Louis-Vincent Thomas

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Louis-Vincent Thomas (born May 20, 1922 , † January 22, 1994 ) was a French sociologist , anthropologist and ethnologist . He was a specialist in Africa and the founder of thanatology in France.

Life

In 1948 Thomas came to Dakar as a philosophy teacher , where he taught at a Lycée (high school) for ten years. A planned philosophical dissertation remains unwritten, instead he devotes himself to ethnological field research and examines funeral rites, especially in the Casamance . Since 1958 he has been teaching at the University of Dakar. He writes his thèse about the Diola in the Casamance. He stayed at the University of Dakar and, on the recommendation of Georges Balandier and J. Stoetzel, was appointed to the Sorbonne, where he became Professor of Sociology. He is a co-founder of the “Société de thanatologie”, of which he is the first president.

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In his research with the Diola, Thomas uses both ethnological and psychological methods ( Rorschach test ). He is interested in the systems of thought and ideologies in Afrique noire and in the 1960s published a two-volume work on socialism in Africa. Gradually his interest focuses on the subject of death.

The starting point of his general anthropological interest is the confrontation with the handling of death in rural Africa (as an example of a society in which non-capitalist traditions (at least at that time) were still very much alive), which differs fundamentally from the modern European handling of death.

People in Sub-Saharan Africa are often surrounded by a hostile nature (endemic diseases, insecurity of survival, etc.). They respond, according to Thomas, with an exaltation of life. “Even more: everything is life; and the hierarchy of beings reproduces the hierarchy of vital principles. The good becomes one with that which promotes or allows life to grow; and evil, on the other hand, is defined by that which diminishes it or puts an end to it. The believer, like the magician, is concerned with participating in universal life through a dialectic of affirmation, of revitalization, and those who refuse to sacrifice languish and die of exhaustion. […] The black man's love for life is manifested in the rich and original way in which he sings and dances, in his desire to have numerous children who continue his lineage so strong that sterility is the main reason who is divorces, hence his love for collective celebrations, profane and sacred, during which he lives intensely and in harmony with the group; but also and above all he proclaims the victory of life over death in the manner in which death negates by creating an imaginary in which death only temporarily interrupts the existence of life.

The cult of the immortal ancestors, the belief in rebirth, the certainty that death is never a complete and definitive destruction, initiation , which is above all a collective and symbolic rebirth, have no other meaning. "

“ Death is in no way an isolated fact. It is a process that begins at birth: death of the newborn for the ancestral world, separation from the mother's womb, burial of the double that is the placenta that sometimes becomes the object of a real cult. It continues symbolically in the initiation, in which symbolically the killing of the initiate and then his liturgical rebirth in a higher state is carried out. [...] To situate death in different moments of life (birth, initiation, fate post mortem) or everyday life (violent emotion, deep sleep, mental illness are assimilated to small deaths), that is, to place it everywhere Doesn't that mean protecting yourself from it by generalizing it? Incidentally, without ever doubting the brutal reality of the fact, which is confirmed by the existence of the funeral rites, one understands death as a moment of life rather than its negation, as a passage, as a transition, as a metamorphosis rather than as an end. "

The comparison between death in Africa and in Europe is developed in Anthropologie de la mort (first 1975).

For Thomas, death was “not the opposite of life, but perhaps its basic condition”.

Ultimately, Thomas is concerned with understanding the human condition by examining how we deal with death . For Thomas his research was “[...] driven by the search for humans. Death remains the privileged access [révélateur] to human nature. And love of life: We wrote somewhere: it is absolutely true to say that if we love life but not death, it is because we don't really love life. "

Another focus of his work was the relationship of death to science fiction .

Fonts

  • Pouvoirs sorciers. Enquêtes sur les pratiques actuelles de sorcellerie with Dominique Camus, Imago, 2004
  • La mort , Que Sais-Je, Puf , 2003
  • Les chairs de la mort: corps, mort, Afrique , Paris: Inst. D'Éd. Sanofi-Synthélabo, 2000 (Les empêcheurs de penser en rond), foreword by Jean-Marie Brohm
  • Mort et pouvoir Petite Bibl. Payot Payot, 1999
  • Les religions d'Afrique noire textes et traditions sacrés , with René Luneau Stock , 1995
  • Anthropologie de la maladie. Etude ethnologique des systèmes de représentations étiologiques et thérapeutiques dans la sociétés contemporaines , Bibl. Scientifique, mt François Laplantine, Payot, 1993
  • Les Mots de la mort with Martine Courtois, Belin , 1991
  • Fantasme et formation Inconscient et Culture with René Kaës, Didier Anzieu Dunod
  • Mort et pouvoir Petite Bibliothèque Payot, Payot, 1998
  • Beyrouth ou la fascination de la mort with Issa Makhlouf, Éditions de La Passion, 1992
  • Anthropologie des obsessions, L'Harmattan, 1988 (on science fiction)
  • Elements pour un itinéraire , De Boeck Université ISBN 2-8041-5181-6
  • La Mort africaine: idéologie funéraire en Afrique noire , Payot, 1982
  • Civilization et divagations. Mort, fantasmes, science-fiction , Payot, 1979
  • Anthropologie de la mort , Payot, 1975
  • Cinq essais sur la mort africaine , Dakar, Université de Dakar, Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines, 1968.
  • Le socialisme et l'Afrique
    • Tome 1, Essai sur le socialisme africain , Paris: Le livre Africain, 1966
    • Tome 2, L'idéologie socialiste et les voies africaines de développement , Paris: Le livre Africain, 1966
  • Les idéologies négro-africaines d'aujourd'hui , Paris: AG Nizet, 1965
  • Les Diola. Essai d'analysis fonctionnelle sur une population de Basse-Casamance (thèse), Université de Paris: Faculté des lettres, 1959

Secondary literature

  • Une galaxie anthropologique. Homage to Louis-Vincent Thomas , "Quel corps?", 38/39, October 1989
  • Socio-anthropologie de la mort: Louis-Vincent Thomas: dix ans après , Bruxelles: Univ. Libre, 2005. (Revue de l'Institut de Sociologie; 2005,3 / 4)

proof

  1. ↑ The classic thèse de doctorat was a very extensive work (in the case of Thomas more than 800 pages), which were, so to speak, a dissertation and a habilitation in one.
  2. ↑ biographical information based on Louis Vincent Thomas, "Éléments pour un itinéraire" in: Sociétés, No. 93, 2006/3, p. 39-43
  3. ↑ Éléments, p. 40-41
  4. ↑ Éléments, p. 41
  5. ↑ Éléments, p. 42
  6. ↑ Éléments, p. 43

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Thomas, Louis-Vincent
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French sociologist, anthropologist and ethnologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 20, 1922
DATE OF DEATH January 22, 1994