Review: Lvi-Strauss and Myth: A Review of Mythologiques Author(s): Albert Cook Source: MLN, Vol. 91, No.

5, Centennial Issue: Responsibilities of the Critic (Oct., 1976), pp. 1099-1116 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2907118 Accessed: 31/08/2010 18:33
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhup. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to MLN.

http://www.jstor.org

REVIEWS
LEVI-STRAUSS AND MYTH: A REVIEW OF Mythologiques'
Mental processes are queer. (It is as if one said: "The clock tellsus the time.Whattimeis, is not yet settled.And as forwhatone tellsthe timefor-that doesn't come in here.") New York: Macmillan, 1968; No. 363.
Ludwig

Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations,

Through our time's ever-increasing(but perhaps compensatorily"inspecificationof social function,and hence of intellectual terdisciplinary") the enterprisepracticed by areas, the old enterpriseof world-construct, Hegel and Schelling and even Herbert Spencer, to say nothing of semiempirical systemslike those of Marx and Freud, has passed from the narrowingview of philosophers into the analyzing conspectus of anthropologists.Cosmologystillhas gone begging,and ithas founda home among the anthropologists only by distancing and disguising itself as The or earlier culture radicallyincapacitatedfor performOther-a different thatTylor or Radcliffe-Brown, ing on itself the generalizingclassifications Durkheim or Mauss or Malinowski,Levi-Bruhl or Levi-Straussperform upon them, though not upon their own culture directly.In the home culture of the anthropologist, to be sure, there are residues (in the whichresemble sense of the term),practicessurviving nineteenth-century culture. There must be residues, since those of the alien, more primitive the whole anthropologicalenterprisefindsitsjustificationin the analogy or homologybetween Us and Other. And so all the comparison between Us and Other is kept in the form of something like an enthymeme,a logical proof whose conclusion remains unexpressed. The differencebetween the cultures must be preserved through distance, too, as much or nature of its presentations. more, in the rigorouslyenthymematic In the Mythologiques as elsewhere, Levi-Strauss follows the canons of the investigation ethnographicinquiryin keeping the object of systematic Other; for our culture the analyzed analogical traitsremain random resi'Claude Levi-Strauss: Mythologiques The Raw and The Cooked,New York: Harper & Row, 1970 (RC) FromHoneyto Ashes,New York: Harper & Row, 1973 (HA) de table,Paris: Plon, 1968 (OMT) L'Originedes manieres L'Hommenu, Paris: Plon, 1971 (HN) TheSavage Mind,Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1966 (SM) Referencesto these books will be indicated by the parenthesized abbreviations. MLN 91 (1976) 1099-1152 ? 1976 byTheJohns Press Hopkins University Copyright

1100

REVIEWS

dues. They must remain residues for the enthymematic presentationto have itsforce; theymustpreserve theirdiscontinuity as random examples so thatthe magisterially continuousprimitive cultureswithwhichtheyare being compared will retain a difference-in-likeness, lest the likeness-indifferenceforce the discussion wholly onto the terrain of theory. The depth psychologist, Freudian or Jungian,stressesthe continuity of likeness betweenthe structures of mythand the functions of the unconscious,thus collapsinganother distinction, thatbetween functionand structure, which the anthropologistis intentupon maintaining. The anthropologicalquest and the inward psychological quest do double back upon one another. The psychologist would be an ethnologist(Totem and Taboo),and vice versa. What theyboth dwell on bringsabout thisstate of affairs:myth. And myth, in turn,formulableonlyin language, refersto the controls of language both for its formulationand, inescapably, its analysis. The difference between civilizedand primitive societiescan no more be abrogated than can theirlikeness,nor is the dialecticbetween the likeness and the difference establishedby a simple acceptance or rejectionof either or both. Put in termsof oral and written, the epistemologicalprocedures of Derrida (L'Ecriture et la Diffe'rence; Paris, Seuil, 1967) insiston likeness by an archi-icriture in the phenomenologyof perception.But then establishing we would have simplyto redefine oral cultures as having a dialectic differentfrom our own between the fact or equivalent of writingand the actuality of speech, while operating froman epistemologicalbase like our own. Levi-Straussfocussesthe difference between our own thoughtprocesses and the primitive, and also the fundamental likeness between them, by choosing as the object of his investigationa societywhere preciselythe "divergence" (that is, the difference) from his own will be the most "marked (accuseie)" by the rules of his (different)method and reveal a pattern(riseau) of basic and universal laws (contraintes) (RC; p. 11). This "supreme gymnastics" of seeking likenessby applyingdifference findsthe likenessas a kind of deep structureunder a surface structure of different social facts. Levi-Strauss'sprocedure, however, locks likeness away from difference and fixeshim in a series of discontinuities. Levi-Strausshimselffeels (RC; p. 9) that the ethnographicdisciplineof havingchosen an externalsocietyas his object rebutsof itselfthe charge of formalism and idealism; he feels that he escapes Ricoeur's charge thathe presentsa Kantianismwithout transcendental objectbecause he has avoided havingthe mind (esprit) go throughthe solipsistic process of imitating itself by taking itselfas object, a thing among things. He begs the questionthough his doing so does not diminish the considerable power of his myth-analysis-bylinkingthe "snare of personal identity"to the alleged 'falsehood' of the differencebetween civilizedand primitive (SM; p. 249),

