The Advent of Heroic Anthropology in The History of Ideas

The Advent of Heroic Anthropology in the History of Ideas
Author(s): Albert Doja

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 66, No. 4 (Oct., 2005), pp. 633-650
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
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The
Advent
of
Heroic
in the
Anthropology
History of Ideas
Albert Doja
Introduction
It is sometimes claimed that Radcliffe-Brownand Malinowski more or
less single-handedlycreatedmodem anthropology.This may have seemed to
be the case at midcentury, when Boasian American anthropologyhad diverged out into many specialized strandsand Marcel Mauss's students had
not yet made their mark in French anthropology. British kinship studies
seemed, in contrast,to rest securely on a methodinventedby Malinowskiand
a theory developed by Radcliffe-Brown,as an established "science of society." As Eriksenand Nielsen put it, majorchanges took place in anthropology
during the 1950s and 1960s, economics and politics were reconceptualized
and new theories of symbolic meaning transformedthe discipline.' Developments in North America and Britain differed, although the problems raised
were similar,yet the single most importanttheoristwas French.
If alreadyin the first postwar years, Claude L6vi-Strausswill emerge as
an exemplarythinker,the most importantfigurein the history of anthropology
and the "ecumenical," "paradigmaticanthropologist"of the second half of
the twentiethcentury,this implies a good deal aboutthe intellectualmilieu of
our time and of anthropologyin particular.2In the 1950s and 1960s, for a
numberof reasons, not the least of which is Levi-Strauss's astute promotion
1 Thomas H. Eriksen and Finn S. Nielsen, A History of Anthropology (London: Pluto
Press, 2001), 95.
2
Stanley Diamond, "The Inauthenticityof Anthropology:The Myth of Structuralism,"in
In Search of the Primitive:A Critiqueof Civilization(New Brunswick,N.J.:TransactionBooks,
1974), 292-331.
633
2005by Journalof theHistoryof Ideas,Inc.
Copyright

634
AlbertDoja
of his discipline,3anthropologybecomes one of the essential referencepoints

of intellectual discourse in France, taking part of the mainstreamof ideas
defined as structuralism,which had the ambitionto provide social sciences a
rigor and power comparableto those of naturalsciences.
Moreover, the "unparalleled"intellectual and internationalprominence
and audienceL6vi-Strausshas acquiredin anthropologyhas been immensely
influential,not only in anthropology,but in the disciplines interestedin mankind and humanproducts,from history and psychoanalysisto philosophy and
literary studies. "The bearing of that work on the notion of culture, on our
understandingof language and mental processes, on our interpretationof history is so directand novel that,George Steinerclaimed, an awarenessof L6viStrauss's thought is a part of currentliteracy."4His work has broughtabout
an epistemological break with previous methods of analysis, so as one can
refer to a real anthropologicalrevolution.
What is often ignored is the extent to which Levi-Strauss'soriginal formulationof structuralmethodwas embeddedin problemsspecific to the position of anthropology, not simply problems of anthropologicaltheory, but
more generallyproblemsof definitionof the natureand scope of anthropology
and its relationshipwith the other humansciences. It seems that L6vi-Strauss
is always concernedwith asserting something more general about the nature
of the discipline he is practicing,its field of referenceand its claims to scientific and humanisticinterest,in an essentially "corporatist"way of thinking.5
He is not content simply to speak on his own account and from his own
local perspective, but is also preparedto speak collectively, in the name of
anthropology,in defence of what he believes to be its special contributionto
contemporaryknowledge, to the extent thatthe adventof his contributionhas
done "more to alter anthropology'ssense of itself than its sense of its subject."6 His capacity for synthesis, for overview, for reflexive statement on
what one's discipline is aboutand also what it should be about,could be seen
as an essential traitof Levi-Strauss,who is not simply a producerof ideas and
theories, but equally and inseparably,an influentialthinker,mattreit penser.
L6vi-Strauss developed anthropology into a scientific project with far
more sophisticatedintellectual purchasefor understandinghumanitythan is
generally acknowledgedor than the discipline had previously achieved. His
contributionrepresentedthe reabsorptionof the discipline into the mainstream
3ChristopherJohnson, Claude Levi-Strauss: The Formative Years (Cambridge:Cambridge UniversityPress, 2003), 29.
4 George Steiner, Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature,and the Inhuman (London:Faber, 1967), 250.
5 Johnson, Claude Levi-Strauss,181.
6 Clifford Geertz, Worksand Lives: The
Anthropologistas Author (Stanford,Calif.: Stanford UniversityPress, 1988), 25.

TheAdventof Heroic Anthropologyin the History of Ideas
635
of Westernideas, since he reestablishedanthropologyas an intellectualundertaking, a profession of the intelligentsia, ratherthan a specialized vocation
with its own peculiarlanguage, corpus of data, techniques,methods, and theory. The rise of structuralismitself is historically inseparablefrom the prestige of anthropology. Structuralismbecame an alternativeto Marxism and
phenomenology, and its impact on general intellectual life was at least as
pronounced as in anthropology.In France, important scholars like Lacan,
Barthes,Foucault,and Bourdieuwere broughtup on structuralism,eventually
rebelled against it, and their rebellion was in turn noted and debatedby anthropologists,who broughtthese authorsinto the canon of anthropology.
The IntellectualContext
In France, with the publication of Being and Nothingness and the Phenomenology of Perception,phenomenologydominatedthe intellectuallife in
the form of existentialism,which became an all-encompassingphilosophical
movement under the charismatic leadership of Jean-PaulSartre.7The phenomenon of structuralismcapturedthe attentionof Parisianintelligentsia in
the late 1950s and the 1960s and set the terms of intellectual debate for the
entire decade. The debates that developed aroundexistentialismand structuralism in the 1960s provide a typical dialectical counterpointingof schools or
movements that seems to be a permanentfeatureof French intellectuallife."
With its combinationof science and humanism,structuralismwas seen as the
logical successor to existentialism.The first volume of L6vi-Strauss'sStructural Anthropology9in some way appearedat the time as the manifesto of
structuralism,and alreadyLevi-Strausswas spoken of as a philosopher,the
founderof structuralism,on a par with Sartre,the founderof existentialism.
Structuralismwas a reactionagainstthe predominantlyphenomenological
bias of Frenchphilosophy in the postwaryears. In this sense, it is impossible
to understandthe phenomenalsuccess of structuralismin Francewithoutreference to the previous hegemony of existentialism, of which it appearedto
be a point-by-pointrefutation.Basically, postwarphilosophers,of the same
generationas Levi-Strauss,formulatedthe same objectionsas him with regard
to traditionalphilosophy, that is, resting on a system of factitious and insurmountableoppositionsbetween subjectand object thatalways renew the same
narrow conceptions and hamper any investigation. But to a conscience reduced to "I think," inheritedfrom Cartesianism,phenomenologysubstituted
7 Jean-PaulSartre,L'Etre et le Neant: essai d'ontologie phenomenologique(Paris:Gallimard, 1943); Maurice Merleau-Ponty,Phenomenologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard,
1945).
8 Johnson, Claude Levi-Strauss,107-8.
9Claude Levi-Strauss,Anthropologiestructurale(Paris:Plon, 1958).

