El gesto y la palabra

October Books

by André Leroi-Gourhan, Felipe Carrera D. (Translator)

André Leroi-Gourhan contempla la mano y la cara fósiles como si fuesen herramientas para el gesto y la palabra. La mecánica y la dinámica de estos útiles biológicos condicionan la transformación que el hombre lleva a cabo de la Naturaleza, incluida la transformación de su propia naturaleza humana.

Genres: Anthropology, Philosophy, History, Nonfiction, Language, Archaeology, Sociology

394 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

André Leroi-Gourhan was a French archaeologist, paleontologist, paleoanthropologist, and anthropologist with an interest in technology and aesthetics and a penchant for philosophical reflection.

Reviews

[Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

It ought to be a criminal offence that Gesture and Speech, the defining work of André Leroi-Gourhan's distinguished anthropological career, remains relatively unknown among students of the humanities. After all, nothing less than the arc and trajectory of 'the human adventure' is at stake in this work, one extending from depths of evolutionary time right through to the as-yet unrealized future(s) of humanity. Indeed, the very label of 'anthropology' belies the richness of this work, which doesn't so much deal with this or that aspect of human behavior, so much as it traces the very becoming-human of our species; In truth, less anthropology than anthropogenesis is the wheel upon which Gesture and Speech turns.

How then, does the human fable unfold? As told by Leroi-Gourhan, what defines our becoming-human is less the acquisition of any one specific trait, than the progressive 'liberation' and 'exteriorization' of our various biological faculties. Beginning with the evolution of our bipedal physiognomy, which freed our hands for the purposes of manual manipulation and our mouths for vocalization, so in turn do our memory and muscles follow suit, becoming respectively externalized in society and technology. One thinks here, for example, of our vast libraries of accumulated knowledge ('offline' in Leroi-Gourhan's day, online in ours!), along with our Archimedean machines of inhuman 'strength'.

Beyond our mere 'zoological' traits however, space and time themselves become subject to a progressive 'humanization', with cities and communities transforming the environment for the sake of human proclivities; socialized rhythms of work, transport, play and sleep warping and waning the power of non-human cadences - think planetary motion and seasonal change - in ways unthinkable to the nomadic hunter-gatherers of yesteryear. Art too is given a similar treatment, with L-G tracing the development of human aesthetics from its sensual grounding in taste, touch, sight and smell all the way through to the 'functional aesthetics' of tools and the figurative representations of modern - and pre-modern - art. All to say nothing of the discussion of language made famous by Jacques Derrida, among others.

As might be gleaned from the pithy summary above then, the scope and ambition of Gesture and Speech is simply huge. Far from skimping on the details in favour of the big picture however, part of the book's majesty lies precisely in its elaborate discussion of the minutiae of human action: from the intricate illustrations of prehistoric art and tools, to the detailed examination of skeleto-cranial evolution, all the way to the diagrammatic analyses of urban space, Leroi-Gourhan retains the paleontologist's historical sensibility no less than the philosopher's analytic prowess. With both at play, and to the degree that we remain the protagonists and inheritors of the chronicle presented herein, Gesture and Speech is a work of anthropological magic that simply cannot be overlooked.

[Nancy Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book offers the best, most exciting and provocative explanation of human evolution I've ever encountered. In particular, this account explains why, when we know that many, probably most plants and animals have evolved to accommodate changing conditions in the last few centuries, human beings haven't. While the tiny Covid virus has been evolving at a terrific rate over the past two years, our basic design -- mammal, upright posture, big brain -- has hardly changed in 250,000 years.

In brief, Gesture and Speech contends that this is because of our technical tendency (his term), a tendency to cope with changing circumstances and needs by externalizing aspects of both our physical and cognitive capacities, that is, to arrange solutions outside our own bodies. Leroi-Gourhan was a man of many parts -- archaeologist, anthropologist, historian, philosopher and, almost incidentally, astute critic of art, music, food and more -- and he draws on all of these to deliver his account. At the beginning he tracks a hominid evolutionary history up to the point when we began to walk upright. With this change, our hands were available for all kinds of highly informative interactions with the environment, and our crania were suspended on a vertebral column, making a very significant space available into which our brains could expand. Note that it is NOT the big brain that came first, driving the other developments. It was the feet that came first, making it possible for the organism to develop its control centre.

The next bit is, I think, pure genius. Our brains developed in response to a need to co-ordinate our hands -- newly liberated from their drudgery in the service of locomotion, with the organs of the face -- above all eyes, ears. The key feature of our adaptation to this need to coordinate face and hands, both within ourselves and within a social group -- was language. It almost seems obvious in retrospect. With speech, we were completely human, as human as we are today. Rather than actually evolving special claws or beaks or exceptional strength or sight or hearing in order to survive, we designed and build technical solutions to address our needs, fears and desires. We adapted them to changing conditions. The human body remained largely as it was at the point we stood up, even as our immediate environment changed beyond recognition.

