René Barbier (University Paris 8)
http://www.barbier-rd.nom.fr/
 lecture at the " Worldwide Comparative Education Forum: Economic Globalization & Education Reforms" 14-16 th October 2002, Beijing Normal University China
 

Introduction

Trips to Brazil and the photography discovery.

Since 1992, I have gone to Brazil several times to give lectures and to lead research groups. On  my last trip, in July-August 2002, within the framework of a research seminar at the Federal  University of Brasilia (UnB), I found a poster of an Indian mother in the office of the  head of
the Educational Sciences department that strongly impressed me. I asked whether I could get this document.  One of my friends printed a copy of it and sent it to me so that I could digitalise  it. It is  around this image that I want to reflect with you on the culture from elsewhere and its
repercussions upon educational imaginary.

Educational questionning

The structure of the photography (see below) does not fail to question our way of seeing as  Westerners. It questions us specifically on our connection with the body, with the animal  world, with sharing, with the acquaintance in education and it reveals to us the unvoiced
comment of our culture which is set up upon reason. More closely let us examine this image in  a listening sensitive way, suitable for the transversal approach (Barbier, 1997).

1. Mother in  amerindian and negro-African culture from Brazil

 Structure of the photograhy

 - Archetypal Mother

At once  a central character is expounded to us by this image : native Amerindian mother (see  note). Since the very beginnings of humanity, the mother has been praised. In Egypt, she is Nout : Egyptian goddess of  heavens, and Tefnet’s daughter, Geb’s sister, Osiris, Isis,
Haroëris, Seth, and Nephtys' mother. She is depicted as a woman with a curved body above the Earth with her arms extended to the West, her feet touching the East, and her belly, the stars,  or sometimes like a cow raised up on the top of Universe, geniuses supporting her legs. She is the mother and wife of the Sun, and every morning she gives birth to a golden calf which grows, and which, at its zenith, in the shape of a bull, fertilizes his mother... (the myth of the Bull’s mother). Appeared in a human shape, she carries around bowl upon her head. She is protective of death, one often sees her holding the narrowly embraced deceased.
On our photography, one notices that she is squatting half-naked and that she carries her own child quite tightly in one of her arms. Her only clothing is a kind of loincloth. Nevertheless, one can realize that she does not disdain necklaces. Her feet are naked too. Her other arm is
supporting a small animal (a pup, a small fox ?) which is sucking from his mother’s right breast. It's mother's glance is directed towards the animal and all her attitude reveals a sustained attention. She is the feeder Mother par excellence. The one who protects and guarantees
against the pangs of hunger and suffering. Around her, the nature with its luxuriant vegetation. Traces of modern civilization are not visible. The path is neither tarred nor organized. Plants grow there.

- Place of the child

The child does not worry overmuch about this mysterious foster brother. He is well fixed on his mother’s shoulder, and he seems to be looking elsewhere, biding his time. Let us suppose that he is getting an education about sharing, about being non possessive about his relationship with others (human beings, natural, vegetable and animal worlds).

- The nature

 It is omnipresent. It is a nature touched by the human culture despite everything. It is not a jungle. But, in the background, one can feel the presence of its chaotic, non-controllable dimension. It is at the edge of civilization, ready to invade it if we don’t watch it.

- The animal

It came, seemingly fearlessly. It is sucking from the woman's breast as it would with its own mother. Undoubtedly it is an orphan and, quite naturally, is taken in within the group by human beings. A reception probably without forfantery, without laces. A reception ensuring
food but not dogs' "three stars canned food" from European city grocers. But, here, it is without a collar, free of coming and going where it wants to. Its "owner" (but is he really ?) won’t be penalised for the nauseous waste it might deposit here and there. It is surely an animal
which will still preserve a certain hunter instinct. In France, the putting back of wolves in the Alps, with ecological reasons, is strongly fought by the inhabitants of the neighbouring localities in the name of an ancestral fear and of a so-called destructiveness attributed to free
and wild animal.

2. Transversal Approach of an image

What does this photography tell us ? Why does-it touch us at once and before any analysis ? A transversal approach which combines three imaginary aspects : instinctual, social and sacral and three listenings : private clinic, institutional and mythopoetic, will allow there some topics of reflexion there.