AlbertDoja
636
a conscience widened towardbody experience and history ordeals. The subject is apprehendedon the level of its perceptions and its experiences. The
cogito of Descartes made place to a percipio with Merleau-Ponty,a praxis
with Sartre,or a gramma with Derrida.Moreover,whereas Sartre's existentialism and Derrida's grammatologycould be situatedwithin a recognizable
traditionof Westernphilosophy, taking their inspirationfrom the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger, for L6vi-Straussthe programof structural
anthropologyand the social sciences representeda breakwith metaphysics,a
rejectionof the traditionalproblemsof philosophy in orderto pursuea scientific investigationof humanbehavior.
Structuralismwas above all an expressionof contest and correspondedto
a moment of Westernhistory as an expressionof a certainamountof detestation of self, rejection of traditionalWesternculture, and wish of modernism
in a search for new models. Structuralismopposed to the glorificationof old
values a certain sensitivity for everything repressed in Westernhistory, the
reverse of manifest meaning, the repressed and inaccessible side of human
nature.Foucault,in his Orderof Things,aptly describedLacan's psychoanalysis and L6vi-Strauss'santhropologyas animated "by a perpetualprinciple
of anxiety, of setting in question, of criticism and contestationof everything
that could seem, in other respects, as taken for granted."o From this point
of view, Levi-Strauss's very choice of the linguistic model is by no means
indifferent,for one of the revolutionaryprinciples structurallinguistics has
introducedin scientific methodologywas exactly to shift the inquiryfrom the
level of conscious linguistic phenomena to that of their unconscious infrastructure.The means of conceptualizingthe relations not immediately available to conscious intuition that structuralanalysis uncovers, as proposed by
L6vi-Strauss,is intuitively the most assimilable representationof the unconscious.11
The decline of the Europeanpowers and the wave of decolonizationthat

followed the war had the result for many to question the preeminence of
Europeancultureand consciousness and also to criticize its ethnocentrism.In
this context it seemed logical that anthropology,in its special role as mediator
of non-Westerncultures,should become the special focus of such questioning
and criticism. Indeed, structuralanthropologyis justified as a human science
of non-Westerncultures in light of their modem experience of alienation, in
what amounts to an alternativeform of humanism. This new humanism,
which L6vi-Strauss aimed to extend "to the measure of humanity," combines
the ambition of scientific analysis with the imperative of a global awareness.12
10oMichel Foucault,Les mots et les choses: une archeologie des sciences humaines(Paris:
Gallimard,1966), 385.
11Claude L6vi-Strauss, "L'analyse structuraleen linguistique et en anthropologie,"in
Anthropologiestructurale(Paris:Plon, 1958), 40.
12
ClaudeL6vi-Strauss,"Le champde l'anthropologie,"in Anthropologiestructuraledeux
(Paris:Plon, 1973 [New York:Basic Books, 1976]), 44 [32].

The Advent of Heroic Anthropology in the History of Ideas
637
A wider vision of humanitythan the traditionalphilosophicalversion of humanism involved, focused on the conception of the individualsubject as culture-specific,is thus far from achieving the kind of universalitythat the old
humanismclaimed.
In effect, the old humanism,as exemplifiedin the figureof Sartre,seemed
by comparison parochial both in its confinement to a specific traditionof
Westernphilosophy and in its lack of interestin the developmentsof contemporaryscience. The new humanismof Levi-Strauss'santhropologywas seen
to combine the rigor of science with an enlarged vision of humanity,acting
as both the conscience and the consciousness of Westerncivilization, while
assigning a humblerrole to the individualsubject.
In this sense, the scientific mission of structuralanthropologycannot exclude considerationof questions of value and ideology. For Levi-Strauss,
structuralanthropologyas a humanscience and humanismare not antinomic.
The close articulationof the epistemologicaland the ethical in Levi-Strauss's
work, in the way he articulateshis life experience and his theoreticalwork,
possesses a heuristic closure and methodological unity that transcendsthe
narrowly scientific programof structuralism.Indeed, it is apparentthat the
paradigmof structuralanthropologycannot simply be equatedwith the field
of structuralism,and that it amountsto somethingaltogethermore complex.
From the 1960s, structuralismwas to flourish in many other fields and
very rapidlybecame a form, often very contestable,of an intellectual,philosophical, and literaryfad, with all of the distortionsand simplificationsthat
accompany such popularization.Levi-Strauss never therefore failed to distance himself from and deny paternityof the ideological passions that gave
raise to the structuralistvogue. He has endlessly repeatedthat structuralism,
as it developed in Francein the late 1950s and early 1960s, should be distinguished from what he was attemptingto accomplishin anthropology.
Often he was summoned to describe fields of knowledge that were not
familiarfor him, methodsthathe could not recognize, or standpointsthathad
nothing to do with the technical characterof his own research. Finally, he
very quickly understood of such intellectual fashions to what extent they
could publicly and academicallyharm the rigor and the serene evaluationof
his own work. That is why he chose for the most part to keep himself away
from this intellectualagitation.Undoubtedlyanxious to police his inheritance,
he limited himself to correcting what he perceives as misinformed attacks on
his own local practice of structural analysis, and engaged his dialogue in
debates only with those, either in anthropologyor in close disciplines, who

posed to him or to themselves precise questions and raised relevant objections.
For L6vi-Strauss, structuralism was only the narrow framework of a brilliant venture. Essentially, his work is at once more modest, more scrupulous,
and much more relevant for anthropological knowledge, even if the style remains a baroque mixture of equilibrium and witty liveliness. Even if structur-

