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Authors: Patrick Wilcken
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Claude Levi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory (28 page)
BOOK: Claude Levi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory
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For Leach at Cambridge, reading
Les Structures élémentaires
was a paradoxical revelation. He had spent the war in Indochina, arriving in 1939 and traveling up to the northern Burmese hill tribes. He conducted an initial eight months’ fieldwork among the Hpalang, a small Kachin community on the northeastern Burmese border, who practiced shifting monsoon cultivation, overlooking the paddy fields of the Chinese Shan states. Later, working as a British intelligence agent, he returned to the Kachin hills, where he spent long periods studying remote communities that had had little contact with Westerners. Through the chaotic years of the Japanese invasion, he lost all his field notes, photos and a draft of his manuscript, but later managed to reconstruct his findings, publishing them in the postwar classic
Political Systems of Highland Burma
. As it happened, the central section of
Les Structures élémentaires
, the chapter that contained the very nub of Lévi-Strauss’s arguments, related to the Kachin, a group about which Leach had recent firsthand ethnographic knowledge.
Les Structures élémentaires
was a paradoxical revelation. He had spent the war in Indochina, arriving in 1939 and traveling up to the northern Burmese hill tribes. He conducted an initial eight months’ fieldwork among the Hpalang, a small Kachin community on the northeastern Burmese border, who practiced shifting monsoon cultivation, overlooking the paddy fields of the Chinese Shan states. Later, working as a British intelligence agent, he returned to the Kachin hills, where he spent long periods studying remote communities that had had little contact with Westerners. Through the chaotic years of the Japanese invasion, he lost all his field notes, photos and a draft of his manuscript, but later managed to reconstruct his findings, publishing them in the postwar classic
Political Systems of Highland Burma
. As it happened, the central section of
Les Structures élémentaires
, the chapter that contained the very nub of Lévi-Strauss’s arguments, related to the Kachin, a group about which Leach had recent firsthand ethnographic knowledge.
Leach quickly recognized that Lévi-Strauss had based his analysis on earlier, poorly researched ethnographic accounts that were factually inaccurate. He also became concerned at the way Lévi-Strauss had marshaled his evidence, drawing questionable parallels between a hodgepodge of different hill tribes. In a review essay, Leach concluded that the book’s huge ambition of establishing “the general laws of development governing all Asiatic societies, ancient and modern, primitive and sophisticated” was achieved only “by adopting a decidedly cavalier attitude towards the facts of history and ethnography.” He criticized Lévi-Strauss’s “inexcusable carelessness” of assuming customs among the Haka Chin were applicable to the Kachins—two entirely different groups separated by hundreds of kilometers. He also questioned Lévi-Strauss’s use of sources: Head’s
Handbook on Haka Chin Customs
, which Lévi-Strauss had described as “an unrecognised treasury of contemporary ethnography,” was in actual fact a “pamphlet of forty-seven pages, originally priced at eight
annas
” written by “a Frontier Service administrative officer with no professional competence as an ethnographer.”
55
Handbook on Haka Chin Customs
, which Lévi-Strauss had described as “an unrecognised treasury of contemporary ethnography,” was in actual fact a “pamphlet of forty-seven pages, originally priced at eight
annas
” written by “a Frontier Service administrative officer with no professional competence as an ethnographer.”
55
And yet there was something about Lévi-Strauss’s account that intrigued Leach. In spite of the inaccuracies, he found certain insights—specifically, the way marriage circuits had a tendency to break down and morph into caste systems—that even he had not realized in the field, but which with hindsight fit the evidence. Curiously, in a kind of inadvertent structuralist effect, Lévi-Strauss’s model had somehow been inverted in the process—“He’d got it back to front and upside down,” laughed Leach in an interview given to the literary critic Frank Kermode in the early 1980s. “This fascinated me,” he continued, “as how someone could be wrong about the facts, but right somehow about the theory.”
56
56
Writing in a review essay for the
New Left Review
in the mid-1960s, Leach described
Les Structures élémentaires
as “a splendid failure,” with one very good idea drawn from Lévi-Strauss’s reading of Marx, Freud and Jakobson—that social behavior is conducted with reference to a logically ordered conceptual scheme, “a model in the actor’s mind of how things are or how things ought to be.” For Leach, Lévi-Strauss’s structural method was like psychoanalytic dream interpretation. “The basic assumption is that the actual dream . . . is an ephemeral, trivial matter, but is at the same time a precipitate of something much more important and enduring, a logical puzzle in the dreamer’s conceptual system.”
