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Abstract
This article develops that of William Watts Miller (in Durkheimian Studies 2005), who called for further detective work on the idea of ‘dynamogénie’. My investigations show a way of linking it with Durkheim and Mauss in bringing out that Eugène Gley – according to Mauss, a ‘lifelong friend’ of Durkheim's – was one of the last to work with the idea's chief originator, C-E. Brown-Séquard, a doctor who succeeded Claude Bernard at the Collège de France and a central figure in Watts Miller's article. ‘Dynamogénie’ was first described by Brown-Séquard in 1851 in relation to a case of religious ecstasy, and was characterized by him as an exceptional and unconscious mobilization of nervous and muscular energy. It was then actively – if somewhat mysteriously – taken up by Durkheim and Mauss over sixty years later in their co-signed review of Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse. Gley, whose trajectory ran in parallel with Durkheim's and to a lesser extent Mauss's, constitutes a link between them and ‘dynamogénie’ that helps us fill out the two men's intellectual horizons.
Contributor Notes
Nicolas Sembel est Maître de conférences Habilité à diriger des recherches (HDR) en Sociologie, Centre Émile Durkheim & Espé, Université de Bordeaux. Son principal objet de recherche est le travail intellectuel des élèves, des enseignants et des scientifiques. Les deux volumes de son habilitation (Université Paris-Ouest, 2015) ont pour titre : Pour une sociologie générale de l'éducation ; et : Durkheim et Mauss au travail à Bordeaux en 1890 : la naissance de la sociologie générale. E-mail : nicolas.sembel@sfr.fr