638
AlbertDoja
alism might have once had a beneficial role, it became nowadaysan obstacle
to the full developmentof ideas for which anthropologyis after all indebted
to L6vi-Strauss.His approachcame less from general principlesthan from a
demandingand audacious intellectual attitude.Thanks to this attitudeand a
numberof deep intuitions,theoreticalwork offered him the appealingopportunityto hunt for orderwithin chaos and make a very general and at the same
time very personalcontributionto anthropology.
If the structuralanthropologyconsists in studyingrules and showing laws,
in particularby the analysis of certainaspects of social life or culturalmaterializationswhose validity could be tested on other aspects, it is not a question
of an ideological structuralismthat would bring a message or offer a general
philosophy of man. The epistemological approachof L6vi-Strausshas the
ambitionto be only a rigorous method that comes close to scientific knowledge, and quite simply to introduce a measure of rigor in an area of study
where there had been none. Certainpassages of his work undoubtedlyverge
on the excess of methodologicaloptimism, the structuralanalysis seeming to
merge with science itself, whose royal way, mathematicsincluded, finally
opened to the fields that until now have remained rebellious. But he never
confused with the outline of a new dogmatic system of scientist inspiration
certain more personal digressions, which he pleasantly qualifies as "a small
infringing onto the hunting area kept by philosophy," in spite of the range
and depth of sights they may express.
The absorptionand developmentof L6vi-Strauss'sstimulatingand contentioustheoriesengaged the attentionof a numberof talentedanthropologists
not only in Francebut also in Britainand elsewhere. It is one of the ironies of
the history of the reception of Levi-Strauss's work in anthropologythat he
has sometimesbeen reproachedby his Frenchcolleagues for his undueattachment to the "Anglo-Saxon"tradition,while his English-speakingcolleagues
have criticizedhis "French"penchantfor speculation,abstraction,and generalization.13
Even thoughBritish anthropologyis traditionallyused to receive theories
from France,Levi-Strauss'sworkreachedsuch a degreeof abstractionthatthe
quasi-naturalBritishcircumspectioncould only be overcomein good measure
thanks to the witty eloquence of an Edmund Leach. Among other things,
when introducinga collection of papers by British anthropologistsdealing
with Levi-Strauss's theories of myth and totemism, Leach went on to comment that some of the contributorsdid not appearto have read Levi-Strauss,
and that their criticism depended "either on English arroganceor straight
misinformation."14
It is Leach's introductionto the writings of L6vi-Strauss,
Johnson, Claude Levi-Strauss,9.
Edmund R. Leach (ed.), The StructuralStudy of Myth and Totemism,A.A.A. Monographs, 5 (London:Tavistock,1967), xv.
13
14

639
perhapsthe most widely read,that substantiallyincreasedknowledge of LeviStrauss'swork in the English-speakingworld.'5

Leach has been the most enthusiasticand creative of the leading British
anthropologistswho experimentedin applyingstructuralmethodsto new subjects, doing much enough to make structuralideas accessible.16 Levi-Strauss
himself had commentedquite extensively on kinship among the Kachin, and
Leach immediatelyrecognized not only the relevance of Levi-Strauss'sconclusions for his own data.17 As he later confessed, "what amazed me at the
time was that Levi-Strausshad somehow perceivedmuch more clearly than I
had myself certain essential features of the structureof Kachin society."'8
Rodney Needham was anotherearly enthusiastfor L6vi-Strauss,althoughhe
had certain reservations,strengthenedby Levi-Strausshimself, who strongly
repudiatedNeedham's interpretationof his kinship theory. All reservations
were far from being dissipated, and in what took sometimes the forms of a
great national cause, many British anthropologistscriticized Levi-Strauss
rathervehemently.Definitely more positive, Leach also was not less polemist,
and sometimes even provocative.
In structuralism,however, Leach and others discovered a sophisticated
alternativeto British empiricism. Not surprisingly,the British passion for
Levi-Strauss's structuralanthropologywas accompaniedby a quasi-visceral
Needham'9dedicated
rejectionof Radcliffe-Brown'sstructural-functionalism.
to the latter a morbid resentment,while in his British Academy RadcliffeBrown Lecture,Leach20made of his admirationfor Levi-Straussthe corollary
of a contempt for Radcliffe-Brown.The success in converting some of the
brighteststudentsof the periodwas facilitatedby the almostreligious enthusiasm of Leach and Needham,joined later by Mary Douglas,21 in propagating
of Levi-Strauss'sideas.
Structuralismcame to have somethingof the momentumof a millennial movement, and some of its adherents felt that they formed a
15EdmundLeach, Claude Levi-Strauss(London:Fontana/Collins,1970).
Edmund Leach, Culture and Communication:The Logic by which Symbols are Connected (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1976).
~7EdmundLeach, Political Systemsof Highland Burma:A Study of Kachin Social Structure (Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniversityPress/LondonSchool of Economics and Political
Science, 1954).
18 EdmundLeach, "Telstaret les
aboriginesou la Pensee sauvage," in Anthropologyand
Society, ed. StephenHugh-JonesandJamesLaidlaw(New Haven,Conn.:YaleUniversityPress,
2000), 121.
19Rodney Needham, Structureand Sentiment:A Test Case in Social Anthropology(Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1962).
20 EdmundLeach, "Social
Anthropology:A NaturalScience of Society? [BritishAcademy
Radcliffe-BrownLecture]," in Anthropologyand Society, ed. Stephen Hugh-Jonesand James
Laidlaw (New Haven,Conn.: YaleUniversityPress, 2000).
21
Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo
(London:Routledge & KeganPaul, 1966).
16