Leroi-Gourhan's argues closely and carefully. This book is quite difficult to read, not only because the information is so vast, minute, and diverse, but also because the ideas are so unfamiliar -- particularly to Anglophone readers (Although it was published in French in 1964, this book was not translated into English until 1993, and Leroi-Gourhan has never drawn the same level of attention among Anglophone readers as, say Claude Lévy-Strauss, a figure whose thought was comparable in terms of scope, depth, and implications.). The book demands such close attention, raises so many new questions, initiates such remarkable new patterns of thought, a reader wonders whether she herself is evolving.

[Found Object · Rating 5 out of 5]

For Leroi-Gourhan, in the course of human evolution, the development of hand and face are mutually determinant. Because of the capacity of grasping, mouths is freed from capturing food, which directly lead to the development of speech. Tools, languages, and rhythmic creation are three symptoms of one process, namely, the externalization of human evolution. Rather than developing internally and zoologically, humans begin to evolve together with their tools, words, and rhythms. Leroi-Gourhan pays a special attention to the relationship between writing and language. For him, the emergence of graphism marks the turning point in human evolution. When speech is recorded phonetically in writing in a linear manner, language becomes imprisoned in efficiency and rationality. Graphism is a writing system capable of incorporating affects, while the alphabetical system prohibits noise and parasitical signs. Similarly, tools imprison the gesture. Their designs also require a grammar of gestures that have little tolerance of noise and sloppiness. The rhythmic creation allows humans to regulate both their movements and their biological processes. This argument stands very close to Kittler's distinction between the symbolic and the real. Because of the three-fold externalization of human evolution, humans are pushed away from their natural environments.
Leroi-Gourhan also writes about the connection between individual and society. For him, externalized human evolution is a collective phenomenon that happens at the level of ethnic groups. The externalized organs created by technological developments are social rather than individual ones. For Leroi-Gourhan, as for many French anthropologists, such as Mauss, technology is collective. The use of fire, Leroi-Gourhan argues, marks the inception of technological development because it enables people to live close together and it allows people to develop cities, to store grains, and to distribute the surplus grains to artisans and technicians.

[Dylan]

One of those breathtaking, all-encompassing books that is about everything, that will surely stick in my head for the rest of my life, that reorients my thinking about fundamental issues ranging from giant philosophical problems to utterly boring mundane shit, that has given me a huge headache from trying to internalize in a single reading, and which is incomprehensibly only a single volume. It is probably best to not even try and consume this work in its entirety in the span of a single reading—probably it needs to be digested, revisited in stops and starts, flipped through, held near and dear for years. Like, I had to skim the portions about this that were directly about the brain (the topic I care most about), because I was so distracted by the previous chapters on upright posture, the hands and the face. It's the only academic book I've literally ever encountered where the drawings and diagrams and illustrations (there are a ton of them) are less interesting than the text around them. Yes: this is a transformative work and from this point forward I will be desperate for a paperback copy that I can hold in my hands and annotate and pull from my shelf whenever I please. Also, I now want to try and learn the Levallois technique so I can make some sweet stone chips.

[Ricky · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has been given to me after an interesting conversation with the father of a friend of mine. We were talking about how the human beings are not supposed to have a complete knowledge of how the world works, because they're just animals, only more more complex than the others. We are not the climax of millions of years of evolution,we're not the "lucky ones" who are made to conquer the world and rule it forever. We are just another species, the result of evolution and contingency.

And that's clòear, very clear from the beginning in this book. What made us so different was not our bigger brain, but our symmetry,our hand and our posture. We have bigger brains because of the way our skull and our face evolved,and so we are not more evolved because we're more intelligent, but we're more intelligent because we are more evolved. All that is typical to our species, tools, art, language, cities and society is in fact a mere result of our biological evolution, not because of an implicit superior of the homo sapiens (the name itself it's a bit assuming, isn't it?).

This is not to say that we aren't free or that evolution is the only allmighty force that rules every aspect of our life, it's just a way to accept who we are, wat we can do and why we should do it. We are animals but this doesn't make our life different, we have only to accept this.

This book is a really interesting reading if you're keen on biology, paleo-anthropology, linguistics and anthropology, but can be awfully boring if you're not interested (I found the first part, more about paleontology than anthropology a bit too complex for me, but I really liked when he starts dealing with tools, language and culture). In conclision, is a good book but I recommend it only for readers who love this subject.