57
Taking the analogy a step further, Leach grafted Freud’s triad, the id, the ego and the superego, onto Lévi-Strauss’s nature, culture and human mind. There is indeed a similar flavor to the works of Freud and Lévi-Strauss: both chose their arena of intellectual invention at a remove from surface reality; both invented a set of logical interrelations that were said to exist beyond the threshold of consciousness.
New Left Review
in the mid-1960s, Leach described
Les Structures élémentaires
as “a splendid failure,” with one very good idea drawn from Lévi-Strauss’s reading of Marx, Freud and Jakobson—that social behavior is conducted with reference to a logically ordered conceptual scheme, “a model in the actor’s mind of how things are or how things ought to be.” For Leach, Lévi-Strauss’s structural method was like psychoanalytic dream interpretation. “The basic assumption is that the actual dream . . . is an ephemeral, trivial matter, but is at the same time a precipitate of something much more important and enduring, a logical puzzle in the dreamer’s conceptual system.”
57
Taking the analogy a step further, Leach grafted Freud’s triad, the id, the ego and the superego, onto Lévi-Strauss’s nature, culture and human mind. There is indeed a similar flavor to the works of Freud and Lévi-Strauss: both chose their arena of intellectual invention at a remove from surface reality; both invented a set of logical interrelations that were said to exist beyond the threshold of consciousness.
Leach and Needham would later emerge as the key interpreters of Lévi-Strauss in the English-speaking world, a role that would become fraught with mutual suspicion and, in Needham’s case, personal animosity, when Lévi-Strauss began questioning their interpretations of his work in the 1960s.
In France, criticism was couched in more conceptual terms. In a piece for
Les Temps modernes
, the philosopher Claude Lefort, a student of Merleau-Ponty, launched what would become a standard line of attack.
Les Structures élémentaires
was overly abstract—it reduced behavior to rules, meaning to mathematics. For Lévi-Strauss, this was exactly the point. “Is there any need to emphasise that this book is concerned exclusively with models and not with empirical realities?”
58
he hit back in the introduction to a later edition of
Les Structures élémentaires
—an extraordinary statement that was a measure of how far he had traveled from conventional anthropological analysis. By the end of the 1940s, Lévi-Strauss’s experiences among the Caduveo, the Bororo and the Nambikwara were dissolving. Their day-to-day lives, their relationships, their struggle for survival on the margins of twentieth-century Brazil, so evocatively captured on film and in his field notes, had shrunk to a pinpoint on a graph.
Les Temps modernes
, the philosopher Claude Lefort, a student of Merleau-Ponty, launched what would become a standard line of attack.
Les Structures élémentaires
was overly abstract—it reduced behavior to rules, meaning to mathematics. For Lévi-Strauss, this was exactly the point. “Is there any need to emphasise that this book is concerned exclusively with models and not with empirical realities?”
58
he hit back in the introduction to a later edition of
Les Structures élémentaires
—an extraordinary statement that was a measure of how far he had traveled from conventional anthropological analysis. By the end of the 1940s, Lévi-Strauss’s experiences among the Caduveo, the Bororo and the Nambikwara were dissolving. Their day-to-day lives, their relationships, their struggle for survival on the margins of twentieth-century Brazil, so evocatively captured on film and in his field notes, had shrunk to a pinpoint on a graph.
LES STRUCTURES ÉLÉMENTAIRES
remained Lévi-Strauss’s favorite book throughout his life, although interestingly he did not include it in Gallimard’s Bibliothèque de la Pléiade selection of his works, published in 2008. In many ways, though, it was the least convincing application of the structural method. The central claims, made with such gusto in the opening chapters, have not stood up well over the years. Anthropologists have since questioned the universality of the incest taboo, citing examples from ancient Egypt and Achaemenid Persia where brother-sister, father- daughter and mother-son relations were actually encouraged. Though the incest taboo is deep-rooted in human societies, evidence now points toward its biological, adaptive foundations, an argument ridiculed by Lévi-Strauss. Once seen as “a cultural taboo, putting a break on innate desires,” incest prohibition is now viewed “as an innate tendency, which is being eroded by culture.”
59
Advances in primatology have destroyed Lévi-Strauss’s strict distinction between promiscuous animals and rule-bound humans, the cornerstone of the nature/culture divide.
60
Indeed Lévi-Strauss would later completely recast the book’s central claim—the elemental division that he believed existed between nature and culture. This, he came to realize, was an opposition in the mind, rather than an empirical reality.
