“Anthropology of gesture” published in Italian

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