Levi-Strauss, Claude

LEVI-STRAUSS, CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS, CLAUDE that are one of the distinctive features of contemporary Anthropologist French thought. There is a fundamental ambiguity at the heart of Claude Le´vi-Strauss’s theories have been fundamental Le´vi-Strauss’s works that resides in the way in which to the renewal of modern anthropology, in particular they combine scientific enquiry and metaphor, reason- the study of kinship systems, totemism, classification, ing and poetic invention. In early essays, such as “L’A- and mythology. Throughout his works, he has sought nalyse structurale en linguistique et en anthropologie” to understand the functioning of so-called “primitive” or “Langage et socie´te´”(Anthropologie structurale, modes of thought. In opposition to the theories formu- 1958), he expresses the ambition to elevate anthropol- lated by influential predecessors such as Lucien Le´vy- ogy to a new level of scientificity by importing into Bruhl, he has revealed that these “primitive” modes anthropology the methodology of structural linguistics. of thought are neither radically different (prelogical, It was this lateral connection between anthropology prerational) nor fundamentally more archaic than our and structural linguistics that provided Levi-Strauss own “civilized” ways of thinking. Indeed, Le´vi-Strauss with the name for his method of anthropological en- is careful to present these “primitive” modes of thought quiry: “structural anthropology.” He forecast that the not so much as the attribute of so-called primitive soci- branch of modern linguistics founded by Ferdinand eties, but as an aspect of the way in which all human de Saussure and developed by his successors Roman beings think. Jakobson and Nikolai Trubetskoy (probably the three Le´vi-Strauss’s influence, however, extends beyond linguists who most influenced Le´vi-Strauss) would anthropology into philosophy, literary criticism, psy- revolutionize the social sciences in the same way that choanalysis, and other areas. The dissemination of his nuclear physics revolutionized the exact sciences. Part ideas, in particular about the representation of histori- of what motivated Le´vi-Strauss to turn to structural cal time and the relationship between primitive linguistics, and more specifically phonology, as a (“cold”) and Western (“hot”) societies, gave rise to a model for anthropology was that linguistics was the first social science to have succeeded in uncovering number of debates with French philosophers, among “necessary relations,” normally the prerogative of the them Jean-Paul Sartre (the last chapter of Le´vi- exact sciences (Anthropologie structurale, 40). And he Strauss’s La Penseé sauvage [1962], entitled “Histoire thought that it might be possible for anthropology to et Dialectique,” contains a virulent attack on Sartre’s follow in its wake. Critique de la raison dialectique), Paul Ricœur (see However, it would be wrong to view Levi-Strauss’s “Structure et hermeńeutique” in the special “penseé works in the light of this project alone, however impor- sauvage” issue of the journal Esprit published in No- tant it may have been in his early works. In practice, vember 1963), and Jacques Derrida (see, in particular, it is doubtful whether one can accurately describe “La structure, le signe et le jeu dans le discours des Le´vi-Strauss’s works as an application of the methods sciences humaines” and “La Violence de la lettre: de of structural linguistics to anthropology (even if this Le´vi-Strauss a` Rousseau”). This dialogue (sometimes is often how he presents structural anthropology him- conflict) between anthropology and philosophy has self). The linguistic model often works more as the played a major part in shaping contemporary French means of developing intricate metaphors or analo- thought. gies—such as the one that he draws between “kinship In the area of literary criticism, it was arguably systems” and “phonological systems” (the former Le´vi-Strauss’s influence on Roland Barthes, who in guarantees the “circulation” of women, the latter the his early works used structuralist ideas to interpret lit- ‘’circulation” of words)—that enable him to approach erature, film, and fashion, that did the most for the familiar material in an innovative way. Later, in the constitution of a structuralist poetics. When, in 1964, Mythologiques (1964–1971), his four-volume study of Jacques Lacan gave his first seminar on “The Four Amerindian mythology, Levi-Strauss was to identify Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis” at the Wagner (not Saussure, Jakobson, or Troubetskoı¨)as E´ cole normale supe´rieure, one of the first questions the founding father of the structural analysis of myths. that he raised was whether Le`vi-Strauss’s notion of a What is his reasoning here? penseè sauvage could accommodate the unconscious One