CONTENTSCopyright © 1970, 1974 by Edmund Leaeh

Al! rights reservedOriginal!y published in 1970

Revised edition published in 1974 in a hardbound andpaperbound edition by The Viking Press, Ine.,625 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022

SBN 670-22515-0 (hardbound)670-01980-1 (paperbound)

Library of Congress eatalog eard number: 74-1122Printed in U.S.A.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Hill and Wang, Ine., and ]onathan Cape Ltd.: FromThe Elements of Semiology by Roland Barthes.Translated by Dr. Annette Lavers' and Dr. ColinSmith. Translation © 1967 by ]onathan Cape Ltd.Reprinted by permission.

The University of Chicago Press and GeorgeWei­denfeld & Nicolson Ltd.: From The Savage Mjnd byClaude Lévi-Sh'auss. English translation © 1966by George Weidenfeld & Nieolson Ltd. Al! rightsreserved. Reprinted by permission.

/ii

/

iii

/iv

/v

/vi

/vii

/Biographical Note ix

The Man Himself 1

Oysters, Smoked Salmon, and StiltonCheese 15

The Human Animal and His Symbols 35

The Structure of Myth 57

Words and Things 93

The Elementary Structures of Kinship 105

Machines for the Suppression of Time 125

Short Bibliography 137

lndex 143

111

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The Human Animal and His Symbols•••

Lévi-Strauss' central intellectual puzzle is oneto which European philosophers have returnedover and over again; indeed, if we accept Lévi­Strauss' own view of the matter it is a problemwhich puzzle s all mankind, everywhere, always.Quite simply: What is man? Man is an animal,a member of the species Horno sapiens, closelyrelated to the great apes and more distantly toall other living species past and presento Butman, we assert, is ahuman being, and in sayingthat we evidently mean that he is, in some way,other than "just an animal." But in what wayis he other? The concept of humanity as distinctfrom animality does not readily translate intoexotic languages, but it is Lévi-Strauss' thesisthat a distinction of this sort-corresponding tothe opposition culture/nature-is always latentin men's customary attitudes and behaviors

37The Human Animal and His Symbols

e The reader is expected to recognize that ¡'enfer c'est lesautres is a quotation from Jean-Paul Sartre's play Huis dos(Paris, 1944).:1 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "Essai sur l'origine des langues"(Geneva, 1783).

; infancy to be self-centered and individualistic, to fearthe impurity of foreign things-a doctrine which weembody in the formula "Hell is the others" (1'enfer,c'est les autres)-but primitive myth has the oppositemoral implication, "Hell is ourselves" (l' enfer, e'estnous-meme)." "In a century when man is bent on thedestruction of innumerable forms of life," it is neces­sary to insist, as in the myths, "that a properly ap­pointed humanism cannot begin of its own accord butmust place the world before lHe, life before man, andthe respect of others before self-interest." (Mytholo­giques IIl, p. 422) But, the puzzle remains, what is ahuman being? Where does culture divide off fromnature?

Lévi-Strauss himself takes his cue from Rousseau,

though he might equally well have followed Vico orHobbes or Aristotle or a dozen others. It is languagewhich makes man different: "Qui dit homme, dit lan­

gage, et qui dit langage dit société." (Tristes Tropiques,

p. 421) But the emergence of language which accom­panies the shift from animality to humanity, fromnature to culture, is also a shift from affectivity to astate of reasoning: "The first speech was all in poetry;reasoning was thought of only long afterwards."3

Rousseau's thesis, as elaborated by Lévi-Strauss, isthat man can become self-conscious-aware of himselfas a member of a we-group-only when he becomescapable of employing metaphor as an instrument ofcontrast and comparison:

36CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS\

even when it is not explicitly formulated in words. The . '"human Ego is never by himself; there is no ''1'' that is •not part of a "We,"l and indeed every ''1'' is a member ofmany "We"s. In one sense these we-groups stretch outto infinity in all directions to embrace everybody andeverything. "Man is not alone in the universe, any morethan the individual is alone in the group, or any onesociety alone among other societies" (Tristes Tropiques,

p. 398), but in practice we cut up the continua. Myparticular "we," the people of my family, my com­munity, my tribe, my class-these are altogether special,they are superior, they are civilized, cultured; the othersare just savages, like wild beasts.

Lévi-Strauss' central preoccupation is to explore thedialectical process by which this apotheosis of ourselvesas human and godlike and other than animal is formedand re-formed and bent back upon itself. Adam andEve were created as ignorant savages in Paradise in aworld in which animals talked and were helpmeets toman; it was through sin that they gained knowledgeand became human, and different, and superior to theanimals. But are we really "superior"? God made manin his own image, but are we so sure that in achievinghumanity (culture) we did not separate ourselves fromGod? This is the note on which Lévi-Strauss ends Tristes

Tropiques, the book which first brought him interna­tional renown outside the narrow world of professionalanthropology-to discover the nature of man we mustfind our way back to an understanding of how man isrelated to nature-and he comes back to the sametheme in the closing paragraph of Mythologiques IlI.We (Europeans), he comments, have been taught from

1 Tristes Tropiques (Paris, 1955), p. 448: "Le moi n'a pas deplace entre un nous et un rien."

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39The Human Animal and His Symbols

4It should be stressed, however, that unlike Piaget Lévi­Strauss does not speculate about the ontogenetic or philo­genetic development of category systems; he simply relieson this style of argument to explain the otherwise surpris­ing fact that he is able to discover strikingly similar"structures" in widely different cultural contexts.

,do this not so much because of any instinct but because".~ the architecture of the human mouth and throat and its

.associated musculature makes this the natural way togo about it.Lévi-Strauss asks us to believe that categoryformation in human beings follows similar universal"natural" paths. It is not that it must always happenthe same way everywhere but that the human brain isso constructed that it is predisposed to develop cate­gories of a particular kind in a particular way.4

All animals have a certain limited capacity to make

category distinctions. Any mammal or bird can, underappropriate conditions, recognize other members of itsown species and distinguish males from females; somecan further recognize a category of predator enemies.Human beings, in the process of learning to talk, extendthis category-forming capacity to a degree that has nopara11el among other creatures, but nevertheless, at itsvery roots, before the individual's language capacityhas become elaborated, category formation must beanimal-like rather than human-like. At this basic levelthe individual (whether animal or human) is con cernedonly with very simple problems: the distinction betweenown species and other, dominance and submission,sexual availability or lack of availability, what is edibleand what is not. In a natural environment distinctionsof this sort are a11 that are necessary for individualsurvival, but they are not sufficient within ahumanenvironment. For human (as distinct from animal) sur­vival every member of society must learn to distinguish

38CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS

It is only because man originally felt himself identi­cal to all those like him (among which, as Rousseauexplicitly says, we must incIude animals) that ,hecarne to acquire the capacity to distinguish himself'as he distinguishes them, i.e. to use the diversity ofspecies as conceptual support for social differentia­tion. (Totemism, p. 101)

Rousseau's insight can be held to be "true" only in astrictly poetic sense, for the thought processes of proto­man are even less accessible to us than those of apesand monkeys. But the phylogenetic form of the argu­ment is mixed up with Lévi-Strauss' search for humanuniversals. Verbal categories provide the mechanismthrough which universal structural characteristics ofhuman brains are transformed into universal structural

.characteristics of human culture. But if these universalsexist, they must, at some rather deep level, be consid­ered innate. In that case, we must suppose that theyare patterns which, in the course of human evolution,have become internalized into the human psyche alongwith the specialized development of those parts of thehuman brain which are directly concerned with speechformation through the larynx and mouth and withspeech reception through the ear. And why not? Afterall, although the human infant is not born with anyinnate language, it is born with an innate capacity tolearn both how to make meaningful utterances and howto decode the meaningful utterances of others.

Not only that but, if Jakobson's argument is correct,all human children will learn to master the basic ele­ments of their phonemic inventory by making the same,or very nearly the same, initial series of basic dis­criminations-consonant/vowel, nasal consonant/ oral

stop, grave/ acute, compact/ diffuse. They presumably

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41The Human Animal and His Symbols

that elements of "totemic" behavior occur even in..:sophisticated cultures, but the earlier writers interpreted'thesedetails as archaic residues which had somehow. survived into our own day from the remo te past. In themore general primitive case "totemism" was thought topose a basic problem of rationality.

