Ivan Illich and Jacques Ellul

Jacques Ellul (1912-1994) is a thinker who often gets mentioned in the same breath as Ivan Illich. An historian, sociologist, philosopher, Christian theologian, and social critic, Ellul is perhaps best known for a book called The Technological Society. A generation of activists and others concerned with the perils of industrial society viewed this book (published in English in the early 1960s) and Illich's Tools for Conviviality (along with a number of titles by Lewis Mumford) as key texts for understanding the history and nature of technology and its impact, symbolic and otherwise, on society and humanity.

In 1993, in Bordeaux, France (a city that Ellul once served as mayor), Illich gave an address in honor the Frenchman, expressing "my gratitude to a master to whom I owe an orientation that has decisively affected my pilgrimage for forty years." Illich's address is well worth reading, if only for its sly humor in a certain passage concerning the Church and its views on contraception.

We're pleased to have discovered just now that the International Jacques Ellul Society has made available on its website a seemingly complete collection of back issues of its newsletter. We've subscribed to this newsletter off and on for several years, now, but here we find many issues we've missed. And among them are several that feature essays by and about Illich.

The Ellul Studies Forum for January, 1992 (PDF), for instance, offers a collection of seven pieces on "Illich's critique of technology and its theological implications." As guest editor, Carl Mitcham chose to include several pieces by Illich himself, two by Lee Hoinacki, and one by David B. Schwartz. Also included is an interview conducted with Illich in 1990, in Berlin.

The Spring 2003 issue, partially devoted to "remembering Ivan Illich," includes essays by several of his collaborators.

July, 1996's issue offers a review of Illich's In the Vineyard of the Text.

The issue for July, 1994, "In Memory of Jacques Ellul," includes Illich's Bordeaux address.

We look forward to exploring this rich trove of material.

Illich's resting place

A few days after Ivan Illich died on Dec. 2, 2002, friends gathered for a funeral mass at a local Bremen church, St. Johann. A Roman Catholic church built by the Franciscans in 1380, St. Johann is located in Bremen's Schnoor, a district of tiny streets dating back to the 10th century. This is St. Johann:

Illich was buried, though, at another church, also called St. Johann but unrelated. This church, located in a part of the Bremen city-state called Oberneuland, is Protestant. There is, we gather, no Catholic burial ground in Bremen. Barbara Duden has told how she had to make a special appeal to this church to get permission for Illich, a Catholic and non-German citizen, to be buried there. There is a tradition, or rule, she learned, that makes special provisions for those are traveling far from home when they die.

This is St. Johann in Oberneuland, as seen in the winter of 2003; we walked there from the center of town, which took most of an hour:

Illich is buried in the yard behind the church. His grave is marked by a well-constructed wooden cross and, when summer arrives, by sunflowers.

Wolfgang Palaver, a speaker in Oakland

One of the speakers at the upcoming Illich event in Oakland will be Wolfgang Palaver, a professor at the University of Innsbruck, in Austria. His name being new to us, we did some quick research:

Prof. Palaver is Professor of Catholic Social Thought and Chair of the Institute for Systematic Theology at Innsbruck. Early this year, his book René Girard's Mimetic Theory (Studies in Violence, Mimesis, & Culture) was published in English. YouTube offers a short interview with him about Girard, with whom he has worked closely. Evidently, he also has lectured on Illich's ideas about the roots of modernity.

UPDATE: Prof. Palaver has written (see Comments below) to point out that in addition to a piece in German about Illich, he has reviewed -- in English, no less -- The Rivers North of the Future. The review appears in a newsletter called The Bulletin of the Colloquium on Violence & Religion, which "explores, criticizes, and develops Girard's mimetic model of the relationship between violence and religion in the genesis and maintenance of culture."

(For anyone not familiar with Rene Girard's mimetic model, we heartily recommend listening to David Cayley's 5-hour radio series about this important thinker. "The Scapegoat: René Girard's Anthropology of Violence and Religion" is available for streaming on the Web. It is just as compelling and fascinating as Cayley's two in-depth programs about Illich. Our advice: Run, don't walk.)

Jean-Pierre Dupuy in Oakland

We're excited to learn about a last-minute addition to the agenda for this week's Illich symposium in Oakland: Jean-Pierre Dupuy of the École Polytechnique and Stanford University will be speaking there on Saturday Aug. 3. He will be part of Sat. evening's program devoted to Illich's thoughts on politics and religion.

