Claude Levi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory (47 page)
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BOOK: Claude Levi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory
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Rodney Needham, then professor of anthropology at Oxford University, was less forgiving of Lévi-Strauss’s intuitive approach to research. An early supporter of his in Britain, Needham had already translated
Le Totémisme aujourd’hui
(published by Merlin Press as
Totemism
in 1964) when he began organizing the translation of
Les Structures élémentaires
, almost twenty years after its original publication. The process was laborious, involving two translators in Australia sending each chapter with queries about language, interpretation and sources back to Oxford for Needham to recheck against the French. Needham picked his way through Lévi-Strauss’s five-hundred-page book, finding numerous discrepancies, mistranscribed quotes and errors in referencing. This was partly to do with Lévi-Strauss’s whole style of operating—his encyclopedic approach and theoretical ambition, the scope of his projects and his intellectual avarice sometimes led to mistakes, a fact that he openly acknowledged. (“No claim is made that the work is free of errors of fact and interpretation,” Lévi-Strauss had written disarmingly in the preface to the first edition; while in the second he had volunteered, “I admit to being an execrable proofreader . . . Once completed, the book becomes a foreign body, a dead being incapable of holding my interest.”) But his on-the-hoof, ideas-driven method was anathema to Needham; an old-fashioned scholar, a stickler for correct referencing and ethnographic accuracy, he began to harbor doubts. “His scholarship was unreliable,” he told me. “If you go back to the examples in the
Elementary Structures
, they were often wrong, or had the wrong interpretation—you couldn’t send students back to Lévi-Strauss’s works with any confidence.”
54
Le Totémisme aujourd’hui
(published by Merlin Press as
Totemism
in 1964) when he began organizing the translation of
Les Structures élémentaires
, almost twenty years after its original publication. The process was laborious, involving two translators in Australia sending each chapter with queries about language, interpretation and sources back to Oxford for Needham to recheck against the French. Needham picked his way through Lévi-Strauss’s five-hundred-page book, finding numerous discrepancies, mistranscribed quotes and errors in referencing. This was partly to do with Lévi-Strauss’s whole style of operating—his encyclopedic approach and theoretical ambition, the scope of his projects and his intellectual avarice sometimes led to mistakes, a fact that he openly acknowledged. (“No claim is made that the work is free of errors of fact and interpretation,” Lévi-Strauss had written disarmingly in the preface to the first edition; while in the second he had volunteered, “I admit to being an execrable proofreader . . . Once completed, the book becomes a foreign body, a dead being incapable of holding my interest.”) But his on-the-hoof, ideas-driven method was anathema to Needham; an old-fashioned scholar, a stickler for correct referencing and ethnographic accuracy, he began to harbor doubts. “His scholarship was unreliable,” he told me. “If you go back to the examples in the
Elementary Structures
, they were often wrong, or had the wrong interpretation—you couldn’t send students back to Lévi-Strauss’s works with any confidence.”
54
After the
Savage Mind
debacle, Lévi-Strauss had little to do with the translation process.
55
He did, however, find time to add a last-minute preface in which he criticized Needham’s interpretation of his theories, reiterating comments he had made in the Huxley Memorial Lecture he had given in Oxford in 1965. The points he made might now seem arcane—the argument hinged on distinctions between prescribed and preferential marriage systems, theoretical rules and actual behavior. But for Needham its late appearance, in the final edit of a project to which he had devoted so much time and energy, was hurtful.
Savage Mind
debacle, Lévi-Strauss had little to do with the translation process.
55
He did, however, find time to add a last-minute preface in which he criticized Needham’s interpretation of his theories, reiterating comments he had made in the Huxley Memorial Lecture he had given in Oxford in 1965. The points he made might now seem arcane—the argument hinged on distinctions between prescribed and preferential marriage systems, theoretical rules and actual behavior. But for Needham its late appearance, in the final edit of a project to which he had devoted so much time and energy, was hurtful.
When I met Professor Needham shortly before his death in 2006 at his Holywell Street flat in the very heart of the Oxford colleges, he was still bitter, decades on. “I was going to read some Lévi-Strauss to prepare for our interview,” he told me as we sat down in his meticulously laid-out apartment, plain but stylish with pared-down 1950s décor, “but I
recoiled
from it.”
