Moncef Chelli theory about the relativity of cultures Author : Moncef Chelli, born in 1936 in Tunisia, Ph.D in Philosophy, he taught human sciences at preparatory classes at HEC Paris. He died in (?) He wrote: - La parole arabe (Ed. Sindbab, 1980, la Bibilothèque arabe) - Le mythe de crystal ou le secret de la puissance de l’Occident (collection les empêcheurs de penser en rond, Institut Synthélabo, 1997) - L’évolution des idées dans la culture occidentale, (Ed. Ellipses, 1987) - Fiction, mythe et récit, une analyse de Borges (Ibid, 1988) - Coauthor of : Trois visions du temps (Ed. du Centurion, 1993) Note of the editor: Malraux wanted to lean towards the Western Civilization to study it as an anthologist studies an ant’s hole. The New Philosophers also want to appreciate, as if from the exterior, the Western Culture; but the latter can’t become an object and what’s characterizes it is indeed a certain way of creating the objectivity. We’re closed inside a vicious circle.. This circle may be broken only by opposing to the culture-subject another culture-subject. The exteriority is then created by a confrontation where each one of the considered cultures refuses to be reduced to the categories of the other, and putting its own identity holds its own differences. That’s the path of this book that differs from the classic ethnologist’s path. It allows to throw a new glance over all the development of the philosophy and the science. LA PAROLE ARABE, A theory of relativity of the cultures (see the index as poorly translated by me at the end of this posting, and for the internal use in our linguistics and translators community: www.translatorscafe.com.) Introduction (Part 1) Moncef Chelli had, at the age of 8 or 9 years, a very special experience (rather common for bi-lingual people): one fine morning (exactly before the dawn) on holidays with his family, he was along a beach and entering the water, he heard almost simultaneously two different voices saying in two different languages (French and Arabic): “l’eau est froide!” (the water is cold) and in Arabic: “El mâ bâ â â ridd!”. He didn’t feel that the two voices were fusing into the space, but that each was hunting the space and all the surrounding environment to model it in its way; he was literally feeling double, because each voice was bringing him in a different universe. He felt that the separation between those two universes was not made of year-lights but by the discontinuity in its absolute state: the sea was double, the sand and the sky too and even the sun light that was not visible yet, were tainted by two different religiosities. Moncef Chelli had a second experience at the age of 12, 13 or 14 he doesn’t remember with precision. He was listening to music. He just listened to the first half of a song of the Egyptian singer Abdel-Uahab (the whole song was on two discs), and wanted to listen to the second half. When he placed the second disc, instead of hearing Abdel-Uahab, it’s the music of Borodine that came out, since he inadvertently mixed the discs. So he felt that all the objects surrounding him changed sharply their aspects. The portraits of Vigny and George Sand hanging on the wall were not anymore foreign faces. From the first notes of the Prince Igor, their physiognomies were expressing themselves differently, they were in their own element. But in the same time, the oriental carpet lying on the floor and that was one instant before, in its own element, was taking an exotic shape and was rather expressing the Thousand and One Nights as seen in Occident. The most shaking in these experiences was the feeling that there was a break, a total rupture and a discontinuity in the passage from a universe to the other, something that looked like a death and a resurrection, but a resurrection with a different soul and a different personality. Here are then the two experiences that will be the basics of Chelli’s works. He says that these experiences cannot be shown to the public as if they were objective phenomena like Florence springs that rise 10,33 meters or Michelson and Morlay rays that do not come back at the scheduled time by calculation logics. Nevertheless, he realized that his were not subjective experiences: he knew from there on, that the unity and coherence of the personality were linked to the element of a certain culture, and overall that this element, usually given as a universal value relying on a law, was in reality the fruit of the artifices of a language or an art. I will try in the next post to introduce the philosophical project of Moncef Chelli (methodology) and to show that it’s not a simple linguistic approach (linguistics are for him a too easy tool, more technical than really going to the roots of the thinking and conceiving the world processes). Nevertheless, who better than translators and linguistics can follow and check his ideas. At least in this first book. In the second one, (le mythe de crystal) mathematicians and physicians will be beeped… Salaam, Ouadoud La parole arabe: Index: Introduction Carateristics of the Arabic language Chapter 1: the absence of vocals Chapter 2: The immanence of the meaning How the word fixes the meaning of the thing How the things provide to the words their signifying substance Chapter 3: The “to be” is expressed only in the past Relativity of the essences Ambiguity of the being The problem of the copula Back to “Kâna” Chapter 4: The Arabic words are not fixed by the usage, they’re constituted through derivation processes The facts The principle of the language Nature of the movement Back to the facts The Western mutation The word (speech) in the Arabic group Chapter 5: the word in the Arabic Pre-Islamic tribe Chapter 6: the Islamic word (speech) To conclude
[Edited by Abdelouadoud El Omrani on June 11, 2005 10:36 AM]
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