Claude Levi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory (48 page)
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Authors: Patrick Wilcken
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BOOK: Claude Levi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory
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Every few hundred myths, Lévi-Strauss’s argument took a new twist. Running in tandem with his geographical journey across the Americas was a conceptual one, a progressive adding of layers of logic—sensual, formal, spatial—that coursed through the mythic narratives. Comparing myth clusters, he saw that different indigenous groups had not just inverted specific mythic elements, but transposed them into completely new codes, from culinary to astronomical, sexual to cosmological.
L’Origine des manières de table
represented the most challenging step in the argument, as the point at which the temporal entered the equation. The relationships between the terms became relative, not absolute, oppositions, and in a kind of Native American modernist turn, the myths themselves were meditations on the very nature of these relationships. For Lévi-Strauss, stories about the moon, porcupine quills, the Pink River, a toad and an incontinent old woman were actually vehicles for thought about increasingly abstract properties—conjunction, disjunction and mediation.
71
L’Origine des manières de table
represented the most challenging step in the argument, as the point at which the temporal entered the equation. The relationships between the terms became relative, not absolute, oppositions, and in a kind of Native American modernist turn, the myths themselves were meditations on the very nature of these relationships. For Lévi-Strauss, stories about the moon, porcupine quills, the Pink River, a toad and an incontinent old woman were actually vehicles for thought about increasingly abstract properties—conjunction, disjunction and mediation.
71
Lévi-Strauss had arrived at the outer limits of
la pensée sauvage
, the point at which “the science of the concrete” began admitting abstract thought. Up against the periphery, mythic thought began to degrade, its narrative collapsing into a series of short, repetitive episodes that Lévi-Strauss likened to the
roman-feuilleton
—the serialized novels issued in newspaper supplements, a kind of nineteenth-century equivalent to pulp fiction. For him, the ultimate heir to the collapse of mythic thought was the modern novel. Trapped inside tight genres, with repetitive characters and motifs, the novel fed off mythic elements ripped from their original context, as Lévi-Strauss explained with this lyrical image:
la pensée sauvage
, the point at which “the science of the concrete” began admitting abstract thought. Up against the periphery, mythic thought began to degrade, its narrative collapsing into a series of short, repetitive episodes that Lévi-Strauss likened to the
roman-feuilleton
—the serialized novels issued in newspaper supplements, a kind of nineteenth-century equivalent to pulp fiction. For him, the ultimate heir to the collapse of mythic thought was the modern novel. Trapped inside tight genres, with repetitive characters and motifs, the novel fed off mythic elements ripped from their original context, as Lévi-Strauss explained with this lyrical image:
The novelist drifts at random among these floating fragments that the warmth of history has, as it were, melted off from the ice-pack. He collects these scattered elements and reuses them as they come along, being at the same time dimly aware that they originate from some other structure, and that they will become increasingly rare as he is carried along by a current different from the one which was holding them together.
72
Earlier, in conversations with Georges Charbonnier and in the “Overture” of
Le Cru et le cuit
, Lévi-Strauss had predicted the death of painting and the onset of a new, apictorial age. Avant-garde music, too, was drifting out of reach of the listener, like a heavenly body accelerating into the distance in an expanding universe.
73
Now the novel was fading away, sated on images stolen from the dawn of culture. Lévi-Strauss’s vision was of a cultural apocalypse, an annihilation as severe as the environmental collapse that Western expansion was generating. This profound pessimism was wedded to a yearning for the failing powers of
la pensée sauvage
, a style of thought once dominant but now barely surviving in the crevices of modernity.
Le Cru et le cuit
, Lévi-Strauss had predicted the death of painting and the onset of a new, apictorial age. Avant-garde music, too, was drifting out of reach of the listener, like a heavenly body accelerating into the distance in an expanding universe.