Prof. Dupuy has been associated with Illich for many years, starting in the 1970s when he began visiting CIDOC. He contributed to the The Challenges of Ivan Illich (2002) an essay about the intersection of Illich's and Rene Girard's thinking. He also collaborated with Jean Robert on a 1976 book, La trahison de l'opulence (The Treason of Opulence) and another, Les Chronophages (1978), which both elaborated on Illich's arguments in Energy & Equity. Prof. Dupuy also has written extensively about, among other topics, nanotechnology, cognitive science, and cybernetics.

'Beyond Economics and Ecology' to be available in Oakland

Those attending the upcoming Illich symposium in Oakland next week (Aug. 1-3) will be able to purchase the newly-published book of Illich's essays, Beyond Economics and Ecology. Copies of the book, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, who has contributed the book's preface, will be on sale at the event. This will be the book's first availability. The 128-page paperback, released by Illich's longtime publisher Marion Boyars, reprints four of Illich's most incisive essays:

• Energy & Equity (1974) -- After Deschooling Society, this is the most widely-quoted of Illich's works, shining a penetrating light on industrial society's addiction to fossil fuels. Intensive consumption of energy, Illich shows, inevitably leads to social inequity: While a few get to enjoy jet travel, the majority is forced to wait for the bus.

• Shadow Work (1981) -- Here, Illich looks at industrial society's need for a "bifurcation of work," an "apartheid" much like what was then the norm in South Africa: While much effort, generally paid for, goes into producing commodities, much additional effort is required to make those commodities useful. And this latter, which he calls shadow work, draws on unpaid labor that is largely provided by women -- the housewife, in particular. A key essay in his effort to write a history of scarcity, "Shadow Work" is where we see Illich getting started on the far-ranging analysis and research that culminated a few years later in Gender.

• War Against Subsistence (1981) -- In which Illich relates the story of how Elio Antonio de Nebrija in 1482 urged Queen Isabella of Spain, fresh from seeing Columbus off at the dock, to enforce on her subjects a taught "mother tongue" -- a key chapter in the history of compulsory schooling and of the determined eradication of vernacular ways.

• The Social Construction of Energy (1983) -- Here, Illich looks closely at how the meaning and connotation of the words energy and work have expanded and morphed, particularly in the 19th century as Marx formulated his theories concerning the "labor force." The energy that Einstein famously equated with matter is not, for instance, the same energy that today we are all urged to conserve or harvest from alternative sources. This essay, not available until now in English book form, offers some of Illich's most trenchant thinking about the computer and automation, as well.

Here is an excerpt from Sajay Samuel's introduction to the new book:

Forty years ago, Ivan Illich (1921-2002) foresaw the coming crises. He then argued that the industrialized societies of the mid-twentieth century, including communist Russia and capitalist USA, were already burdened by too much employment and too much energy. Arguing that habituation to paid work frustrates and destroys self-reliance, and that the increasing power of machines deepens the dependence on them, he warned against those whose misunderstanding of ‘crisis’ would perversely bring on what they sought to avoid. Even though that is precisely what they have wrought, politicians and scientists continue to stubbornly insist that the ‘economic crisis’ is a matter of not enough jobs and the ‘ecological crisis’ is a matter of not enough clean energy. ‘Not enough jobs’ channels attention to producing more employment by expanding the economy, just as ‘not enough clean energy’ confines debate to getting more of it through techniques that reduce carbon emissions. This persistent fixation on more employment and more energy has now found expression in dreams of a so-called ‘green economy’, which at one stroke is expected to wipe out unemployment and renew the environment. The fixation blinds us, Illich then noted, to recognizing the thresholds beyond which useless humans will have to occupy uninhabitable environments.

Doubtless, the fear and anxiety of a jobless life is palpable to the intern who must pay to work. So are the incomprehension and anger of the homeless family displaced by a hurricane. But even others, who may be luckier, now feel trapped between the pincers of shrinking paychecks and rising costs, whether of gas, heating oil, or food. For the increasingly many who must bear it, this feeling of vulnerability and precariousness need not lead to paralyzing despair. Instead, forced by their circumstances to acknowledge that widespread unemployment and a ravaged environment are likely here to stay, they may, with a flinty humor, reinvent ways to live well. And precisely because they have become scarce, it is perhaps now possible to begin this task by rethinking the once dearly held attachment to ‘employment’ and ‘energy’.