M L N

1101

as though a casual humanisticassertionwould do dutyfor the theoretical questions which are fundamentalto his enterprise. It is in these termsthatLevi-Straussattemptsa refutation of Sartre,for an ethnocentricfailure to perceive at once the special character (difference)of WesternIndustrialSocietyand the common humanity underlying it-for in fact not possessing an external object, like the ethnologist. Redefiningpractical and dialectical reason as a single enterprise(though the Mythologiques itselfoffersa dialectic of circular algorithms, as he calls them, distinctfrom mere empirical inference), he leans heavily on the truismthatconsciousness needs some object-"other than itself."He reasserts this principle to nullifySartre's enterprise,as though there were a kindof privilegedobject before the mind in the formof an alien society;as though the Star-Husband Tale were somehow exempt fromthe (likeness of) philosophicalcanons whichapply to the consciousnesswhen itis itsown object. Levi-Strausstries to demonstratea deep structureof likeness between the thought-processes thatproduce mythin his primitive culturesand the logical thoughtprocesses of our own. Sartre,by contrast, is pledged to the difference betweenour cultureand more primitive ones. This bias, in fact, appears even in Sartre'sphilosophical discussionsabout the Self,whichhe presentsas perpetually differentiating the Moi in time,pour-soi linked to and inseparablydifferent fromen-soi(L'Etreet le neant; Paris, Gallimard, 1943). Levi-Strausspostulates the unconscious as a mediator between self and other (Introduction d l'oeuvre de MarcelMauss, in Marcel Mauss, Sociologie et anthropologie, Paris, 1968, XXIX). Yet thisdoes not resolve the philosophical questionof interplay between selfand other. Self and other,in factmay be seen as a false similarity/dissimilarity pair. They are similaras human but the other is dissimilarin being distinctfrom self. Self and other are indissociable but at the same time they are reversible; the self of one person is 'other' to the self of a second person. When he addresses this question, Levi-Strauss'divide-and-conquerbinarystrategy, pretendingto be exhaustivewhen in the last analysisit is merelytaxonomic,makes him, by a long detour,what he accuses Sartreof being, "the prisonerof his own Cogito" (SM; p. 249). Sartre's "Hell is others",in its own dialectic of likeness and difference, can be at once an "ethnographictestimony" (OMT; p. 422) and a self-consistent conclusion; the argument of cultural relativism does not answer L'Etre et le niant. And if myths, being regulatory, have a moralfunction as well as a logic of qualitiesand a logic of forms(ibid.),then what they mediate would include the avoidance of a potential chaos not entirelydissimilarfromthe metaphorical"hell" of Sartre. The subject-object in any case, when dealing withany kindof distinction, linguistic system-and mythis a kind of linguisticsystem-is posteriorto the distinction between the signifierand the signified(posterior in lan-

1102

REVIEWS

guage but prior in perception,unless perception is taken to be dependent on language). Thus, while the discourse is going on, thereis no privileged in removal fromit. "Reason" participatesin rational (linguistic)structures the same way that mana participatesnonverballyin its object, though of course the absence of verbal expression does make some difference. anthropolIt does not matterthat the dialectical reason and structural ogy could offer definitionsof each other (Jean Pouillon, "Sartreet LiviL'Arc 26, 1965, p. 57). They do not "exclude each other radically Strauss," and the criteriafor deterbecause theyinclude each other reciprocally", of their inclusions and exclusions would themselves miningthe partiality of a sortof transcendentalsocial dialecticthat have to reston a definition neitheroffers. The realm of myth,like the realms of art and religion,does not lend attempt, because the sign-systems distinction easilyto a subject-object itself by theirverycoherence and economy, to provide a means for bypassing and the objectification As Adorno says,"The subjectifying thatdistinction. derNeuen Musik,Frankfurt,1958; p. of music are the same." (Philosophie 145) among his own series of stressesthe difference Levi-Strausssignificantly enterprises,where we may ourselves see the likeness. He sees intellectual himselfas a "neolithic" exhausting an intellectualterrain and then dethe same remarkableforcultivating camping,when he is, on the contrary, ground. The anthropologizing philosopher is well recapitulated in the philosophizing ethnologist,and his 1945 article "StructuralAnalysis in pp. 29-53) alAnthropology; Linguisticsand in Anthropology"(Structural ready lays out the procedures of binary analysis and systemichomology Unlike Freud or Aristothathe has carried so veryfarin the Mythologiques. he has applied himselfwithlittledeviatle or Heidegger or Wittgenstein, period to a splendid, if singleminded,explicationof tionover a thirty-year the implicit. An ethnologist(!) who avoids going to the theatrebecause he does not like the illusion of pryinginto others' lives (Georges Charbonnier,EntreParis: Plon, 1961; p. 90), Levi-Straussin his tiens avec Claude Livi-Strauss, of the interplay too, would tend to oversimplify own conceptionof himself, Levi-Straussposits and likenessbetweencivilizedand primitive. difference not only that the human thought process always works through a homologous structureand code, whatever the message, but also that bias though Aristotle, formulation, naryalgorithmsare theirmost scientific had been rebornin the formof of the Organon, withthe predication-classes For Levi-Strauss is an anti-Deleuze: where the latter a cyberneticist. eroticizescyberneticmodels (Allen Mandelbaum's phrase in conversation the unconscious thatFreud has idenhe cyberneticizes fortheAnti-Oedipe), tifiedas erotic. And he is also a sort of anti-Derrida and anti-Foucault; as fundamental,Leviwhere they see riftsand fracturesand diffe'rances

M L N

1103

Strauss factorsthese out as new mediatingtermsor whole systemic inversions,when he does not ascribe them to the long-termprocess of running down, of "entropology",as he calls it. In StructuralAnthropology Levi-Strauss had systematized RadcliffeBrown's analysisof kinshipclasses by centralizinga ratio of relationships ratherthan relationshipsthemselvesas a formulawhichwould order any known set of kinship rules: "the relation between maternal uncle and nephew is to the relation between brother and sisteras the relation between fatherand son is to thatbetween husband and wife" (p. 40). Here and elsewhere,too, he had defined totemicsystems as modes of classification,of mediatingone or more kindsof relatingthe general to the particular. The Mythologiques subsume both these procedures, that of ratios and that of classificatory modes, while including and deploying kinship and totemicsystems, along withmuch else. Much earlier he had presented the Oedipus myth as the establishing of a ratio to account forand comprisean instability, to finda satisfactory transition between thistheory (mankind's autochthonous andtheknowledge origin) that human beings are actually bornfrom theunionof manand woman. Although theproblem obviously cannot be solved, theOedipus myth provides a kindof logicaltool whichrelatestheoriginal problem-born from one or bornfrom two?-tothederivative problem: bornfrom different or bornfrom same?Bya correlation ofthistype, theoverrating ofbloodrelations is to theunderrating of bloodrelations as theattempt to escapeautochthony is to theimpossibility to succeedin it. (Structural Anthropology; p. 212). In the Mythologiques likenessand differenceamong individualitemsof a mythic story(mythemes), or homologyand contrast, generate the pairings whichpermitthe ordering of elementsin nature and culture,while at the same time revealing the rigor of the ordering principle. Thus the sky, standingin opposition to the earth,is mediated by wateron the one hand and by the fireof the sky,brought to earth in cooking fire,on the other. Water itselfis the inversionof firein the South American mythic systems withwhichhe begins,but also, homologously,throughall the transformations in the mythologiesof the tribesof the Great Plains and the Pacific Northwest. Not onlyis waterthe opposite of firebecause one produces raw vegetable food and the other cooks animal food (eitherby boiling in water or by roasting directly, the formerraising a possible confusion with the rotten as an intermediatenatural term between the natural raw and the culturalcooked). Each containsin itselfthe binaryopposition of a creative side and a destructive side. Water is the realm of the dead in the Bororo and a place where one drowns or gets inundated as well as where myths, fishand plantsare produced. The cooking firemimicsthe approach of the celestial fire to earth, but then (RC; p. 289 and passim) this implies the "Thus closes a vastsystem, the invariant danger of universalconflagration:

