA Direct Debit (with your IBAN account number – you will receive a code for payment validation on your mobile phone).

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Jousse according to the TIME Magazine, Nov. 6, 1939

By

On 10 March 2018

In Archive documents, Archive documents, Media library, Media library

To the Society of Jesus, militant defenders of Roman Catholic orthodoxy, a French Jesuit named Marcel Jousse has long been its enfant terrible. A onetime artillery captain who began studying for the order after World War I, white-haired, fiftyish Père Jousse invented and today teaches something he calls Rhyth-mocatechism, or preaching with gestures.

His theory began to evolve when he noticed a distinction between anthropoid and apish mimicry: children can imitate such actions as shaving and shooting without using razors or guns; but apes cannot, or do not. Père Jousse decided that miming and gesturing came before writing; hieroglyphics, he believed, were not ideograms, but mimograms, representations of significant gestures.

From his researches Père Jousse concluded that it was possible to reconstruct not only what Jesus said, but how He said it, from texts in Aramaic—the language which many believe that Jesus spoke, and which Père Jousse believes is admirably fitted for eloquent gesturing. To other Jesuits, his theories smelled of heresy. But Père Jousse argued himself out of trouble, even convinced the late Pope Pius XI, in a personal interview whose words and gestures were not reported, that he was fundamentally orthodox.

War notwithstanding, in Paris last week Père Jousse made ready to resume at the Sorbonne his course in rhythmocatechism. Its title: Les Rhytlimes Formulaires de I’Apocalypse d’Ezdras et le Style Oral Palestinien. Père Jousse’s first enrolée was his good friend and collaborator, a tiny, wrinkled, white-haired spinster, by name Ms Gabrielle Desgrées du Lou. This lady, who must enroll as a student in order to get in the Sorbonne, does Père Jousse’s gestures for him on the platform. While chanting, for example, Jesus’ parable of the houses built on sand and on rock, Ms Desgrées du Lou rolls her eyes, waves her arms, twists and sways like a ballet dancer. When Père Jousse lectures, 200 people watch goggle-eyed: doctors, spiritualists, philologists, ballet students, poets (among them Paul Valery)—and two Jesuit theologians, hawklike for heresies.

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