7he tradllional teacher-learner relationship q{ the Abbe; Father- Bere; SOil IS central 10 JOlIsse'l1' percepfion of fhe essence of Ihe amhropos and Jus mferactions wlIII his species and the cosmos (It a number of levels. The teachll1f!. can only be achiewd wifh the help of a 'medlOtor' or 'go-beflVeen' - fhe Paroqlitfi. which takes a number offorms.
• In the crealion o./the world. the ParoqUta is the primordial breath or ROllhah/rom the na/j'ha-Ihroat oflhe Abbii-Elaha cOrl)ling his informing memra and bringing Ihe world into being by insJ~(flation
Ihe energISIng-breath.
• In the leaching of a hllman Father 10 a human Son - or a teacher 10 a learner in any ethnic milieu - the ParaqlitG is the breath which energ,ses Ihe speech which carries the learning.
• In the teaching q( the dlvme Father to IllS hllman learners. the Paraqlito is incarnated diVinely in 0
human Bera. who In tllrn leaches as does a human teacher with breath-energised geste and rhythm.
• In the absence of the divinely incarnated Bere;, the divine Father breathes his teaching into his human learners through hi,~' own energising-breath: his hllman learners are insufflated with his c.·reatin!!, memrG with every breath that they breathe.
• In instances where the teachmg must be translated. the ParaqlitG is the Metollrgemiin- SlInergos. who in tllm willllse the energising-breath 10 relay his message in gesle and rhythm. as is the case 111 all human communiC(llion.
Examples of US<lge
• "By his instnlction, which is Constnlction and quasi-Creation, the Abba engenders his Bedis
'according to his' (gestual and global) 'image and resemblance'. He is within his Beras, and his Benis are within him, propositional geste by propositional geste and therefore interactional geste by interactional geste. One is what one knows.
This makes us understand why the Palestinians remained Mimodramatists of the so-called 'action language', to the astonishment, and often scandal, of the Graeco-Latin historians of the great Nabis of Isrnel. Only by making the geste re-play spontaneously, or otherwise having the geste underpin each word, can the oral language truly be explained. From one end of the rhythmo-catechistic Recitations to the other, the geste is always signified either by dlis single word, or by dIe group of words which we call the propositional fonnula." (Jousse 2000:471)
• "The abba-teacher utters his teaching, which is received by the bera-leamer - the one being taught - who is his echo. This echo is repeated aloud by the parol/fita for tlle benayya - those already taught, the receivers - who thus become the resonators of this double echo of the abbu-teacher." (Joussc 2000:563)
• "So we see the abba, the bera and the paraqlita united by a single 'word', reverberating in the echo
of a common traditional formula. This can only be the work of an inspired genius, so finely distinguished is tlle transposition of these 'role-players', sublimated analogically in the world of the heavenly tradition. Naturally, the Teacher, the Abbii of the Heavens is the only true Master or
Mara,
of whom the abbas of the earth are but echo-like repeaters. These are the faithful, daily distributors of
the Bread of Life and of the Water of Life to their benh, the rnemorizers, their intellectual sons."
(Jousse 2000:563)
• "TIle Benayya Isg. bel"a] are his sons, the ones he instructs, the ones he has 'built up', the ones he has 'constructed'. We can only understand this reference fully when it is embedded in a pedagogical conte>..i. 'Poor in knowledge', poor in Ronha (spirit, breath) refers to those who are stranded in lowly estate without teachers qualified to instmct them, to guide them. 111is was the great movement created by the Rabbi leshoua: like a good shepherd, he came to nourish and instmct the poor of his flock: the Malkouta of Shemayyii was for them all." (Jousse 2000: 563)
• "Let us, then, analyse this creative geste by Insl~(fla'ion in three parts: the mimismological intussusception of the AbM-teacher; dle mimismological intussusception of dle Bera-leacher; the mimismological intussusception of the Paraqfita-Interpreter." (Jousse 2000:397)
• "So we will have:
Ahb.l Bera
Rouh:l
because anthropologists seek beneath the words for the source of the real information. Beneadl the dead texts they seek life, sometimes even dle Life etemal which is the Pedagogy of Eternity.
