THE ARCHAIC PRESENT: THE SOCIAL THOUGHT OF MARCEL MAUSS AND HIS SUCCESSORS (FRANCE)

Marcel Mauss's "Essai sur le don" of 1925 stands at the crossroads of modern French social theory. Mauss placed the phenomenon of reciprocity at the center of social life, thereby setting the agenda for much of the best work in French social theory over the past half-century. The present study aims to situate Mauss's great essay in its political context. Mauss took an active part in the hopes and quarrels of French socialist politics before and after the First World War. Analysis of his politics helps us to understand why he pressed his findings about the role of gift exchange in archaic societies into the service of an argument for a reformed welfare state.;In a period characterized by ideological polarization, by rumors of war and threats of political barbarism, French social theorists looked to archaic societies for insights into the roots of politics and of political violence. This study seeks to shed light on their efforts to come to terms with the crisis of European civilization on the period between the world wars.;In the mid-1930s Mauss lent his support to the historian Elie Halevy's thesis on the common roots of Bolshevism and fascism. Halevy's views on the "era of tyrannies" were further developed in a series of articles by Raymond Aron; the commentary by Mauss on Halevy's thesis in turn inspired further work by Georges Bataille and Roger Caillois. Bataille's debt to Mauss's theory of exchange was already apparent in two important essays of the early 1930s--"The Notion of Expenditure" and "The Psychological Structure of Fascism," both of which receive extensive consideration in this study. Caillois was fascinated by the phenomenon of the secret society (societe des hommes), and he too took his point of departure from the work of Mauss. The common project of Bataille and Caillois and their "College de Sociologie" was the development of a "sociology of the sacred" that could be applied to modern societies. The present study attempts to assess the strengths and weaknesses of their approach to the modern world by way of the archaic.