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147 Formations In the Greco-European lineage, it is possible to trace the first anthropological narratives back to antiquity, to Herodotus, for example. We see these narratives renewed by the experience of the New World,by authors such as Jean de Léry. However,if we consider “anthropology ”in terms of a discipline,as a way of organizing knowledge in the enactment of a shared method, then the first attempts are instead found toward the end of the eighteenth century. In France,La Société des Observateurs de l’Homme, created in 1799, regulates the practice of collecting information about human beings through the writing of dissertations. Léon-François Jauffret specifies five directions for the discipline: the study of the “physiognomy of the diverse inhabitants of the Earth” (qtd. in Copans and Jamin, Aux origines 54); their differences from place to place (56); “comparative anthropology,” or the relation between “customs” and “practice” (68); the examination of “natural man” (61–62); and the analysis of the “mechanical formation of languages” (63). The very term anthropology conforms here to the long philosophical tradition of which Kant, with his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, during this same period, will be one of the last representatives . The knowledge of the character of nations and peoples was a lesser branch of (post)Aristotelian science that sought, above all, to establish Chapter 8 Formations and Reformations of Anthropology 148 DISCIPLINING KNOWLEDGE the existence of invariable moral “types.” The new “observation of Man” utilizes comparison and links the description of ways and customs to indexes of physical forms. The last directions that Jauffret mentions concern man in his raw state, who would grow up outside of society, an ancient figure that Victor of Aveyron (aka “the wild boy of Aveyron”) helped to revive.1 This discipline trying to establish itself bears a direct relation to exploration and colonization, as the libido sciendi (Augustine’s famous “desire for knowledge”) is at the very least increased by the discovery of “other people.” Joseph-Marie Gérando writes the Considérations sur les diverses méthodes à suivre dans l’observation des peuples sauvages (The Observation of Savage Peoples) in order to compensate for the faulty tradition of unorganized and biased travel narratives. It is time, he assures his readers, to “observe” man and to be satisfied no longer with dilettantism or prejudice. By means of the professionalism of the narrative, a field of knowledge will be constructed that will piece together the mosaic of the human species. For the dawning of scientific desire to occur,the first shock of encountering the savage was thus necessary, followed by the frustration with a literature that has too narrow a focus. This rather schematic history of the need for disciplinary organization is what is presupposed at the outset of this quest for knowledge. In the aftermath of these proclamations, the “observation” in question will progressively relativize and marginalize the problem of “natural man.” It goes without saying, however,that the term “savage,”applied both to distant tribes and to the wild boy of Aveyron, signals the potential (and altogether logical) inclusion of the “natural” in the “primitive.” As for languages, their history and function will be brought back into the vast pattern of anthropological description. These internal displacements will then allow two essential branches of the field to appear, which mark the development of the discipline in France and elsewhere. On one side, there is the study of physical traits (heredity, races, inherent capacities); on the other, we have the analysis of what is produced by people (objects, customs, practices). Throughout the nineteenth century, “anthropology” often designates the first path, whereas “ethnography” or “ethnology” most frequently refers to the second. It is true that in France scholars often assembled around the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle and its collections. It is Paul Broca who founded the Société d’Ethnographie. If the emphasis is on comparative anatomy and hereditary systems, then the understanding of human systems still remains to be seen. One member of this group, Clémence Royer, the high priestess of “Aryan”superiority,uses human remains,artifacts,and even linguistic changes to reveal the migration of populations.2 This method of comparing physical objects and elements (or practices and languages) is still active today in FORMATIONS AND REFORMATIONS OF ANTHROPOLOGY 149 paleoanthropology, an area into which almost all of Broca’s former discipline from the nineteenth century has now withdrawn. The Revue d’anthropologie, at first an...

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