We must be alert to the fact that it is the simple geste ofdle sign of our Cross which carries all of the great Palestinian pedagogical tradition of the teaching Abba, of the Bera who receives the teaching and of the Rouha or Paraqlita who rememorates dle breath.
b
TIle Lessons which I recite to you
d
But the Abb;1 who is stable in me it is he who does my works
c
Not from myself do I recite them
says iI~shoua, Bera of his E16h6, alIDouncer ofthe Rouha or Paraqlita." (Jousse 2000:311)
• 'This is the point of departure for the whole trinitary mechanism: dlere will be the Abba, who engenders, who possesses the Bedi or the Memra (so badly translated by us as: the Word). If the 'Word', or Memrii, is the Bera, son of dle 'Speaker', then the notion of the Invisible One can be grasped as this natural unit: the Abba, the Bera and the Roiiha - meaning the Speaker, the Word (la Parole or le Parler) and the Breath which proceeds from each to the odler. Tres in lino - "three in one". But if you translate Falher, Son and Holy Spirif, you are creating a type of hiatus in dle extraordinary logic of these fundamental mechanisms." (Jousse 2000: 146)
See also JOl/sse 2000: 1-17, 38.J, -113. 50-1, 525. inter alia.
o Abba-insumation
(Abba - Bcr.i - Paraqlitalldynamo-gcncsisllbrcath)
The Abba-£lah6 crealed Ihe world with the primordial brealh or ROllh6h from his najshii-throat which carries his informing memr6. so bringing the world and all life into being by insufflation -the energising- breath.
Examples of Usage
• 'Then we see dle great mechanics ofdle insufflation appear. And we see the Breath of the All-Mighty giving life to the modelled earth:
And the Adam-antllropos became a living throat.
As we see, by the Breath of his Word: "He spoke, and things held". The great creating Breath! The Nabis are 'under dle Breadl'. whence the visions and the revelations ...
And these men were all thought of as being 'breathed' by the Invisible One, whether they were modellers or sculptors or Rhythmo-mimers at the stage of global expression. or whether they were only
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recltcrs at the time when oral language became dominant 111CY were breathed by a mysterious Breath which drove Ihemlo act and to express" (Jousse 2000:241)
• ''''1is force. wlllch brings about action, is seen by no-one 111at is because it is II1corporated into the visible world in the same way that breath is incorporated into us. When breath disappears from our human composite, death follows. Similarly there is a variety of composites throughout the whole of nature. Nothing is dead. Everything contributes to this invisible breath, 111is Acting One, who is invisible in all things except in his actions, is also all-powerful and therefore capable of everything, Nothing is impossible to him. TIle power of man himself, on the other hand, is limited." (Jousse 2000'138)
• "1lle insufflation rhythmed in the nostrils was called Life. TIle insufflation no longer rhythmed in the nostrils is called Death." (Jousse 2000:403)
o absh'act - concrete - ;tlgebrised - algebrosed concretism - Concrete Abstraction - Algebrosed Abstraction
1"lgcbdscld] IW"iting]
For JOllsse. Ihe anrhropos is innately p:-,ycho-physiologica//y eqllipped 10 operale concrete~)) and
obstract~", (hereby exclllding rhe notion (ha( (he hllman capacify for abstraction is related /0 maturation or Ilferacy. He boses his position on his observarions of children and paysan Oral-style communities world-wide. JOllsse arg/les rhat the abstract 'draws-()/l!-<J[ (Jollsse 2000:62) the concrere, and therefore the capacity for concrete and abstract thinking and expression are inextricably linked, borh ro each other and to the md,vls,ble complexus of 'knowledge-understanding-memo,))'. JOllsse coins Ihe word
~(llgehrL .. etl' from the Arabic aljabr "that which slImmarises" for the process o.f fiXing expression In a
form external to the anthropos. scribal wrifing being one SlIch form. 'Algebrisalion' therefore 'records' thlls providing an al!ernatlve to human memory as means of psycho-physiological archive. the redllCTive nature o.fwhich is inevitably compromising. Once 'memory' is compromised as 'record', (he potentialfor redllction of the concrete 'knowledge-undersfCtnding' is increO!ied. Such reduction results in a lack of concrete IInderstanding of who! is recorded hence the {algebrosed' or fOSSilised 'knowledge- understanding'divorcedfrom ·memory·. Hence . .Jotlsse ident{fies
• (he murually-informing relationship of the con,'rete and the abstrtlctj
• the potential complemenlarity o.fthe algebrised in the expression o/Ihe concrete and the abstract:
• the opposition of the concrete and the algebrosed.