- Attachment and loss

What strikes, at first sight, is the meaning of the mother’s attachment to the relationship between her child and another being belonging to another living species. She does not neglect her child, she puts it, temporarily "between brackets" to deal with another living  being which
has lost its reference marks and which is hungry. She intuitively knows that the small animal needs physical contact, heat, fur. She did not read scientific works by Rene Spitz, John Bowlby (1978), Rene Zazzo (1979), or Hubert Montagner (1988). She seems to know from
the very beginning  that a living being fundamentally needs safety, which starts with food, a roof, but also with physical contact and tenderness. She  knows the power of care and attention to the other. Undoubtedly she also knows the suffering of the loss involved in any
feeling of joy within the infinite process of life. As confucian philosopher Mencius would, she would readily go to the edge of a well to withdraw a child who has just fallen into it, moved by simple, spontaneous, altruistic behavior.

-  « Reliance » (connection with the whole life, "linkedness")

This poster expresses the reality of the feeling of « reliance »  (Marcel Bolle de Bal, 1996) in the cultures that once some used to "savages". Claude Lévi-Strauss (1962) paid homage to their relationship with the world, too much coded as "primitive mentality" by the ethnology of Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (1996) in his first works. Holistic cultures, organized around and for the social group, in which individuals have a meaning only if they are integrated in a living unit. Often in hierarchical cultures, the authority is assessed according to the services which the head ensures to its members. In traditional Chinese culture, one knows that the Emperor of China could be dislocated and the popular rising legitimated, if he had not been able to or did not know how to contain social dysfunction and disastrous inequalities, far from the "right middle", always at work in the process of life. Harmony is at the root of a collective human reality as well as a natural and cosmic one. The Chinese respected what went along these lines and their ancestral philosophy became lead by its "process" (F.Jullien, 1989). In Amerindian cultures, this sense of harmony and "reliance" remains. The Indians from North Colombia - Kogis - assert for example that they live on earth to guarantee the ecological survival of humanity and they developed an extremely subtle philosophy of life (É. Julien,
2001). But, in the end, don’t North-American Indians as well as South-American Indians both come from the same stock, on ice era, thirty thousand years ago, through the completely frozen strait of Behring ? Aren't they descendants of former Shamans from archaic Asia ?

- Vital energy

The image causes a kind of call to order on ourselves. Life is not only made up with computers, quantities to be measured, profits to be accumulated. It is the form of a fundamental vital energy, the expression of a relationship of the unknown with - the tao - spoken about by the
Chinese traditional thought (Anne Cheng, 1998). A kind of connection with the sacred without god, without priests or holy books, a connection with religion not instituted  at first by some sacred intermediary, as Leon Vandermeersch notices about ancient China, but by some average
households (Vandermeersch, 1994). We can feel all the power of this vital energy flowing through the characters of the scene. A flexible and deep energy combining at the same time the child who is asleep with his attentive mother, the busy animal with the detached and
connected plant, the foreground with the background of the picture. A vital energy indicating the necessity of an écosophie as Felix Guattari says in "three ecologies" (1979), underlined by a " lay spirituality" relieved of every old idol as a wise man like Krishnamurti (1997) talks
about. There is in this photographic fresco, an esthetics which expresses an ethics, as in the Chinese liberal arts, specifically in painting and poetry (Kamenarovic, 1999). Admittedly, Chinese painters hardly place characters at the center of their work. It is rather the nature that they draw, the one of vacuum and slenty (F.Cheng, 1979), where mountain and water meet, to tell the double yin and yang slope of every thing, in their infinite variation. But isn't it what one feels here ? The woman knows, almost intuitively, that the situation of the small animal could be that of her own child's, on another time or another place.

- Body and actual experience

Westerners who are accustomed to the repression of the body or, in a very modern way, to its spectacular and glossy exhibition, will be surprised by this photography. Here is a naked body in all its simplicity, its grace and its beauty. If a certain sensuality emerges, it is not in
any way a kind of eroticism. It is about sensuality suitable for life in act, for living and giving life drives. A sensuality that reminds of the given fruits of Brazil. One is thrown by this connection with the body. The body is no longer a trick, it is lived from day to day, in all its wholeness. There is not the body and something else but a living body allowing other things to appear. One locates it very well in the condomblé ceremony in Brazil. With the dancing body, it is a festive sharing, a communion, a "reliance" with the ancestors, in a final analysis, a meaningful life.

 3. Educational questionning

This photography reminds us that our philosophy of life and education is particularly restrictive as soon as one considers another way of being in relationship with the world, in the cultures from elsewhere.

The first point is the sense of linkedness with every living thing.