1104

REVIEWS

elements of which can always be represented in the form of a combat between earth and skyfor the conquest of fire." (HN; p. 535). The termsundergo multiplications of the binaryaxes, since the principle of likeness can easily shiftin logic. The jaguar resembles man as a hunter,(RC; p. 98) but is his opposite as a natural masterof fire;thus he is an opposite of the frog.He is an equivalentor transform of the porcupine, the beaver, the squirrel, and the anteater, with whom he wars in the heavens (HA; p. 134). He is also homologous in functionto the bear of the Pacific Northwest.The axes permute-"honey/game, male/female, raw/ cooked, spouse/affine, literalsense/figurative sense, diachrony/synchrony, dry/wet, high/low, life/death" (HA; p. 165). Bilateral symmetry in the very physicalstructureof certainanimals makes them "already revealed as algorithmsfor empirical deduction... elementaryparts of the vast combinatorymatrixwhich is the mythic system"(HN; p. 498): ants, squirrels, rayfish, the Morpho butterfly, and grouse, are especiallyadaptable to binaryinterpretation because of their physicalappearance. Mediating termsare the operators of the combinatory process. As both fire and water mediate between earth and sky, so the zoologic order mediates between the cosmic and the social (RC; p. 327). This implicit Hegelianism,is already prefiguredin Levi-Strauss'sdescriptionof his constantmethod (Tristes New York: Atheneum, 1974; p. 51) "conTropiques, trastingtwo traditional views .., thanks to a third view .., reduced by verbalartifice to complementary aspects of one and the same reality:form and subject-matter (fond),container and content,being and appearance, and discontinuity, continuity essence and existence, etc." The mediating term,say the act of cooking, does not disappear, though sometimesin a functionit will be suppressed, as the wife of the jaguar (RC; p. 83) is necessarily suppressed afterhaving served between men who used the raw and thejaguar who knew the cooked. The new termcould be taken as the locus of a whole system;marriage,a union of earth and skyin miniature (RC; pp. 328-329), produces a birth, which itself serves in turn as a mediator directly,without a Hegelian process; the five senses are five interrelated codes, where taste,in its rapport withthe alimentary mediation of nature and culture,holds a privileged position (RC; p. 164). The binarycontrasts, mediated, allow for transpositions fromset to set, "from noise-making(vacarme)to eclipses, from eclipses to incest,fromincest to unruliness (disordre), and from unruliness to the colored plumage (la couleur)of birds" (RC; p. 312). These processes in the formationof myth serve to "bear witnessto the fact that there is an isomorphic relationbetween two typesof order, which may be either the cosmic order and the culturalorder; the cosmic or meteorologicalorder and the social order; or one or otherof the orders above and the zoological order,whichis situated on an intermediatelevel in relation to them." (RC; p. 316). In all this

M L N

1105

Levi-Straussnever loses sightof the particularintricaciesof the combinations,which can most vividlybe seen in theiractual formulation: of the hero brings abouttheappearanceof the In M134, the disembowelling (and in thebasicmyth Pleiades(in the sky)and of fish(in the water).In M134 ofthewater) ofacquatic plants (on thesurface dereference], theappearance [mythe one can Behind thesemetamorphoses is also the resultof a disembowelling. thehighand the axis: on theone handbetween oppositional discern a two-fold downbelow plants float on high 'on theair',as theaquatic thestars float low, since and content, sincewater handbetween container on thewater; and on theother andvegetthefruit speaking, water-melons (and,generally contains fish, whereas the which determines The disembowelling water. ablesofthedry season)contain in thatfishing in M134 are all the morecomparable thearrival of thefish mines thedryseason.It is true during takeplacechiefly and thegathering ofwildfruit reference to thetheme of no morethana barely perceptible thatM134 contains the thehusband, to be rid of thewifeafter thegirlmad abouthoney:wishing honey tree(i.e.,a placewhere herto getinsidea hollow Indianpersuades killer (HA; p. agouti3 of catching wouldnormally be lookedfor),buton the pretext 264). in Guyanese as we know, since, to theagoutiis notaccidental 3 The reference of thetreeof life. with thetapiras master p. 65), italternates myths (Ogilvie, Moreover, the armature of an entire systemincluding paired termsis convertible,at a further,second level of abstraction,into the armature, point for point, of another. The systemwhose axis is the cooking fire on the axis of into a system (unitingskyand earth) (S1) can be transformed meat (S2), which can be shown to have its inversionon the axis of ornaments (S-2). The former are related, as means to end, to still another the axis of whichis the tobacco of his title(S3). The inverseof that, system, in turn,is the systemaligned upon honey (S-3) (HA; pp. 29-32). models whichperformthese transthemselvesare cybernetic The myths formations;the fact of conversion is in no way dependent, Levi-Strauss asserts,on the order of events. Paradigm always takes precedence over syntagm. encomMoreover,at stillanother,thirdlevel, the whole series of myths desOiseaux)series of Brazil, the Bird-Nester(De'nicheur passingthe systems, the Canadian Star-Husband series, and the Plains Star-Husband series, forma vast closed system, transformable, throughthe deformations(HN; pp. 528-531) theyevidence, each into the other ("Le MytheUnique", HN; in itself a code, one of a power constitutes pp. 502-558). "A group of myths superior to each of those it utilizes. .. a veritableintercode" (HN; p. 38). does of Max Muller) "the myth Thus (Levi-Strausssaysin partialrefutation nor does it result not admit of reductionby any singlecode taken by itself, fromthe addition of several."
origin of water-melons in M109-M219, and the disembowelling which deter-

