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Authors: Patrick Wilcken
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BOOK: Claude Levi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory
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Lévi-Strauss met up with Henri Laugier, who then headed the Directory of Cultural Relations, and began negotiations on the future of the École libre. They agreed that the École had outlived its useful existence and concluded that, one way or another, it should be wound down or perhaps amalgamated with the Alliance française. Lévi-Strauss was making himself redundant, but with Laugier’s help he managed to maneuver himself into the position of France’s cultural attaché in New York. He was originally offered the post in Mexico, but through his own connections with Seyrig he secured the ideal job: a not-too-demanding diplomatic post a few blocks down from the New York Public Library.
While negotiations continued, Lévi-Strauss set up an office at the Directory of Cultural Relations in a town house on the rue Lord Byron, off the Champs-Elysées. There, working under Laugier, he acted as a liaison officer for French people wanting to visit America. He later recalled processing the then famous soprano Jeanine Micheau, who strolled into his office “heavily perfumed, leading two enormous dogs on leashes.”
11
He also remembered meeting Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whom he had not seen since they had taught classes together during the three-week probationary period in the run-up to the
agrégation
more than a decade earlier. In the intervening years, Merleau-Ponty had become one of the most influential philosophers working in France. Their meeting was pure coincidence, he having wandered into Lévi-Strauss’s office in search of advice about visiting America.
11
He also remembered meeting Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whom he had not seen since they had taught classes together during the three-week probationary period in the run-up to the
agrégation
more than a decade earlier. In the intervening years, Merleau-Ponty had become one of the most influential philosophers working in France. Their meeting was pure coincidence, he having wandered into Lévi-Strauss’s office in search of advice about visiting America.
They talked philosophy, Lévi-Strauss asking Merleau-Ponty to explain what existentialism was. Merleau-Ponty apparently satisfied him with the vague answer: “It is an attempt to re-establish philosophy as it was in the times of Descartes, Leibniz and Kant.” Asked later by Didier Eribon what he thought of the response, Lévi-Strauss replied: “Nothing. Philosophy didn’t interest me anymore, even existentialism”
12
—a typically dry but hardly credible answer. Lévi-Strauss had been away for more than a decade, with only intermittent contacts with the French academic system, to which he hoped one day to return. Philosophy was the intellectual ballast of the humanities, and despite his later protestations to the contrary, Lévi-Strauss was still a typically French, philosophically oriented thinker. He would surely have been curious to hear about developments in his absence.
12
—a typically dry but hardly credible answer. Lévi-Strauss had been away for more than a decade, with only intermittent contacts with the French academic system, to which he hoped one day to return. Philosophy was the intellectual ballast of the humanities, and despite his later protestations to the contrary, Lévi-Strauss was still a typically French, philosophically oriented thinker. He would surely have been curious to hear about developments in his absence.
Several milestones had passed him by. The publication of Sartre’s
L’Être et le néant
(
Being and Nothingness
) (1943) and Merleau-Ponty’s own increasingly influential work, culminating in
La Phénoménologie de la perception
(
The Phenomenology of Perception
) (1944), were at the head of a revival and reassessment of the work of the German philosophers Edmund Husserl and his onetime assistant Martin Heidegger. While at one end of the spectrum Lévi-Strauss had begun grappling with overarching, abstract systems, at the other Merleau-Ponty was talking about the centrality of the body in intimate acts of perception. For Merleau-Ponty, a person’s most private or even banal thoughts were the raw material of philosophy. Pages of reflections on his experiences of his own body—from the impossibility of treating his eyes as objects (even using a mirror, “they are the eyes of someone observing”) to the mysterious sensations of simultaneously touching and being touched when his left hand grasped his right
13
—were indeed remote from Lévi-Strauss’s intellectual instincts.
L’Être et le néant
(
Being and Nothingness
) (1943) and Merleau-Ponty’s own increasingly influential work, culminating in
La Phénoménologie de la perception
(
The Phenomenology of Perception
) (1944), were at the head of a revival and reassessment of the work of the German philosophers Edmund Husserl and his onetime assistant Martin Heidegger. While at one end of the spectrum Lévi-Strauss had begun grappling with overarching, abstract systems, at the other Merleau-Ponty was talking about the centrality of the body in intimate acts of perception. For Merleau-Ponty, a person’s most private or even banal thoughts were the raw material of philosophy. Pages of reflections on his experiences of his own body—from the impossibility of treating his eyes as objects (even using a mirror, “they are the eyes of someone observing”) to the mysterious sensations of simultaneously touching and being touched when his left hand grasped his right
13
—were indeed remote from Lévi-Strauss’s intellectual instincts.