56
The dispute clearly ran deep—Needham lined the walls of his study with framed photos of intellectual greats, with the picture of Lévi-Strauss turned toward the wall. Once a champion of Lévi-Strauss and a key figure in the emergence of a British version of structuralism, Needham now felt Lévi-Strauss was a lush, self-conscious, grandiloquent writer. After their falling out, he wrote in the
Times Literary Supplement
that Lévi-Strauss should not be seen as a renowned exponent of structuralism, but as “the greatest Surrealist of them all.”
57
When I asked Lévi-Strauss about Needham, he replied matter-of-factly, “He was kind and helpful in trying to popularize my ideas for the Anglo-Saxon world, but the way he did it misinterpreted my work, so I said so—the same goes for Leach.”
58
But perhaps Lévi-Strauss’s successor at the Collège de France, Philippe Descola, had a more convincing explanation: Lévi-Strauss did not like imitators, he told me, and repelled collaborations, even as he attracted them with the programmatic flavor of his research.
59
recoiled
from it.”
56
The dispute clearly ran deep—Needham lined the walls of his study with framed photos of intellectual greats, with the picture of Lévi-Strauss turned toward the wall. Once a champion of Lévi-Strauss and a key figure in the emergence of a British version of structuralism, Needham now felt Lévi-Strauss was a lush, self-conscious, grandiloquent writer. After their falling out, he wrote in the
Times Literary Supplement
that Lévi-Strauss should not be seen as a renowned exponent of structuralism, but as “the greatest Surrealist of them all.”
57
When I asked Lévi-Strauss about Needham, he replied matter-of-factly, “He was kind and helpful in trying to popularize my ideas for the Anglo-Saxon world, but the way he did it misinterpreted my work, so I said so—the same goes for Leach.”
58
But perhaps Lévi-Strauss’s successor at the Collège de France, Philippe Descola, had a more convincing explanation: Lévi-Strauss did not like imitators, he told me, and repelled collaborations, even as he attracted them with the programmatic flavor of his research.
59
Underlying the rifts were real differences in intellectual culture between Lévi-Strauss and his Anglo-American counterparts. It is indeed hard to imagine a British or American anthropologist producing a sentence like, “It is in the last resort immaterial whether in this book the thought processes of the South American Indians take shape through the medium of my thought, or whether mine take shape through the medium of theirs.”
60
Lévi-Strauss’s long period in the United States had not dimmed his essentially continental philosophical outlook. For all his appeals to the higher authority of the hard sciences, for all his use of metaphors drawn from physics, chemistry, astronomy and, most important, linguistics, his approach was becoming more literary and philosophical as he aged. So much so that when his American publishers, the University of Chicago Press, added the subclause “Introduction to a Science of Mythology” to each volume of the
Mythologiques
quartet, he was apparently very unhappy. The strictly scientific pretensions of his work were becoming less and less important to him. He was, after all, still using Jakobson’s two-decade-old structural linguistic models as a blueprint for his own theories at a time when linguistics as a discipline was surging ahead.
60
Lévi-Strauss’s long period in the United States had not dimmed his essentially continental philosophical outlook. For all his appeals to the higher authority of the hard sciences, for all his use of metaphors drawn from physics, chemistry, astronomy and, most important, linguistics, his approach was becoming more literary and philosophical as he aged. So much so that when his American publishers, the University of Chicago Press, added the subclause “Introduction to a Science of Mythology” to each volume of the
Mythologiques
quartet, he was apparently very unhappy. The strictly scientific pretensions of his work were becoming less and less important to him. He was, after all, still using Jakobson’s two-decade-old structural linguistic models as a blueprint for his own theories at a time when linguistics as a discipline was surging ahead.