Examples of Usage
• "Fortunately or otherwise, our knowledge or ignorance of Graeco-Latin etymology - which is always mimismologically concrete in origin but also always intellectually abstract - will in no way whatsoever change the fundamental anthropological mechanism of man's intellectual and expressive gesticulation. TIle anthropos is a mimismologically and abstractively propositioning animal.
Moreover, the more a mimismologically concrete and intellectually abstract expression is plastically 'transferred', the more completely it is modelled by the contemplation of the object to be expressed, and therefore the more concrete it will be.
An originally algebrosed, conventional expression is t.herefore genetically impossible as all expression is only an intussuscepted, macroscopically replayed Mimeme, the living and visible incorporation of a concrete action or interaction of what is real.
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So it would be a serious mistake to t11ink that when Corporeal-manual Style man wants to express the most subtle and delicate actions in refined detail, he reduces them to a kind of rough outline. Quite the contrary: it is in grasping the concrete that one arrives at precision.
Corporeal-manual Style man is constantly in direct contact with the things and gestes of ambienl nature. lllUs he grasps in each being t11at he observes over a period of time. innumerable actions - to us unimportant or unknown - which he Mimes with finely differentiated gestes. As I said above: t1\ere are no synonymous gestes." (Jousse 2000:75)
• "It is also clear why every expression that is truly spontaneous and objective is necessarily concrete.
And here, contrary to the amphi-biologicalusage of French vocabulary, I do not differentiate between i.·Of/crete and abl'lrtlCI, but between COl1crele and algebrosed. There is indeed no way any man could
'think', that is 'consciously turn his manifold Mimemes into propositions', without having recourse to
abstraction. And Corporeal-manual Style man has no trouble at all making propositions and expressing his unmcdiated Mimemes which are at once concrete and abstract: he has no necd to algebrose them by transposing them into so-called solely 'abstract expressions'.
Their name notwit11standing (ex pressio), these so-called abstract 'expressions' no longer flow from within miming man under the 'sealing' pressure of t11e gestes of what is real. They are more frequently 'impositions', socially and superficially imposed from without, in t1\e manner of purely conventional labels: voces .'iignificom ad arbilritlm - sOWlds are of arbitrary significance.
We saw elsewhere that there is no doubt t11at these social 'impositions-expressions' were themselves once formed from Mimcmes which had been objectively fashioned reflecting what was the Real. But little by little. over thousands of years, t11ese Mimemes came to lose contact with the things t11emselves, and slowly, little by little, they became deformed, disfigured, "algebrosed'. It is these purely social 'algebroscmcs' which we, in our ignorance, call 'abstract' and against which we set 'concrete' mimismological gestes, which would then not be 'abstract'. And thus we are led to decree that our primitive person, who only uses concrete expressions, is incapable of abstraction!" (Jousse 2000:74)
• "from this norlllal tendency in Corporeal-manual Style, we should not then draw pejorative
conclusions regarding the Mimer's power to "abstract' and to 'generalize', as has been done by some psychologists, who have drawn over-hasty, simplistic conclusions, using an overly narrow and algebrised terminology.
\¥hen he tnlly feels the need for utilitarian expression, Corporeal-manual Style man knows very well how to 'generalize' one of his 'particularized' Mimemes. And in this respect, he acts according to t1\e universal laws of human and intelligent semantics.