1106

REVIEWS

runningfromrandom to ordered In these threelevels of binarysystem, carries the day diversity (HA; p. 176), from polar to cyclicto transitive, over unity(SM; p. 116). The alimentary, the astronomical,and the sociological codes are interbut "there is no hidden unity[ ...] connected by the agency of the myth, ad infinitum"(RC; p. 5). In the Themes can be split up [se dedoublent] of the WesternHemisphere, extensiveclosed terrainof all the mythologies Levi-Straussoffersa solutionwhich parallels his own praise of Philippine and botanical taxonomy,"The problem of the relationbetweencontinuous discontinuous thus receivesa solutionin termsof originsince the universeis representedas a continuummade of successiveoppositions" (SM; p. 139). transformation The Mythologiques allow for gaps and lapses, "Any mythic should be characterized (seraitmarqui) by an imbalance which is both a and a sign thatit is complete" (HA; p. guarantee of its vitality (dynamisme) diagram,"an ideal 259). And at the same time,thereis a three-dimensional sphere" as Levi-Strausscalls it,on whichone could locate any given mythfromany starting formulation: "the mythological curve closes and permits, version,the recapturingof all the others, set in the natural order of the which engender them. This complex curve,it should still transformations works at what I have called his secondbe noted [his printed illustration level mythsystem]... delimitsa diffusesemantic field, on which at any point on the interiorof the sphere, one could locate the mythsalready studied,those simplyknown,or even those whichare possible." (OMT; p. 83). sees his studyof a vast delimitedarea as systemaLevi-Strauss justifiably in focus. It is a kind of ethnologicalequivaticin purportthoughhistorical lentforThucydides, if not forthe Einsteinwhom he asks foranthropology Anafter Rivers had been its Galileo and Mauss its Newton (Structural elaborated enunciation of laws whose recurthropology; p. 159), a firmly a ktema eis aei. sivenessdemonstratestheirgenerality, -2Levi-Strauss,at the same time,would stressthe differencebetween his assertingthat historymust use a code to enterpriseand historiography, analyze its object (SM; p. 258). Of course any linguisticconstructmust. Moreover, he characterizes the practise of historiographyas especially caught in a dilemma (p. 262) of biography versus history. In moving onto the ground of myth,however, Levi-Strausshas moved onto the ground, he well knows, where non-literatesocieties formulate theirsense of time; historiography itselfis the product of literatecultures. The analyses proper to totemand kinship,whichare atemporal or at least simplyrecursivewhen theyare applied to myth,produce in mytha message akin to those structures.If "all these mythstransmitthe same mes-

M L N

1107

sage" (HA; p. 148), it is a message about marriage rules and alliances, kinship and totems and exchange systems,the management of seasonal huntingand agriculturaltechniques. At the veryoutsetof his enterprisehe declares thathe willavoid preconceived classifications "-cosmological,seasonal, divine, heroic, technological, etc." (RC; p. 4)-but the ones I have italicizedemerge in the course of his protracted analyses as primary,the others at best as secondary. LeviStrauss'snativeinformants one feels sure, would give priority themselves, and so death and to the otherworldly ones, in which time is irreversible, fearand the riskof huntingand mating;all thatis involvedin "the sacred", as a procedural dominates.Leaving out the sacred slides fromfunctioning of the sortof termhe findsto be strategy into "proving" the dispensibility too plenaryfor signification. The whole perceptual universe of mythis mapped as an unconscious in its theoretical science not different justificationfrom Frazer's sympatheticand imitativemagic, though far more powerful in the manifold calculus of its applicability.We have a relation,but-Levi-Strauss himself tellsus as much-we lack, he would say we must lack, a specificmeaning abound. Some sense of mystery forthe metamorphosesin whichthe myths is evoked, stillexploited in the considerable literatureof metamorphosis, when the boundary between animal and human is in some way crossed. When Maba (Honey) the wife of M233 changes into a bee, the algorithms which may link maritalexchanges to the gatheringof a complex natural choose the route pervasively product do not offera reason whythe myths of transformations between the animal kingdom and the human. Whatever networksof significancemay be activated,there is a radical discontinuity between the two levels. While he takes Kroeber to task (HN; p. 95) ratherthan dialectiforassuming that mythsreflectethnographicreality, cal relations that "often violate that reality,"Levi-Strauss'sown demonstrations of dialectical relationbecome themselvesa simple delineation of is offeredas a proofof an ethnographicreality whose functional circularity its all-inclusiveness, at least withina given culture. Still, the bearing towards time and death is not simplyeither parallel to or derivable from attitudestowards nurtureand kinshipand astronomicalphenomena, but rather-this is only the conventional view, which must be accorded its weight-the other way around. Levi-Strauss is moving onto a terrain is reciprocand structuralism between functionalism where the distinction ally definable; yet the balanced opposition between diachrony and synchronymust finally yield before the predominance of time,of diachrony, in any human existence. it The question of time Levi-Strausssolves, as Eliade does, by referring an alternatedeployment."The Maidu version",he says of to periodicity, one myth(HN; p. 115), "replaces the synchronicdoublings with which contentsitselfby appealing to a periodicitythe notion of which is M553