Selected from Illich’s many essays, pamphlets, and drafts, the four items reprinted here remain vitally important to that task. Though written between 1973 and 1983, they have an urgent relevance to those who must inhabit a world without secure employment or supportive environments. Employment is good’, ‘economic growth is necessary’, ‘technical innovations liberate’ -- these were thought obvious when Illich wrote these pages. Though not as obvious now, such notions still dimly maintain their hold on the popular imagination. Just as words on a page blur when a book is held too close, so also one must take sufficient distance to what one thinks obvious to better question it. This effort at distancing becomes all the more difficult when an assumption has been left unquestioned long enough to be taken for a certainty and to even congeal into the way the world is perceived. Unlike many of his time and later, Illich’s thought is radical in the sense of going to the roots of such modern perceptions. These still unsettling and disturbing pages are likely to be useful now to those who seek to find a way, for whatever reason, beyond economics and ecology.

Illich, birds, and astrology

Two months after Ivan Illich died in late 2002, more than 150 of his friends and colleagues gathered at Bremen University to celebrate his spirit. Barbara Duden describes this symposion (Greek for "drinking together," as Illich liked to point out) in a short paper.

She relates, among other things, how she herself had told the crowd of "Ivan's extraordinary astrological constellation which Annis Fromm, the widow of Erich Fromm, once had cast in an image."

Annis Fromm had seen Illich as "like a broad leaf-less bush with hundreds of birds squatting on its branches."

"So here they were," Ms. Duden continues, "Ivan's 'birds,' his lame ducks and migrant birds, tippet grebes, paradise birds, eagles and cranes. Nils Christie from Norway, Fjedor Shanin from Moscow, Uwe Pörksen from Freiburg, Christine von Weizsäcker from Bonn, Hanns Steger from Erlangen." And many more.

It was about one year after this event that we first heard Ms. Duden use this figure of speech, while speaking at a celebration of Illich held at Pitzer College. Illich's work, we took her to say, was such that thinkers in all sorts of other fields were able to use and build on it. Illich's explorations delved into many different branches of knowledge, from architecture to medicine, from sociology to economics, from history to theology, from linguistics to education.

We've never forgotten this image of birds gathering on the tree of Illich. We've always assumed it was something Ms. Duden had come up with, but having recently re-read her article about that long-ago symposion, we realize not. (It was only after we chose the graphical theme for this page, one of the stock themes offered by Google, that we noticed those birds up in the corner. A sign of some sort?)

At that same Pitzer College gathering, someone who'd known Illich told us something else quite interesting. It seems Illich's uncle was an astrologer of some renown and one of his clients was none other than Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian philosopher and social reformer who is perhaps best known for having created the Waldorf school program. Illich spent most of his childhood in Austria and it wouldn't be surprising if Steiner had been a family friend.

(The same person who told us about the star-gazing uncle also recalled Illich saying that had he himself had children, he certainly would have had them attend a Waldorf school. Funnily enough, someone close to this same person told us of Illich having described Steiner's anthroposophical program, the basis of Waldorf schools, as humbug, or some such. Knowing Illich, he might easily have made both remarks.)

House in Bremen

Here is a photo we made in Summer, 2008 of Kreftingstrasse 16, the home of Barbara Duden in Bremen, Germany. This is where Ivan Illich stayed while teaching at the University of Bremen over the years, where many people were his (and Ms. Duden's) guest, and where he died on Dec. 2, 2002.

A lecture in San Francisco, 1999

A lecture we'd like to have heard:

USF lecture series kicks off

San Francisco EXAMINER

Tuesday, October 5, 1999

IVAN ILLICH, philosopher and social critic, leads a series of lectures Thursday for the University of San Francisco's Louise Davies Forum, which runs through Dec. 9.

Illich, 72, will be speaking on de-institutionalizing society and his relationship with the Catholic Church. The lecture is set for 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Gershwin Theater on campus, 2350 Turk. Admission is free.

The lecture series, titled "Voice, Memory and Landscape," will be held every week through the beginning of December. It's hosted by Davies Professor Vijaya Nagarajan.

