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Richard L. W.

Clarke LITS3304 Notes 03B

CLAUDE LVI-STRAUSS THE STRUCTURAL STUDY O F M YTH (1955) Levi-Strauss, Claude. The Structural Study of Myth. Structural Anthropology. Vol. 1. Trans. Clair Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Shoepf. New York: Basic, 1963. 206-231. Levi-Strauss begins by pointing out that the field of anthropology has turned away from the study of primitive religion (206), started by m en like Tylor, Frazer, and Durkheim (206), all celebrated anthropologists who were psychologically oriented (206), thereby creating a vacuum subsequently filled by all kinds of am ateurs (206). The reason for this was that the interpretations of Tylor, et al. soon becam e vitiated by the outm oded psychological approach which they used as their basis (206). Levi-Strauss believes that m ythology has been one of the sub-field of religious anthropology (207) to suffer the m ost. Myths are still widely interpreted in conflicting ways: as collective dream s, as the outcom e of a kind of esthetic play, or as the basis of ritual. Mythological figures are considered as personified abstractions, divinised heroes, or fallen gods. Whatever the hypothesis, the choice am ounts to reducing mythology either to idle play or to a crude kind of philosophic speculation. (207) Levi-Strauss wants to m ove beyond a false choice between platitude and sophism (207). Som e claim , he points out, that hum an societies m erely express, through their m ythology, fundam ental feelings comm on to the whole of m ankind, such as love, hate, or revenge or that they try to provide som e kinds of explanations for phenom ena which they cannot otherwise understand astronom ical, m eteorological, and the like. (207) But, Levi-Strauss wonders, why would they strain for these, rather than sim pler empirical explanations (207). Sim ilarly, those of a m ore psychoanalytic bent (e.g. Jung) have shifted the problem s away from the natural or cosm ological toward the sociological and psychological fields (207), arguing that an em phasis on, for exam ple, evil grandm others reflects the social structure and social relations (207) or, should the evidence be conflicting, that m ythology provides an outlet for repressed feelings (208). All in all, whatever the situation, a clever dialectic will always find a way to pretend that a m eaning has been found (208). Levi-Strauss argues that there is a paradox to m yth: on the one hand, it would seem that in the course of a m yth, anything is likely to happen. There is no logic or continuity. Any characteristic can be attributed to any subject; every conceivable relation can be found. With m yth, everything becom es possible. (208) On the other hand, this apparent arbitrariness is belied by the astounding sim ilarity between m yths collected in widely different languages (208) with the result that if the content of m yth is contingent, how are we going to explain the fact that m yths throughout the world are so sim ilar (208). Levi-Strauss sees a sim ilarity between this contradiction (208) and a problem which brought considerable worry to the first philosophers concerned with linguistic problem s (208), a hurdle which Linguistics had to overcom e before it could begin to evolve as a science (208): Ancient philosophers reasoned about language the way we do about m ythology. On the one hand, they did notice that in a given language certain sequences of sounds were associated with definite meanings, and they earnestly aim ed at discovering a reason for the linkage between those sounds and that m eaning. Their attem pt, however, was thwarted from the very beginning by the fact that the sam e sounds were equally present in other languages although the m eaning they conveyed was entirely different. The