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Albert Doja
secret society of the seeing in a world of the blind. Conversionwas
not just a matterof acceptinga new paradigm.It was, almost, a question of salvation.22
The United States were undoubtedlyless permeableto the ideas and theories
of the greatFrenchanthropologist,even thoughL6vi-Strauss"as self-incorporated Americanist" may be considered to some extent as successor to the
Boasian tradition.23As Adam Kuper rhetoricallyreminds us, who but Boas
would have botheredto publish pages and pages of Kwakiutlgooseberrypie
recipes in vernacularlanguage, and who but L6vi-Strausswould be interested
in reanalyzing such material?24Admittedly,analyses and criticism of LeviStrausshave been common enough and his work was discussed by American
anthropologistsas by many others. Perhaps the most encompassing is the
chapteron the "cerebralsavage" writtenby Clifford Geertz who presentsan
original reading of Levi-Strauss's work.25Marshall Sahlins, initially influenced by structuralMarxismand neo-evolutionism,is one of the first who, in
his radical criticism of Marxismas unable to account for the foundationsof
"tribal society," considered structuralismas advancementin this respect.26
Although still thoughtto be unableto seize change "the structureis the beginning of historicalwisdom," and Sahlins was one of the firstwho triedto make
structuralanthropologyhistorical.27
Nevertheless,the countryof culturalismseemed uneasy with the idea that
the logic of symbolism could derive from the human mind. Most AngloAmerican anthropologistswere in fact deeply suspicious of Levi-Strauss.Although challengedby his suppositions,they become outragedby the selectivity with which he handleshis data;attractedby his brilliantliterarystyle, they
were angeredby the arrogancethey see as contradictinghis humanism;and
invited by his philosophical inquiries, they felt disbelief and almost embarrassmentwhen confrontingthe narrownessto which his concept of structure
reducesto a layeredgrid the problemsof humansymbolicity and history.28To
a greatextent all were provokedby L6vi-Strauss'sabstractmodels and deduc22
Adam Kuper,Anthropologistsand Anthropology:The Modem British School, 3rd ed.

(London/NewYork:Routledge, 1996), 215.
23
Regna Darnell,Invisible Genealogies:A History ofAmericanistAnthropology(Lincoln:
University of NebraskaPress, 2001), 282.
24
Kuper,Anthropologistsand Anthropology,223.
25 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973),
345-59.
26
Marshall D. Sahlins, Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1976).
27
MarshallSahlins, Historical Metaphorsand MysthicalRealities: Structurein the Early
History of the SandwichIslands Kingdom(Ann Arbor:Universityof Michigan Press, 1981).
28
Eleanor B. Leacock, "Structuralismand Dialectics," Reviews in Anthropology, 5
(1978), 117-28.

641
tive thinking, and although they disagree with his unfamiliar assumptions
about marriage or tendentious summaries of selected myths, most remain
caught by his seductive style, interweavingas he does broad philosophical
considerations,concise theoreticalstatements,and the fascinatingexploratory
discussion of mythic and social materials. Clifford Geertz, for instance, in
spite of his own "admittedscepticism toward the structuralistproject as a
researchprogram"and his probably "outrighthostility to it as a philosophy
of mind," makes it clear that he regardsL6vi-Strauss's "constructionof an
entire discourse realm from a standingstart as a stunningachievement,altogether worthy of the attentionit has received."29
The AntistructuralCritique
Levi-Strausswas from the beginning a controversialand influential author, and his challenge to what remains a generally positivist anthropology
continues to be enormously influential.In spite of the enormous secondary
literature,debatestill rages over the validityof L6vi-Strauss'smethods,which
may sound plausible in theory but there are practicaldifficulties thatturn out
to be of majorimportance.
Critiquesof L6vi-Strauss'swork fall into two main classes, as adversaries
of the method deplore not only structuralism'sapparentindifference to history but also its restrictivemodel for consciousness and its empirical inadequacy. A first serious objection, initially expressed in the polemic raised by
Jean-Paul Sartre in his Critique of Dialectical Reason, related to L6viStrauss's limits of the meaning of history.30The most devastatingcritique
came from JacquesDerridain his Grammatology,who emphasizedthe elaborate and illusory formalism of structuralism'spurporteduniversalsas exemplary only of the fallacies of the Western"phonologistic"and "logocentric"
philosophical tradition.31Again and again Derrida methodically attacked
structuralismand the whole range of Levi-Strauss'swork and accused structuralismof failing to acknowledgethe free "play" of the signifier.32
It is on the issue of relationshipbetween subject and object that the dissension is the most acrimonious,the philosopherssuspectingL6vi-Straussto
reduce man and his works to a purely objective reflection.From the point of
view of phenomenology, they blame out the structural approach for impoverishing social praxis or for being unable to reach the interpretative dimension
of comprehension. Exported in the English-speaking world, the critical question became that of agency, of who uses what, and to what extent "what"
29Geertz, Worksand Lives, 27.
Sartre,Critiquede la raison dialectique (Paris:Gallimard:1960).
31 JacquesDerrida,De la grammatologie(Paris:Minuit, 1967).
32
JacquesDerrida,L'ecritureet la difference(Paris:Seuil, 1967), 409-28.
30 Jean-Paul

