In fact, the world still seems to be inhabited by savages stupid enough to see reincarnated ancestors in their newborn children. Weapons and jewelry belonging to the dead men are waved under the infant's nose; if he makes a movement, there is a great shout — Grandfather has come back to life. This "old man" will suckle, dirty his straw and bear the ancestral name; survivors of his ancient generation will enjoy seeing their comrade of hunts and battles wave his tiny limbs and bawl; as soon as he can speak they will inculcate recollections of the deceased. A severe training will "restore" his former character, they will remind him that "he" was wrathful, cruel or magnanimous, and he will be convinced of it despite all experience to the contrary. What barbarism! Take a living child, sew him up in a dead man's skin, and he will stifle in such senile childhood with no occupation save to reproduce the avuncular gestures, with no hope save to poison future childhoods after his own death. No wonder after that, if he speak of himself with the greatest precautions, half under his breath, often in the third person; this miserable creature is well aware that he is his own grandfather.
These backward aborigines can be found in the Fiji Islands, in Tahiti, in New Guinea, in Vienna, in Paris, in Rome, in New York — wherever there are men. They are called parents. Long before our birth, even before we are conceived, our parents have decided who we will be.
John Paul Sartre, Forward to The Traitor by André Gorz (London:Calder, 1960), pages 14-15.