[Philippe Malzieu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leroi-Gourhan exerted a considerable influence not only among prehistorians but also at the ethnologists.
what is important, he shows us that prehistoric man is not so distant from us. He has a religion. He thus has a cosmogony which locates his in the universe. He has an artistic direction. Leroi-Gourhan estimates that the painted caves are sanctuaries.
The importance of the transition between primate and hominid is a delicate phase. What is remarkable, it is that the hominisation is done with acquisition of the artistic direction and religion. There is the fundamental role of this small muscle: opponent of the inch. It is it who makes it possible to seize out of grip.
By seizing the world, man préhistoric has an action on his environment. He begins actor and no subject. And the gesture is accompanied by sounds which will become a language. This work is a sum which enables us to understand from where we come.

[Esteban · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tiene docenas de páginas predeciblemente aburridas - fáciles de evitar, también - alrededor de otras que son excelentes. En esas últimas Leroi-Gourhan habla del pictograma, el dibujo naturalista, la escritura, y de lo que él llama el mitograma como puntos en un espacio continuo de expresiones plásticas. Ese núcleo del ensayo es fácil de ubicar, y puede fascinar a cualquiera que tenga un interés serio por el potencial del grafismo.

[David Dutkiewicz, III · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing short of the whole human adventure is at stake in Leroi-Gourhan's Gesture and Speech. It traces the development of man through certain evolutionary "liberations" to the formations of culture and the future of mankind. Simultaneously brilliant and terrifying, Leroi-Gourhan's work should be mandatory humanities reading. Though I can't deny that the book was highly technical (it is anthropological scholarship, after all), it never veered too far from common understandability.

[nonegloga]

La pittura eseguita mediante proiezione, bruciature, lacerazioni, come lo scolpire automobili con la pressa, costituiscono un vero e proprio tuffo nelle strutture infrasapiane perché portano, come l’arte delle pietre grezze o delle radici, a una situazione estetica di un livello corrispondente all’uomo di Neanderthal, quello delle forme nate dal gioco delle forze naturali. I quadri dipinti dalle grandi scimmie antropoidi, benché siano il risultato di un ammaestramento, testimoniano di una indagine spinta ancora più a fondo del comportamento estetico, della reiezione nel ritmo nato dalla intersezione del caso con la psico-fisiologia. Questi fatti sono estremamente interessanti perché, se in ogni tempo le bizzarie della natura hanno provocato reazione estetiche profonde, la irruzione del caso come fondamento di una estetica contro-figurativa è un fatto tipicamente attuale nella sua importanza. (...)Si può ritenere che l’esistenza al giorno d’oggi di “pittori di vuoto” costituisca il segno di un principio? (...) L’arte delle troppo vecchie civiltà agricole dell’Eurasia è forse arrivata al rifiuto totale; fino al punto di là del quale non c’è più rinascita, ma inizio di un altro ciclo. La figurazione è il linguaggio delle forme visibili; come il linguaggio delle parole, essa è legata alle radici dell’umanità e non esiste altra soluzione umana se non nella costruzione di parabole storiche che sostengano lo slancio creativo in una lunga ascesa, seguita da una caduta che si collega ad altre traiettorie più nuove. Le ricerche figurative hanno dunque un avvenire umano (...). Alla fine del secolo XVIII, il passaggio da un mondo che durava dal primo coltivatore a un mondo diverso si è concretizzato nella tecnica ed è scoppiata la grande crisi attuale; nella stessa epoca gli schemi sociali hanno incominciato a vacillare e la musica ha preso a girare su se stessa poco tempo dopo. L’arte delle immagini è stata più lenta e solo prima della fine del secolo XIX gli slittamenti sono diventati percettibili. La situazione che esiste da ottant’anni è persino normale, corrisponde al complesso dell’evoluzione e i commoventi affreschi allegorici sono andati a raggiungere le diligenze nell’archeologia. L’attuale brulichio di formule, l’impossibilità di fissare l’orientamento dell’arte, i tentativi contro-figurativi sono altrettanti segni della realtà di uno stato di rinnovamento. L’avvenire pone, malgrado tutto, alcuni problemi. Il realismo ottico ha perso, con la fotografia e le immagini del movimento, il carattere propulsivo che ha avuto nella maggior parte delle arti di lunga durata. Le forme semplici del simbolismo primitivo, quali sono state illustrate negli ultimi cinquant’anni dai grandi pittori o scultori, sono forme transitorie; ci si troverebbe in genere ai confini dell’arcaismo per il periodo artistico futuro, quello dei primi complessi monumentali, costruiti con ancora qualche incertezza nella padronanza dei rapporti. L’arte che anima gli edifici, nel mondo intero, dà l’impressione che questo stadio si sta forse affermando. Il peso dell’erudizione accumulata nella memoria del mondo maschera, attraverso l’attrazione delle reminiscenze, il senso esatto di una evoluzione che ci riconduce, dopo un breve secolo di riorientamento, al punto in cui si trovavano gli immediati predecessori dei pittori di Lascaux.