1108

REVIEWS

just periodic, here diachronic."Franklydiachronic,but not clearly frankly as elsewhere. If "the poles of the temporal axis are presented not in the in being then the intervals, theyconsistof typesof intervals", formof terms: feature,leave aside the measurable,withlong or shorttheirdistinguishing perceptionof time in the subject who is tellingor perceivingthe myth. New Haven: Yale Univ. Formalism, It is not, as Hartman says (Beyond but Press, 1970; pp. 19-20) that Levi-Straussfails to deal withrepetition, ratherthathe reduces repetitionto mere recursion.The forceof striving in myth is lost,and the successionof generationsbecomesjust a formulable demographicbalance (HN; p. 244). The tribalgroups among whom myth Given the simple and recursiveviewof is alive are thusdeprived of history. to retrieve would be difficult in nonliteratesocieties,such a history history deprives them also of any equivain any case. But Levi-Strauss,in effect, translatedinto an atemporal dialecby having theirmyths lent forhistory, tic. He reduces the analogies between theirfunctionsand our religionor art to spatial ones (the analogy between the zones of a cityand the interlockingsectionsof a tribalhut pattern)or simplyfunctionalones (the use of noisemakingat certain seasons or as a protestagainst a matingincongruous withsocial rule). Literate societies, with the self-consciousnessabout the non-recursive aspect of time that writtenrecords spanning past rememberable generations may develop, produce a literaturewith a "tradition."Each poem is the order of words is fixedin them; the fixedin time,and correspondingly necessarilytemporal character of language is invariant,with respect to means, having a fixed order in a given poem, but variantwithrespect to societies,on the other hand, the single non-recursive end. In non-literate doubled by a recursiveconcepdestinyof a given man is unselfconsciously too, must literature;but myth, tionof time.Mythtakes the place of written be recounted in language, where the temporal characterof the language cannot be abrogated; it doesmatterin what order the eventsof a mythare told. It is not that the syntagma of temporal order is redefined as a of formulation paradigm of logical relations,but ratherthat the linguistic variable as it is spoken now one way and now another,is variantwith myth, respect to means but invariant with respect to end: the myth,as Levican onlyobscure one of itselementsand Straussabundantlydemonstrates, leave a "gap" in the storywhichone may fillout elsewherein the "field"of the mythic system. Levi-Strauss'sinsistence on the preeminence of the mythicparadigm had its counterpartand converse in the theoryof Propp, who takes the of Levi-Strauss)to presence of story"functions"(roughlythe "mythemes" constitute an underlyingmorphologyin which "the sequence of functions Bloomington:IndiFolktale, ofthe is alwaysidentical"(V. Propp, Morphology ana UniversityPress, 1958 [1928], p. 20.) Propp proceeds to outline a steps. But when it turns out supposedly invariantsequence of thirty-one

M L N

1109

that a single functioncan have a double or treble meaning, that no tale perfectly preservesthe order, that a functionmay be omitted(p. 64) and thatthe functions may even "switchpositions"(p. 97), then the supposedly invarianttime-orderbecomes quite variant. The argument must then be reduced to the weak form of identifying type-clusters in stories; the sequence specifiedamountingto not much more than the requirementthata hero mustleave home beforehe returnsand that,ifhe is testedby a villain, his trialswill certainlyhappen between these two events, and before his efforts are crowned by marriage withthe princess. Always, inescapably, there is the one-way destiny of the hero, taken at the upward crest, as in myths.The "invariant"syntagmaof typically Propp does not admit of the permutationsthrough which Levi-Strauss puts his invariantparadigm: for Levi-Strausswhat is invariantis the very principlewhich permitsthe variance of the relational orders-though alwaysby a logicallyunnecessarycancelling of the syntagma. The invariantform of mythin a societyis ritual,whose words or acts must often be performed letter-perfect, and where the order of timecorrespondenceincludes the lifeof the celebrantin one, definablerelation both to the recursiveyear and to the non-recursivestage of his own life. Levi-Straussreads the Plains Sun Dance (OMT; p. 174-75) as involving both propitiation and defiance of the sun; thisambivalence,itselfan unresolvable complexityinvolvingthe emotional dispositionwhich he also ignores (AlbertCook, Enactment: Greek Tragedy, Chicago: The Swallow Press, 1971; pp. xx-xxii; 2-16), constitutes a whole set of relationsbetween the fertility cycle of the sun, and the prowess of the initiate.A given mythis only "inexplicable as a syntagma"(OMT; p. 72); as Levi-Strausscalls the Plains Tale of a hero's series of marriages a syntagma (M354),if one refrainsfromhaving recourse to the life-span. The structural laws of the unconscious, for the shaman or the psychoanalyst, maywell be atemporal (Structural Anthropology; p. 199); they are involved,like the myths which formulatethem in eitherinstance,with a dialecticof lived time where the personal and the biological converge, where ontogeny transcends as well as recapitulates phylogeny. LeviStrauss' three formsof periodicity(HN; p. 430), the astronomical(male), the meteorologic(androgyne), and the biological (female) are all merely phylogenic,and it is only by such a concentratingexclusion that he can claim thatthe mythpresentsa "suppressed" time (HN; p. 542). For myths whose temporal order will not fullyyield to his (alternate,I would claim) paradigmaticanalysis,he is willingto assert,as for M60and others (OMT; p. 95), thattheyindicate "a significant passage fromthe genre of mythto the genre of the novel, in which the curve is suppler or does not bear the same determination"-and this in the face of all we know about the relation of post-Medievalliteratetime conceptions and the novel; whereas to can only the myths be oral, forthe peoples he studies,is to be myth-bound;

1110

REVIEWS

literate societies.

