Savage

See also: Wild (homonymy)

Like " barbare" , the wild adjective constitutes an antonym of Civilisé . It does not have however a dimension also obviously linguistic. Indeed, the savage is étymologiquement that which lives the forest, " silva" in Latin. He is supposed to mark the border between humanity and the animality. One still wondered the 18th century so certain large monkeys were not human savages (see also denatured animals of Vercors). Thus the orang outan is the man of the forest étymologiquement, in Malayan " orang hutan ". The wild animal, it is from now on, in French right: the animal not held or raised in an exploitation

Myth

There is no Peuple which lives in a wild state, or natural. The idea is even contradictory, since so that there are people, it is necessary for him to have a minimum of Institution S, at least a Langue. In fact, the people which do not have State, far from living in saddle-oyster, is precisely those which are subject to the collective rules most constraining. Moreover, from a point of view more or less marked by the Scientism, one tends to compare to a form of brutality the tender of these people to rites and beliefs which we do not include/understand. In particular, the Westerner at the same time is fascinated and put badly at ease by the cruelty of certain ritual, which rather crûment reveal the proximity of the monk and the management of violence. As shows it the deep differences which exist between them, the people without State do not express what is spontaneous human reality, but only one particular way to be man. Especially, one will not find there pure individuals delivered of any alienation collective, but rather an at the same time ritualized and fusional design of the group. It is in fact rather difficult to speak in a general way of these various people without projecting there, would be this only by collectively naming them (" people primitifs" , " people premiers" , " tribus"), not so much our own institutions, but rather their negative. The savage is initially the phantasm of the absolutely other, of the transgression. The men of the the Middle Ages, at the time of their festivals, disguised themselves readily in " sauvages" , which for them did not represent anything precis nor of located, not more for example that for us Tarzan! The savage is represented like an half-animal, because it takes part more of the nature of humanity. The prehistoric man, seen by the cartoons, is generally not other thing.

Ethnocentrism

The things are corsent when one projects on real people and individuals this phantasm which haunts the culture. More one people are attached to his own forms, at the expense of the spirit, more it is tempted to reject the other forms in cruelty or nature. Lévi-Strauss recalls that the oldest attitude and most spontaneous consists with " to repudiate purely and simply the forms culturelles" who are most distant as of ours. Without fear of contradiction, we will speak about " practices of sauvages". Manners of living, of believing or of thinking which are foreign for us, or which appear to us such, call into question the need for our own designs, recall us that what appears to us to go from oneself is finally the expression of an always fragile conditioning. Paradoxically, us kids the other in nature at the time when he recalls us that we are far from natural. More simply, another standard that ours is initially perceived like absence of standard, or anormality. According to Lévi-Strauss, always, there are epithets like barbarian behind, in Antiquity, or savage, currently, the same judgment: the wild term, which wants to say forest, evokes an animal kind, like the Barbarian was that which, not speaking Greek, was famous not to have human language. " In both cases, one refuses to admit the fact even cultural diversity; one prefers to reject out of the culture, in nature, all that does not conform to the standard under which one vit". However, written Lévi-Strauss, this attitude is precisely the distinctive attitude of these alleged same savages. For vast fractions of the mankind, the word which corresponds to " homme" name in fact the representatives of the linguistic group concerned, or tribe, or village. The other men are only awkward copies of true humanity, even of the spectra. Thus, " it is in the measurement even where one claims to establish a discrimination between the cultures and the habits which one is most completely identified with those that one tests of nier". " The barbarian, it is initially the man who believes in the barbarie". It behind these formulas better than, since Lévi-Strauss sees in the ethnocentrism the shape of inculture, made relativism there indifference (or of hostility) with the other cultural forms that ours.

Interculturality and optical illusions

Not that the man is the same one everywhere, which would be still negation of the difference. It is precisely the incomprehension or the indifference of the Western observer for the concerns of the exotic people which lead it to deny any evolution on their premises, still notes Lévi-Strauss. They are not deprived of history, but they do not go in the same direction as us; they are for example indifferent to technological advances or do not work to constitute empires. Bergson, answering in its time the ethnologist Levy-Bruhl, who believed in a radical difference in mentality between civilized and the “savage”, had already noticed that the people who attached a great importance to the magic did not have another logic strictly speaking only ours. Western civilization is not radically impermeable with the magic procedures. Only, we did not let the magic practice proliferate and all to invade, when these people persevered continuously in this direction. All the men have techniques, an art, knowledge, an social organization. But each culture privileges certain concerns or values, and it should be wondered why. At the time of the arrival in Europe of “cannibals”, Montaigne, which one could not reduce the analysis to the only topic of the " good sauvage" , had known to perceive that the alleged savages, if they did not come straight of some terrestrial paradise, were not crueler than Europeans, and even rather less. They had other institutions that them, being unaware of in particular the State and hereditary monarchy; but theirs did not miss a good sense. It is not that monarchy or the cheffery is equivalent conventions at the bottom; they rest on distinct requirements. Hereditary monarchy allows the continuity of the capacity, at the price of the subordination of individual qualities to the institution. The function is less the attribute of the person than the person the body of the function; also our " cannibale" to find extremely strange that a man made, extremely and armed, can obey the royal kid. For him, the chief is that which goes the first to the war. Insofar as it serves the community, by its courage or its generosity, It obtains it well some marks of honor; he is not the Master. The anthropologists of anarchistic inspiration will even want that far from being primitive or delayed, incompetents to design the State, the people without State consciously work with to do everything to avoid its formation. It is there a misadventure of the topic rousseauist of the " good sauvage".

in connection with the impregnation of the magic in the indigenous culture: to consider the Time of the dream Indigenous of Australia.

See too

  • Associations induced by Antiquity:

  • Associations induced by the Great Discoveries and colonization:

    • Indigenous | Indigenous

  • , the Anglo-Saxon version of the Bottom-earthy

External bonds

August 1st

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