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AlbertDoja
may become independentof "who." Essayists and philosophers of various

horizons condemnedstructuralanalysis as a doctrineof refutingany freedom
to the subject of meaning productionand any autonomyto individualpraxis,
human agency becoming entirely dependent in the apprehensionof reality
and self-consciousness on the universallaws of an alreadyconstitutedreason.
Whereas Sartre's brand of existentialism was primarilyconcerned with
the experienceof the subjectin-the-world,stressingthe importanceof historical situation and the necessity of individual choice and responsibility,structuralismfocused on the unconsciousstructuresthatprecedeindividualagency
and resist historicalcontingency, and at least in principle,was said to remain
closed to questions of a moral or ethical nature.Sartrecriticized the abstraction of structuralanalysis and its objectificationof humanexperience, which
ignored the dialecticalrealtiesof concreterelationsand historicalprocesses.33
In his view the prioritygiven to autonomousand unconsciousstructuresdehumanized the subject and excluded the possibility of individualagency.34 The
"deathof the subject" was, in fact, a favoritetheme in French structuralism
during the 1960s. Regardingthe natureof L6vi-Straussianisomorphismbetween the laws of the universe and those of the mind, Paul Ricoeur assumed
from the startthatwhat was being profferedwas a Kantianunconsciousness.
Not the Freudian unconscious of instinctual, erotic drives and its
power of symbolisation,but a categorial,combinativeunconscious,as
regardsits organization,since we are here concernedwith a categorial
system withoutreferenceto a thinkingsubject;thatis why structuralism as a philosophy will develop a kind of intellectualismwhich is
fundamentally anti-reflective, anti-idealist and anti-phenomenological.35
Structuresmove towardconcordanceby mutuallyreflectinghypothesizedunderlying predispositionsof the mind, and by reflectingeach other in various
ways. In L6vi-Strauss'sscheme there seems to be not developmentalchange,
but mere permutationand combination.In TristesTropiques,when he related
Marxismto the other main impulses in his own intellectualdevelopmentand
conception of ethnography,he was concerned with the same primaryquestion: "That of the relationshipbetween feeling and reason, the experienced
and the rational,and the aim pursuedis the same: to achieve a kind of superrationalismwhich will integratethe formerwith the latterwithout sacrificing
any of its properties."36
Jean-PaulSartre,Critiquede la raison dialectique (Paris:Gallimard,1985), 490-93.
Jean-PaulSartre, "L'anthropologie,"in Situations(Paris:Gallimard,1972), 9: 83-89.
35 Paul Ricoeur, Le conflit des interpretations: essais d'hermeneutique(Paris: Seuil,
1969), 37.
36
Claude Levi-Strauss,TristesTropiques(Paris:Plon, 1955), 62.
33
34

643
This may be a very abstractway of saying that Marxismis an etiology,

an attemptto trace the conditions of society, of materialenvironment,and of
human consciousness, to their hidden source. Social relations and collective
representationsare then the primary coordinates of L6vi-Strauss's theory,
who goes on to suggest that Marxism itself is only a partial case of a more
general theory of communication.This theory will be the frameworkof a
truly rationaland comprehensivesociology. Not surprisingly,Marxists have
challenged the "totalitarian"claims of Levi-Strauss's theory and have attacked its "irrationalist"and "anti-historical"aspects.
It was not enough to simply posit kinship structuresor mental frameworks; equally importantis the process by which these are produced and
reproduced.With kinship, Levi-Strausshad addressedthe issue with an emphasis on reciprocityand cross-cousin marriage.But by shying away from it
in his studies of the intellect, with his formulaof "forms imposed upon conLvi-Strauss is believed to have fallen victim to his own methodtent,""37
ology.38
At any rate, if both L6vi-Strauss's and Marx's methods emphasize the
determinatenessof underlyinghidden structures,today this may amount to
little more than scientific truism. Structuralismseems to deny meaning to
surface phenomena,such as social action and praxis, because it views meaning as a faculty of deep structurenot susceptible to modification through
experience.The divorceof structuralanalysisin its L6vi-Straussianform from
all these sets of considerations,like the divorce of structureitself from the
individualsocial and culturalforms that are its putativebearers,is believed to
be a result of L6vi-Strauss'sa priori commitmentto Saussureanideology.39
Displacing the concept of structureoutside any concrete cultural construct
means, in effect, that any social or culturalsystem is separatedby definition
from any articulationwith subjectiveconsciousness, interpretivemeaning, social action, or social organization.These separationsthus converge with the
fundamentalantinomiesof Saussureanlinguistic ideology, interalia the separationof cognition from action, culturefrom society, paradigmfrom syntagm,
text from context, structurefrom historicalprocess, and subjectivityfrom the
structuresof consciousness.
In addition, considering that LMvi-Straussborrowed his most essential
claims for structuralanalysis from linguistics, critics see as a paradoxthat
language, the subject matterof linguistic discipline, failed utterly to engage
his imagination. Some claim that he failed, like Durkheim, to address the
37 Claude Levi-Strauss, "Histoire et ethnologie," in Anthropologie structurale (Paris:
Plon, 1949), 28.
38 Gary Roth, "ClaudeLevi-Straussin Retrospect,"Dialectical Anthropology,18 (1993),
31-52.
39 TerenceS. Turner,"On Structureand Entropy:TheoreticalPastiche and the Contradictions of Structuralism,"CurrentAnthropology,31 (1990), 563-68.

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Albert Doja
contentionof historical linguistics that the comparativemethod provides the