Let us not confuse Abstraction with Algebrose. Mimemes which are extremely vague and therefore too broadly applicable would weaken a system of expression which has as its ideal the plastic reproduction and transfer of each and every one of even the most subtle gestes out of the surrounding universe. Let us see now how this living 'concrete abstraction' succeeds in expressing a Transitory Action exercised by an Essenti31 Action on another Essential Action. For example, 'the bird is e.3ting t1\e fish'. Corporeal-manual Style man will play out a quite complex geste which is intuitively mimismological and which consists of three 'phases', of three mimismological 'gestes' that are intimately and muscularly prolonged one by the other, without any real break in continuity, wit110ut any 'cutting up'. He will give us the interactional geste grasped by all his receptor muscles:
all Acting One - acling on - an Acted UPOII (TI1C) Flying Onc - eating (the) Swimming Onc
I have called this complex, intuitively mimismologicai and intellectually logical geste. which very finely expresses the 'intussuscepted' reality through the entire acting, feeling and knowing human composite, the Proposilional Geste." (Jousse 2000:70-71)
o Action - Essenti:IIICIHlnlctel'istic Action/Gestc and Tnmsitol), Action/Gcslc lan acting onc - ;,cling, on -an w:tcd ul)Onlllri-"h<lsisml
JOlIsse idenf({ies Ihe al1lhropos as a "complex/ls ~rGesles" (Jol/sse 2000:2'/), which Gesles art! born
0/
fleredilm:v memol)' in the/ann o.fpersonal DNA logelher with those Ihal are played inlO him contlnuol/sly and consfOnrly thml/ghollt I(fe. both by reinforcing agenls in Ihe universe 01 large and by his own express;on which immediately re-impresses. JOllsse iden/~fies this /asl process as the instinctive leoming behaviour in /he anlhropos - man - which di!,'criminales him .tram Ihe anlhropod - Ihe animal. The acclImlllalion of habitllally re-impressed G'estes is slored microscopically and constitlltes the essence of the individllal. These essential Gestes man~fos' macroscopically in the psycho-physiological conformation o.f physical. menial and emolional identily including physical. character and personality lraits. literally in /he shape and form of (he indMdual. thlls the 'essenti(ll ch(l((lcteristic (lctio,,/Geste' constitutes (he identify ~fthe individual by which we name it: 'the Actor' or 'the Acting one'. the Transitory Gesles on the other hand. are those G'e,51es that are per/armed incidentally, as opposed 10 repeatedly, and therefore arc Tremsito'.), in natllre and occurrence. The Trall.o;ito'.I' Ge,\'tes conSlilllle 'the acting upon', 171e repeated aCfing of 1'((IlIsiIO'.1' G'e~jtes IIpon Ihe existing characteristic Geste of the acted upon, changes Ihal chllrm:leristic Geste. The cOl1tinllolls/lllid interaction of the universe with Ihe anlhropos accounts for the 'complexus ofGeste' oIwhich the amhropos is conformed. In this way Jousse accounts simlllwneollsly
Ior
individual identity, learning, mOfllralion. aging and wisdom - what we might term 'life experiences', as well as for idiosyncraric, group and species-!wecljic identity, regislered in the DNA and hence in the unconscious, and played Ollt in behaviours Ihat are recognised as groflp- and species-specific. It is this process which would contribute,for example, to 'memory' and Ihe capacily for 'memorising' which wOllld be reinforced by {radWoning. and eroded by generalions of the use oJ scriba/literacy for record. which rendered memorising slIper./lllolls.Examples of Usage
• "All the explanations I have given of Mimism, can be repeated here: Rhythmism propels Mimism dynamically. Mimism and Rhythmism will always play in constant and intelligent interdependence. It is clear how the Cosmos plays its immense Mimodrama around the global and spontaneous anthropos, with every geste appearing to form a kind of posture, as if striking a kind of attitude, This attitude, this posture, is, in a manner of speaking, eS3'elltial to the being under consideration, appearing as the manifestation of its essence. When it comes to expressing the being the various Mimers choose, instinctively and almost unanimously, this 'characteristic Mimeme', transforming it into a sort of 'gestual name' of the being in question. We have already seen previously how the 'Name is the essence of the thing', its' Essential Action', Thus the whole of the human composite of the Rhythmo-mimer elaborates a vast gestual and mimisl11ological terminology, which is as rich as its expressive needs require, Within the human composite, each one of the interesting beings of the cosmos will be ex- pressed by its Essential Action, But each of these beings is not restricted to a single, essential and 'inherent' action, as it were: as it acts on other beings, it activates other actions. When, like a conscious and living mirror, the anthropos reproduces faithfully outside of him what is played within him, he is gestualizing and sequencing the three rhythmic phases of all interaction: the Essential Action of a subject, the Transitory Action of this subject, the object 011 which this Transitory Action is carried
5
out and which is itself mimed by an essential action. It is 'the Acting One-acting on-the Acted upon' "
(Jou"e 2000: 176-177)
• "And so there develops in the whole human composite of the Mimer a vast mimismological
terminology of Corporeal Style, a terminology as rich and differentiated as his need for expression demands: each of the interesting beings of the universe will be 'expressed' wit.hin the human composit.e by its Essential Action.
