Inventer L'Ecriture: Rituels Prophetiques Et Chamaniques Des Indiens D'Amerique Du Nord, Xviie-Xixe Siecles

This work is both a historic study and an ambitious theoretical discussion on the discovery of an unrecognised phenomenon: the invention and use of writings among North American Indians. Between the 17th and 19th centuries, prophets and shamans formulated original inscription techniques in order to ensure that ceremonial discourses would be passed on to future generations. For the first time in this book, such writings are compared to each other based upon the most exhaustive study possible of sources which demonstrate that North American Indians invented selective writings whose notation principles were considerably different from those of the writings with which we are familiar, such as the Latin alphabet.Inventer l'écriture makes it possible to formulate an innovative theory. At the moment all writings were first invented they were attached writings: their purpose was to transcribe pre-existing rituals within the framework of institutions organising their transmission and recitation. This reversed perspective introduces a new venue for further reflection on the origin of the key writings which have appeared throughout humanity’s history in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and among the Mayas. The writing invention issue can thus be freed from evolutionist approaches which have never managed to correctly address selective writings, as well as from sociological approaches which limit themselves to linking the emergence of writing to the origin of the State. Inventer l’écriture offers readers a series of conceptual tools which can be used to answer one simple question: why have humans on several occasions produced the immense intellectual effort required to invent a new writing form?