Why should sane human beings indulge in the "super­stitious worship" of animals and plants? How canmen come to imagine that they are descended fromkangaroos, or wallabies, or white cockatoos? A greatvariety of possible answers to such guestions were pro­posed. A. Van Gennep, in L'Etat actuel du problemetotémique (1920), was able to distinguish forty-onedifferent "theories of totemism," and more have accumu­lated since then. Broadly speaking they fa11 into two

types: (1) universalist explanations implying thattotemic beliefs and practices indicate a "childish" men­tality which had once been characteristic of a11 man­kind; (2) particularist explanations resting on thefunctionalist proposition that any totemic system willserve to attach emotional interest to animal and plant

species which are of economic value to the particularhuman society concerned and will thereby tend to pre­serve these species from total destruction by humandepredation.

After the publication of A. Goldenweiser's "Totemism,an Analytical Study" (1910) theories of the first kindwere barely tenable, and thereafter down to 1962 themore worth-while contributions to the subject wereconcerned with particular ethnographies-Australia,Tikopia, Tallensi-rather than with universal truth.But Radcliffe-Brown's "The Sociological Theory of To­temism" (1929) is a special case because it attempts togeneralize the functionalist position; "totemism" is heretreated as a near universal and is seen as the ritual

4°CLAUDE LÉV1-STRAUSS

his fe110w men according to their mutual social status.,But the simplest w,ay to do this is to apply transforma:tions of the animal-Ievel categories to the social classifi:cation of human beings. This is the key point in:Lévi-Strauss' structuralist approach to the classic an­thropological theme of totemism.

It is a fact of empirical observation that humanbeings everywhere adopt ritual attitudes toward theanimals apd plants in their vicinity. Consider, for ex­ample, the separate, and often bizarre, rules whichgovern the behavior of Englishmen toward the creatureswhich they classify as (1) wild animals, (2) Eoxes, (3)game, (4) farm animals, (5) pets, (6) vermin. Noticefurther that if we take the seguence oE words (la)strangers, (2a) enemies, (3a) friends, (4a) neighbors,(sa) companions, (6a) criminals, the two sets of termsare in some degree homologous. By a metaphoricalusage the categories oE animals could be (and some­times are) used as eguivalents for the categories ofhuman beings. One oE Lévi-Strauss' major contributionsto our understanding has been to show how very wide­spread is this kind of socialization of animal categories.The facts themselves are we11 known, but, in Lévi­Strauss' view they have been misunderstood.

The conventions by which primitive peoples usespecies of plants and animals as symbols for categoriesof men are not rea11y any more eccentric than our own,but, in a technologically restricted environment, theybecome much more noticeable, and to scholars of SirJ ames Frazer's generation they seemed altogether ex­traordinary-so much so that any social eguivalencebetween human beings and other natural species cameto be regarded as a kind of cult (totemism), a proto­religion appropriate only to people at a very early stageof development. It was recognized right Erom the start

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expression of interdependence between social order and.the natural environment. In a later essay, "The Gom.i,parative Method in Social Anthropology" (1951), Rad.•cliffe-Brown carried this universalist thesis a good dealfurther, drawing special attention to the classificatory."nature of totemic systems. Some features of this latterpaper are so markedly "structuralist" in style that itprovided the trigger for Lévi-Strauss' own contribution,'Le Totémisme aujourd'hui (1962).

Lévi-Strauss takes the view that the anthropologistswho have tried to isolate "totemism" as a phenomenonsui generis have deluded themselves; considered as a

religious system "totemism" is an anthropologicalmirage; even so, the subject deserves our close atten­tion because totemic beliefs and practices exemplify auniversal characteristic of human thought.

Lévi-Strauss' account does not add anything of sig­nificance to our understanding of Australian totemismbut his reappraisal of Radcliffe-Brown's argumentsmakes it much easier to understand how the seeminglybizarre thought categories of the Australian Aboriginesare related to category systems with which we are morefamiliar. The crux of his argument is that totemicsystems always embody metaphoric systems of the sortindicated above (pages 39-41 )." IncidentalIy it was withreference oto "totemism" that Lévi-Strauss came up withhis Own summary of what constitutes the essence ofstructuralist method, which I have quoted already (seepage 20). Note in particular his seeming contempt forthe "empirical phenomenon." The "general object ofanalysis" is conceived as a kind of algebraic matrix ofpossible permutations and combinations located in the

'This metaphoric formatio:l is discussed in greater detailbelow, pages 46-50.

The Human Animal and His Symbols 1 43"', ..-

, unconscious "human mind"; the empirical evidence ismerely an example of what is possible. This same pref-

•erence for the generalized abstraction as compared withthe empirical fact occurs again and again throughout

·Lévi-Strauss' writings. Mind you, that is not how Lévi­Strauss himseIf sees the situation. He conceives of the"human mind" as having objective existence; it is an

·attribute of human brains. We can ascertain attributesof this human mind by investigating and comparing itscultural products. The study of "empirical phenomena"is thus an essential part of the process of discovery, butit is only a means to an end. G

But let us go back to Rousseau's vision of man as atalking animal. Until a few years ago it was customaryfor anthropologists to draw a very sharp distinctionbetween culture, which was conceived of as exclusivelyhuman, and nature, which was common to a11animals,induding mano This distinction, according to LeslieWhite, "is one of kind not of degree. And the gap be­tween the two types is of the greatest importance ....Man uses symbols; no other creature does. An organismhas the ability to symbol or it does not, there are nointermediate stages."7 In his earlier writings, thoughless emphaticalIy in his later ones, Lévi-Strauss reiter­ates this view. The special marker of symbolic thought isthe existence of spoken language in which words standfor (signify) things "out there" which are signified.

G It is the constant refrain of Lévi-Strauss and his closedisciples that all his Anglo-Saxon critics, the present authorincluded, are erude empiricists. Empiricism here seems tomean the doctrine that truth must be verifiable by referenceto observable facts; it stands opposed to "rationalism,"which reaches to a deeper form of truth by means ofoperations of the intellect.7 Leslie White, The Science of CultuTe (New York, 1949),p. 25·

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Signs must be distinguished from triggers. Animals oí •.

all kinds respond mechanically to appropriate signals; '.this process does not entail "symbolic thought."· In .order to be able to operate with symbols it is necessaryfirst of all to be able to distinguish between the signand the thing it signifies and then to be able to recog­nize that there is a relation between the sign and thething signified. This is the cardinal characteristic whichdistinguishes human thought fram animal response-,.the ability to distinguish A from B while at the sametime recognizing that A and B are somehow interde­pendent.

This distinction can be put in another way. When anindividual acts as an individual, operating upon theworld outside himself-e.g., if he uses a spade to diga hole in the ground-he is not concerned with symboli­zation; but the moment some other individual comesonto the scene every action, however trivial, serves tocommunicate information about the actor to the ob­

server-the observed details are interpreted as signs,because observer and actor are in relation. From thispoint of view the animals in any human environmentserve as things with which to think (bonnes a penser).