Linguist Noam Chomsky, who had led the revolution, briefly touched on Lévi-Strauss’s work in
Language and Mind
(1968), published at the height of French structuralism. Although sympathetic to his general orientation, Chomsky was dismissive of Lévi-Strauss’s use of linguistics. Formal aspects of language identified by structural linguists like Jakobson were, for Chomsky, merely the epiphenomena of deeper rules—the generative grammar that he and his colleagues were then mapping out. “There is nothing to be said about the abstract structure of the various patterns that appear at various stages of derivation,” he concluded. “If this is correct, then one cannot expect structuralist phonology, in itself, to provide a useful model for investigation of other cultural and social systems.” The thought was ironic—could it have been that, for all Lévi-Strauss’s insistence on breaking through surface realities and finding deeper structural truths, the linguistic model he chose represented a mere outer shell of appearance hiding the mechanics of language that were hidden at a deeper level still? It was not an idea that Lévi-Strauss ever stopped to contemplate. His coordinates had already been set and the pace of production was such that there was now no turning back.
Language and Mind
(1968), published at the height of French structuralism. Although sympathetic to his general orientation, Chomsky was dismissive of Lévi-Strauss’s use of linguistics. Formal aspects of language identified by structural linguists like Jakobson were, for Chomsky, merely the epiphenomena of deeper rules—the generative grammar that he and his colleagues were then mapping out. “There is nothing to be said about the abstract structure of the various patterns that appear at various stages of derivation,” he concluded. “If this is correct, then one cannot expect structuralist phonology, in itself, to provide a useful model for investigation of other cultural and social systems.” The thought was ironic—could it have been that, for all Lévi-Strauss’s insistence on breaking through surface realities and finding deeper structural truths, the linguistic model he chose represented a mere outer shell of appearance hiding the mechanics of language that were hidden at a deeper level still? It was not an idea that Lévi-Strauss ever stopped to contemplate. His coordinates had already been set and the pace of production was such that there was now no turning back.
Perhaps it is not surprising that one of Lévi-Strauss’s most perceptive critics crossed both the Latin/Anglo-American and the anthropological /linguistic divides. French anthropologist Dan Sperber had studied under Georges Balandier and gone on to work with Rodney Needham in Oxford, as well as attending both Noam Chomsky’s and Lévi-Strauss’s seminars in the 1960s. As a young man he had been seduced by Lévi-Strauss and structuralism, and went on to Oxford to preach the word, but soon found Lévi-Strauss’s theory wanting. “Its model didn’t even work in its initial field, linguistics. Its claim to work for the rest of the universe was altogether doubtful,” he told historian François Dosse.
61
61
In one of the most penetrating critiques of Lévi-Strauss, Sperber concluded that although his instincts had been right, structuralism “was an uninspiring frame for an otherwise stimulating and inspired picture.”
62
In the 1970s he began working from the ground up, blending contemporary advances in linguistics, cognitive psychology and neuroscience in his attempt to found a true science—what he called an “epidemiology” of ideas. Lévi-Strauss took no interest in his work, even though it had been directly inspired by the core questions that he had built his career around. “As for Sperber,” he told Eduardo Viveiros de Castro in the 1990s, “I don’t understand anything he writes! And this business about epidemiology, this seems to me such a return to the past.”
63
62
In the 1970s he began working from the ground up, blending contemporary advances in linguistics, cognitive psychology and neuroscience in his attempt to found a true science—what he called an “epidemiology” of ideas. Lévi-Strauss took no interest in his work, even though it had been directly inspired by the core questions that he had built his career around. “As for Sperber,” he told Eduardo Viveiros de Castro in the 1990s, “I don’t understand anything he writes! And this business about epidemiology, this seems to me such a return to the past.”
63
On the publication of
La Potière jalouse
—the second of the
petits mythologiques
, which he later wrote as companion pieces to the original quartet—Lévi-Strauss told Sperber that the book had been conceived as a response to his ideas. Sperber rushed out to buy a copy, but was disappointed to find there was not a single reference to his work. When I put this to Lévi-Strauss, he laughed. “That was a joke,” he told me. “Sperber had criticized me for the fact that after introducing the canonic formula for myths F
x
(a) : F
y
(b)
~
F
x
(b) : F
a-1
(y)”—first mentioned in his structural analysis of
Oedipus Rex
, then briefly alluded to in
Du miel aux cendres
—“I had never referred it again. In
La Potière jalouse
I mentioned it.” In a final irony, in 2009 Dan Sperber became the first to receive the Prix Claude Lévi-Strauss, awarded for excellence in the social sciences.