How, in our education systems, do we maintain this sense of unity of the living world ? What is our connection/ratio with the environment, beyond the speeches of the last "Summit of the Earth" at Johannesburg in September 2002 ? How many universities have ecology courses in educational Sciences in France ? What is the importance of the control of pollution in China at the present time ? (Barbier, 2002)

The second point is the place of the body and the feeling in any education.

Beyond the expensive fashion of the body-building in the West, how do we lean towards a harmonious and non competitive development of the body in our education ? Don't we have to learn from these remote cultures ? And in France, how do we consider the way the Chinese live
their body by practising, at the first light of dawn, exercises of Tai Ji Quan in parks or even in the streets of the large Chinese cities, before going to work ?

The third point : Sensitivity.

The woman on our poster is sensitive to another living being. We  must insist on the nature of essential sensitivity in education and, more widely in social sciences (Barbier, 1997). Cognitive education should not crush education to sensitivity. One knows the role of the sensitivity in China. One does not think over there with the head but with the heart, as the ideogram indicates it. As Claude Larre remarkably puts it, in connection with the Chinese culture, "the control of life is the art of the heart" (Larre, 1998, p.355) which allows deep knowledge of what is. One is always touched by arts and by Chinese poetry expressing so well this sensitive listening of the nature and of the world in a non exuberant style, loan of reserve and primarily founded on allusion and subtle repercussion about which François Cheng speaks so well (1979, 1990) or our Vietnamese colleague Lê Thành Khoî (2000).

The fourth point: the aesthetic dimension of life.

Even if clothing is simple, the woman is wearing necklaces, a sign that she belongs to a culture. The aesthetic sense of human life, and the symbolic system, in clothing, in jewels, in everyday life objects is ancestral. It indicates cultural and social elements within the very heart
of each and every individual. It shows a connection with the world that does not want to be exclusively mercantile and functional. What is the place of art in our education? What do we make in our universities, our schools, our factories, our offices, to make walls, corridors,
spaces of collective life pleasant to see ? Where are the artists on our walls ? Why are there so many  indecent and indelible graffitis and tags in our classrooms ? What influence can our culture have on the sense of beauty in our students and our pupils ' minds ? What do our students know about universal poetry? Which Chinese intellectual can still recite a poem by Li Bai, by Du Fu or by Wang Wei ? Which professor of university in France could intelligently speak about Rene Char or Rutebeuf ?

NOTE

According to certain archaeologists who worked in the Northeast of Brazil during the 80s, traces of population in this area existed more than 30.000 years ago, but it is more likely that the first human settlements in South America went back as far as approximately 15 000 years BC. Situated in the coastal regions of Venezuela and Colombia, they indicate a populating of northerly origin, introduced by the isthmus of Panamá, spread bit by bit along the littoral and penetrating in the heart of the continent along waterways. Of the system of Orénoque in that
of the Amazon, the passage is easy thanks to the "canal" of Casiquiare ; on the immense area crossed by rivers which goes from the Andes Cordillera on the West, to the savannas of the Northeast, no natural obstacle, no change of geographical environment prevented the
movements of population and cultural development.
So a homogeneous culture built itself up during ages, in all the area  of the low and woody lands, which extends beyond the strictly geographic frame of the Amazon. From the ethnological point of view, the Indians of the Southern Amazon ( Mato Grosso) and the Westerner (class(course) of Mara ñ ó n and of its tributaries) are a part of the same cultural group as those of Guyana and of Orénoque. They differ from all the groups of the high Andes plateaux, the moderate and cold plains of the South of the continent and those who, in savannas especially, lived until our days (or almost) exclusively as hunters and pickers. Before the Europeans arrival, there was a relatively restricted native population. These people can be classified in two main groups, a population partially sedentary that speaks the Tupi language and has cultural affinities, and the natives who moved from place to place through this vast territory. We consider that there are approximately one million persons, native people who live scattered in all the territory. There are approximately 200 Indian societies living in Brazil ; 200 cultures with different languages, religions and specific social organizations. The federal constitution declares inalienable the right of the Indians to possess the earth which they live on. However, because of the unlimitedness of the Brazilian territory and the lack of
means by the governmental body the interests and the rights of the Indians have to be defended and guaranteed, the FUNAI (Fundacão Nacional doh Indio - national Indian foundation) has not succeeded in imposing the law which guarantees adequate health and education yet, or in applying projects aiming at developing productive activities.