When Lévi-Strauss poses for himself the seeminglyquite unanswerable puzzle of how this faculty for sym­bolic interpretation carne into being, he finds his answerin an adaptation of ideas borrowed from Durkheim and

his immediate pupils. Certain binary concepts are partof man's nature-e.g., men and women are alike inone sense yet opposite and interdependent in another;the right hand and the left hand are, likewise, equaland opposite, yet related. In society as it actually existswe find that such natural pairs are invariably loadedwith cultural significance-they are made into the prato­type symbols of the good and the bad, the permitted

The Human Animal and His Symbols I 45iand the forbidden. Furthermore, in society as it actually

: exists individuals are social persons who are "in rela­tion" to one another-e.g., as father to son or as em­

ployer to employee. These individuals communicate withone another by "exchange"; they exchange words; theyexchange gifts. These words and gifts communicateinformation because they are signs, not because theyare things in themselves. When an employer pays outwages to an employee, the action signifies the relativestatus of the parties to the transaction. But, accordingto Lévi-Strauss (if 1 understand him correctly), theultimate basic symbolic exchange which provides themodel for a11 the others is sexual. The incest taboo(which Lévi-Strauss erroneously claims to be "uni­versal") implies a capacity to distinguish betweenwomen who are permitted and women who are for­bidden and thus generates a distinction between womenof the category wife and women of the category sister.The basis of human exchange, and hence the basis of

symbolic thought and the beginning of culture, lies inthe uniquely human phenomenon that aman is able toestablish relationship with another man by means ofan exchange of women.8

But let me take up once more my earlier point thatLévi-Strauss seems to be more interested in an algebra

of possibilities than in the empirical facts. His justifi­cation is this: in actual social life individuals com­municate with one another a11 the time by elaboratecombinations of signs-by words, by the clothes theywear, by the food they eat, by the way they stand, bythe way they arrange the furniture of a room, and so on.In any particular case there wi11be a certain discover­able consistency between behaviors at these different

8 I shall come back to this again. See below, Chapter VI,pages 105 ff·

..levels; e.g., in England, members of the upper micjdle :class living in Kensington will adopt, for each of the.."codes" l have mentioned, quite a different style from ,;members of, say, the working class in Leeds. But any .particular empirical case is only one alternative from awhole set of possibilities, and, according to Lévi-Straussand his folIowers, we shall gain additional insight intothe empirical cases that we have observed by consider­ing their relationship to the possible cases that we havenot observed.

At this point it is necessary to make something of adigression. Lévi-Strauss' ideas about how human beingsare able to communicate through symbols are a develop­ment from arguments originalIy developed by specialistsin structural linguistics and semiology (the theory ofsigns). But the latter have used a very varied and con­fusing terminology and it may help if l try to sort outsome of the equivalents.

The first basic distinction is that of de Saussure be­tween language (langue) and speech (paTOle). D "TheEnglish language" denotes a total system of words,conventions, and usages; from the point of view of anyparticular individual speaker it is a "given"; it is notsomething he creates for himself; the parts of thelanguage are available for use, but they do not have tobe used. But when 1, as an individual, make an utter­ance I use "speech"; I select from the total system of"the language" certain words and grammatical con ven­tions and tones and accents, and by placing these in aparticular oTdeT I am able to transmit information bymy utterance.

Thcre is a close but not exact equivalence betweenthe distinction of language and speech, as specified

v F. de Saussure, COU1'S de linguistique générale (Paris,1916).

; ábove, and the information-theory distinction of code. .

..and message. If we, in fact, think of a spoken language;.as acode, then it is a particular kind of code-namely,. acode made up of sound elements. But there are manyother kinds of possible codeso As I suggested just now,we use clothes as acode, or kinds of food, or gestures,or postures, and so on. Each such code is "a language"(in de Saussure's sense), and the sum of all such codes(Le., the culture of the individual actor) is also "alanguage."

Now, the verbal boxes which l have used in thisargument-e.g., "sound elements," "clothes," "kinds offood," etc.-Iump things together because they areassociated in our minds as somehow similar in func­tion or "meaning," whereas when l make a verbal utter­ance and transmit a message-"the cat sat on the mat"-the elements are brought together in a chain as a re­sult of the rules of the language and not because theyare in any way similar in themselves. This is what Imean when I refer later to "syntagmatic chains" -theyare chains formed by the application of rules ofsyntax.

In the same way, we need to distinguish the mentalassociation which tells us that roast turkey and boiledchicken are both "kinds of food" (and therefore partsof one language) from the rules of particular wholelanguages (cultures) which may specify, for example,that in England roast beef should be eaten with York­shire pudding or, to be more complex, that a menu ofroast turkey followed by flaming plum pudding andmince pies probably indicates that it is December 25·

Many readers are likely to find this use of the word"language" to refer to nonverbal forms of communica­tion somewhat confusing, and matters are not madeany easier by the fact that Roland Barthes, who in

47The Hll1nan Animal and His Symbols46CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS

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B

Juxtaposition ofdifferent pieces offurniture in thesame space: bed,wardrobe, table,etc.

Sequence of thedetails at the levelof the wholebuilding.

Real sequences ofdishes chosenduring a meal,the menu."

Syntagm[Sentence.]

Juxtaposition inthe same type ofdress of differentelemen ts: skirt,blouse, jacket.

Syntagm and System11

Set of foodstuffswhich have affinitiesor differences, withinwhich one choosesa dish in view of acertain meaning:entree, roast,sweet, etc. "

Set of "stylistic"varieties of a singlepiece of furniture:bed, etc.

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The Human Animal and His Symbols

Variations in style ofa single element ina building: typesof roof, balcony,hall, etc.

11 From Roland Barthes, Elements of Semiology (New York,]968), p. 63. The words in square brackets have been added.* A restaurant menu actualizes both planes: a horizontalreading of the entrees, for instance, corresponds to thesystem; a vertical reading of the menu corresponds to thesyntagm.

Architecture"system"[languagecade]

Furniture"system"[language,cade]

Faod"system"[language,cade]

System [Parts of speech:nouns, verbs, etc.]

Garment Set of pieces, parts,"system" or details which[language, cannot be worn atcade] the same time on the

same part of thebody, and whosevariation corre­sponds to a changein the meaning ofthe clothing: toque,bonnet, hood, etc.

) -)JL 148CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS

10 R. Jakobson and M. Halle, Fundamentals of Language(New York, 1956), p. 81.

Elements of Semiology (1968) presents the general. ~I"

structuralist argument with relative clarity, uses yet'another terminology. On page 49 1 give a modified :'1,version 01' a table which Barthes employs to explainthe relationship between metaphoric (paradigmatic)and metonymic (syntagmatic) uses 01'nonverbal signs.In the original Barthes uses the term "system" in twadifferent senses-first, to denote what 1 have re1'erredto above as "a language" and, second, to denote the"parts 01' speech" 01' such a language-i.e., the sets ofobjects which correspond to the sets 01' words which,in a verbal language, we would distinguish as nouns,verbs, adjectives, etc. (I have modified his diagram bywriting the first 01'these usages "system" and the secondsystem). The term "syntagm," as applied to an assem­blage 01'nonverbal signs, here corresponds to "sentence"in a verbal language.

The distinction between columns A and B in this

diagram is very important for any understanding ofLévi-Strauss' writings, but he himself does not use thisterminology. Where Barthes opposes "system" and"syntagm," the corresponding contrasts in Lévi-Straussare "metaphor" and "metonymy" or sometimes "paradig­matic series" and "syntagmatic chain" (see, for example,page 101). Although the jargon is exasperating, the prin­cipIes are simple. As J akobson puts it, metaphor (sys­tem, paradigm) relies on the recognition 01' similarity,and metonymy (syntagm) on the recognition 01' con­tiguity.]O

Lévi-Strauss maintains that in the analysis 01' mythand 01' primitive thought generally, we need to dis­tinguish between these two poles. For example, if we

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51The Human Animal and His SymbolsCLAUDE LÉVI-STllAUSS

1" James G. Frazer, The Galden Baugh (London; abridgededition, 1922), p. 12,

5°

imagine another world peopled by supernatural'b~ing;.' '.~.• , , " ..then we can represent this other world in any numbel" ,.ph9nc/metonym1c d1stmctlOn, and the fact that Frazerof ways: as a society of birds, or of fishes, or of wild •.• ' and Lévi-Strauss should agree that this kind of dis­animals, or even 01'beings "like" men, and in each 'case' crimination is highly relevant for an undersanding ofwe shall be using metaphor. That is one kind of symboll_"prímitive thought" seems very significant.zation. But there is also another kind in which we r~l - But how does a11this tie in with Lévi-Strauss' general

on the fact that our audience, being aware of how ~ ' attitude to the process of symbolizatíon?partícular syntagm (sentence) is formed out of the We11, first of a11 ít needs to be appreciated thatelements of the "system" (language, code), ís able to these two dimensions-the metaphoric-paradigmatic-