La Potière jalouse
—the second of the
petits mythologiques
, which he later wrote as companion pieces to the original quartet—Lévi-Strauss told Sperber that the book had been conceived as a response to his ideas. Sperber rushed out to buy a copy, but was disappointed to find there was not a single reference to his work. When I put this to Lévi-Strauss, he laughed. “That was a joke,” he told me. “Sperber had criticized me for the fact that after introducing the canonic formula for myths F
x
(a) : F
y
(b)
~
F
x
(b) : F
a-1
(y)”—first mentioned in his structural analysis of
Oedipus Rex
, then briefly alluded to in
Du miel aux cendres
—“I had never referred it again. In
La Potière jalouse
I mentioned it.” In a final irony, in 2009 Dan Sperber became the first to receive the Prix Claude Lévi-Strauss, awarded for excellence in the social sciences.
OBLIVIOUS TO CRITICISM, Lévi-Strauss forged on and in early 1968 was finishing off his third
Mythologiques
volume,
L’Origine des manières de table
. By now he had clocked up more than five hundred myths, each taken apart, sifted for logical affinities and recombined into structural sets. He likened the process to the patient dismantling of the mechanisms of a clock—but this was a strange kind of clock, one whose cogs and wheels seemed to have been thrown together haphazardly, and whose ratios and symmetries became apparent only after exhaustive comparisons between scores of subtly different mechanisms. More plausibly, he described himself as like a photographer working in the darkroom of human consciousness, bringing out the myths’ “latent, but hidden, properties.”
64
Mythologiques
volume,
L’Origine des manières de table
. By now he had clocked up more than five hundred myths, each taken apart, sifted for logical affinities and recombined into structural sets. He likened the process to the patient dismantling of the mechanisms of a clock—but this was a strange kind of clock, one whose cogs and wheels seemed to have been thrown together haphazardly, and whose ratios and symmetries became apparent only after exhaustive comparisons between scores of subtly different mechanisms. More plausibly, he described himself as like a photographer working in the darkroom of human consciousness, bringing out the myths’ “latent, but hidden, properties.”
64
Ethnographically, Lévi-Strauss had crossed over into North America, leaving the jungles of the Amazon for the Midwestern prairie lands of the Plains Indians, a shift of focus that he described as “almost tantamount to exploring another planet.” Conceptually, volume three added a feature that would complicate an already elaborate scheme: time. Taking his cue from the proliferation of myths involving canoe journeys, Lévi-Strauss moved from the spatial to the temporal. The logical relationships that he was now dealing in were ever-changing configurations between the “here” and the “there,” near and far, the ebb and the flow, the rising and falling of water levels, and so forth.
Myths featuring canoe trips led on to journeys along rivers, to river crossings and floods, to discussions of stock mythic figures—the ferryman, “a semiconductor,” carrying some people across and obstructing others
65
—and the “clinging woman,” a curious character who attaches herself to the hero’s back. He drew parallels between the sun and the moon and the steersman and the oarsman, both traveling together, but at a fixed distance apart—just like interrelated kin groups. The sun and the moon produced still more oppositions: summer and winter, nomadic and sedentary groups, hunting and cultivating, war and peace, as Lévi-Strauss began moving from simple oppositions to more complex quadripartite structures. Though now working in entirely different cultural milieu, he found that the North American “wives of the sun and moon” myth cycle was in fact a transformation of the original bird-nester series. A panoramic view across the Americas was now emerging, with “the bird-nester myths along a vertical axis, and the Moon’s saga running horizontal.”
66
65
—and the “clinging woman,” a curious character who attaches herself to the hero’s back. He drew parallels between the sun and the moon and the steersman and the oarsman, both traveling together, but at a fixed distance apart—just like interrelated kin groups. The sun and the moon produced still more oppositions: summer and winter, nomadic and sedentary groups, hunting and cultivating, war and peace, as Lévi-Strauss began moving from simple oppositions to more complex quadripartite structures. Though now working in entirely different cultural milieu, he found that the North American “wives of the sun and moon” myth cycle was in fact a transformation of the original bird-nester series. A panoramic view across the Americas was now emerging, with “the bird-nester myths along a vertical axis, and the Moon’s saga running horizontal.”