Back in New York, Lévi-Strauss worked out the last months of his contract at the École against a backdrop of hostility. There was widespread criticism of his role in negotiations over the future of the École. The physicist Léon Brillouin complained that Lévi-Strauss had been “unfaithful to his mission, since far from defending the interests of the École . . . he appeared to bring back with him the death sentence for our institution.”
14
The faculty eventually voted to block Lévi-Strauss’s last month’s salary.
14
The faculty eventually voted to block Lévi-Strauss’s last month’s salary.
Lévi-Strauss was beginning to reveal a deft, pragmatic side—a kind of coolness toward events, which he was about to apply to ethnographic data. A fascinating window into his state of mind at the close of the war comes from a classified report on the politics of the École, filed by an agent from the American Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner of the CIA). The OSS agent had originally intended to interview the film producer Jean Benoît-Lévy, but as he was away, Lévi-Strauss stepped in. The agent was charmed by Lévi-Strauss, finding him “a most attractive and agreeable personality,” loyal toward General de Gaulle, but with some harsh views on recent events in Europe. France had “lost the war” and “the sooner that people realised this the better for all concerned,” Lévi-Strauss told the agent, adding that “it might have been better to kill 50,000 collaborationists immediately” rather than get bogged down in the niceties of gathering evidence and mounting trials
15
—an astonishing statement for someone who had just returned from France and seen for himself the postoccupation tensions and ambiguities. Lévi-Strauss had traveled a long way from the idealism of his youth. His political commitment had “faded away.”
16
What remained was a conservative instinct that would never really leave him for the rest of his life.
15
—an astonishing statement for someone who had just returned from France and seen for himself the postoccupation tensions and ambiguities. Lévi-Strauss had traveled a long way from the idealism of his youth. His political commitment had “faded away.”
16
What remained was a conservative instinct that would never really leave him for the rest of his life.
IT WAS IN THIS TRANSITIONAL PHASE of Lévi-Strauss’s life, as the war wound down and his exile status evaporated, that he produced a short paper, “L’Analyse structurale en linguistique et en anthropologie” (Structural Analysis in Linguistics and Anthropology).
17
Published in
Word: Journal of the Linguistic Circle of New York
, which had been founded by Roman Jakobson and his colleagues, the article consecrated Lévi-Strauss’s intellectual partnership with Jakobson, drawing parallels between structural linguistics and anthropology and fusing them in the area of kinship. Although on the face of it a dry, technical and strictly anthropological essay, the piece introduced the kind of theoretical radicalism that Lévi-Strauss would become known for.
17
Published in
Word: Journal of the Linguistic Circle of New York
, which had been founded by Roman Jakobson and his colleagues, the article consecrated Lévi-Strauss’s intellectual partnership with Jakobson, drawing parallels between structural linguistics and anthropology and fusing them in the area of kinship. Although on the face of it a dry, technical and strictly anthropological essay, the piece introduced the kind of theoretical radicalism that Lévi-Strauss would become known for.
He likened the state of the study of kinship to the extreme empiricism of nineteenth-century linguistics, when the analysis of sound had collapsed under the weight of its own endlessly subdividing data. “Each detail of terminology and each special marriage rule is associated with a specific custom as either its consequence or survival,” he wrote; “we thus meet with a chaos of discontinuity.” Where both anthropology and traditional linguistics had erred “was to consider the terms, and not the relations between the terms.”
18
He then addressed the classic anthropological conundrum of the differing attitudes between a man and his sister’s children, a relationship known as “the avunculate.” The argument is involved and difficult for the nonspecialist to grasp, but it is worth following through step by step, since this reinterpretation set the methodological tone for much of Lévi-Strauss’s later work.