~ecognize the whole by being shown only a parto Thís harmoníc-símilaríty axis on the one hand, and the meto-1S metonymy. For example, when we use the formula nymíc-syntagmatíc-melodíc-contagíous axís on the other"The Crown stand s for Sovereignty" we are relying on -:correspon~ to, the logical fra.mework within which

t~e fact that a crown is uniquely associated wíth a par- Lev1-Strauss v~nous structu.ral tnangles are constructed.tlcular syntagmatic chaín of items 01' clothíng which For example, 1.fv:e take F1g~re 3. (page 27), the cul-together form the uníform of a particular officeholder ture/nature aX1SIS metaphonc whlle the normal/ trans-the King, so that, even when removed from this con: formed axís is metonymic. But it ís more immedíatelytext of proper use, it can still be used as a signífier fol' relevant in, the present co~text that, for Léví-Strauss,

t~e v:hole co~plex, This metaphor/metonymy opposí- thlS s,ame f,ramew~rk provldes the clue .for our u~de~-tlOn 1Snot an elther/or distinction; there is always some s~andm? oí' totem1sm and m~th. Cons1dered as md1-element of both kinds of association in any communí- v1dual ltems of culture totem1C ntuals or myths arecative discourse but there can be marked differimces of syntagmatic-they consist of a sequence of details

emphasis, As 1 have said, "The Crown stands for linked together in a chain; animals and rrien are ap-Sovereígnty" is primarily metonymic; in contrast; the parently interchangeable, culture and nature are con-concept of a "queen bee" is metaphoric. fused. But if we take a whole set of such rituals or

All this link s up with a much earlier style of anthro- myths and superimpose one upon another, then a para-pological analysis. Frazer started his classic stud of digmatíc-metaphoríc pattern emerges; it becomes ap-prímítíve magicl~ wíth the thesís that magícal beiíefs pa~ent that the variatíons of what happens ~o, thedepend on two types of (erroneous) mental association: a~lmals are algebrmc transformatlOns of the vanatlOns

homeopathi.c magic, depending on a law of similarity; of what h~ppens to the men.and contaglOus magic, depending on a law of contact. Alternanvely we can operate the other way round.Frazer's homeopathic/ contagious distinction is practi- If we start wíth a particular sequence of customarycally identical to the J akobson-Léví-Strauss meta- behavior we should regard it as a syntagm, a specialcase of ordered relations among a set of cultural odd-

ments which, ín itself, is just a residue of history. Ifwe take such a special case and consider the arrange­ments between íts component parts algebraically we can

arrive at the total system, a theme and variations-aset of paradigms (metaphors) of which our special caséis just one example. This will bring to our attention allsorts of other possible variations, and we can then take .another look at our ethnographic data to see if theseother variations actually occur. If they do, then weshall have confirmed that our algebra corresponds tosome deep-rooted organizational principIe in hurnan'brains everywhere.

This sounds plausible in theory, but there are twopractical difficulties which turn out to be of major im­portance. The first is that, in the final stage of tbisprocess, it is easy to make it appear that the theoryand the evidence fit together, but the contrary is difficultto demonstrate. Logical positivists can therefore arguethat Lévi-Strauss' theories are more or less meaninglessbecause, in the last analysis, they cannot be rigorouslytested.

The second difficulty is to understand just what ismeant by the total system, "the general object of analy­'sis," the ultimate algebraic structure of which particularculture products are merely partial manifestations.Where is this structure located? This is a questionwhich may be asked about all cultural systems. Whereis "a spoken language" -in de Saussure's sense-Io­cated? The language as a whole is external to any par­ticular individual; in Durkheim's terrninology, it is partof the collective consciousness (eonseienee eolleetive)

of all those who speak it.But Lévi-Strauss is not much concerned with the

collective consciousness of any particular social system;his quest rather is to discover the collective uneonseiousof "the hurnan mind" (l'esprit humain), and this shouldapply not merely to speakers of one language but tospeakers of all languages.

.".',o1,

l',\

\-1

\\. \i \

1" In Jacques Ehrmann, ed., StructU1'alism, a double issue ofYale French Studies, Nos. 36-37 (1966), p. 56; the Intro­duction to Mythologiques 1 is reprinted there in Englishtranslation.1-1 In John and Doreen Weightman, trans., The Raw and theCoohed (New York, 1969), p. 12.le, See Mythologiques IV, p. 606. The last chapter of D'ArcyThompson, On Growth and Form (Cambridge, 1961), ishighly relevant for an understanding of Lévi-Strauss' struc­turalism (Chapter XVII, "On the theory of transformations,or the cOlnparison of related forms").

~. The Human Animal and His Symbols \ 53

l;Úsendeavor sometimes leads him to make sta te­ments which suggest that the mind has an autonomy ofits O\yn which operates independently of any. humanindividual. For example, "Nous ne prétendons done pasmontrer eomment les hommes pensent dans les mythes

mais comment les mythes se pensent dan s les hommes,et ii leur insu." (Mythologiques 1, p. 20) Native speakersof French disagree as to just what this is in tended tomean; and there are two published English versionsof this passage. One reads, "We are not, therefore,clairning to show how men think the myths, but ratherhow the myths think themselves out in men and with­out men's knowledge."I:{ The other reads, "1 thereforeclaim to show, not how men think in myths but howmyths operate in men's minds without their being awareof the fact."14

The French is ambiguous. "Comment les mythes se

pensent dans les hommes" might be translated "howmyths are thought in men," which would reduce thedegree of autonomy implied. The issue of autonomy isimportant. Lévi-Strauss appears to regard cross-culturalvariations of cultural phenomena, especially myth, asself-generated topological distortions of a common struc­ture. As illustration, he refers to D'Arcy Thompson'sdiscussion of the shapes of fish,15 The presumed au-

52CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS

C L A U DEL É VI - S T R A U S s 54

tonomy implies that Lévi-Strauss can ignore the cultural,.context of particular variants; the mechanism that", Igenerates the observed differences is not that of adap-~tive evolution 01' functional relevance, but simply mathe- •matical permutation. The nature of the "human mind," •which functions as a kind of randomising computer togenerate these permutations "without bcing aware ofthe fact," is left obscure. The heresy of Lévi-Strauss'Anglo-Saxon critics is that they start off by assumingthat any local variation of a structured form, whetherin biology 01' in culture, is functionally adapted to thelocal environment, so that we can only claim to under­stand the local peculiarities after we have taken intoaccount the local environmental circumstances. Forsuch critics, playing tic-tac-toe with topological dia­grams is not enough.

However, Lévi-Strauss firmly repudiates the sugges­tion that he is an idealist, so we have to assume thatthe somewhat mysterious operations of the "human

mind" which he postulates are processes that take placein the ordinary substance of the brain. The implica­tions of his argument seem to be something like this:

In the course of human evolution man has developedthe unique capacity to communicate by means óf lan­guage and signs and not just by means of signals andtriggered responses. In order that he should be able todo this it is necessary that the mechanisms of the

human brain (which we do not yet understand) embodycertain capacities for making plus/minus distinctions,for treating the binary pairs thus formed as relatedcouples, and for manipulating these "relations" as in amatrix algebra. We hnow that the human brain can dothis in the case of sound patterns, for structural lin­guistics has shown that this is one (but only one) essen­tial element in the formation of meaningful speech;

.The Hmnan Animal ancl His Symbols I 55

'l\'e can therefore postulate that the human brain oper­ates in much the same way when it uses nonverballele~ents of culture to form a "sign language" and that

• tbe ultimate relational system, the algebra itself, is an. attribute of human brains everywhere. But-and thisis where the metaphors and the metonyms come in­we also know, not only from the way we can decode

speech but more particularly from the way we appre­hend music, that the human brain is capable of listen­ing to both harmony and melody at the same time. Nowthe associations of sounds in harmony-an orchestralscore read vertica11y up and down the page-is meta­phoric. In terms of the table on page 49 the notes belongto the system of sounds which can be made by a11theassembled orchestral instruments. But the sequence ofsounds in a melody-an orchestral score read hori­zontally acrosS the page-is metonymic. In terms ofthe table, the notes form a syntagmatic chain derivedin sequence from one instrument at a time. So it isLévi_StrauSS, bold proposition that the algebra of thebrain can be represented as a rectangular matrix of atleast two (but perhaps severa!) dimensions which canbe "read" up and down or side to side like the words ofa crossword puzzle. His thesis is that we demonstrablydo this with sounds (in the way we lis ten to words andmusic); therefore it is intrinsica11y probable that wealso do the same kind of thing when we convey mes­

sages by manipulating cultural categories other thansounds.

