Simon Ganneau, le Mapah | |
---|---|
Born | circa 1805 Lormes, France |
Died | 14 March 1851 Paris, France |
Nationality | French |
Relatives | Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau (son) |
Simon Ganneau[a] (born circa 1805 in Lormes, died 14 March 1851 in Paris) was a French socialist, feminist, sculptor, and mystic.[1][2][3][4]
Like several other socialists of his time, Ganneau treated Christianity as a call for social reform.[3] He was influenced by Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin and Saint-Simonian philosophy,[2] particularly in viewing God as an androgynous or bisexual.[5] Ganneau's writings treat androgyny not only as a move towards religious salvation, the final stage of humanity, but also as embodying the socialist concept on unity and balance in the world.[2]
Adopting the title of the Mapah, a combination of mater and pater or maman and papa ("mother" and "father"), Ganneau presented himself as an androgynous prophet (with a beard and a woman's cloak)[6] of a new religion called "Evadaism" (French: Evadaïsme) based on his ideas for "a redefined humanity, Evadam" (from Eve-Adam) and for a new era of female emancipation, gender equality and social justice.[1][2][3][7] According to Éliphas Lévi, Ganneau also claimed to be the reincarnation of Louis XVII, and his wife claimed to be the reincarnation of Marie Antoinette.[6][8]
As a sculptor and a former phrenologist, he spread his ideas via pamphlets and plaster figurines, "of strange appearance, without doubt symbolically bisexual", both called "plasters".[2][3] His garret studio apartment on the Île Saint-Louis in Paris functioned in the late 1830s as a salon for discussing his ideas, and he influenced many of the socialists and feminists of his time, including Alexandre Dumas, Alphonse Esquiros, Flora Tristan and Éliphas Lévi (Abbé Constant).[2][3][9] Ganneau contributed to Tristan's 1844 collection The Worker's Union,[3] as well as to an 1848 paper titled La Montagne de la Fraternité.[2]
Ganneau had a wife[6] and child, who was five when Ganneau died in 1851, whom Théophile Gautier took under his wing: the Orientalist and archaeologist Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau.[4][10][11]