"The notion of landscape is a reference to our natural world and how it shapes the perception of memory and voice," said Nagarajan, who suggested that modern man is losing touch with the natural world.

"How do we re-embody our landscapes through the interwining [sic] of voice and memory?" she asked.

Nine speakers will attempt to answer that question, beginning with Illich. In the weeks that follow, scheduled speakers are essayist Rina Swetzell, Oct. 14; Arundhati Roy, best-selling author of "The God of Small Things," Oct. 28; Nicaraguan poet Daisy Zamora, Nov. 1; African American writer Melba Pattilo Beals, 1999 winner of the Congressional Gold Medal, Nov. 4; ecologist Bernie Krause, Nov. 11; novelist Peter Matthiessen, Nov. 18; Catherine Sneed, author of "The Garden Project," Dec. 2, and author Maxine Hong Kingston, Dec. 9.

John Holt on 'deschooling society,' 1971

Reason magazine, published by the libertarian, free-marketeers at The Cato Institute, has republished a piece from 1971 written by John Holt. His topic is "deschooling society," as put forth by Ivan Illich.

Holt was a close collaborator of Illich's and is widely recognized as the founding father of the home-schooling movement. In this piece, he sets out to interpret Illich's notion of deschooling. As Holt puts it, "we must dissolve the schools back into society. They seem to me to have precipitated or congealed—a little like a lump in a cream-of-wheat—and the thing we have to do is stir them back into the mix, so to speak." Holt also gives credit to Paul Goodman for informing his thinking.

'Osculatorium' and the 'conspiratio'

Anyone who has read or listened to Illich's last interviews with David Cayley will have encountered him discussing the conspiratio. This was one of two high points in early Christian celebrations, a sharing of the Holy Spirit through a mouth-to-mouth kiss. (The other was the comestio, a meal shared by all in attendance.) Conspiratio turns out to be a key element of Illich's intriguing explanation of modernity's origins.

This kiss signified "that each one of those present around the dining table contributed of his own spirit," Illich says, "or, if you want, the Holy Spirit, which was common to all, to create a spiritual community, a community of one spirit. … Slave and master, Jew and Greek, each contributed equally to making the community to which, through his contribution, he could then belong."

This ceremony, Illich goes on to say, "gave its participants the idea that community could come into existence outside of the community into which they were born, and in which they fulfilled their legal obligations -- a community in which all those who are present share equally in the act of its establishment."

By the high Middle Ages, however, this bodily contact and radical equality among all sorts of people was quite out of harmony with the "feudal ideal" of a strict social hierarchy, Illich states, and conspiratio's importance faded. Indeed, Illich explains, the bodily, mouth-to-mouth kiss was replaced by "an instrument … called an osculatorium, a kissing object. You can see it in museums, sometimes made of beautiful wood with precious stones. The priest would kiss it after kissing the altar and then hand it down to the community so that it could make its rounds through the church."

What does this osculatorium look like? We, for one, began to wonder. The Web provides a few images, though none seem to be as impressive as those Illich mentions. Here is one from Italy ca. 1550-1650, as explained by a page at James Madison University:

And here is another, from 18th-century Venice, as noted here:

Illich delves into the notion of conspiratio in some depth in a talk given in 1998 when he was awarded the city-state of Bremen's Culture and Peace Prize. (The talk is available from the Pudel site as "The Cultivation of Conspiracy.") "Community in our European tradition," Illich says, "is not the outcome of an act of authoritative foundation, nor a gift from nature or its gods, nor the result of management, planning and design, but the consequence of a conspiracy, a deliberate, mutual, somatic and gratuitous gift to each other."

Indeed, Illich sees conspiratio as the source of today's social contract. "During the period of the Gregorian reform," he tells David Cayley, "the attempt to establish, legalize, and formalize the conspiratio reached a high point." The Church attempted to establish a "worldly solidity and clarity and definition and to create, through legal, contractual means, a social body entitled to recognition as an equal by the Emperor and the civil law."

"In order to understand the general idea of corruptio optima quae est pessima [the corruption of the best is the worst] as it applies to the political, it is necessary to observe throughout history this fading of the conspiratio, and the monumental elaboration of the conjuratio, or contractual arrangement."