This is an extreme reductionist argument, but on theface of it, it should help to explain not only how cul­tural symbols convey messages within a particularcultural milieu but how they convey messages at all.The structure of relations which can be discovered by

analyzing materials drawn from any one culture is an

e L A U DEL É VI - S T R A U S s I 56

algebraic transformation of other possible stru~tútesbelonging to a common set, and this common set consti-'·<

tutes a pattern which reflects an attribute of the mech- ".1)anism of all human brains, It is a grand conception;whether it is a useful one may be a matter of opinion.

The Structure of Myth•

IVLévi-Strauss on myth has much the same fas­cination as Freud on the interpretation ofdreams, and the same kind of weaknesses too,A first encounter with Freud is usually per­suasive; it is all so neat, it simply must be right.But then you begin to wonder. Supposing thewhole Freudian argument about symbolic asso­ciations and layers of conscious, unconscious,and preconscious were entirely false, would itever be possible to prove that it is false? And ifthe answer to that question is "No," you thenhave to ask yourself whether psychoanalyticarguments about symbol formation and free as­sociation can ever be anything better than clevertalk.

Lévi-Strauss' discussions about the structureof myth are certainly very clever talk; whetherthey are really any more than that still remainsto be seen.

CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS I 58 , .-.. -,

Myth is an ill-defined category. Some people use ~,word as if it meant fallacious history-a story about tbe"past which we know to be false; to say that an event is"mythical" is equivalent to saying that it didn't happen.;The theological usage is rather differen t: myth is aformulation of religious mystery-"the expression ofunobservable realities in terms of observable phe­nomena."l This comes close to the anthropologist's usualview that "myth is a sacred tale."

If we accept this latter kind of definition the specialquality of myth is not that it is false bu t that it isdivinely true for those who believe but fairy tale forthose who do noto The distinction that history is trueand myth is false is quite arbitrary. Nearly all humansocieties possess a corpus of tradition about their ownpast. It starts, as the Bible starts, with a story of theCreation. This is necessarily mythical in all senses ofthe termo But the Creation stories are followed bylegends about the exploits of culture heroes (e.g., KingDavid and King Solomon), which might have some

foundation in "true history," and these in turn lead onto accounts of events which everyone accepts as fulIyhistorical because their occurrence has been independ­ently recorded in some other source. The Christian NewTestament purports to be history from one point of viewand myth from another, and he is a rash man whoseeks to draw a sharp line between the two.

Lévi-Strauss has evaded this issue of the relation be­

tween myth and history by concentrating his attentionon "societies with no history"-that is to say, on peoplessuch as the Australian Aborigines and the tribal peoplesof Brazil, who think of their own society as changeless

].l. Schniewind, "A Reply to Bultmann," in Kel'ygma andMyth, ed. I-I.W. Bal'tsch (London, 1953), p. 47.

The StTuctuTe of Myth \ 59

.~d conceive of time present as a straightforward per­'petuation of time pasto In Lévi-Strauss' usage, mythhaS no location in chronological time, but it does have

.certain characteristics which it shares with dreams andfairy tales. In particular, the distinction between natureand culture which dominates normal human experiencelargely disappears. In Lévi-Straussian myth men con­verse with animals or marry animal spouses, they livein the sea or in the sky, they perform feats of magic asa matter of course.

Here, as elsewhere, Lévi-Strauss' ultimate concern iswith "the unconscious nature of collective phenomena."

(StTUcwral Anthropology, p. 18) Like Freud he seeksto discover principIes of thought formation which areuniversally valid for all human minds. These universalprincipIes (if they exist) are operative in our brainsjust as much as in the brains of South American In­dians, but in our case the cultural training we havereceived through living in a high-technology society andthrough attending school or university has overlaid theuniversal logic of primitive thought with all kinds of

speciallogics required by the artificial conditions of oursocial environment. If we are to get at the primitive,universal logic in its uncontaminated form, we needto examine the thought processes of very primitive,technologically unsophisticated peoples (such as theSouth American Indians), and the study of myth is oneway of achieving this end.

Even if we accept the general proposition that theremust be a kind of universal inbuilt logic of a nonrationalkind which is shared by a11humanity and which is mademanifest in primitive mythology, we are still faced withmany methodological difficulties. Mythology (in Lévi­Strauss' sense) starts out as an oral tradition associatedwith religious ritual. The tales themselves are usually

6rThe Structure of Myth

"This representation of the incest argument is altogethertoo "empi11cist." For Lévi-Strauss the importance of the dis­tinction exogamy /incest is that it marks the establishment

a message in codeo In other words he assumes with.Fr'eud that a l11yth is a kind of collective dream and

'.'that it should be capable of interpretation so as to. reveal the hidden l11eaning.

Lévi-Strauss' ideas about the nature of the code and

the kind of interpretation that might be possible haveseveral sources.

The first of these comes from Freud: myths expressunconscious wishes which are somehow inconsistent

with conscious experience. Among primitive peoples thecontinui ty of the polítical system is dependent uponthe perpetuation of alliances between sl11all groups ofkin. These alliances are created and cemented by giftsof women: fathcrs givc away their daughters, brothersgive away their sisters. But if men are to give awaytheir women to serve social-political ends they mustrefrain from keeping these women to themselves forsexual ends. Incest and exogamy are therefore oppositesides of the same penny, and the incest taboo (a ruleabout sexual behavior) is the cornerstone of society (astructure of social and political relations). This moralprincipie implies that, in the imaginary initial situation,the First Man should have had a wife who was not hissister. But in that case any story about a First Man or aFirst Woman must contain a logical contradiction. Foríf they were brother and sister then we are all the out­come of the primeval incest, but, if they were separatecreations, only one of them can be the first human beingand the other must be (in some sense) other thanhuman: thus the biblical Eve is of one flesh with Adamand their relations are incestuous, but the nonbiblicalLilíth was a dCl110n.~

60CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS

transmitted in exotic languages at enormous len'gth.By the time they become available to Lévi-Strauss or to;.any other would-be analyst, they have been writteri ~down and transcribed, in abbreviated form, into oneor other of the common European languages. In theprocess they have been completely divorced from theiroriginal religious context. This is just as true of thestories which Lévi-Strauss discusses in Mythologiquesas it is bf the myths of Greece and Rome and ancientScandinavia with which we are more familiar. Even so,Lévi-Strauss asserts that the stories will have retainedthe essential structuTaI characteristics they possessed in

the first place, so that if we go about it in the right waya comparison of these emasculated stories can still bemade to exhibit the outstanding characteristics of auniversal primitive nonrationallogic.

Our valuation of such an improbable credo can onlybe assessed in operational terms. If, by applying Lévi­Strauss' technigues of analysis to an actual body ofanthropological materials, we are able to arrive at in­sights which we did not have before, and these insightsthrow illumination on other related ethnographic factswhich we had not considered in the first instance, thenwe may feel that the exercise has been worth while.Let me say at once that in many cases there is a pay-offof this kind.

The problem, as Lévi-Strauss sees it, is roughly this.If we consider any corpus of l11ythological tales at their

face value we get the impression of an enormous varietyof trivial incident, associated with a great deal of repeti­tion and a recurrent harping on very elementary themes-incest betwcen bl'othcr ancl sistcr or mother ancl son,parricicle and fratricide, cannibalism .... Lévi-Strausspostulates that behind the l11anifest sense of the storiesthere must be another non-sense (see above, page 29),

JJ¡I

Another contradiction of a comparable kind 1s that'the concept of life entails the concept of death. A living .thing is that which is not dead; a dead thing is that"which is not alive. But relígion endeavors to separatethese two intrinsically interdependent concepts so thatwe have myths which account for the oTigin of death orwhich represent death as "the gateway to eternal life."Lévi-Strauss has argued that when we are consideringthe universalist aspects of primitive mythology we sha1lrepeatedly discover that the hidden message is con­cerned with the resolution of unwelcome contradictions

of this sort. The repetitions and prevarications ofmythology so fog the issue that irresolvable logical

63The StructuTe of Myth

All the paradoxes conceived by the native mind, onthe most diverse planes: geographic, economic, socio­logical, and even cosmological, are, when all is saidand done, assimilated to that less obvious yet so realparadox which marriage with the matrilateral cousinattempts but fails to resolve. But the failure isadmitted in our myths, and there precisely líes theirfunction. ("The Story of Asdiwal," pp. 27-28)

But the "admission" is of a complex kind, and even Lévi­Strauss needs two pages of close argument to persuadethe reader (who is already in possession of all the rele­vant evidence) that this is what in fact the myths aresaying.

