Marcel Mauss et la notion de « race » face à la montée des fascismes

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Marcel Mauss and the Idea of Race Faced with the Rise of FascismIn a 1920 public lecture on nationality, Marcel Mauss noted that « in sum, it is because the nation creates the race that it is thought that the race creates the nation ». Despite this early sociological insight that race was always a social construction, Mauss did not challenge fellow ethnologist George Montandon directly, when the latter began popularizing vicious new scientific forms of biological racism and anti-Semitism in interwar France. Mauss did, however, undermine the revival of scientific racism in other ways, particularly in his teaching and research. In works such as The Gift and in his many seminars, Mauss developed a generous and pluralist valuing of human difference that deeply influenced his students. Armed with Mauss’s insights, these students analyzed the devastating effects of escalating racism at home and in the empire more powerfully than did their mentor ; several would go on to join the first global antiracist campaign launched by UNESCO in the wake of the Holocaust. In short, Mauss’s response to the racist abuse of science unleashed by fascism was both layered and indirect.