Mauss Redux: From Warfare's Human Toll to L'homme total

After his 1919 demobilization, yet before writing The Gift (1925), Marcel Mauss developed his concept of the "total human being" (l'homme total) as a methodological spur in works such as "L'expression obligatoire des sentiments" (1921). This translation and introduction to "The obligatory expression of feelings" highlights Mauss's post-war transition to psycho-physiological research and the concept of totality. Here, Mauss considers Australian "greeting by tears" as a synchronized performance of mind, body, and soul. We argue that Mauss's post-war concerns had crystallized around the omnipresent threat of loss-of-humanity and his war-survivor's scepticism toward absolute conceptions of individual and collective sovereignty.