18
He then addressed the classic anthropological conundrum of the differing attitudes between a man and his sister’s children, a relationship known as “the avunculate.” The argument is involved and difficult for the nonspecialist to grasp, but it is worth following through step by step, since this reinterpretation set the methodological tone for much of Lévi-Strauss’s later work.
British anthropologist Alfred Radcliffe-Brown had observed two sets of inversely correlated relationships. A boy’s relationship with his maternal uncle—be it strict obedience or jesting familiarity—was the reverse of the same boy’s relationship with his father. If the boy had an easy, joking relationship with his maternal uncle, he would be submissive toward the father, and vice versa. Radcliffe-Brown had argued that the distinction had to do with descent: in matrilineal
19
societies the maternal uncle, as a member of the descent group, becomes an authority figure, the father a source of familial tenderness; in patrilineal societies the situation is the opposite—the father embodies traditional authority of the descent group, and the maternal uncle becomes a kind of “male mother.” This seemed like a tidy solution, but it was spoiled by numerous exceptions to the rule.
19
societies the maternal uncle, as a member of the descent group, becomes an authority figure, the father a source of familial tenderness; in patrilineal societies the situation is the opposite—the father embodies traditional authority of the descent group, and the maternal uncle becomes a kind of “male mother.” This seemed like a tidy solution, but it was spoiled by numerous exceptions to the rule.
Lévi-Strauss reframed the question by adopting the linguist’s approach. He looked at all possible permutations of relationships within the system as a whole—not just within the family unit, as Radcliffe-Brown had, but across interlocking family groups. The “atom of kinship,” as Lévi-Strauss coined it, became a complex of consanguinity (blood relations), affiliation (marriage) and descent (generational relations)—in its most stripped-down form, a man, his wife, their child and the child’s maternal uncle.
20
He then drew up a table of possible attitudes, marking them “+” for free and familiar and “−” for strict and reserved. Like crystalline structures of compound molecules, the pluses and minuses seemed to follow a pattern, balancing off against each other in a complex yet ultimately symmetrical manner.
20
He then drew up a table of possible attitudes, marking them “+” for free and familiar and “−” for strict and reserved. Like crystalline structures of compound molecules, the pluses and minuses seemed to follow a pattern, balancing off against each other in a complex yet ultimately symmetrical manner.
This approach revealed certain structural echoes—sets of relationships that ran in parallel to each other. Lévi-Strauss summarized his findings in the following “law”: “In both groups, the relation between the maternal uncle and nephew is to the relation between brother and sister as the relation between father and son is to that between husband and wife,” he wrote.
21
Or, in more condensed form,
maternal uncle/nephew
is to
brother/ sister
as
father/son
is to
husband/wife
. And the model seemed to work, at least in the examples that Lévi-Strauss put forward. From Tonga to the Trobriand Islands, the Lake Kutubu groups of Papua New Guinea to the Siuai of Bougainville, the African Kipsigi to the Melanesian Dobuans, relationships of respect and familiarity were distributed through the kinship system with an eerie symmetry.
21
Or, in more condensed form,
maternal uncle/nephew
is to
brother/ sister
as
father/son
is to
husband/wife
. And the model seemed to work, at least in the examples that Lévi-Strauss put forward. From Tonga to the Trobriand Islands, the Lake Kutubu groups of Papua New Guinea to the Siuai of Bougainville, the African Kipsigi to the Melanesian Dobuans, relationships of respect and familiarity were distributed through the kinship system with an eerie symmetry.
Radcliffe-Brown had focused on a specific problem to tease out the meaning of its content. But Lévi-Strauss simply dissolved the problem and its content within a network of relationships.
22
It was a maneuver that he would use again and again in his analyses—not just of kinship systems, but when he moved into the more conceptual realm of religious thought and mythology. The method hinted at the more profound truths that Lévi-Strauss had long sensed but had struggled to articulate. His use of linguistic models for social systems was more than metaphorical; it was based on what he believed to be a concrete affinity. The bridge between linguistics and kinship was cognition. At root a kinship system existed “only in human consciousness” as “an arbitrary system of representations,” like a language or a system of sounds.
23
Beyond the hard-to-follow kinship analysis, the
Word
article was theoretically suggestive; it pointed toward a revolutionary way of understanding human culture. The full demonstration, though, would have to wait until 1949 with the appearance of the first copies of
Les Structures élémentaires de la parenté
.