Bibliography

Rene BARBIER, 1997, Transversal Approach. Significant listening in social sciences, Paris, Anthropos, 357 p.
Rene BARBIER, October 2002, China, philosophy and environment, Paris, Re-examined Further education, On the WEB http://www.barbier-rd.nom.fr/ArticleChinefin5.rtf.PDF
de BOLLE Marcel (ed.), 1996,The reliance. Travel in the heart of the social sciences (two volumes), Paris, Harmattan, T1, reliance and theories (332 p.) T.2, Reliance and practical (340 p.)
BOWLBY John, 1978, Attachment and loss, Paris, PUF
CHENG Anne, 1998, History of the Chinese thought, Paris, Threshold, 650 p.
CHENG Francois, 2000, Chinese Poetry, penmanships of Fabienne VERDIER, Paris, Albin Michel,
CHENG Francois, 1990, Between source and cloud. Reinvented Chinese poetry, Paris, Albin Michel, 261 p.
GUATTARI, Felix, 1979, three ecologies, Paris, Galileo
JULIEN Eric, 2001, the way of the nine worlds. The Kogis Indian of Colombia can teach us the mysteries of the life, Paris, Albin Michel, 289 p., http://membres.lycos.fr/tchendukua/
KAMENAROVIC, Ivan P, 1999, Arts and Well-read men in the Chinese tradition. Test on the artistic implications of the thought of the Well-read men, prefaces of Leon Vandermeersch, Paris, editions of the Stag, 141 p.
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LARRE Claude, 1998, TheChinese. Spirit and behavior of the Chinese as they appear by their books and in their life, of the origins at the end of the dynasty Ming (1644), Paris, Auzou, coll. Old history of the people, 671 p.
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Bibliographie en français

BARBIER René, 1997, L'approche transversale. L'écoute sensible en sciences humaines, Paris, Anthropos, 357 p.
BARBIER René, octobre 2002, Chine, philosophie et environnement, Paris, Revue Éducation permanente,
Sur le WEB http://www.barbier-rd.nom.fr/ArticleChinefin5.rtf.PDF
BOLLE De BAL Marcel (s/dir), 1996, La reliance. Voyage au coeur des sciences humaines (deux tomes), Paris ,L'Harmattan, T1, reliance et théories (332 p.) T.2, Reliance et pratiques (340 p.)
BOWLBY John, 1978, Attachement et perte, Paris, PUF
CHENG Anne, 1998, Histoire de la pensée chinoise, Paris, Seuil, 650 p.
CHENG François, 2000, Poésie chinoise, calligraphies de Fabienne VERDIER, Paris, Albin Michel,
CHENG François, 1990, Entre source et nuage . La poésie chinoise réinventée, Paris, Albin Michel, 261 p.
GUATTARI, Felix, 1979, Les trois écologies, Paris, Galilée
JULIEN Eric, 2001, Le chemin des neuf mondes. Les Indien Kogis de Colombie peuvent nous enseigner les mystères de la vie, Paris, Albin michel, 289 p., http://membres.lycos.fr/tchendukua/
KAMENAROVIC, Ivan P, 1999, Arts et Lettrés dans la tradition chinoise. Essai sur les implications artistiques de la pensée des Lettrés, préface de Léon Vandermeersch, Paris, éditions du Cerf, 141 p.
KRISHNAMURTI Jiddu, 1997, Paris, Le Livre de la Méditation et de la Vie, Stock, 425 p.
LARRE Claude, 1998, Les Chinois. Esprit et comportement des Chinois comme ils se révèlent par leurs livres et dans leur vie, des origines à la fin de la dynastie Ming (1644), Paris, Auzou, coll. Histoire ancienne des peuples, 671 p.
LE THÀNH KHÔI, 2000, Un désir de beauté, paris, Horizons du Monde, 222 p.
LEVY-BRUHL Lucien, 1996, L'âme primitive, Paris Presse Universitaire de France, Quadrige ,450 p.
LEVI-STRAUSS Claude, 1962, La Pensée sauvage, Paris, Plon
MONTAGNER Hubert, 1988, L' attachement, les débuts de la tendresse, Paris, Odile Jacob
VANDERMEERSCH Léon, 1994, Études sinologiques, coll Orientales, 354 p., pp.221-230
ZAZZO René (sous la direction de), 1979, L'attachement, Neuchâtel, Delachaux et Niestlé
 

Thanks for the translation to Jacqueline COULON and Marc MARCISZEWER