The second major source of Lévi-Strauss thinking onthis topic comes from arguments taken over from thefield of general information theory. Myth is not justfairy tale; it contains a message. Admittedly, it is notvery clear who is sending the message, but it is clearwho is receiving it. The novices of the society who hearthe myths for the first time are being indoctrinated bythe bearers of tradition-a tradition which, in theoryat any rate, has be en handed down from long-deadancestors. Let us then think of the ancestors (A) assenders and the present generation (B) as receivers.

Now let us imagine the situation of an individual Awho is trying to get a message to a friend B who isalmost out of earshot, and let us suppose that communi­cation is further hampered by various kinds of inter­ference-noise from wind, passing cars, and so on.

:in.consistencies are lost sight of even when they are. openly expressed. In "La Geste d'Asdiwal" (1960),. 'which is, for many people, the most satisfying of all

Lévi-Strauss' essays in myth analysis, his conclusionis that:

"',

62CLAUDE LÉV1-STRAUSS

of a social dichotomy order/ disorder. The key myth ofMythologiques l, M. 1 (pp. 43 ff.) and the key myth ofMythologiques IV, M. 529/30 (pp. 25 ff.; 564) are bothmanifestly "about" incesto They are also both manifestly"about" bird nesting. The bird-nesting element entails sus­pension in a void between this world and the other, regres­sion to infancy, deprivation from cooked food. Althoughmost of the other details are quite different, Lévi-Straussdeclares that the two myths are identical but inveTse. InM. 1 a naked adolescent boy commits incest with hismother, acquires clothing, and, after adventures, kills hisfather; in M. 529/30 the father of a richly clothed adultson strips the son of his clothing and commits incest withone of the son's many wives. In the course of adventuresthe son is reborn in an abnormal manner. The father isagain destroyed by the son. It is only after extended analysisthat these stories can be shown to be concerned with thebeginning of society because they are also concerned withthe beginning of time, the beginning of order, the beginningof culture. For Lévi-Strauss, the most persistently recurrent"opposition" in mythology is that between order and dis­order, but it takes on endless permutations of empiricalformo To illustrate this point he places near the end ofMythologiques l (p. 318) a series of myths which movefrom "noisemaking to eclipses, from eclipses to incest, fromincest to unruliness, and from unruliness to the colouredplumage of birds." The transformations I offer in the fol­lowing pages are of a more pedestrian kind.

1 2 47 8

234

68

14 57 8

1 257

345 68

Lévi-Strauss' postulate is that a corpus of mythologyconstitutes an orchestral score of this sort. The collec­

tivity of the senior members of the society, through itsreligious institutions, is unconsciously transmitting tothe junior members a basic message which is manifestin the score as a whole rather than in any particularmyth.

Many social anthropologists of the more usual Anglo­American sort-the functionalists of whom Lévi-Strauss

is so critical-are prepared to go along with him thisfar, but they find his method far less acceptable when­ever he ignores the cultural limitations of time andspace.

In "The Story of Asdiwal," Lévi-Strauss devotes forty

65The StTuctuTe of Myth

J

pCiges to the analysis of a single complex of myths pre­,'cisely located in a particular cultural region, and the

result is entirely fascinating. But when, like Frazer, he,roams about among the ethnographies of the wholeworld picking up odd details of custom and story toreveal what he presumes to be a single unitary messageinherent in the architecture of the human mind, mostof his British admirers get left behind. Here is an ex­ample of this latter procedure: "As in archaic China andcertain Amerindian societies there was until recentlya European custom which entailed the ritual extinctionand subseguent rekindling of domes tic hearths precededby fasting and by the use of instruments of darkness[instruments des tenebTes]." (Mythologiques II, p. 351)"Instruments of darkness" refers to a twelfth-century

European custom in which, between Good Friday andEaster Eve, the ordinary church bells were silent andwere replaced by various other noise-producing devices,the din from which was supposed to remind the faithfulof the prodigies and terrifying sounds which accom­panied the death of Chris t. (M ythologiques II, p. 348)In the cited guotation Lévi-Strauss has given thismedieval European Christian category a world-wide ex­tension by using it to include any kind of musical in­strument which is employed as a signal to mark the

beginning or end of a ritual performance. He then drawsattention to the use of such signals in various situationswhere lights and fires are extinguished and rekindledat the beginning and end of a period of fast. And finallyhe comes back to Europe and notes that "instrumentsof darkness" are used in contexts of the latter kind.The whole argument is circular, since the universalityof the conjunction of "instruments of darkness" andfasting is already presupposed in the operational defini­Hon of the terms employed.

64CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS

What will A do? If he is sensible he will not be satisfl,edwith shouting his message just once; he will shout itseveral times, and give a different wording to the rr¡e~~'sage each time, supplementing his words with visual,signals. At the receiving end B may very likely get themeaning of each of the individual messages slightlywrong, but when he puts them together the redundan­cies and the mutual consistencies and inconsistencies

will make· it guite clear what is "really" being said.Suppose, for example, that the in tended message con­

sists of eight elements, and that each time that Ashouts across to B different parts of that message areobliterated by interference from other noises; then thetotal pattern of what B receives will consist of a seriesof "chords" as in an orchestra score, thus:

"See Claude Lévi-Strauss, "La Strlleture et la forme. Ré­flexions sur un ouvrage de Vladimir Propp," in Cahie'/"s del'Inst'itut des Sciences économiques appUqllées (Paris),1960.

:1",IJ,

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67The St1"uctu1"e of Myth

-,Claude Lévi-Strauss, "The Struetural Study of Myth,"]ou1'11al of AmeTiean FolhloTe, Vol. 68, No. 270 (1955).o In this and subsequent stories I use an anglicized Greek(rather than a Latin) spelling of personal names in theform in which they appear in the Index of H. ]. Rose, AHandbooh of G-reeh Mythology (1959). A summary of theleading features of the Theban myth cyc1e is given below,pages 78 ff.

~

which run paraIlel to those of Lévi-Strauss in quite al1umber of ways. But the latter has carried the theoreti­cal analysis of what he is up to much further than anyof the others.

In Lévi-Strauss' first essay on this topic4 he uses, asone of his examples, an abbreviated analysis of thestructure of the Oidipus story. This is one of the veryfew cases in which he has so far applied his method toa myth which is likely to be familiar to an English 01'

American reader, so let us start with that. I have fol­lowed Lévi-Strauss fairly closely, introducing modifica­tions only at points where his argument seems particu­larly obscure.

He first assumes that the myth (any myth) canreadily be broken up into segments 01' incidents, andthat everyone familiar with the story will agree as towhat these incidents are. The incidents in every caserefer to the "relations" between the individual characters

in the story, 01' to the "status" of particular individuals.These relations and statuses are the points on which weneed to focus our attention; the individual characters,as such, as often interchangeable.

In the particular case of the Oidipus" myth he takesthe foIlowing segments of a syntagmatic chain:

i. "Kadmos seeks his sister Europe, ravished byZeus."

ii. "Kadmos kiIls the Dragon."

66CLAUDE LÉVI-STllAUSS

Very substantial sections of aIl four volumes ofMythologiques are open to objections of this kind, ánd,to be frank, this grand-scale survey of the mythology.·of the Americas, which extends to two thousand pagesand gives details of eight hundred and thirteen differentstories and their variants, often degenerates into alatter-day Golden Bough, with aIl the methodologicaldefects which such a comment might imply. Lévi­Strauss is, of course, weIl aware that he is open tocriticism of this kind, and in Mythologiques III (pp.11-12) he goes to some lengths to justify an astonishingclaim that a Tukuna myth which is "impossible to in­terpret" in its native South American context becomescomprehensible when brought into association with a"paradigmatic system" drawn from the myths of NorthAmerica. It seems to me that only the most uncriticaldevotees are likely to be persuaded by this argumentoBut, even so, the structural analysis of myth deservesour serious attention. Just what does this expressionmean?