22
It was a maneuver that he would use again and again in his analyses—not just of kinship systems, but when he moved into the more conceptual realm of religious thought and mythology. The method hinted at the more profound truths that Lévi-Strauss had long sensed but had struggled to articulate. His use of linguistic models for social systems was more than metaphorical; it was based on what he believed to be a concrete affinity. The bridge between linguistics and kinship was cognition. At root a kinship system existed “only in human consciousness” as “an arbitrary system of representations,” like a language or a system of sounds.
23
Beyond the hard-to-follow kinship analysis, the
Word
article was theoretically suggestive; it pointed toward a revolutionary way of understanding human culture. The full demonstration, though, would have to wait until 1949 with the appearance of the first copies of
Les Structures élémentaires de la parenté
.
AT THE END OF 1945, Lévi-Strauss took up his new post as cultural attaché. His first task was to refit a mansion on Fifth Avenue near Seventy-fourth Street, acquired by the French government before the war but empty since the mayor of New York had barred Vichy officials from using the building. Working with the architect Jacques Carlu, who had designed the monumental Palais de Chaillot in Paris—now housing the Musée de l’Homme—he drew up plans, consulted with builders, even carried out some of the manual work himself, a job he apparently relished. The hands-on practicality appealed to him, a vestige of growing up on the rue Poussin surrounded by his father’s various artisanal projects.
While the work went on, he was forced to improvise, running his office out of what had been a ballroom—an eccentric salon done out as a replica of a Roman palazzo, with painted ceilings and elaborate woodwork. Later, when hosting the great modernist architect Le Corbusier, Lévi-Strauss asked what he should do with the room. “Don’t touch it,” Le Corbusier told Lévi-Strauss. “It’s a fine piece of craftsmanship, let’s respect that.” The advice left an impression on Lévi-Strauss. From then on, wherever he lived, he would leave previous owners’ architectural follies intact.
24
24
Once they were installed, Lévi-Strauss settled into his diplomatic duties. Much of his job involved hosting French cultural figures passing through New York, entertaining them and dealing with the logistics of their stay. In the course of his work, he met French writers and intellectuals, including Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus. Already intellectual stars, Sartre and de Beauvoir needed little assistance, but he showed Camus around New York, dining in a restaurant in Chinatown and ending up in a club—probably Sammy’s Bowery Follies on the Bowery at Third Street, a cabaret featuring aging divas belting out old standards. Among the many other people Lévi-Strauss received in New York were the celebrated neurologist and future director of the Collège de France, Yves Laporte; the head of the Bibliothèque nationale, Julien Cain; the psychiatrist and writer Jean Delay; as well as Gaston Berger, a philosopher and the writer of an acclaimed study on Husserl, who would go on to run the university system at the ministry for education. After the years of exile, Lévi-Strauss was rapidly reconnecting with France’s cultural elite.
In other areas, he tried to bend his newfound powers to his own interests, proposing that the government buy up a collection of Northwest Coast Indian art, to be had from a collector in exchange for “a few Matisse and Picasso canvases instead of taxable dollars.”
25
(He was unsuccessful, and the collection ended up going to a West Coast museum.) He was also involved in negotiations between the Rockefeller Foundation and the French government for the resumption of their funding of French academic institutions driven to their knees by war and occupation. He sat in on meetings discussing the creation in Paris of something akin to the London School of Economics. The result was the establishing in 1948 of the Sixth Section of the École pratique des hautes études (where Lévi-Strauss would soon be teaching), seeded by ten thousand dollars of Rockefeller largesse a year for the first three years.
25
(He was unsuccessful, and the collection ended up going to a West Coast museum.) He was also involved in negotiations between the Rockefeller Foundation and the French government for the resumption of their funding of French academic institutions driven to their knees by war and occupation. He sat in on meetings discussing the creation in Paris of something akin to the London School of Economics. The result was the establishing in 1948 of the Sixth Section of the École pratique des hautes études (where Lévi-Strauss would soon be teaching), seeded by ten thousand dollars of Rockefeller largesse a year for the first three years.
BOOK: Claude Levi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory
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