73
Now the novel was fading away, sated on images stolen from the dawn of culture. Lévi-Strauss’s vision was of a cultural apocalypse, an annihilation as severe as the environmental collapse that Western expansion was generating. This profound pessimism was wedded to a yearning for the failing powers of
la pensée sauvage
, a style of thought once dominant but now barely surviving in the crevices of modernity.
In the age of entropy, all that was left was to climb onto the treadmill of structural exegesis in an attempt to relive vicariously a purer, more integrated thought by unearthing its formal properties. And it was in this contemplative mood that Lévi-Strauss approached the fourth and final volume of the mighty
Mythologiques
project. Without warning, though, the spell of structuralist meditation was broken by a sudden irruption at the heart of French academic life.
Mythologiques
project. Without warning, though, the spell of structuralist meditation was broken by a sudden irruption at the heart of French academic life.
11
Convergence
In everything I have written on mythology I wanted to show that one never arrives at a final meaning. Does that ever happen in life?
CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS
1
1
IN THE FIRST WEEKS of May 1968 the streets around the Collège de France became the stage for the famous
événements
. Near the offices of the Laboratoire d’anthropologie student groups carrying pipes and wooden planks and using garbage can lids as shields charged into rows of CRS riot police, in a boiling-over of dissatisfactions with an antiquated university system and the ultraconservatism of de Gaulle’s France. Hails of cobblestones pelted the ranks of the police, with tear gas canisters streaming back in the other direction.
événements
. Near the offices of the Laboratoire d’anthropologie student groups carrying pipes and wooden planks and using garbage can lids as shields charged into rows of CRS riot police, in a boiling-over of dissatisfactions with an antiquated university system and the ultraconservatism of de Gaulle’s France. Hails of cobblestones pelted the ranks of the police, with tear gas canisters streaming back in the other direction.
After nights of rioting, the atmospheric Latin Quarter was a mess. Protestors had dug up piles of cobblestones to be used as ammunition dumps, uprooted trees and pulled down fences. The remains of torched cars, tipped onto their sides, zigzagged down one street in a series of makeshift barricades. Throughout the
quartier
the walls were daubed with graffiti that would become famous: “
Sous les pavés, la plage
” (Under the cobblestones, the beach), “
La poésie est dans la rue
” (Poetry is in the streets) and “
J’ai quelque chose à dire mais je ne sais pas quoi
” (I have something to say, but I don’t know what). Between the clashes students walked through the streets, putting up posters, holding sit-ins and convening discussion groups. By mid-May the Sorbonne was occupied, and in a separate dispute one-third of the French workforce was on strike, as de Gaulle’s regime tottered. In the most theatrical way possible, historical forces had burst back on the scene, irrupting from within a grid of conservative repression.
quartier
the walls were daubed with graffiti that would become famous: “
Sous les pavés, la plage
” (Under the cobblestones, the beach), “
La poésie est dans la rue
” (Poetry is in the streets) and “
J’ai quelque chose à dire mais je ne sais pas quoi
” (I have something to say, but I don’t know what). Between the clashes students walked through the streets, putting up posters, holding sit-ins and convening discussion groups. By mid-May the Sorbonne was occupied, and in a separate dispute one-third of the French workforce was on strike, as de Gaulle’s regime tottered. In the most theatrical way possible, historical forces had burst back on the scene, irrupting from within a grid of conservative repression.
The semiotician Algirdas Greimas remembered bumping into Lévi-Strauss as the protest movement got under way. “It’s over,” Lévi-Strauss told him. “All scientific projects will be set back twenty years.”
2
In his youth, Lévi-Strauss would have been manning the barricades. Now, approaching his sixtieth birthday, he wandered around the occupied Sorbonne as a complete outsider, looking on with what he described as “an ethnographer’s eye.” He withdrew to his apartment, where he waited to be recalled by his colleagues at the Laboratoire. His only involvement was a meeting held with, among others, the liberal public intellectual Raymond Aron and the classicist Jean-Pierre Vernant, in which they passed a motion condemning the use of violence. “I found May 1968 repugnant,” he later remarked. He was particularly upset by the wanton destruction in the streets in the Latin Quarter, the felled trees and desecrated buildings. To Lévi-Strauss, it was a return to a kind of mob rule. “I still have the
tripe
[guts] of a man of the left. But at my age I know it is
tripe
and not brain,” Lévi-Strauss had said in 1967.