66
There was more rich scatological material, especially in Lévi-Strauss’s ongoing examination of blockage and blocked characters, like M
524
, a Guianan Taulipang just-so story explaining the origin of the anus. In the beginning neither men nor animals had anuses, but excreted through their mouths. A disembodied anus sauntered among them, taunting them by farting in their faces and then escaping. But they hunted him down, cutting him up into pieces and sharing him out among all animals—bigger or smaller, in accordance with the size of their orifice today. This is why all living creatures have an anus; otherwise they would be forced to excrete through the mouth or would burst, so the story ran.
67
524
, a Guianan Taulipang just-so story explaining the origin of the anus. In the beginning neither men nor animals had anuses, but excreted through their mouths. A disembodied anus sauntered among them, taunting them by farting in their faces and then escaping. But they hunted him down, cutting him up into pieces and sharing him out among all animals—bigger or smaller, in accordance with the size of their orifice today. This is why all living creatures have an anus; otherwise they would be forced to excrete through the mouth or would burst, so the story ran.
67
In a final section, which seemed strangely disconnected from the rest of the book, Lévi-Strauss reintroduced his famous “culinary triangle”—a gastronomic version of Jakobson’s structural linguistics—which had first appeared in the journal
L’Arc
in 1965.
68
Using Jakobson’s triangular model of sound distinctions, Lévi-Strauss substituted phonemes for “gustemes.” Vowels and consonants became raw, cooked and rotted, which stood at the triangle’s apexes, with air and water along two sides operating as mediators.
L’Arc
in 1965.
68
Using Jakobson’s triangular model of sound distinctions, Lévi-Strauss substituted phonemes for “gustemes.” Vowels and consonants became raw, cooked and rotted, which stood at the triangle’s apexes, with air and water along two sides operating as mediators.
The argument was complex, examining all the various permutations of roasting, boiling and smoking within this scheme. Boiling was compared to rotting, for instance, as, mediated by water, it “decomposed” the raw; smoking, on the other had, was a slow and thorough form of cooking mediated by air, as opposed to the fiery, partial cooking of the roast. In a comparison between boiled and roasted dishes, he argued that while the former was often associated with homely frugality, roasting had a theatrical, ceremonial role. “Boiling provides a means of complete conservation of the meat and its juices,” Lévi-Strauss concluded, “whereas roasting is accompanied by loss and destruction. Thus one denotes economy, the other prodigality; the latter is aristocratic, the former plebeian.”
69
To demonstrate his arguments, he juxtaposed examples drawn from Aristotle, Diderot and d’Alembert’s encyclopedia and the Marquis de Cussy with Guayaki, Kaingang, Maori and Jivaro ethnography in what was a tour de force of popular structuralism.
69
To demonstrate his arguments, he juxtaposed examples drawn from Aristotle, Diderot and d’Alembert’s encyclopedia and the Marquis de Cussy with Guayaki, Kaingang, Maori and Jivaro ethnography in what was a tour de force of popular structuralism.
Through a process of constant recapitulation, he moved back and forth through his accumulating stock of myths, comparing, drawing parallels, finding new angles as he incorporated earlier material into later analytical developments. Everything is connected, he wrote in the foreword to
L’Origine des manières de table
, “M
428
links up with M
10
in
The Raw and the Cooked
. . . M
495
coincides with a group of myths (M
1
, M
7-12
, M
24
)”—the Bororo and Ge series that began the whole project. As a result, the reader could just as well start with volume three and go on to volume one; “then, if still interested, he can embark on volume two.”
70
You could even begin with volume two, Lévi-Strauss explained, then track back to volume one, finishing off with three, or take on volumes two and three in order, leaving volume one until last.
L’Origine des manières de table
, “M
428
links up with M
10
in
The Raw and the Cooked
. . . M
495
coincides with a group of myths (M
1
, M
7-12
, M
24
)”—the Bororo and Ge series that began the whole project. As a result, the reader could just as well start with volume three and go on to volume one; “then, if still interested, he can embark on volume two.”
70
You could even begin with volume two, Lévi-Strauss explained, then track back to volume one, finishing off with three, or take on volumes two and three in order, leaving volume one until last.
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