Introduction to Semiotics of Cultures, 2010

Claude Lévi-StraussTotemism, Savage Mind, Myths

Vesa Matteo Piludu

University of Helsinki

Another unconscious

The unconscious level isn’t personal, as in psychoanalysis

It is cultural, collective, independent from the individuals’ desires It permits to fly upon the barriers that divides different societies

It’ a mediator between us and the others, it consents communication

It imposes a form, a group of laws, to a sets of contents: it deals with the regularities found in the human mind, that Lévi-Strauss called the human spirit

The human spirit is logic, systematic: the unconscious possibilities are limited in number, their structure forms a logic architecture

Influence of Georges Dumézil (March 4, 1898, Paris – October 11, 1986)

Comparative linguistic, Historian, mythologist

Famous scholars of Indo-European mythologies

He compared the same mechanism and structures that are common in the myths of several Indo-European people

Critics:

Lincoln, Bruce. Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship. 2000.

Littleton, C. S. The New Comparative Mythology. 3rd ed. Berkeley 1982.

Puhvel, Jaan. Comparative Mythology. Baltimore 1987. Haugen, Einar "The Mythical Structure of the Ancient Scandinavians:

Some Thoughts on Reading Dumézil" in Introduction to Structuralism, edited by Michael Lane, Basic Books, 1970

Lévi-Strauss’ model: order in chaos i.e. Dumézil in and his studio

Le Totemisme aujourdhui (1962, Totemism, trans. Rodney Needham, 1963)

Totemism: a theory about the connection with a exogamic clan and an animal or vegetal species

The old theorist considered totemism a step of human development, the most barbaric and illogical, in which the native people “maked confusion” between humans and nature

Lévi-Strauss demonstrated that this notion is completely fictional, created by the ethnologist

Totem is not a pole!

Totemism for Lévi-Strauss

It is not a historical phase, is not barbarian or illogic

It is a sophisticate organization system that joins the social system and the natural world

The natural differences are used to hit light social differences: the natives are good observers, not children making confusion

The necessity to classify the world it common to native and modern societies

the totemism is similar to scientific procedures, even if the organization system is quite different

Primitive cultures never existed: the humans have always think “well”

Effects: totemism taboo

After the book totemism, the use of the concept become a taboo in anthropological literature: it disappeared for a long time

La Pensée sauvage (1962, The Savage Mind, 1966)

In this book, that is “the second part” of Totemism, Lévi-Strauss demonstrated, using an enormous quantity of dates, how rich and complex were the systems of natural classification of the natives

The capacity to create complex classification isn’t a prerogative of the scientific thought

Good to eat (Malinowsi) vs. good to think (L-S)

The natural world for the natives isn’t only an ”instrument to satisfy needs” (Malinowski) but

Object of sophisticate thoughts, a cognitive map

Many animals present in the native speculation (lynx) aren’t useful, and aren’t good to eat

But they are good to think

The natives aren’t reacting passively to the natural environment, they elaborate speculations about it

The animal symbolism operate in a semiotic web: every animal related to another one and is opposed to another one

So the savage mind isn’t savage at all: it is able to built complicate operations of classification and organization

Coyote isn’t good to eat, but is good to think

Good to think, but not tasty at all

Myths and Science

Mythical thought and scientific thought are living on the same historical reality, not in different steps

Even today there are many mythological systems working in native cultures and in modern ones (nationalist propaganda and commercials – Barthes)

Remember the “magic powers” of Mr. Clean and their physical and psychological effects

Myths acooding to L-V

Traditional sense: Archaic narratives related to gods, heroes, animals, fantastic beings

that have a deep meaning, subject to speculation

Barthes use myth in another, negative, way: simple modern narratives that considers natural and obvious what is historical and bourgeoisie

Myths and Science

Myths and science are only two different way to organize the dates of experience

They are parallel axes, similar at the formal level, different in their presupposes about the essence of the natural world

The natives domesticated a great number of plants also for the pleasure to know new things, not only for their practical use

The native world is more close to the sensible qualities and it have a more immediate connection with nature

Marcel Griaule

Demonstrated how sophisticate are the systems of thought of West Africa

The mythological thought: savage

Science of concrete

Actor: bricoleur, someone that have many objects to create many results, that are more casual

It is possible to built, break and built again Many variations of the same mythological theme The natural object acquire a cultural meaning, that is clearly not

natural

The thought is savage in the sense that is more casual, more free

The mythological thought is alive in modern art

Scientific thought: domesticated

Science of projects

Actor: engineer

the scientist has a clear project from the beginning, rigorous methods

The possible results are limited, not so various as myths

The though is domesticated in the sense that is less free, more rational, less subject to fly of fantasy

Magic thought

Also magic is a way to think, a way to organize reality based on its own rigorous logic, it’s an independent system

If we understand the logic of the mythological or magical thought, we are able to understand their meaning

Different systems could be transformed into other ones reversing the importance of single elements

Australian totemistic systemand Indian caste system

Exogamic: each group should marry another clan Social group divided on the base of natural species: the natural world

is considered social and cultural

Endogamic: members of caste couldn’t marry a member of another caste

Social order considered as natural

The two system are logically opposed, based on the opposition of the same elements: variant of a combinatory system

The human mind is working using the same logic, but with reversal meaning

A system is in theory transformable in another one if their elements are put in opposition

That happens often in politics: a party give a different interpretation of the symbols of the other party

Myths in Structural Anthropology 1

The Boas’ school collected a large amount of myths, but the result of the research were deluding