closest thing to a "scientific"method attainableto the social sciences.40 Others believe that he virtually ignores language as a system of communication,
whereby symbols are created and manipulatedin the process of persuading
and admonishing,seeking reassurance,catharsis,straightforwardenjoyment,
or attemptingto comprehendsituations.There is no place in his explanations
for the emotions, the wonderful,joy, sorrow, and love. Although ever occupied with meanings, he is supposed to reduce semantics to a mere tool for
discoveringbinary structures.His work is based on the universalityof metaphor, yet he treatsmetaphoras given, as virtuallycoterminouswith the physiological structureof the brain,ratherthan as a powerfulartificeof language.41
Most consider thereby a largely misunderstoodmodel of linguistic structure
altogetherwith a separationof myth from other language products,in which
Levi-Strauss'smechanisticviews of social systems is allegedly matched.
In this line of criticism there is also the closing off of the question of
ritual.The accusation,coming mainly from Britishanthropologistslike Victor
Turner,is that his exclusive concentrationon the symbolic and the cognitive
has neglected the reality of the extreme affective states experienced during
social activities like ritual, which cannot simply be reduced to modalities of
the intellect.42
More importantly,it is significantfor critics that in defining the critical
role of anthropology,L6vi-Straussavoids all mentionof social processes such
as exploitation,alienation,the extremedivision of labor, modernwar, and the
characterof the state.43Given his affinity with Marxism, L6vi-Strausswas
also expected to search for the basis of universal structuresin the quality of
materiallife, not just in economic activity but in the complete dimensions of
social life which constitutethe fabric of humanactivity.44But having contributed to the resurgence of both Marxist anthropologyand literary criticism,
he ended by ignoring them both. And despite his claims of shifting from
infrastructuralto superstructuralconcerns, he is actually reproachedto fall
into neitherarea.
His thirst for the ultimate is supposed to evade our realities or, perhaps,
to take them for grantedas mere contingencies.Apparently,in the Mythologiques cycle,45the relationshipsof myths to the people who work them out are
only examined quite occasionally, and the structuralperspective is vehe40
Regna Darnell, "The Structuralismof Claude Levi-Strauss,"HistoriographiaLinguistica: InternationalJournalfor the Historyofthe Language Sciences, 22 (1995), 217-34.
41 Leacock, "Structuralism
and Dialectics."
42 Victor W. Turner,The Ritual Process: Structureand Anti-Structure,The Lewis
Henry
Morgan Lectures, 1966 (Chicago:Aldine, 1969).
43 Diamond, "The Inauthenticityof Anthropology."
44 Roth, "ClaudeLevi-Straussin Retrospect."
45 Claude Ldvi-Strauss,Le Cru et le Cuit (Paris:Plon, 1964); Du miel aux cendres (Paris:
Plon, 1966); L'origine des manieres de table (Paris: Plon, 1968); L'hommenu (Paris: Plon,
1971).

645
mently criticizedfor consideringmyth as only a manifestationof the underlying logic of the system in which it is a part, and not as a voicing and bodying
forth of the inner life of humankind,of its achievements and tragedies, of
recurrentexperiences with wondrous and terrifying forces and movements,
and least of all, of the dramainherentin humancommunication.The fascinating complexity and the range of L6vi-Strauss'sinquiryinto myth is meant to
mask the fact that he has seriously isolated and narrowedthe scope of his
research,insofar as a generaltheory of society is concerned.
Levi-Straussis finally meantto have denaturedthe humanmind by reducing it to a machinefor producinglogical rules. If myths can explain anything,
critics wonder whether their reason is first of only intellectual character.It
seems actuallyto Levi-Strauss'scritics thathe only speaks of oppositionsand
transformationsfrom one to anotherlevel with an approachthat informs the
applicationof his terms as thoroughlymechanistic. Technicalproceduresof
structuralanalyses denying meaning at the level of action are taken to represent the most intellectualistic and abstractedapproachto myth within the
much broader spectrum of schools of thought. It is maintainedthat L6viStrauss's approachon the whole seems to lead away from, ratherthan into,
questions aboutrelationsbetween mythologies and social systems, and about
transformationsin these relationsas social systems change.
Moreover,because female sexuality and the wishes of women are superfluous to his kinshiptheory, Levi-Straussfaced criticismfrom Americanfeminists who began to make inroadsin anthropologyin the 1970s. In particular
Gayle Rubin's chapterbecame the classic feminist critiqueof the structuralist
position, presentingthe whole of Levi-Strauss's contributionas intrinsically
reactionary.46In addition, whereas in the 1970s the feminists had regarded
the ElementaryStructuresof Kinship47as a treatise of sexism, it becomes
homophobic with the recent movements for homosexual rights to marital
union and parenthood.48
No matter how many details L6vi-Strauss might have accounted for
within his analytical framework,the motivating forces behind the process
remainedunintelligible and his proceduresarbitrary,even if sometimes illuminating.49Even the Tristes Tropiques50have been criticized by theorists in
culturalstudies for almost everything,from racismto an oversimplificationof
46
Gayle Rubin, "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex," in
Towardan Anthropologyof Women,ed. Rayna R. Reiter (New York:Monthly Review Press,
1975), 157-210.
47 Claude L6vi-Strauss,Les structureselementairesde la
parente (Paris:Mouton, 1967).
48 Jeanne Favret-Saada,"La
pens6e L6vi-Strauss,"Journal des Anthropologues, 82-83
(2000), 53-70; Patrice Maniglier, "L'humanismeinterminablede Claude L6vi-Strauss,"Les
TempsModernes,609 (2000), 216-41.
49 Roth, "ClaudeLevi-Straussin
Retrospect."
50 L6vi-Strauss,TristesTropiques.

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AlbertDoja
the tropesof traveland fieldwork!5"