3
It now seemed that even in his
tripe
he was a conservative.
2
In his youth, Lévi-Strauss would have been manning the barricades. Now, approaching his sixtieth birthday, he wandered around the occupied Sorbonne as a complete outsider, looking on with what he described as “an ethnographer’s eye.” He withdrew to his apartment, where he waited to be recalled by his colleagues at the Laboratoire. His only involvement was a meeting held with, among others, the liberal public intellectual Raymond Aron and the classicist Jean-Pierre Vernant, in which they passed a motion condemning the use of violence. “I found May 1968 repugnant,” he later remarked. He was particularly upset by the wanton destruction in the streets in the Latin Quarter, the felled trees and desecrated buildings. To Lévi-Strauss, it was a return to a kind of mob rule. “I still have the
tripe
[guts] of a man of the left. But at my age I know it is
tripe
and not brain,” Lévi-Strauss had said in 1967.
3
It now seemed that even in his
tripe
he was a conservative.
It was Sartre’s moment—the only intellectual with the credibility to enter the occupied Sorbonne and, with the aid of a hastily improvised sound system, connect with the crowds of students who spilled out into the corridors and pavements. With the exception of Michel Foucault,
4
whose relative youth and growing sense of political engagement gave him kudos, the so-called structuralist thinkers were seen as a part of a discredited, elitist university system. This was no time for abstract analyses of myth or a semiology of narrative.
4
whose relative youth and growing sense of political engagement gave him kudos, the so-called structuralist thinkers were seen as a part of a discredited, elitist university system. This was no time for abstract analyses of myth or a semiology of narrative.
Barthes’s and Greimas’s students rebelled, setting up their own more politicized discussion groups. Barred from speaking during their own seminars, these great thinkers were reduced to answering questions when required. One day a student scrawled, “Structures don’t take to the streets,” across the blackboard; another day someone pinned up a poster reading, “Barthes says: structures don’t take to the streets. We say: neither does Barthes”—a slogan that subsequently appeared on lecture-theater blackboards across the United States during Greimas’s lecture tour in the autumn. A sensitive man who feared crowds and violent protest, Barthes was wounded by this sudden turn against him and his work, especially since he considered himself more authentically grounded in Marxism and the Left than his unruly students.
5
5
Some felt a sense of schadenfreude at what they saw as the sudden exposure of the limitations of structuralist thought. The psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu, who had split from Lacan accusing him of obscurantism, felt vindicated, declaring: “It is not only a student strike in Paris . . . but a death warrant of structuralism as well.” Later in the year
Le Monde
published a supplement entitled “
Le structuralisme, a-t-il été tué par Mai ’68?
” (Has structuralism been killed by May ’68?),
6
in which longtime Lévi-Strauss skeptic Georges Balandier wrote, “The whole idea of 1968 belied the structural world and structural man.”
7
Much of this was in the broad brushstroke spirit of the times, with its sloganeering and political posturing, but May ’68 did indeed jar with the feel of structuralism. France had been rocked by the return of the subject, the return of history writ large. Structuralism, broadly defined, along with the emerging post-structuralist thought, would remain dominant in the French academy in the years to come because those influenced by Lévi-Strauss had all risen to hold key positions in the university system, but the optimism around the project had been punctured.
Le Monde
published a supplement entitled “
Le structuralisme, a-t-il été tué par Mai ’68?
” (Has structuralism been killed by May ’68?),
6
in which longtime Lévi-Strauss skeptic Georges Balandier wrote, “The whole idea of 1968 belied the structural world and structural man.”