61
remained Lévi-Strauss’s favorite book throughout his life, although interestingly he did not include it in Gallimard’s Bibliothèque de la Pléiade selection of his works, published in 2008. In many ways, though, it was the least convincing application of the structural method. The central claims, made with such gusto in the opening chapters, have not stood up well over the years. Anthropologists have since questioned the universality of the incest taboo, citing examples from ancient Egypt and Achaemenid Persia where brother-sister, father- daughter and mother-son relations were actually encouraged. Though the incest taboo is deep-rooted in human societies, evidence now points toward its biological, adaptive foundations, an argument ridiculed by Lévi-Strauss. Once seen as “a cultural taboo, putting a break on innate desires,” incest prohibition is now viewed “as an innate tendency, which is being eroded by culture.”
59
Advances in primatology have destroyed Lévi-Strauss’s strict distinction between promiscuous animals and rule-bound humans, the cornerstone of the nature/culture divide.
60
Indeed Lévi-Strauss would later completely recast the book’s central claim—the elemental division that he believed existed between nature and culture. This, he came to realize, was an opposition in the mind, rather than an empirical reality.
61
More fundamentally, the idea that these structures were truly “elementary”—that is, forming the building blocks of all kin systems—has never progressed. At the time Lévi-Strauss envisaged a second volume (
Les Structures complexes de la parenté
), but he eventually realized that the combinatory possibilities of less restricted systems were so vast that the task was beyond him. He also wanted to extend the work introduced in his essay for
Word
, systematically mapping attitudes between members of kin systems, but this too would remain on the drawing board.
Les Structures complexes de la parenté
), but he eventually realized that the combinatory possibilities of less restricted systems were so vast that the task was beyond him. He also wanted to extend the work introduced in his essay for
Word
, systematically mapping attitudes between members of kin systems, but this too would remain on the drawing board.
When Lévi-Strauss had sent his manuscript to Robert Lowie, the great American anthropologist told him that it was a work “in the grand style.” Lévi-Strauss at first took this as a compliment, but with the passing of time he would become less sure about what Lowie really meant.
62
Much later, when he had begun to understand Lowie’s backhanded compliment, he could admit that the project had been overambitious.
62
Much later, when he had begun to understand Lowie’s backhanded compliment, he could admit that the project had been overambitious.
But the grand edifice of
Les Structures élémentaires
took decades to crumble. Its originality, the confidence of its assertions, the sense of a long-overdue theoretical reorientation, made it the landmark publication of its times. Only a handful of specialists (like Leach) were equipped to evaluate Lévi-Strauss’s sometimes fast-and-loose use of ethnography; the rest were left to marvel at the book’s theoretical implications, which seemed to offer a way out of a double bind—the logjam of empiricism and the subjectivity of contemporary philosophical thought—while promising the birth of leaner, more scientific humanities. Lévi-Strauss’s own summaries of his work, many of which imply, to the untutored eye, that
Les Structures élémentaires
had demonstrated that
all
kinship systems (not just the very restricted and in some ways atypical set that Lévi-Strauss had examined) were but variations on limited sets of structural laws, periodically primed the pump.
63
But as a pioneering, if flawed, attempt at using the tools of linguistics in a completely different domain,
Les Structures élémentaires
levered open new theoretical space.
Les Structures élémentaires
took decades to crumble. Its originality, the confidence of its assertions, the sense of a long-overdue theoretical reorientation, made it the landmark publication of its times. Only a handful of specialists (like Leach) were equipped to evaluate Lévi-Strauss’s sometimes fast-and-loose use of ethnography; the rest were left to marvel at the book’s theoretical implications, which seemed to offer a way out of a double bind—the logjam of empiricism and the subjectivity of contemporary philosophical thought—while promising the birth of leaner, more scientific humanities. Lévi-Strauss’s own summaries of his work, many of which imply, to the untutored eye, that
Les Structures élémentaires
had demonstrated that
all
kinship systems (not just the very restricted and in some ways atypical set that Lévi-Strauss had examined) were but variations on limited sets of structural laws, periodically primed the pump.
63
But as a pioneering, if flawed, attempt at using the tools of linguistics in a completely different domain,
Les Structures élémentaires
levered open new theoretical space.
In the book, Lévi-Strauss had criticized Freud’s famous account of the origins of the incest taboo as a myth. Yet he had produced his own kind of myth: a peculiarly mid-twentieth-century appeal to abstraction, displacement and mathematics. Like Freud, Lévi-Strauss’s claims were ambitious, though not always fully backed up by the evidence. But they were endlessly suggestive. Against the intellectual current, Lévi-Strauss had introduced a series of ideas that were destined to change the intellectual ecology for decades to come.
6
On the Shaman’s Couch
Most of us regard psychoanalysis as a revolutionary discovery of twentieth-century civilisation and place it on the same footing as genetics or the theory of relativity. Others, probably more conscious of the abuses of psychoanalysis than the real lesson it has to teach us, still look upon it as one of the absurdities of modern man.
CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS
1
1
LÉVI-STRAUSS WAS AS FASCINATED by the work of Sigmund Freud as he was skeptical of the practice of psychoanalysis—then becoming an established, if left-field, treatment for psychosexual problems and neuroses. In New York, he had met the famous Freudian psychoanalyst Raymond de Saussure through Jakobson, and back in Paris his friendship with Jacques Lacan was blossoming. In the 1960s he would make the distinction between the psychoanalyst’s “theory of the mind” and “theory of the cure,” saying that it was only the former that interested him.
2
But in the late 1940s he began exploring the borderlands between psychoanalysis and anthropology, the therapist and the shaman, analysis and ritual cure. It offered him a way back to the matrix of the unconscious, the irrational and the primitive—the aesthetic hunting ground of the surrealists. It also opened up another area that was occupying his thoughts more and more: myth.
2
But in the late 1940s he began exploring the borderlands between psychoanalysis and anthropology, the therapist and the shaman, analysis and ritual cure. It offered him a way back to the matrix of the unconscious, the irrational and the primitive—the aesthetic hunting ground of the surrealists. It also opened up another area that was occupying his thoughts more and more: myth.
He set down his ideas while teaching at the newly established Sixth Section of the École pratique des hautes études—an autonomous social science research center, the institutional home of the famous Annales school of historical research. He had been recruited by founder of the Sixth Section Lucien Febvre in the winter of 1948-49, the first fully functioning year of the institution, to give a seminar on the Religious Life of Primitives. In two essays—“The Sorcerer and His Magic” and “The Effectiveness of Symbols”—he placed ethnographic examples from Brazil, Panama, Mexico and the Pacific Northwest against Freudian psychoanalysis.
“The Sorcerer and His Magic” followed the story of Quesalid, one of Franz Boas’s informants from the Kwakiutl group near Vancouver. Quesalid is a native skeptic who becomes a shaman in order to unmask “the false supernatural,” the fakery of the shaman’s art—the hidden nails, the tufts of down concealed in the corner of the mouth, the use of “dreamers” (spies) to find out information about the patient who is being treated. But through the course of his debunking quest, as Quesalid himself becomes a great shaman renowned for his cures, he begins to doubt his own skepticism. He finds that some deceptions work better than others, that certain rituals do in fact make patients better. Through his cures Quesalid discovers that the power of performance is in some sense real. The interactions between the patient, the shaman and the group, the structuring of a psychic universe, however achieved, bring about concrete results.
3
3
This point was vividly demonstrated in Lévi-Strauss’s companion piece, “The Effectiveness of Symbols,” written at around the same time. Dedicated to Raymond de Saussure, the essay worked through a ritual incantation used to assist difficult childbirths in Panama, which had been recorded by Swedish ethnologists. The incantation describes the shaman’s and his spirit assistants’ journey into the woman’s vagina and up to the uterus on a quest to release the unborn child. The child must be liberated from the Muu—the spirit who forms the fetus, but who in this case has abused her powers. The shaman sings the woman’s predicament as she lies in a hammock, knees parted, pointing eastward, “groaning, losing blood, the vulva dilating and moving.” He calls on diverse spirits, “of the winds, waters and woods,” as well as, in a Conradesque touch, “the spirit of the silver steamer of the white man.”
As the torturous labor continues, the shaman embarks on his journey. Through blood and tissue, into a uterine “hell
à la
Hieronymous Bosch,” he marshals his spirits in single file along “Muu’s way.” The group struggles up the woman’s birth canal, the shaman calling on “Lords of the wood-boring insects” to cut through the sinews, clearing a path through a jungle of human fiber. After defeating Muu and her daughters with the use of magic hats, and thus releasing the child, the shaman’s troop begins the descent, another perilous journey, analogous to the act of childbirth itself. The shaman urges his troop on toward the orifice, employing more “clearers of the way,” such as the armadillo. After the delivery of the child, the shaman throws up a cloud of dust, obscuring the path to prevent Muu’s escape.
4
à la
Hieronymous Bosch,” he marshals his spirits in single file along “Muu’s way.” The group struggles up the woman’s birth canal, the shaman calling on “Lords of the wood-boring insects” to cut through the sinews, clearing a path through a jungle of human fiber. After defeating Muu and her daughters with the use of magic hats, and thus releasing the child, the shaman’s troop begins the descent, another perilous journey, analogous to the act of childbirth itself. The shaman urges his troop on toward the orifice, employing more “clearers of the way,” such as the armadillo. After the delivery of the child, the shaman throws up a cloud of dust, obscuring the path to prevent Muu’s escape.
4
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