die ("Comment ils meurent" Esprit4, 1971; pp. 694-706) aftercontactwith -3-

Astronomical,technological, seasonal, and biological phenomena, as well as the combinatory techniquesLevi-Straussmaps out as theirunderlying structure, all constitute"nature" or attemptsby "culture"to structure it. But there is a furtherarea, where the erotic impulse, the sense of identity, the violentrivalrywithallies or enemies who are like but other, and the loss of identity in death, all converge, an area for which the term "culture"is too exclusive and "nature" itselfalmost too reductive.Girard et le sacri; Paris: Grasset, 1972) analyzes the structureof (La Violence sacrifice symbolisms, myths and ritualsand other patterns, as centeringon such a convergence. And Octavio Paz, in commentingon Levi-Strauss, connects death with the incest taboo and relates our sense of our own death with the very possibility of a dialectical relationshipwith nature; "death condemns us to culture" (Claude Levi-Strauss:An Introduction, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970; p. 52). Levi-Strausshimself(HN; p. 118) analyzes M554as positing a set of equivalences between marrriage, thecreationof culture,and the resuscitation of the dead. Resurrections are frequentin the mythshe recounts, and it is not possible to account for themfullyby viewingthem as recursionsinto the cyclesof kinship,totem, and nurture. The rainbow and the color of birds signifypoison and the sicknessin passing by insensibleintervals across color lines and fromlifeto death; but if the continuum of insensiblysmall intervalsincludes the discontinuous (RC; pp. 319-320), such a logisticincorporationof confusion does not entirelydispel the mystery. The demiurges in the Klamath and Modoc myths relate to the spiritsof the dead, and it is the intercalary time in the "dead" of Winter (a mirror-image of midsummercelebrations,as Frazer also demonstratesin his discussion of Balder and the mistletoe) whichis chosen forthe initiation of shamans (HN; pp. 16 ff),whose ability to interpret dreams and performmagic is not separable fromtheirspecial access to "other" worlds. Moreover, in some societiesevery man can be a shaman or have shamanisticpowers; Black Elk's vision and his statusas a warriorare not separable fromone another. It is funeralritesthatinvolve the noisemakerselaboratelydecoded by Levi-Straussin theirastronomical and seasonal parameters(HA; pp. 402-409 and passim). In the opposition where souls are the mistresses of water and the jaguar the master of fire (RC; p. 285), the distinction between plural (souls) and singular (jaguar)-which is not analyzed in this discussion by Levi-Strauss-may itselfsubsume those of male/female and water/fire withinthe class living/ dead, especiallyif thejaguar is read as a trans-totemic alter ego for man. "Structure into seriality," degrades Levi-Strausssays (OMT; p. 105) of the

M L N

1111

rich M60, and he sees the novel itself(106) only in its negativeaspect of an attemptto recapture mythicperception rather than in its positiverole of bringingfine-calibered, exactlyordered sequences to bear upon an understandingof sequence. In his myths the savage would seem to be facingtime in the non-recursive sequence that leads to death. Levi-Strauss,however, translates sequence, after the fact, into mere structure. By such an avoidance of sequence, he deprives his own analysis of the possibility of incorporatingforms for understanding,say, the rampant sexualityof a grandmother as it "revolts"a grandson (HN; pp. 142-143), who immediately incinerates her. The myth itself, we may say,at once displaces the Freudian primalscene and condenses it intoconjunctionwithdeath (to use the terms of Freudian dream analysis)-while at the same time,as Levi-Straussdoes tell us, it activatesthe opposition between short and long life. He translatessequence into structure before the factas well as after.As he himselfsays of Stith Thompson's folk motifindices "the difficulties offer begin withthe definition of the facts",and, whilehe mustnecessarily resumes in his presentation,as he urges (HN; p. 565), we may profitably see the actual selection process at work in his version of M565 (OMT; pp. 270-271). This deals withthe "Painted Red StickCeremony",as recounted by Bowers (Alfred W. Bowers, Hidatsa Social and Ceremonial Organization Washington: Government PrintingOffice; pp. 452-454), a practice designed to attract the Buffalo herds in autumn or winter by the ritual prostitution of wives to older men. This rite calls into play a procedure used, under many other circumstancesin Hidatsa life,for the transfer of spiritualpowers to membersof the youngergeneration,"Walkingwiththe Daughters-in-Law",by crossing the boundaries of the age-classes which fundamentally organize Hidatsa social life. I quote Bowers' versionof the myth, puttingin bracketsall materialomittedby Levi-Straussand in parentheses his misleading or erroneous renderingsfromthissource, bulls-livedto[Twelve(six)buffalo bulls-men withthe spirits of thebuffalo in red,never white orblack. Thesemenwere and painted themselves gether only In this known as wirukusi forthey carried red sticks.] thepeoplegambled. village A short, and wonconsisand rather came to thevillage fat, ill-looking stranger thepeoplewouldputup. He wouldwinall theproperty tently. in thevillage, thatbeWoman(La Bisonne)whowas living Buffalo predicted causeofthestranger's gambling success, (avaitdefiiaujeu desMandan) thevillage wasSun wasin dangerof starvation. She informed thepeoplethatthegambler with barkon,he would whoplanned to killoff thepeople.[Ifhe wonthearrows half. winhalfofthevillage. If he wonthepeeledarrows, he wouldgettheother to helpthepeoplewhile bullsthatMoonwas trying She toldone of thebuffalo wasdestroyed.] Moona shareofthebodieswhenthevillage Sun keptpromising You Buffalo Womanannounced, "There is onlyone wayto save thevillage. to puton the buffalo fouryoungmen(lesjeunes hommes) holymenshouldselect willbe If they thevillage with theDaughter-in-law 'Walking ceremony'. refuse,

