Robert Parkin - The Dark Side of Humanity: The Work of Robert Hertz and its Legacy

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The Dark Side of Humanity

The Work of Robert Hertz and its Legacy

Robert Parkin

Copyright 1996 by OPA (Overseas Publishers Association) Amsterdam B.V. Published in The Netherlands by Routledge

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016

Transferred to Digital Printing 2006

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Parkin, Robert

The dark side of humanity: the work of Robert Hertz and its legacy

1. Hertz, Robert Criticism and interpretation

2. Anthropologists France 3. Anthropologists writings

History and criticism 4. Anthropology 5. Ethnology

6. Ethnologists France

I. Title

301.092

ISBN 3-7186-5861-5

ISBN 978-1-136-64620-1 (epub)

Publishers Note

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent

Contents

Preface

R obert Hertz was born in 1881 and killed in action on the Meuse in April 1915, at the age of 33, after a relatively uneventful life devoted to sociology and socialism. He has come to exemplify perhaps more than anyone else the tragedy of the Durkheimians, many of whom, including the master himself, died during, though not necessarily as a result of, the First World War. Although nominally a sociologist of religion, he has certainly had more influence in anthropology than in sociology or any other related discipline. Most anthropologists today would probably place him third in any league table of the Durkheimians, next only to the master and Mauss in terms of the quality, influence and relevance of his work.

Hertz seems to have been aiming to carve out a specific niche for himself in respect of what the Durkheimians were trying to achieve not so much thematically as with regard to the particular angle from which he approached the collective effort. Though probably less intended at the time, his works have also proved, in different ways, to have had relevance for most of the major subsequent anthropological approaches to ritual, itself a key explanandum for the Durkheimians. The degree of admiration he excited in both contemporaries and latter-day followers has become almost adulation at times, as the warmth of Durkheims and Mausss memorials for him show. Given the circumstances of his death and the subsequent regret at the truncated promise of his life, he has become the nearest thing anthropology has to a sort of Chatterton figure, or to those legendary popular entertainers who have won enduring fame by showing promise before dying tragically young. There is no doubt that he was gifted and diligent, as well as being socially concerned, and as a consequence much admired by his colleagues. However, thanks to the efforts of Evans-Pritchard and Rodney Needham in particular, his academic reputation and memory are now secure, and we can begin to put his work in its proper context as regards not only the Anne and anthropology generally but also his own life and personality.

The present book is thus not a conventional biography though biographical details are included nor even entirely an intellectual one. Certainly it is in part an attempt to situate Hertzs work in the history of anthropology by discussing his ideas and showing how they were related to those of his contemporaries especially but not entirely those in the Anne. But a considerable amount of effort has also gone into discussing the ways in which they have been utilized and developed by later scholars, who have almost uniformly found them an inspiration, though often in unexpected ways. This is true of all his major works, mainly those on death and on right and left, but also those on sin and on the cult of St. Besse, which are at last beginning to be recognized after a long period of neglect.

In the course of writing this book, Maurice Godelier and Serge Tcherkzoff gave me invaluable help and support in arranging two research trips to Paris, in spring 1992 and early summer 1993, for which they are duly thanked here. These trips were funded by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and I also acknowledge the help of Hinnerck Bruhns of CNRS in this regard. I would also like to thank Franoise Hritier for giving me permission to examine the archive of Hertzs letters and other papers, including manuscripts, in the Laboratoire dAnthropologie Sociale. This archive was presented to the Laboratoire by members of Hertzs family in the 1960s, with further additions in the 1980s, and it includes Hertzs personal library. It is listed under the title of the Fonds Robert Hertz (abbreviated to FRH in the present book). Citations of and from Hertzs and others letters are from it, except where otherwise stated. Marion Abels and her staff are thanked for their unfailing help during my sojourns in the Laboratoire library; and Marion Abels and Marie Mauz for helping me decipher late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century French handwriting on occasion. Philippe Besnard drew my attention to a handful of letters from Durkheim to Mauss which discuss Hertz after his death.

Finally, special words of gratitude go to Margaret Gardiner, whose father Sir Alan Gardiner was a close friend of Hertz in his youth and who allowed me to peruse reminiscences of Hertz that he had later written down for the benefit of his family; and to Antoine Hertz, who welcomed me most warmly at his home in the Dordogne and clarified a number of uncertainties concerning details of his fathers life. The willing help of all these named individuals and institutions does not in any way diminish the full responsibility for the contents of the present work from being mine and mine alone.

The translations of quotations from works in French are by myself where a published translation does not already exist.

Table of Main Events in Hertzs Life

22 June 1881	Born at Saint-Cloud, near Paris
1889	Entered Lyce Janson de Sailly
1898	Entered Lyce Henri IV
1900	Accepted for Ecole Normale Suprieure
12 Nov 1900	Started military service (approx. 1 year)
About 1900	Met Durkheim
1901	Matriculated at Ecole Normale Suprieure
July 1903	Further military training
24 August 1904	Married Alice Bauer
29 August 1904	Graduated from Ecole Normale Suprieure; joined Durkheims research group
Oct 1904-July 1905	In England (mainly reading in British Museum)

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