John Perceval (1803-1876), who suffered from schizophrenia, published two books on his experience, in 1836 and 1840. More than a century later, the anthropologist Gregory Bateson discovered in Perceval's memoirs a lucid anticipation of his own theories on schizophrenia. To Bateson, Perceval describes the interactive patterns between himself, his family, and the hospital psychiatrists, as examples of "double bind" interactions, in which he played the role of a "sacrificial victim." The article underlines the strong convergence between Bateson's theory of schizophrenia (...) and René Girard's theory of the scapegoat. In the anthropological theory of Girard, the sacrificial ceremonies are the main way of constructing social order. In that perspective, the schizophenic can be considered as a particular example of a scapegoat, that is, as an important figure in social life, and not as a mere phenomenon of psychopathology. This theoretical convergence is remarkable, in particular, because both anthropologists explain the sacrificial processes through a theory of social life based on the idea that the main unit of analysis is not the individual, but the interactive dynamic as a whole: patterns of relationships, to Bateson; reciprocal imitation (mymesis), to Girard. (shrink)

(2000). For an aesthetics of knowing: Twenty conjectures on the responsiveness to connections in science practices. World Futures: Vol. 55, No. 3, pp. 277-292.

In this article, I will show how the notion of ecology of mind developed by Gregory Bateson (1972, 1979; Bateson and Bateson 1987), constitutes a third way, with respect to those two trends that I have here called naturism and realism. I will try to show how Bateson's notion of ecology of mind (that sometimes I will call briefly ecosystemic) is closely linked to notions of epistemology and of the sacred, and how it can highlight potential complementarities between the realist (...) and the naturist tendencies. The discussion will be divided into two parts: from ecology to the sacred, and from the sacred to ecology. (shrink)

La société-monde, dépourvue d’épicentre organisateur unique ou d’une nouvelle noosphère désormais planétaire, est une forme entièrement nouvelle de l’être sociétal humain. Sa naissance remet radicalement en cause et en marche notre subjectivité. Le précieux travail d’Edgar Morin, La Méthode, nous aide à penser ces vertigineux processus à la fois individuels et collectifs, en termes de trame vivante unitaire.World society, devoid of epicenter single organizer or a new planetary noosphere now is an entirely new form of societal human being. Birth fundamentally (...) challenges our subjectivity and running. The valuable work of Edgar Morin, Method, helps us to think these dizzying process both individual and collective, in terms of living unit frame. (shrink)