The myths seemed extremely chaotic: disorder and disorganization in their analysis

Simple speculations Evil Grandma in myth = in this society there were evil grandmothers Evil Grandma in myth = in this society the Grandmother is a symbol

for some feeling lost in the unconscious

The Structural Study of Myth: Chapter XI in Structural Anthropology 1

Linguistic: connects a groups of sounds (phonemes) to certain meanings

The meaning in in the system, not in the single souns

Mythology: is not useful to analyze the “best version of the myths” (single myth), it is necessary to analyze all the versions of the myths to find out analogies and differences (system of myths)

The meaning is the relations: there are relations between different version of the myths

Myth and language

The myth is inside and over the language

Is in the language, because is based on a set of linguistic enunciates (it’s a narrative)

Is over the language, because what is important in the myth isn’t the style or syntaxes, but the story or narrative itself

Mytheme

It’s the myth reduced to short, essential sentence or even to a group of symbols: a simplification of the whole plot

Different mythemes should be connected in pairs of mutual or opposite elements

If the meaning of a mytheme is different in a different version, we have a transformation of the myth itself

The mythemes are element of variation

Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp (Владимир Яковлевич Пропп) 1895 - 1970

Formalism

Considered possible the variation of contents in fables, but it considered the changes as purely arbitrary

For L-S there is a logic in the transformation of myths

Propp

Methods

Should be considered different explications for a single myth

A myth shouldn’t considered as an isolated element, but in its relation with other myths

It’s important to connect the myth to all the other relevant ethnographic information about the societies in which the myths was born and told

Mythologiques I–IV (1964-71)

Mythologiques I–IV (trans. John Weightman and Doreen Weightman)

Le Cru et le cuit (1964, The Raw and the Cooked, 1969) Du miel aux cendres (1966, From Honey to Ashes, 1973) L'Origine des manières de table (1968, The Origin of Table

Manners, 1978) L'Homme nu (1971, The Naked Man, 1981)

Myths

No evident practical function

Cultural function: when it is possible, to reduce the contrasts present in the existence and social life

Contrast life and death

Tricksters

Sacred fool

Creator of disorders and order

He is smart, but often is punished by his own tricks

Trickster: Coyote

Raven

Raven and Coyote

Eaters of dead corpses

Middle position between predators (killers of other animals), and herbivorous (animals that don’t kills other animals)

Mediator between oppositions Life coming from death

Similar situation: war (destruction) and agriculture (creation) Middle position: hunt (nutrition and life given by killing)

Life and death mutually connected: unthinkable without each other

The myth doesn’t resolve completely the contradiction (life-death) , but give an interpretation about their connections

Myths: many answers

No religious dogmas There isn’t an answer, but many possible answers: variation of myths

Possibilities in the past, in the present, in different societies

The mythological thought is creative: The same concepts in a similar myths are revolted and in

contradiction with each other

Influence of Dumézil

Importance to work comparing myths of people that are historically connected

Lévi-Strauss analyzed myths of Amazion indios or Pueblo natives searching for all the possible variants of the same myth, including the ones that are opposite

La Potière jalouse (1985, The Jealous Potter, trans. Bénédicte Chorier, 1988)

Variation 1: A thirsty man asked his son water to drink, the son refused Variation 2: A thirsty man asked his wife water to drink, the wife refused Variation 3:

Opposed variation 3: A mother want to wash her son, the son refused

Situation 1: water inside the body

Situation 3: body inside the water

Inversion: woman that refused, woman that impose

Lévi-Strauss ”mysticism”

The humans doesn’t think myths, but the myths are thinking each others in humans

The myths are thinking in us, and we don’t think about that

Mythical though as a cultural imposition to subjects (similarity between Lévi-Strauss and Barthes)

The narrator loose importance

Comparition

If the comparison is extended to other people, there are more similarities , but many of them aren’t of great significance

If the comparison is more restricted to a certain group of peoples, it is possible to find out differences in the variations

The differences are significative

Myths: nature and culture

In myths there are fenomena of centralization, fragmentation and oppositions of variants … but all in a common vision of the world

Problems: Division between the nature and culture: Raw – cooked naked – clothed

Refuse or acceptation of exchanges: food, cultural products, marriages, importance of gifts

Lévi-Strauss: lost in myths

Myths are superb stories, literary texts I’ve lived in another world, I lived with myths

The mythologist is like a crazy artists, working continuously with his materials

Myths and music

Wagner has done structural mythology in music

Affinity between music and myths: variation on same themes

Myths and melodies use the time to annul the time and to throw us in a dimension outside the time

Creator of music similar to a demiurge

Music and myths are impossible to translate in other languages (written ones)

A melody could only change into another melody and a myth into another myth

Myths and music are able to express something that couldn’t be expressed in other ways: both are emotional, full of pathos

Analysis

The analysis impoverish the myth, we can’t enjoy completely the myths analyzing them, because we are operating simplifications and schemes

The goal of the analysis isn’t esthetical: is to find sense and what are the fundamental questions in the myths

Myth and ritual

The ritual is a set of action based on myths

Ritual is fragmented in gestures and procedures, that are continuously repeated: less information that in myths

Myths distinguish, separate the elements of reality to transform them in instrument of thought

The ritual is always connected to a myth, not to natural reality

Rituals are connected to the world view present in myths

Ritual is a “bastard” son of myth: thought connected to the necessity of life

This negative interpretation of ritual has been criticized