Some authorslike JackGoody or Jacques
Derridahave accusedLdvi-Straussof using ethnocentriccategorizations,52
but
the charge of racism is simply out of place. A full examinationand reassessment of the far too many lines of criticismof Levi-Straussis beyond scope at
this time. However,it can be said that the style of parody or pastiche can be
quite popularamong critics of Levi-Strauss.
The Anthropologistas a Hero
It seems there is currentlya total misrecognitionof L6vi-Strauss'sstanding especially in contemporaryAmericananthropology,where simply speaking, he seems to be on the verge of total irrelevance,as few practicingcultural
anthropologistssee themselves as at all influencedby his approach.At most,
Levi-Straussis read in the context of the history of anthropology,and there
he is usually dismissed, ironically for the very reason he must be praised,
namely, his insistence on scientific rigor, simply because this concept is become unfortunatelyquite alien to many American cultural anthropologists.
The result of this situation is less a steady critique of Levi-Strauss than a
particularlyinsouciantneglect. To put it bluntly, in the United States or Britain today, frequently graduate students of anthropologydo not read L6viStrauss,who is even hardlymentionedin graduatecourses, which is tragically
shortsightedfor the discipline. In addition,and what seems most dramatically
criticalis thatmost Americananthropologistsover the last threedecades don't
even think L6vi-Straussis importantenough to be arguedwith. He is simply
ignored in the day-to-daypractice of a discipline that by and large has embracedpostmodernism.
The "tristes tropes" of postmodernistshave located in empiricism and
historicism a genuine and well-known problem, mainly by means of a dismissive attitudetowardscientific analysis and the largely uncriticalappropriation of literary criticism.53It is hardly surprising in these conditions that
Derrida'stheories have takenhold especially in NorthAmericandepartments
of literature.In many ways his "deconstruction,"graftedacross the Atlantic
from a set of Europeanphilosophical inquiries onto the terrainof American
literary commentaries,is starting to look more American than French. It is
often perceivedeven in Europeas an Americanbrandof theorems,a discourse
or a school, which has become known as a thoroughlyAmerican invention.
51 James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translationin the Late TwentiethCentury(Cambridge, Mass.: HarvardUniversityPress, 1997).
52 Jack
Goody, TheDomesticationof the Savage Mind (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity
Press, 1977); JacquesDerrida,De la grammatologie.
53 Nicole Polier and William Roseberry, "Tristestropes:Post-modernAnthropologistsEncounterthe Otherand Discover Themselves," Economyand Society, 18 (1989), 245-64.

647
This, however,does not simply make referenceto the fact thatdeconstruction

is an American "thing,"but also to the fact thatonly in Americais this brand
of deconstructionunderstoodas a "thing"at all. In other words,it is not only
in America that something like deconstructionis, but America itself is the
deconstructionof Europe.54
No wonderthereare and should be an increasingnumberof scholars,who
have chosen other paths and do the work they do without recourse to L6viStraussat all, in the wake of new developmentsin anthropologyworldwide.
But this cannotput at stakehis contemporaryrelevanceand his criticalimportance for the future, nor can this explain the negative trajectoryof LeviStrauss'sreputation,particularlyin Americanculturalanthropology.Most anthropologistsare ratherunhappywith this situation,and L6vi-Strauss'stheory
is in fact received in anthropologywith more discretion and undoubtedlyin
contrastwith the criticalreactionsthatthe firsttexts of structuralanthropology
caused to a broadrange of censors, more at ease to blame theirphilosophical
presuppositionsthan to judge their impact in a field of knowledge that none
really commanded.
L6vi-Strausswas truly an explorer finding his way into a new realm: a
new world of myth and the imagination.In this respect his work dealt with
both the analysis of the content of the myths and the mental processes that
were responsiblefor their creation.Because such mythical contents and such
mentalprocesses had alreadybeen the subjectof allegoristFrazerianexegesis
or heated Freudianspeculationrespectively,Levi-Strauss'swritings acquired
a significance far beyond the immediate realm of anthropologicalresearch.
Litterateurs,psychologists, historians, and philosophers felt compelled to
come to terms with L6vi-Strauss's radical views, but the fact that most of
these hangers-onknew little about the technicalities of kinship systems, the
exigencies of the ecology in the jungles of Brazil, or the debates arounddual
organizationand similar matters meant that Levi-Strausshimself became a
mythical figure.
For many, L6vi-Strauss's theory is still too much "intellectualist"and
prevent them from understandingthe fascination of human action and practice. As if one rose up, for example, againstthe kinetic theory of gases under
the pretext that by explaining why the hot air dilates and goes up, it would
put in dangerthe life of family and the moralsof the hearthwhose demystified
warmthwould lose thus its symbolic and emotional resonances. As the fact
of knowing, again, how the clock works inside would preventus from knowing what role a watch might play in one's emotional life (making very impatient when an appointmentis late, eager when the person one loves is about
54Anselm Haverkamp(ed.), Deconstructionis/in America (New York:New YorkUniversity Press, 1995), 28.

AlbertDoja
648
to arrive),or if the chemical formulaof sugar deprivedus of appreciatingits

savorand on the contrarywould mistakeus in preferringa salty or bittertaste.
Sensitive souls refuse to understandthat there are not the emotions that
produceculturebut the opposite,just as music is a mathematicalcombination
of differentwavelengthsthat createsthe emotions of which it is not the result.
With his insistence upon a sharp separationbetween the collective and individual consciousness, Durkheim had failed to give proper emphasis to the
possibility of understandingsocial facts totally. This corresponded,according
to L6vi-Strauss,to a generalfault of science wherebythe subjectiveproperties
are left to one side while we seek explanationsin purelyobjectiveforms. With
his conception of "total social facts" Mauss implied that on the contrarythis
facile and convenientdichotomy is inadmissiblefor sociology:
In order to understanda social fact it is necessary to comprehendit
totally, that is, from without as a thing, but a thing an integral part
of which is also the subjective understanding,both conscious and
unconscious, which we have of it, as if being inescapablyhuman we
were to live the fact as the native does instead of merely observing it
as the ethnographer.55
As the ideal of a total chemistrythat "oughtto explain not only the form and
distributionof the molecules of a strawberrybut how a unique saviour does
result from such a layout," L6vi-Strausshas tried to take things seriously,
telling himself they are objects that requirelong and very patient analysis.56
Myth, for instance, is a sui generis reality that can and must be studiedin its
own right, withoutreferenceto a context, whetherhistorical,psychological or
sociological. Myths "arethe very exercise of savage mind;their internalunity
and logical coherence are not on the side of verisimilitudeor reference."57
L6vi-Strauss'stheoreticalinterpretation,based on elucidationof the operations of humanmind, realized a researchof relationshipbetween natureand
culture, especially in the study of kinship systems and the production of
myths. His originalitywas to challenge the dilemma of the incompatibleconceptual opposition between human natureand culturalvariety, attemptingto
show thatone underliesthe otherin the way thatan abstractandhomogeneous
structurecontrols concrete and varied manifestations.The principle is not
new, it was held for asset in traditionalphilosophicalanthropology,but modethnographicknowledge had called it into question. To rejoin this princiemrn
55 Claude L6vi-Strauss, "Introductiona
l'oeuvre de Marcel Mauss," in Marcel Mauss,

et
Presses
Universitaires
de France, 1950), xxviii.
(Paris:
Sociologie Anthropologie
56 Claude Levi-Strauss,ibid., xxvii.
57Marcel Henaff, Claude Levi-Strauss et l'anthropologie structurale (Paris: Belfond,
1991), 171.