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contradiction was surm ounted only by the discovery that it is the com bination of sounds, not the sounds them selves, which provides the significant data. (208) Levi-Strauss reasons that m any contemporary interpreters of m yth labour under sim ilar m isapprehensions. Jungs notion that the archetype, for exam ple, possesses a certain m eaning (208) is com parable to the long-supported error that a sound m ay possess a certain affinity with a m eaning (208). Levi-Strauss is of the view that everybody will agree that the Saussurean principle of the arbitrary character of linguistic signs was a prerequisite for the accession of linguistics to the scientific level (209). However, Levi-Strauss contends that m yth cannot sim ply be treated as language (209) for m yth is language: to be known, m yth has to be told; it is a part of hum an speech (209). But, to preserve its specificity we m ust be able to show that it is both the sam e thing as language, and also som ething different from it (209). This is because language itself can be analysed into things which are at the sam e tim e sim ilar and yet different (209): hence, Saussures distinction between langue and parole, one being the structural side of language, the other the statistical aspect of it, langue belonging to reversible tim e, parole being non-reversible (209). (Later, Levi-Strauss equates reversible and non-reversible, synchronic and diachronic [211].) Myth, Levi-Strauss contends, uses a third referent which com bines the properties of the first two (209): On the one hand, a m yth always refers to events alleged to have taken place a long tim e ago. But what gives the myth an operational value is that the specific pattern described is tim eless; it explains the present and the past as well as the future. (209) Levi-Strauss contrasts m yth with an event like the French Revolution which, for the historian, is a sequence of past happenings, a non-reversible series of events the rem ote consequences of which m ay still be felt at present (209), while for the politician (LeviStrauss is of the view that politics is the heir in m odern society to m yth), it is both a sequence belonging to the past . . . and a tim eless pattern which can be detected in the contemporary French social structure and which provides a clue for its interpretation, a lead from which to infer future developm ents (209). It is that double structure, altogether historical and ahistorical, which explains how m yth, while pertaining to the realm of parole and calling for an explanation as such, as well as to that of langue in which it is expressed, can also be an absolute entity on a third level which, though it rem ains linguistic by nature, is nevertheless distinct from the other two (210). Levi-Strauss stresses the originality of myth in relation to other linguistic phenom ena (210): unlike poetry which cannot be translated except at the cost of serious distortions (210), the m ythical value of the m yth is preserved even through the worst translation. W hatever our ignorance of the language and culture of the people where it originated, a m yth is still felt as a m yth by any reader anywhere in the world. Its substance does not lie in its style, its original m usic, or its syntax, but in the story which it tells. (210) Levi-Strauss sum m arises his argum ent to this point: the m eaning of myth does not reside in the isolated elem ents which enter into the com position of a m yth, but only in the way those elem ents are com bined (210); though it is a form of language, language in m yth exhibits specific properties (210); these properties are only to be found above the ordinary linguistic level (210). This leads him to assert that m yth is m ade up of constituent units (210) which presuppose the constituent units present in language when analysed on other levels nam ely, phonem es, m orphem es, and sem em es but they, nevertheless, differ from the latter in the sam e way as the latter differ am ong them selves; they belong to a higher and m ore com plex order (210-211). Levi-Strauss calls these higher units which differentiate myth from other forms of speech its gross constituent units (211) or

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m ythem es (211). Levi-Strauss then reveals his technique which consists in analysing each m yth individually, breaking down its story into the shortest possible sentences, and writing each sentence on an index card bearing a num ber corresponding to the unfolding of the story (211). Each such card will thus show that a certain function is, at a given tim e, linked to a given subject (211), that is, each gross constituent unit will consist of a relation (211). However, this definition rem ains unsatisfactory because the linguistic units of a lower order are also m ade up of relations (211), and we still find ourselves in the realm of a nonreversible tim e, since the num bers of the cards correspond to the unfolding of the narrative (211), while m ythological time (211) is both synchronic and diachronic. This leads LeviStrauss to articulate a new hypothesis, which constitutes the very core of our argum ent (211): the true constituent units of a m yth are not the isolated relations but bundles of such relations, and it is only as bundles that these relations can be put to use and com bined so as to produce a m eaning. Relations pertaining to the sam e bundle m ay appear diachronically at remote intervals, but when we have succeeded in grouping them together we have reorganised our m yth according to a tim e referent of a new nature corresponding to the prerequisite of the initial hypothesis, nam ely a two-dim ensional time referent which is sim ultaneously diachronic and synchronic, and which accordingly integrates the characteristics of langue on the one hand, and those of parole on the other. (212) Levi-Strauss draws a comparison between m yth, on the one hand, and a m usical score, on the other: Hence the hypothesis: what if patterns showing affinity, instead of being considered in succession, were to be treated as one complex pattern and read as a whole? By getting at what we call harm ony, they [Levi-Strauss im aginary archaeologists of the future] would then see that an orchestra score, to be m eaningful, m ust be read diachronically along one axis that is, page after page, and from left to right and synchronically along the other axis, all the notes written vertically m aking up one gross constituent unit. (212) Later, Levi-Strauss contends that the synchronic-diachronic structure of the m yth perm its us to organise it into diachronic sequences (the rows in our tables) which should be read synchronically (the colum ns) (229). This slated structure (229), as he term s it, comes to the surface, so to speak, through the process of repetition (229). At this point, Levi-Strauss offers a concrete exam ple of the method we propose (212) the Oedipus m yth: Say, for instance, we were confronted with a sequence of the type: 1,2,4,7,8,2,3,4,6,8,1,4,5,7,8,1,2,5,7,3,4,5,6,8 . . ., the assignm ent being to put all the 1's together, all the 2's, all the 3's, etc.; the result is a chart: 1 2 4 7 8 2 3 4 6 8 1 4 5 7 8 1 2 5 7 3 4 5 6 8 W e shall attem pt to perform the sam e kind of operation on the Oedipus m yth, trying out several arrangem ents of the m ythem es until we find one which is in harm ony with the principles enum erated above. (213) This is the basic structure inform ing the diagram , found on p.214, which Levi-Strauss offers of the Oedipus m yth and its variants:

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Cadm os seeks his sister Europa, ravished by Zeus Cadmos kills the dragon The Spartoi kill one another (The nam e) Labdacos (Laios father) = lam e (?) Oedipus kills his father, Laios (The nam e) Laios (Oedipus father) = left-sided (?) Oedipus kills the Sphinx (The nam e) Oedipus = swollen-foot (?) Oedipus m arries his m other, Jocasta Eteocles kills his brother, Polynices Antigone buries her brother, Polynices, despite prohibition Overrating of blood relations Underrating of blood relations Slaying of m onsters = denial of the autochthonous nature of m an Difficulties in walking straight and standing upright = persistence of the autochthonous nature of m an

Levi-Strauss argues that we thus find ourselves confronted with four vertical colum ns, each of which includes several relations belonging to the sam e bundle. Were we to tell the myth, we would disregard the colum ns and read the rows from left to right and from top to bottom . But if we want to understand the m yth, then we will have to disregard one half of the diachronic dim ension (top to bottom ) and read from left to right, colum n after colum n, each one being considered as a unit. (214) All the units grouped in a particular colum n, he points out, exhibit one comm on feature (215): e.g. all the elem ents in the first colum n have som ething to do with blood relations which are overem phasised, that is, are more intim ate than they should be (215), that is,

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their com m on feature is the overrating of blood relations (215); the second colum n expresses the sam e thing, but inverted: underrating of blood relations (215) (in the sense that som eone kills a relative); the third refers to m onsters being slain (215) by m en, and in the fourth, all the nam es have a com m on feature: all the hypothetical m eanings . . . refer to difficulties in walking straight and standing upright (215). Levi-Strauss then asks what is the relationship between the third and fourth colum ns. In the third colum n, the dragon is a chthonian being which has to be killed in order that m ankind be born from the Earth (215) (this has to do with the autochthonous origin of m ankind [215]), while the sphinx is a m onster unwilling to perm it m en to live (215). Hence, the com m on feature of the third colum n is denial of the autochthonous origin of m an (215). This helps to explain the meaning of the fourth colum n: in m ythology, he argues, it is a universal characteristic of m en born from the earth that at the m om ent they em erge from the depth they either cannot walk or they walk clum sily (215). Thus, the com m on feature of the fourth colum n is the persistence of the autochthonous origin of m an (216). It follows, he argues, that colum n four is to colum n three as colum n one is to colum n two (216). This leads Levi-Strauss to offer an interpretation of the Oedipus m yth which has to do with the inability, for a culture which holds the belief that m ankind is autochthonous . . . to find a satisfactory transition between this theory and the knowledge that hum an beings are actually born from the union of m an and wom an. Although the problem obviously cannot be solved, the Oedipus m yth provides a kind of logical tool which relates the original problem born from one or born from two? to the derivative problem : born from different or born from sam e? By a correlation of this type, the overrating of blood relations is to the underrating of blood relations as the attem pt to escape autochthony is to the impossibility to succeed in it. Although experience contradicts theory, social life validates cosm ology by its sim ilarity of structure. Hence cosm ology is true. (216) There is from this point of view, no true version (216) of the m yth. Rather, we define the m yth as consisting of all its versions (217). There is no single true version of which all the others are but copies or distortions (218). Freuds account is, for exam ple, but one m ore version of the myth, concerned less with the problem of autochthony versus bisexual reproduction (217) than that of understanding how one can be born from two: how is it that we do not have only one procreator, but a m other plus a father? (217). Moreover, if a m yth is m ade up of all its variants, structural analysis should take all of them into account (217) leading to a com parative analysis, the final outcome being the structural law of the m yth (217). To check this theory (219), Levi-Strauss devotes m uch of the rest of the essay (pp. 219ff) to an exhaustive analysis of all the known versions of the Zuni origin and em ergence m yth (219). Levi-Strauss ends by offering som e final thoughts on the method which he proposes for the explanation (rather than interpretation) of m yth. The m ethod which he proposes has the advantage of bringing som e order to what was previously chaos (224) and to perceive som e basic logical processes which are at the root of mythical thought (224). The purpose of m yth is to provide a logical m odel capable of overcoming a contradiction (an im possible achievement if, as it happens, the contradiction is real). Any m yth is an interm ediary entity between a statistical aggregate (229) (particular paroles) and the structure itself (229) (langue) which inform s particular m ythical paroles. This leads LeviStrauss to conclude that there is little difference between the m ind of so-called prim itive m an and his allegedly m ore sophisticated m odern counterparts: the kind of logic in m ythical thought is as rigorous as that of modern science (231), the difference lying not in the quality of the intellectual process, but in the nature of the things to which it is applied

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(224). He concludes that the sam e logical processes operate in m yth as in science, and that m an has always been thinking equally well; the im provem ent lies, not in an alleged progress of mans m ind, but in the discovery of new areas to which it m ay apply its unchanged and unchanging powers (231).

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