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Rouch et Schweitzer: Un point de vue eurocentrique

Abstract

This analysis of Jean Rouch and Albert Schweitzer compares their paternalistic views of African subjects with that of Chateaubriand's view of the Natchez. It also provides a theoretical approach to using one's religion, as Schweitzer's Lutheranism, in a way that avoids paternalism and yet provides the benefits of the Christian fundamental value of caritas to others. Tzvetan Todorov underlined the use of exoticism and primitivism by explorers in the New World as a means of classifying the new peoples that they encountered. With Rouch's mission to promote African cultures, and Schweitzer's motives being founded on Lutheran and hippocratic principles, their seemingly innocent journeys to Africa served to further notions of the exotic and primitive Other. Using Carl Jung's analysis of the Christian faith, through psychoanalysis in his book Answer to Job, one finds an outline for how Schweitzer as a Christian could have served better the people that he quite genuinely wanted to help. In order to do so it is necessary to also understand the desire for cultural reproduction, as Pierre Bourdieu outlines in La distinction. Citizens of the western world wishing to assist others abroad, while avoiding the negative impact of a paternalistic relationship, have much to glean through psychoanalytic principles, as well as, an understanding of the affects of their cultural reproduction within African contexts.