649
ple and challenge ethnographicempiricism,trying at the same time to identify

universallaws of the human mind as they express themselves throughsuch
domains as kinship,myth, art, and "primitive"forms of classification,thatis,
better account for the culturalcharacteristicsand to establish the intellectual
unity of humankind,such is the task L6vi-Strausswas fixed.
Criticismwas also the opportunityfor Levi-Straussto assert his conviction that social sciences and anthropology,following the methodologyof natural sciences, should understandthat the reality of their subjectmatteris not
entirely confined at the level of the observantsubject.This is clear especially
in the "finale"to the Mythologiquescycle, which can be seen as an extended
defence of the structuralmethod.In his attemptto clarify his divergenceswith
the philosophies of the subject he also advocateda humanismless narrowly
defined by the culture of one particularhistorical moment and reaffirmed,
against Marxist criticism, his fidelity to Marx and the dialectical spirit of
historical materialism.Trained as a philosopher, indeed, he never entirely
abandonedphilosophy, despite his protestationsto the contrary, and wrote
importantcritiques of both existentialismand phenomenology.One can see,
in retrospect,the nature and the magnitudeof the challenge Levi-Strauss's
anthropologyposed to philosophy. The variouscriticisms leveled at structuralism, its reductionism,its antihumanism,and its a-historicism,are all countered, reformulated,and turned back against philosophy itself: its lack of
scientific awareness, its ethnocentrismand anthropocentrism,its obsession
with history.
As Leach reminded,Levi-Strauss's importancelies in the mode of discourse he inventedto display facts and frameexplanationsand ideas, suggesting new and unfamiliar ways of looking at familiar facts, and thereby
In an astonishingchapteron "totem
provokingthoughtaboutfundamentals.58
and caste," for example, Levi-Strausssets out to demonstratethat the structure of the Indiancaste system is a logical transformationof the structureof
the totemic order of AustralianAborigines.59 "Intellectualfirework"of this
kind, in Leach's terms, do not in themselves enlarge our understandingof
eitherthe caste orderor Australiantotemism,but they do challenge us to think
more deeply about human society and about what is specifically human.6 In
L6vi-Strauss'sview it is much more importantto understandthe difference
between culture and nature than to bother with scholastic arguments about
how oriental despotism, for instance, is related to feudalism in whatever sequence of historical determinism.
With his acknowledgment that mental satisfaction is a product of things
58Leach, Claude Levi-Strauss.
59Claude L6vi-Strauss,La pensee sauvage (Paris:Plon,
60
1962), 144-77.
Leach, "Telstaret les aboriginesou la Pensee sauvage," 111.

650
AlbertDoja
"good to think,"61he moved anthropologytowarda more formalmethod and

more scientific aspirations,and inadvertentlyignited an intellectual enthusiasm that swept throughnearlyall social sciences and the humanitiesand made
of him, in Susan Sontag's terms, the first anthropologistas a hero.62But it is
not the formalisticsearchfor binaryoppositionsthatis genuinely valuable,as
it is not the odd facts or the even odder explanationsL6vi-Straussbrought
forth that made of him an intellectualhero. Accordingto Clifford Geertz, no
anthropologisthas been more insistent thanL6vi-Strausson the fact that "the
practice of his profession has consisted of a personalquest, driven by a personal vision, and directed toward a personal salvation."63In the form of the
standardprophetic myth of the heroic quest, with the anthropologistas its
hero, as Richard Shweder put it, L6vi-Strausstransformedan expedition to
the virgin interiorsof the Amazon into a vision quest, and turnedanthropology into a spiritualmission to defend mankindagainst itself.
That is why Levi-Straussis admirednot so much for the novelty of his
ideas as for the bold originality with which he seeks to apply them and for
the range of associationswhereby complexity appearsas revealinginstead of
confusing. It is the organizationof Levi-Strauss'sideas that creates his facts
"as a cyclotron creates subatomicparticles."64He will no doubt be remembered for many things, including his skills as a meticulousresearcher,whose
command of detail was almost unprecedented,and as a scholar who never
shied awayfrom answeringcritics and who would at times revise ideas, when
he felt the criticism to be serious and powerful enough. Yet, Levi-Strauss's
work is finally strangeand more divertingthan it appears.Rooted as it is in
rationalism,it is also graftedon a paradoxicalRousseauism,but innervedof
a twilight irony, that of an "activepessimism." If it intimidatesby its radical
power, it enchantsby the delicacy of its ways of doing and captivatesby the
discernment with which it imposes its reasons. Written to convince, LeviStrauss'sworkis undoubtedlybased on the irreproachablerigorof a scientific
and academic discipline. At the same time, it is expressed in evocative prose
thatbecomes poetic and limpidin his most difficultpasses, swayingand subtle
even in its most rectilinearand regulatedcourse. It is full of savors, colored
moods, woven in pleasuresof writing, and unceasingly animatedby a significant presence.
Universityof Limerick,Irelandand UniversityCollege, London.
ClaudeIUvi-Strauss,Le totemismeaujourd'hui(Paris:Presses Universitairesde France,
1962), 132.
62
Nelson E. Hayes and TanyaHayes (eds.), Claude Levi-Strauss:The Anthropologistas
Hero (Cambridge,Mass.: MassachusettsInstituteof TechnologyPress, 1970).
63 Geertz, TheInterpretationof Cultures,346.
64Diamond, "The Inauthenticityof Anthropology."
61


The Advent of Heroic Anthropology in The History of Ideas

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Author(s): Albert Doja

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of his discipline,3anthropologybecomes one of the essential referencepoints

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