7
Much of this was in the broad brushstroke spirit of the times, with its sloganeering and political posturing, but May ’68 did indeed jar with the feel of structuralism. France had been rocked by the return of the subject, the return of history writ large. Structuralism, broadly defined, along with the emerging post-structuralist thought, would remain dominant in the French academy in the years to come because those influenced by Lévi-Strauss had all risen to hold key positions in the university system, but the optimism around the project had been punctured.
Even Lévi-Strauss felt the turning of the tide:
In the following months, I clearly sensed that the press and the so-called cultivated public which had hailed structuralism—wrongly moreover—as the birth of a philosophy of modern times turned abruptly away from it, with a kind of spite at having bet on the wrong horse. It’s true, the May youth proved to be far removed from structuralism and much closer to positions, even though old ones, which Sartre defined right after World War II.
8
But at the same time he welcomed the respite from the media frenzy that had enveloped structuralism in the run-up to May ’68. He believed that his work existed on another plane entirely, floating high above the political squabbles of a changing France. May ’68 was merely an inconvenience, an interruption, which, along with a bout of illness that he suffered the following year, had slowed the pace of his work on the
Mythologiques
project. As he began writing his fourth and final volume, his mind was elsewhere. “I was a monk,” he said of the period.
9
Mythologiques
project. As he began writing his fourth and final volume, his mind was elsewhere. “I was a monk,” he said of the period.
9
DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY of his father and to his mother (who, then eighty-five, had lived to see her son’s success),
L’Homme nu
opened with a pan across the northwest of the United States. From the Rockies to the windswept Pacific coast of Oregon and Washington states, it glided over volcanic folds, Jurassic rock formations, deep gorges and basalt outcrops. From here, Lévi-Strauss’s journey would work its way up the coast, crossing the border into British Columbia to straits and fjords around Vancouver Island. Over the course of the
Mythologiques
quartet, tropical forests had turned to prairies, the grasslands to estuaries and ocean passages. The jaguars, tapirs, parrots and monkeys that had peopled the central Brazilian narratives were by now grizzly bears, otters, salmon and woodpeckers. Although the characters had changed, they still trod the same structural pathways, hewn through the byways of a panhuman subconscious.
L’Homme nu
opened with a pan across the northwest of the United States. From the Rockies to the windswept Pacific coast of Oregon and Washington states, it glided over volcanic folds, Jurassic rock formations, deep gorges and basalt outcrops. From here, Lévi-Strauss’s journey would work its way up the coast, crossing the border into British Columbia to straits and fjords around Vancouver Island. Over the course of the
Mythologiques
quartet, tropical forests had turned to prairies, the grasslands to estuaries and ocean passages. The jaguars, tapirs, parrots and monkeys that had peopled the central Brazilian narratives were by now grizzly bears, otters, salmon and woodpeckers. Although the characters had changed, they still trod the same structural pathways, hewn through the byways of a panhuman subconscious.
Based on lectures given at the Collège de France between 1965 and 1971,
10
L’Homme nu
was a difficult book to write. After the third volume Lévi-Strauss had feared he would never finish the series, so complex had the analyses become. Each new strain of mythic thought begged another, each set of myths posed fresh questions, suggesting further axes sheering off in new directions. At the beginning of the Second World War, Lévi-Strauss had criticized Marcel Granet’s
Catégories matrimoniales et relations de proximité dans la Chine ancienne
for its overly elaborate attempts at modeling kin relations. Now he appeared to be falling into the same trap. He had been striving to achieve order from chaos, but had found himself stumbling through a set of interconnected chambers of logic, lost in a maze of reason. If this was not to be a Sisyphean task—like Saussure’s Norse research—Lévi-Strauss had to be pragmatic. What eventuated was a book brimming with ideas, some ambitious, all-encompassing summaries of the
Mythologiques
project, others lightly sketched as notes for further research.
