INTERVIEW
Are we all going to wear a mask to protect ourselves from the coronavirus once containment is complete? This is the question that has agitated the hexagon for weeks. Not only because their number is lacking, but also because it will be a new practice for French people who are not used to covering their faces in this way, unlike countries like China or Japan.
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However, it was a Frenchman, Charles Delorme, doctor of Henry IV and Louis XIII, who invented the surgical mask. But it was not he who popularized its use as a barrier against an epidemic, recalls Frédéric Keck, director of the social anthropology laboratory of the CNRS and who works through epidemics on the question of the mask.
A widely developed port in Asia
"The wearing of the surgical mask in public space as a sign of protection against a respiratory disease pandemic was invented by a Chinese doctor trained in Cambridge in 1910 to control pneumonic plague in Manchuria", he explains to micro by Patrick Cohen on Europe 1. It is this doctor who has thus proven its effectiveness against plague pneumonia. "And besides, a French doctor who refused to believe him died of this disease," notes Frédéric Keck.
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Over time, the wearing of masks has developed in Asia, becoming a symbol for "distinguishing oneself from the Chinese represented as dirty, spitting," he said. It was on the coasts, in Hong-Kong, Taiwan but also in Japan that it was then increasingly worn, especially after the SARS crisis in 2003. "Wearing a mask signified both the will to protect others when you feel symptoms and also a desire to protect yourself from air pollution, "he adds. But more and more, the mask has become "a sign of collective solidarity", spreading in Asian society the idea that protection against an epidemic must be done in an altruistic and not selfish way, and this, much more than in European society.
The same term to designate two types of masks
France is therefore far from Asia on the issue of wearing a mask. And for Frédéric Keck, author of Un monde grippé (Flammarion), this is based on a characteristic of the country: "the need for citizens to present themselves with their faces uncovered". "What I wanted to suggest is that it is not only a criticism of the religious who put on fabrics to demonstrate their obedience to religious power, but it is also a criticism of the archaism of aristocrats who presented themselves in public space with masks ", he analyzes, noting another point: in French, the mask of comedy and that of surgery are therefore designated by the same term.
Conversely, in Chinese these are two different words. "The surgical mask is the veil you wear over your mouth to protect yourself from respiratory illness. The Chinese opera mask is a technique for keeping your face. The fact that we have the same word in French to designate two very different techniques for veiling the face is quite revealing of a continuity in France which does not exist in China ", interprets the anthropologist who points out that in January, at the beginning of l The Chinese tourists who wore one on the street were sometimes asked to remove it by the police.
"In France we do not wear a mask or veil in public space. If we are encouraged, and I hope not to be forced, to wear the mask, I believe that it will be a real revolution in public space by France ", he concludes.
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A form of stigma for the future
Finally, according to Frédéric Keck, the mask will not only be a means of protection but also a form of stigma for the future. "A bit like the condom reminds us of the AIDS pandemic in love relationships or the fact that, when we are on the terrace, we remember the Bataclan attacks, I think wearing a mask in public space will be a a sign that we have taken this coronavirus pandemic seriously and the need to build collective immunity through both the natural and artificial routes of vaccination against this coronavirus. "