1112

REVIEWS

itis and will what willnotknow whenyouask them, they [Ofcourse, destroyed. and willhelp therites You can tellthemthatI knowhow to perform hesitate. them."] "SinceSun is butat lastone agreed,saying, theyoungmenrefused [Atfirst I willvolunteer."] thevillage, to destroy trying Levi-Strausshas If we mayassume thisshortextractto be representative, tended to exclude fromhis selectionelementsin the account whichinclude a process,even a repetitiveone. Later on he renders "granddaughter"as which is accurate as to the factbut slightsthe importantcom"madtresse", ponent of age in the ceremony,and which Buffalo Woman and the Sun of the ritualin being the double transgression are miming.These highlight incestuous and in crossing the age-classes-though again, elsewhere he elaborates on the incestof grandparentsand grandchildrenin other than ritual contexts of myth. His rendering of "Buffalo Woman" as "La Bisonne",while again correct,slightsthe fact that in the myththere is an initial,primordialmetamorphosisof a buffalocow into a woman (Bowers; p. 439) thena long succession of human women are assumed to be avatars older "Buffalo of thischangeling.Their male counterpartis the necessarily Bull" leader who carried the red stickof the rite. somethingequivocal in Uvi-Strauss's repeated disThere is, ultimately, claimer that the mathematical formulae in which he summarizes his but a necessaryshortparadigmaticrelationshipsare not reallyalgorithms hand (RC; p. 30 and passim).If, in his perspective,a separate mythcannot be understood except by coordinationwithothers,and if the coordination takes mathematicalform, the algorithmicformulae make it correspond neitherless nor more to itsobject than the ordinarydiscourse preceding it. His easy faithand his easy disclaimeralike are not a mythin themselvesand his discussion is surely not in any other than a casual sense a myth as he claims. Neither do theyconstitutea necessaryheuristic about myth, blindness. Rather, they simplyevidence the scientismthat could only be eitherresolved or provided withtheoreticalgroundingby being subjected as those he himselfoffers.Such analyses in turnto analyses as magisterial but rathera would not,then,make his relationaloperationsa substructure, whose object would have disappeared, testedseriesof relationalconstructs themselvescannot. His recourse to a sortof graph where the as the myths decades are given either cardinal or fractionalreading according to position exactly reproduces the Pythagorean triangle, or one version of it (OMT; La Balance Egale; esp. p. 289-291); in centralizingratios he may anywaybe said to be PythagoreanizingCassirer, and there is a sort of in the uneasy mystiquewithwhichhe introduces residual Pythagoreanism of The Raw and theCooked. the musical analogies and title-groupings themselvesare more than Levi-Strauss The mathematicalformulations facto almost always,post says because they work; and yet they constitute, formulationsrather than the proofs they cannot help seeming to be-

M L N

1113

hence the need for repeating the disclaimers. The disclaimers in this not themselvesformulae; and as such theytake on perspectiveare writing, (to deny something of a Freudian Verneinung the sublimation-modesty lurkingin any itby counter-assertion). There is anywaya fetishism affirms use of "disambiguated" language, of overtones between an originating class of to which a priestly and the verification-hypothesizing subjectivity rituallyconfines itself.Levi-Strauss presents his credentials for scientists membershipin such a class by his concluding, and extravagant,analogy theory"of the DNA code and the interchanging betweenthe "information of his binaryanalyses (HN; pp. 611-617). transformations leaves us not only withthe quesThe achievementof the Mythologiques bears upon tionof how all thisdeep-thoughtcorrelationunderlyingmyths how it acthe sacred, but, more relevantlyor at least more congruently, in the accounts systems cords withthe generationof such binaryor ternary given of the sacred by prior cultures, as well as the seeminglycontrary key terms.If there has never been a tendencyin such culturesto intensify state of societypurely economic (Mauss, 149-150), and the hau or spirit clings to the goods passed along an exchange network,while all in the societyis interrelated;then the hau would be present or relatable to any etCommunications, item-or to any mytheme.Indeed, M. Sahlins (Echanges Mouton; The Hague, 1970; p. 1011) goes furtherthan Mauss, as against him and implicitly also Levi-Strauss, to demonstrate the nonfor the Maori of spiritualand materialin the hau. distinguishability of relations,(S1 and S-3 of HA; pp. The Jaguar is explained by systems 37-42), but also globallyby both a likeness to and a differencefromman, bound up togetherin a single figurewhose numinous presence is guaranteed by his figurative supersession of the law of contraries,though LeviStrauss factors the stories out in ways that make it seem as though a out all contradictions. The Jaguar also thoughtprocess is actively factoring to of relatingimplicitly into himself, comprehensively gathershis functions all the categories of the South American systems(as of course any figure could be made to do by relationalanalysis),since he eats raw meat,teaches the cooking of meat (M12), gatherswild honey (M188) and has tobacco coming fromhis body. The ara-birdseaten by thejaguar (M7_12)are changed who may himself into serpentseaten by a divinity (M300a, M303)-a divinity be a formof thejaguar, as in what he speaks of as possiblythe older Aztec level of the myth.The jaguar generates fear (as in M14, RC; pp. 82-83), and the recounted mythsare full of fear, flight, danger, impulsive marriages, risks, deaths, and transformations-at once connecting and disterms-woman into frog or bear or buffalo, connectingthe intensifying man into bird or porcupine. If laughteroriginates(M40,RC; pp. 121-122) througha Kuben-niepre or bat-man,there is somethingfearfulin such a monstroushybrid.And it displaces the two categoriesof laughter(RC; pp. them respectively 92-93) fromtheirgiven nexus of perception to classify

1114

REVIEWS

as triumphantand profane when the Indians themselvesdesignate them "laugh of sacrifice"and "laugh of souls". The Tricksterfigure in North American mythology-an allomorph of thejaguar-does notjust serve as a mediator,his functionin Levi-Strauss'sstructuralanalysis; he also perpetuatesthe ambivalencebetweenterms,as well as concordantly actingthe benificent demiurge, by bearing the quasi-moral onus of a name, Coyote or whatever,that points up not just a successfultransferbut the thorny impossibility of carryinga transferthrough cleanly. "The false antinomy between logical and prelogical mentality... once dispelled, it remains no less true that, contrary to Uvy-Bruhl's opinion, its thought proceeds throughunderstanding,not by confusion and participation"(The Savage Mind; p. 268). Thus Levi-Strauss,as the partially justifiedyieldof arduous thought,dismisses one false antinomy-though, again, dangerously collapsing the dialecticbetween the likeness of primitive thoughtto our own and the difference-only to replace it by another. For affectivity, and indeed spirituality, does enter into the classification systems for "confusion and participation"in the "distinctions and oppositions" of early societies; spiritual or affective elements often intrinsicallyconstitute what is classified.Consider the Yin and Yang of the Chinese; the Muntu, Kuntu, Kintuand Hantu of the Yoruba (human being; modality;thing;place and time.JahnheinzJahn, Muntu,New York: Grove Press; p. 100 and passim)as well as the even more comprehensivetermsNtu and Nommo; the oppositionbetweengood and evil,or creationand destruction sometimesambivalentlyincorporated,in the Indian Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu, in Iranian and earlyChinese mythology. The Urubu divide theiruniverseinto"hard" and "soft",thus categorizingdiscourse, conduct, kinds of life,and aspects of the world. Overridingcategories for the Navajo are round and linear. The connectionbetween the dispositionof the body and spiritualstatesin yoga (the term itselfindicates "conjunction") goes back to the earliest recoverablestateof Indian thought,to the thirdmilleniumB.C. (W. Norman Brown,"Mythology of India", in Samuel N. Kramer,ed., Mythologies ofthe Ancient World,New York: Doubleday, 1961; pp. 304-305). Levi-Straussdoes attemptto account for such phenomena in his discussions of magic, religion,and sorcery. In contrast with scientific explanation, theproblem hereis notto attribute confused and disorganized states, emotions, or representations toan objective cause, butrather toarticulate them intoa wholeor system. The system is validprecisely to theextent that itallows thecoalescence or precipitation ofthesediffuse states, whosediscontinuity also makesthempainful... onlythe history of symbolic functions can allowus to understand theintellectual condition of man,in which the universe is neverchargedwithsufficient and in which the mind meaning has more meanings always availablethan thereare objectsto whichto relate them.Torn betweenthesetwo systems of reference-the and the signifying signified-man asksmagical to provide himwith a newsystem thinking ofrefer-