10
L’Homme nu
was a difficult book to write. After the third volume Lévi-Strauss had feared he would never finish the series, so complex had the analyses become. Each new strain of mythic thought begged another, each set of myths posed fresh questions, suggesting further axes sheering off in new directions. At the beginning of the Second World War, Lévi-Strauss had criticized Marcel Granet’s
Catégories matrimoniales et relations de proximité dans la Chine ancienne
for its overly elaborate attempts at modeling kin relations. Now he appeared to be falling into the same trap. He had been striving to achieve order from chaos, but had found himself stumbling through a set of interconnected chambers of logic, lost in a maze of reason. If this was not to be a Sisyphean task—like Saussure’s Norse research—Lévi-Strauss had to be pragmatic. What eventuated was a book brimming with ideas, some ambitious, all-encompassing summaries of the
Mythologiques
project, others lightly sketched as notes for further research.
As fragmentary and imperfect as the
Mythologiques
had been, by the end of
L’Homme nu
the mythic substance had begun to yield. By strange symmetry, the further Lévi-Strauss had traveled from his starting point in central Brazil, the more structurally similar the myths had become. As he moved up the Pacific coast from northern California to British Columbia, from the Klamath-Modoc to the Salish indigenous groups, he began to make out a kind of structural convergence. The original Bororo bird-nester myth with which Lévi-Strauss had led off the series reemerged, but as with the analogy of optical projections through a light box that he had used in relation to “La Geste d’Asdiwal,” many of the “mythemes” had flipped over.
Mythologiques
had been, by the end of
L’Homme nu
the mythic substance had begun to yield. By strange symmetry, the further Lévi-Strauss had traveled from his starting point in central Brazil, the more structurally similar the myths had become. As he moved up the Pacific coast from northern California to British Columbia, from the Klamath-Modoc to the Salish indigenous groups, he began to make out a kind of structural convergence. The original Bororo bird-nester myth with which Lévi-Strauss had led off the series reemerged, but as with the analogy of optical projections through a light box that he had used in relation to “La Geste d’Asdiwal,” many of the “mythemes” had flipped over.
In broad narrative outline, the original Bororo myth (M
1
) and the Klamath variations (M
530
, M
531
), for instance, were uncannily similar. Both told the story of a young man or a boy tricked into climbing to a high place to capture birds. After being stranded, he is rescued by animals and returns to seek revenge on his deceiver. But in Lévi-Strauss’s reading, each element in the narrative had been inverted. In the Bororo myth the birds were macaws; in Klamath myth, eagles, a prototypical fruit-eating bird for a generic bird of prey. The boy in M
1
has his buttocks chewed off by vultures, while in the Klamath variation he is starved, hence privation through external aggression versus internal decay. In the South American myth he is saved by male cannibalistic vultures; in the North American ones his rescuers are harmless butterfly women. At the end of the Bororo myth the hero’s revenge is to call on the rains, while in Klamath variations the hero summons a firestorm.
11
Taken together, the myths fit together like pieces of a puzzle.
1
) and the Klamath variations (M
530
, M
531
), for instance, were uncannily similar. Both told the story of a young man or a boy tricked into climbing to a high place to capture birds. After being stranded, he is rescued by animals and returns to seek revenge on his deceiver. But in Lévi-Strauss’s reading, each element in the narrative had been inverted. In the Bororo myth the birds were macaws; in Klamath myth, eagles, a prototypical fruit-eating bird for a generic bird of prey. The boy in M
1
has his buttocks chewed off by vultures, while in the Klamath variation he is starved, hence privation through external aggression versus internal decay. In the South American myth he is saved by male cannibalistic vultures; in the North American ones his rescuers are harmless butterfly women. At the end of the Bororo myth the hero’s revenge is to call on the rains, while in Klamath variations the hero summons a firestorm.
11
Taken together, the myths fit together like pieces of a puzzle.
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