But these 'expression-of-attitude-beings', if we may call them sllch, do not confine themselves to 'keep' to this or that characteristic position; these 'expression-of-attitude-beings' do not have only one essential geste, an action which could be called 'potential'. They also act on each other, in perpetual int.eraction, through multiple 'Transitory Actions' which are ceaselessly diversified. Each Action activates other Actions, specifically according to its own 'potentiality'.
Corporeal-manual Style man is a subtle observer and a supple 'receiver'. He faithfully reproduces within himself what is played out extemal to himself He replays and gesticulates mimismologically and logically, like a living and conscious plastic mirror, the three phases of all interactions: I) the E..,sentia/ Action of the subject; 2) the Transitory Action of the subject; and 3) the object on which this Transitory Action focuses, the object which is itself mimed as an E..,sential Action." (Jousse 2000:70)
• "From as early as the first months of the young anthropos' existence, a certain number of animate and
inanimate beings had already accumulated their characteristic geste, their 'gestual name' in him, without his knowledge or help. This characteristic geste, pregnant with multiple transitory gestes, has in tum acted in a number of ways on other beings which had similarly been intussuscepted by the corporeal muscu lature of the young cinemimer, each according to its characteristic geste." (Jousse 2000:85)
See also Jom·se 2000: 116. 159. -13-1. infer alia.
[J 'an Acting one - acting on - an Acted upon' IActionIITri-phasismllgloba1111lIayllrcccil'c) (Mcchanics]
Jom·se identifies the instinctIve o(lrIbute q{ Ihe anlhropos 10 interact with the cosmos at a multitude of levels - the physical, the mental, the emotional. the spiritual and etherIc. From this interaction his
·complexus of gesfe· I:,' cOl1linllollsly being formed, informed and reformed even as he informs, conforms and reforms. ThIs activity is continuolls and unceasing/rom rhe moment of birth to the moment of death, and constitutes hiS mutually inferdependent relationship with the cosmos and of! Ihot it comprises.
including his/elfow beings (both living and dead), all OIher animals (bo/h living and dead). alf plal1l life (both living and dead) and all (apparentl)~ inert maNer. The oU/comes of ony sllch cosmic il1leraction informs the fllture and fimher interaction and (con)formalion and confirmation of the anthropos, and records Ihe effects q{ti1e 'acting on' of 'an acting one' and 'an {lctcd upon'. The al1lhropos can be both 'an acting one' and 'an {leted upon', by tllms and simultaneollsly, in a ceaseless raising of consciousness and awareness of the 'Real', both within himse(( and in the indefinable infinily of the universe around and beyond him in space and time.
Examples of Usage
• '111e indefiniteness of these Cosmological interactions constitutes the Universe, or the Cosmos, which, as its name indicates, imposes order or authoritative direction. The Anthropos is objectively assured of this essential and interactional order. TIle Cosmos can thus be objectively defined in terms
6