M L N

1115

of is builtat theexpenseof theprogress ence ... butwe knowthatthissystem one ofthetwoprevious only us to retain wouldhaverequired which knowledge, systems.
pp. 176-178] Anthropology; (Structural

as ever, between likeness and differenceof the logical to the Shuttling, prelogical, Levi-Straussallows at once too much and not enough to the of spiritual elements: too much, because the mere logical classification relationsare given a comprehensivenessof referencetheycannot attainto if their referentsare re-translatedinto terms of exchange; not enough, of understanding,thatthey because it is that,afterall, preciselyas systems are classifying. The preparation and gatheringof food, and even more the exchangedomiof the marketwherebya homogeneityof diet is diversified, system zoological, he asserts,cosmic,meteorologic, nateseveryaspect of the myth, botanical,and technological(HN; p. 287). In movingback to Mauss' printo a society(HN; pp. 245-264), of exchange-systems ciple of the centrality he stillconcedes thatdrinkingwaterand the cooking firestand outside this (HN; p. and that the marketitselfis a "reducing mirror", definingsystem, 265). The New Testament offersanother,overridingopposition between the nurturewhichis perishable and thatwhichis not. "Labor not forthe meat which perisheth,but for that meat which endureth unto everlastinglife, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed" (John 6:27). This passage follows on a distinctionbetween such 6:26; rendered as "miracles" in the eating and observing "signs" (semeia, a closes the circle,being itself KingJames version).The verbseal (sphragizo) repertoireof senses from sign,includingwithinitselfa whole structurable uses, back to the Babylonian Third Millennium,when seals Pre-Christian were already common. Seals indicate by their use: property,authority, relation to god, kingship,proper linguisticdesignation,and plenipotentiary legitimation (G. Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, ed., Theologisches Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1964; Vol. zum Neuen Testament, Wbrterbuch VII; pp. 939-954, sub. voc.). The physical seal itselfindicates "an object witha sign, picture,letter,word, or combinationof those elements." It is practiseto close offor markas secretor holyor laterused in pre-Christian precious or valuable; in both Old and New Testament as a designationfor withall that rite'sconstellationof anthropologicalsignificacircumcision, tion (949); and for the sealing of graves. No one of these uses is irrelevantto the New Testament verse quoted above, itselfassumed and redeployed in the seven seals of Revelations.In ofImages,Boston; Beacon Austin Farrer's reading of the latter(A Rebirth logicallyequivaPress, 1963 [1949]), a series of relationaltransformations takes priority over,and neutralizlentto those offeredby theMythologiques

1116

REVIEWS

es, the ascriptionof particularreadings, as of the number 666, wherein generationsof interpreters of the apocalypse had ramifiedconfusions.But the images themselves,while relational, are neither neutralized nor reduced to theirmaterialequivalents:theyare a syntaxas wellas a paradigm. "In a long concatenationof images, each fixesthe sense of the others,and is itself determinedby them"(p. 18). Levi-Strausshas empowered us to ask stillmore about what such concatenationsimply.
StateUniversity ofNew York-Buffalo ALBERT COOK

AnthonyWilden. System and Structure: Essaysin Communication and Exchange.(London: Tavistock, 1972), xxx + 540 pp.
AnthonyWilden's System and Structure deserves a great deal of attention fromliterary criticsand otherswho interpretwritten language. The book is the firstfull-scaleattemptto join the methods and assumptionsof the Parisian sciences humaineswith those of cyberneticsand general systems theory.Wilden's subjectis an immenselyambitiousone, human communication in and between systems-social systems,persons, psychicsystems, and also textsand systemsof discourse. Explicit issues in literatureand literarycriticism play a relatively small part in the book, although Wilden is himselfa professorof literature.His is to offera series of critiquesof modern European thinkers strategy from a point of view inspired principally by the work of GregoryBateson. The general theoryof communicationand symbolicexchange offered in the book is essentially a synthesis of structuralism Lacan and Levi(primarily Strauss) and Bateson's earlier synthesis of cybernetics, familypsychology, genetics,and cultural anthropology.Bateson's StepsTowards an Ecology of Mind (New York, 1972) offers an admirablylucid introduction to the entire area of communicationstheory. As Bateson and Wilden insist,cybernetic thinking offersa radical break with the positivistic and causally oriented thinkingof Western science. (The break is in many ways parallel to the break with metaphysics which has been going on in continental philosophy.) Mechanics and thermodynamics,the privileged models of the older sciences, provide explanations of the behavior of matter and energy in systemsof organized and unorganized complexity. simplicity Cybernetics offersa model forthe behavior of informationin a systemof organized complexity. The keydistinction is betweeninformation and matter-energy. Information is not a substance or an entity;it is a relation,a pure difference.The chemicalsubstancewhichmakes up a gene behaves in the waysauthorized by the older sciences, but the informationcarried by the gene does not. Information operates primarily in a world of circuits, programs,feedback