of the aims of Le´vi-Strauss’s structural method as such (The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho- (this holds true of the whole of his work on myths, Analysis, 13). Le´vi-Strauss himself borrowed and used for example) is to show that seemingly different or concepts from many other disciplines (linguistics, dissimilar objects of study (let us say, two unrelated mathematics, musicology, biology, and philosophy) myths from two distinct populations) in fact share the and, in this respect, played a key role in demonstrating same hidden armature or structure. Wagner often used the value of the kind of interdisciplinary connections musical motifs—in The Ring, the motif of the renun- 421 0160$$00L2 11-26-03 13:55:42 LEVI-STRAUSS, CLAUDE ciation of love, for example—to establish connections he would have liked to have been a conductor (some- between seemingly unrelated episodes in the stories thing for which, he says, he lacks the right genetic that his operas tell. As Le´vi-Strauss explained in an make up), and the Mythologiques are, in a sense, his interview given on Canadian radio in 1977 (later pub- way of fulfilling this childhood dream by other means. lished in Myth and Meaning, 1978), the musical motif Although his works are steeped in philosophy, Le´vi- of the renunciation of love first occurs in the Strauss’s decision to become an anthropologist was Rhinegold,when Alberich learns that to conquer the tied up, in part at least, with his rejection of philosophy. gold he must renounce human love (which he does). He studied philosophy (and law) at the Sorbonne in However, subsequent uses of this motif do not coincide the 1920s and passed the aggre´gation in 1931, but he in any obvious way with events in the narrative that abhorred the dialectical exercises that were the staple reflect this theme. It recurs in the Valkyrie,when, diet of the philosophy student of the day as well as the thanks to a sword buried in a tree, Siegmund initiates solipsistic fascination with the self that he saw as one an incestuous relationship with his sister Sieglinde of the traits of French philosophy. He characterized (here the hero has fallen in love, not renounced love), himself as having a “Neolithic intelligence” (which and it recurs in the Valkyrie when Wotan condemns one may interpret, in part at least, as meaning that he his daughter Brunhilde to a long sleep surrounded by has a propensity to think in metaphors). When he was a ring of fire. Le´vi-Strauss argues that these episodes offered a post as a lecturer in sociology at the Univer- share a common structural armature. In each case, sity of Saõ Paulo in 1934, he seized on the opportunity “there is a treasure which has to be pulled away . to expand his horizons. from what it is bound to. There is the gold . stuck In the 1930s, he carried out ethnographic field work in the depths of the Rhine; there is the sword, which in the Matto Grosso region of Brazil, in particular is stuck in a tree . there is the woman Brunhilde, among the Bororo, the Caduveo, and the Nambikwara who will have to be pulled out of fire” (Myth and Indians. He was to give an account of these formative Meaning, 48). From a structural point of view, Le´vi- years of his life, as well as of his later escape from Strauss continues, “the gold, the sword and Brunhilde Nazi-occupied France to New York, some twenty are one and the same.” Said differently, they are struc- years after the event in Tristes tropiques (1955). This tural variations of one another, and the uncovering of book, his most personal, is at once an ethnographic this hidden relationship between these three Wag- treatise, a travelogue of sorts (or antitravelogue, as it nerian mythemes (in Le´vi-Strauss’s terminology, the starts with the sentence “I hate traveling and explor- mythical equivalents of phonemes, the elementary ers”), a confession, and a series of meditations on the units of signification of myths) provides Le´vi-Strauss nature of anthropology, man’s” relationship to his en- with a more general key to the significance of Wag- vironment to history and to time. Tristes tropiques is ner’s opera. Wagner uses the musical score in The Ring also a profoundly ecological book. It is imbued with as the means of a structural analysis of the narrative a pessimism that is born from the realization that the sequences that form the libretto, and this is why Le´vi- Amerindian populations that he studied were but the Strauss refers to Wagner as the father of the structural remains of far greater societies that have been all but analysis of myths. In this context, it would appear that decimated as a result of the European invasion of the structuralism is better described as an application of New World. He could easily have echoed Paul Val- the methods of operatic composition than of linguistic ery’s comment, made in the aftermath of World War theory.

Load more