I shaIl try to explain by demonstration, but I mustemphasize two preliminary points. First, a fuIl exposi­tion of the method requires a great deal of space; myskeletal examples give no indication of the subtletiesof the technique. Second, Lévi-Strauss' method is notentirely new. In England, Hocart and Lord Raglan madegropings in the same direction over forty years ago;so did the Russian folklorist Vladimir Proppa Ratherla ter, Georges Dumezil, one of Lévi-Strauss' senior col­leagues at the CoIlege de France, began to develop ideas

69

IV

(xi) Swollen­footedOidipus

(x) Left-sidedLaios

(ix) LameLabdakos

(v) Oidipus/Sphinx

III(ii) Kadmos/

Dragon

The Stmctme of Myth

II

(vii) Eteokles/Poly­neikes

(iii) Spartoi(iv) Oidipus/

Laios

(viii) An ti­gone/Poly­neikes

~

He then points out that in each of the incidents inColumn I there is a ritual offense of the nature of incest-"an overvaluation of kinship." This contrasts withthe incidents in Column Il, where the offenses are ofthe nature of fratricide/parricide-"an undervaluationof kinship." In Column III the common element is thedestruction of anomalous monsters by men, while Col­umn IV refers to men who are themselves to some extentanomalous monsters. Here Lévi-Strauss introjects a

general proposition based on grand-scale comparativeethnography of the Frazerian kind: "In mythology it isa universal characteristic of men born from the Earththat at the moment they emerge from the depth theyeither cannot walk or they walk clumsily. This is the

(vi) Oidipus/Jokaste

I(i) Kadmos/

Europe

. But where should we stop? In another version Haimonis 'killed by the Sphinx; in another Antigone bearsHaimon a son who is killed by Kreon, and so on.

So let us stick to Lévi-Strauss' own skeletal version.

He puts his eleven segments into four columns, thus:

68CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS

iii. "The Spartoi (the men who are born as a resultof sowing thé dragon's teeth) kill one another."

iv. "Oidipus kills his father Laios." •v. "Oidipus kiUs the Sphinx." (But in fact, in' the

story, the Sphinx commits suicide after Oidipushas answered the riddle.)

vi. "Oidipus marries his mother Jokaste."vii. "Eteokles kiUs his brother Polyneikes."

viii. "Antigone buries her brother Polyneikes despiteprohibi tion."

Lévi-Strauss also draws our attention to a peculiarity ofthree of the names:

ix. Labdakos (father of Laios)= "Lame"x. Laios (father of Oidipus) = "Left-sided"

xi. Oidipus = "Swollen-foot"Lévi-Strauss admits that the selection of these char~

acters and these incidents is to some extent arbitrary,but he argues that if we added more incidents theywould only be variations of the ones we have already.This is true enough. For example: Oidipus' task is tokill the Sphinx; he does this by answering the riddle:the answer to the riddle, according to some authorities,was "the child grows into an adult who grows into anold man"; the Sphinx then commits suicide; OidipusCthe child grown into an adult") then marries hismother, Jokaste; when Oidipus learns the answer tothis riddle, Jokaste commits suicide and Oidipus putsout his own eyes to become an old mano So also, if wewere to pursue the fortunes of Antigone, we should notethat, having "buried" her dead brother in defiance ofthe command of her mother's brother (Kreon), she isin turn herself buried alive by Kreon; she commitssuicide; her suicide is followed by that of her betrothedcousin Haimon and also that of Haimon's mother

Eurydike.

how to find a satisfactory transition between thistheory and the knowledge that human beings areactuaIly born from the union 01' man and woman.Although the problem obviously cannot be solved,the Oidipus myth provides a kind 01' logical toolwhich relates to the original p1'oblem-born from oneor born from two-to the derivative problem: bornfrom different or born from the same. By a correla-

case 01' the chthonian beings in the mythology 01' thePueblo ... [and 01'] the Kwakiutl." This, so he says,explains the peculiarity 01' the names.

Anyway, the nature 01' the anomalous monsters inColumn 111 is that they are half man-half animal, andthe story 01' the sowing 01' the dragon's teeth implies adoctrine of the autochthonous origin 01'man; the Spartoiwere oo1'n 1'rom the earth without hum::m aid. In con­trast, the story 01' Oidipus' being exposed at birth andstaked to the ground e this was the origin 01'his swollenfoot) implies that even though born 01'woman he wasnot fuIly separated from his natural earth. And so, saysLévi-Strauss, Column 111, in which the monsters areovercome, signifies clenial of the autochthonous originof man, while Column IV signifies the persistence of theautochthonous origin of mano So IV is the converse 01'

III just as II is the converse 01' I!By this hair-splitting logic we end up with an

eguation;1111 ; ; III/IV

But Lévi-Strauss maintains that there is more to thisthan algebra. The formal religious theory 01' the Greekswas that man was autochthonous. The first man was

half a serpent; he grew from the earth as plants growfrom the earth. Therefore the puzzle that needs to besolved is;

"Compare al so the following quotations; "The purpose ofmyth is to provide a logical model capable of overcoming acontradiction (an impossible achievement if, as it happens,the contradiction is real)." And, "The inability to connecttwo kinds of relationships is overcome (01' rather replaced)by the assertion that the contradictory relationships areidentical inasmuch as they are both self-contradictory in asimilar way." (StTuctlLml Anthropology, pp. 229, 216)

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1

71The S tmctme of Myth

tion 01' this type, "the overrating 01' blood relations"is to the "underrating 01' blood relations" as "theattempt to escape autochthony" is to the "impossi­bility to succeed in it." Although experience contra­dicts theory, social life validates cosmology by itssimilarity 01' structure. Hence, cosmology is true.eStructural AnthTOpology, p. 216)(;

Those who think that aIl this is vaguely reminiscent 01'an argument from Alice through the Looking Glass willnot be far wrong. Lewis CarroIl, in his alter ego asmathematician, was one 01' the originators 01' the

peculiar kind 01'binary logic upon which Lévi-Straussiandiscourse and modern computer technology are alikeconstructed.

It must be admitted that, emasculated in this way,

the argument almost ceases to be comprehensible, yeteven so, the reader may suspect that behind the non­sense there is a sense. The reason why Lévi-Strauss hasnot pursued his explorations 01' classical Greek my­thology any further seems to be that, in the somewhatbowdlerized form in which these stories have comedown to us, there are too few parameters. The SouthAmerican mythology, which has provided the mainarena 01' his explorations, has many more dimensions.In particular he is there able to show that:

l. sets 01' relationships among human beings in

70CLAUDE LíéVI-STHAUSS

terms of relative status, friendship and hostility,'sexual availability, mutual dependence

may be represented in myth, either in direct or trans.posed form, as

2. relationships among different kinds especies) of'men, animals, birds, reptiles, insects, Supernatural'beings

3· relationships between categories of food andmodes of food preparation and the use or non-useof fire eabove, page 27)

4· relations between categories of sound and silenceprod1,lced either naturalIy as animal cries or arti.ficialIy by means of musical instruments

5· relations between categories of smelI and taste­pleasantlunpleasant, sweetlsour, etc.

6. relations between types of human dress and un.dress and between the animals and plants fromwhich the cIothing is derived

7· relations between body functions: e.g., eating,excretion, urination, vomiting, copulation, birth,menstruation

8. relations between categories of landscape, sea­sonal change, cIimate, time alternations, celestialbodies

01' combinations of any of these. The main purpose ofhis South American analysis is not merely to show thatsuch symbolization occurs, for Freud and his folIowershave already cIaimed to demonstrate this, but to showthat the transformations folIow strictly logical rules.

Lévi-Strauss displays quite extraordinary ingenuityin the way he exhibits this hidden logic, but the argu­ment is extremely complicated and very difficult toevaluate.

Is it possible to present a reduced model of such asystem of analysis and still convey the general sense? .

CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS 72The StTuctll7'e of Myth I 73

In his' original articIe Lévi-Strauss remarks at the endof his brief discussion of Oidipus:

If a myth is made up of all its variants, structuralanalysis should take them alI into account. Afteranalyzing alI the known variants of the Theban ver­sion, we should thus treat the others in the sameway: first the tales about Labdakos' colIateral lineincIuding Agave, Pentheus, and ]okaste herself; theTheban version about Lykos with Amphion and Zetosas the city founders; more remote variants concern­ing Dionysos eOidipus' matrilateral cousin) andAthenian legends where Kekrops takes the place ofKadmos. For each of them a similar chart should bedrawn and then compared and reorganized accordingto the findings. eStructural AnthTOpology, p. 217)

The methodological program applied to American ma­terials in Mythologiques is a modification of this plan.Volume 1starts with a Bororo myth from South America(M. 1) and explores variants and permutations. Thereis recurrent emphasis on the theme that "culinary oper­ations are viewed as mediatory activities between heavenand earth, life and death, nature and society." VolumeII examines more convoluted versions of the same com­

plex, and Volume III pursues the chase into NorthAmerica. Volume IV leads us the other way round:starting with a myth from the American NorthwesteM. 529), variants eventualIy take us back to SouthAmerica. The emphasis on cooking as an agent of trans­formation persists, but the title Naked Man draws atten­tion to the recurrent equivalence: nakedl clothed =Nature/Culture. At the end of the day Lévi-StrausscIaims to have demonstrated that the whole vast agglom­eration of stories forms a single system. In principIe,

.such an operation might be expanded indefinitely sothere can be nothing heretical about applying the rules

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CLAUDE LÉVI-STHAUSS 74

of the game to the mythology of Classical Greece. Thereare indeed striking American parallels for some well­known European themes.7

In particular, Orpheus, being heavily laden withbinary anrithE:SE:s, SE:E:msposiri\'E:ly to inÚte a Le vi­Straussian im'bri-:;arion:

H,; ¡., ó. ::/,[j (,i SéfltlE: :\V-,llr, r,ul ::. idlC¡.';E:r úf "ildDiúnysús, with \vhom hE:bE:C:úmE:SidE:nrified.

He rescues his wife hom the land of the dead bymeans of music but loses her because of silence­"nol hearing her footsteps behind him."

He is a devoted husband yet the originator of malehomosexuality; his orac1e was located on Lesbos, thetraclitional source of female homosexuality.

Furthermore, the Orpheus-Euridike story is a structuralpermutation of the Demeter-Persephone story:

Euriclike the wife and Persephone the VirginDaughter are both carriecl off to rule as Queen of theUnclerworlcl.

Orpheus the hllsbancl fails to rescue his wife andis sterile; Demeter the mother partially rescues herc1aughter ancl is fertile.

Euridike dies in consequence of being bit ten by asnake while evading the sexual embraces of Aristaios,half-brother to Orpheus. The punishment of Aristaiosis that he loses his bees and hence his honey. Herecovers his bees by finding a swarm in the carcassof a sacrificed animal which has been speciallyallowed to go putrid instead of being cooked andbumed for the gods in the usual way. Persephonefails to achieve immortality beca use she eats rawpomegranate seeds in the other world; her foster

See A. Hultkrantz, The North American Indian OrphelLsTmdition (New York, 1958).

The Str1.Lcture of Myth I 75

brother Demophoon nearly achieves immortality be­cause he eats nothing in this world but is insteadanointed with ambrosia, a food of the gods relatedto honey. He fails to achieve immortality because hisreal mother (Metaneira) drags hiro from fire in whichhe is being cooked by Demeter, who is seeking toburn away his mortality. Persephone is lured to herdoom by the fragrant smell of fresh ftowers.

Already 1 have started enough hares to fill a wholevolume of Lévi-Strauss' magnum opus, and our authorhimself is undoubtedly aware of the possibilities (see,e.g., Mythologiques II, p. 347). But the ordinary readerwho is unfamiliar with the details of classical mythologyor the permutations and combinations in Mythologiquescan hardly be expected to decipher such a rigmarole.1 shall attempt something much more modesto By fol­lowing through a very restricted version of Lévi-Strauss'original plan, 1 shall try to give the reader some feelingof how, in a structuralist analysis, the contrasted pat­terns of superficially different stories can be seen to fittogether. It needs to be realized, however, that in anysuch trllncated illustration we necessarily forfeit manyof the subtler nuances of the technique.

Within these limitations the analysis which follows,which discusses eight stories in outline and mentionsseveral others in skeletal form, is in tended to illustratecertain key features in Lévi-Strauss' procedure. Thevarious stories are all summarized in the same way sothat the roles of the various dramatis peTsonae can be

easily distinguished. King, Queen, Mother, Father,Brother, Sister, Daughter, Son, Son-in-law, Paramour,etc., are seen to exhibit permutations of a single "plot."

The comparison rests on a basic underlying hypothe­sis to the effect that Greek mythology as a whole con­'stitutes a single "system" (language) and that each

jIi~

individual story is a syntagm of that system (pages 48­50). The system as a whole presupposes a certain meta­phorical apprehension of the relative positions of l11enand animals and deities in a matrix formed by theoppositions:

ABOVE/BELOW, TI-lIS WORLD/OTI-IER WORLD,CULTURE/NATURE

This schema is summarized below in Figure 5. Otherfactors which are presupposed in my analysis (thiswould be more evident if my description oí' the mythswere more complete) are the transformational rules

hinted at in my remarks about the Orpheus story (page74)· The Greek deities were supposed to eat only freshuncooked foods-ambrosia, nectar, honey-but theydelighted in the smell of burnt offerings. Thus BURNING/

PUTRm :: SKY/ UNDERWORLD. In my versions of themyths the issue is blatantly about sex and homicide;

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77The Structure of Myth

And if the relevance of all this to what follows seems

obscure 1 can only remark that one of the unmentionedcharacters, Glaukos, son of Minos and brother-in-lawto Dionysos, was "drowned in ajar of honey" and re­born from a tomb.

Finally, 1 should point out that the ultimate conelu­sion of the analysis is not that "all the I?yths say thesame thing" but that "collectively the sum of what allthe myths say is not expressly said by any of them, andthat what they thus say (collectively) is a necessarypoetic truth which is an unwelcome contradiction." It

[There is] an analogy between honey and menstrualblood. Both are transformed (élaborée) substancesresul ting from a sort of infm-cuisine, vegetal in theone case. , . animal in the other. Moreover, honeymay be either healthy 01' toxic, just as a woman inher normal condition is a "honey", but secretes apoison when she is indisposed. Finally we have seenthat, in native thought, the search for honey repre­sents a sort of return to Nature, in the guise of eroticattraction transposed from the sexual register to thatof the sense of taste which undermines the veryfoundations of Culture if it is indulged in for toolong. In the same way the honey-moon will be amenace to public order if the brida! paír are allowedto extend their priva te game indefinitely and to neg­lect their duties to society. (Mythologiques III, p.340)

in a fuller account it would be seen that this issue also

appears in other guises transposed onto other planes.Just how this works cannot be shown in brief space,'but the í'ollowing generalization by Lévi-Strauss derivedfrom his American material may well apply to theGreek data also:

GODS

Zeus sky

(SkY-Mounta:J.n)Gods Inthe Wild

Underworld

Poseidon ~~es(sea) (owground)

76

Eagles

Figure 5

PRESUMED SCHEMA

----------- NATURE •

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+

ANIMALS

CULTURE

J

THIS WORLD ~ • OTRER WORLD

CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS

MEN

Men In - Domestic Animals _ Wild AnimalsCities I In Fanns Monsters

~ Serpents (dragons)1-<

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79The StructuTe of Myth

daughter Harmonia. The gods give Harmonia amagical necklace as dowry, which later brings dis­aster to everyone who possesses it. At the end ofthe story Kadmos and Harmonia change intodragons.

Comment: The story specifies the polarity Na­ture : Culture :: Gocls : Men and affinns that therelationship between gods and men is one of am­biguous ancl unstable al!iance-exemplifiecl bymarriage fol!owed by feucl followed by marriageaccompanied by poisoned marriage gifts. There isalso the ambiguity of autochthony/nonautoch­thony. Kadmos, who slays the dragon from whomare born the Spartoi, is himself the clragon andancestor of the Spartoi.

2 I Minos and the Minotaur

StOTY: Minos is son of Zeus and Europe (s tory1) and husband to Pasiphae, daughter of the Sun.

Poseidon is brother to Zeus but his counterpart,

god of the sea instead of god of the sky.Poseidon sends Minos a beautiful bull which

should be sacrificed; Minos retains the bull. In

punishment Poseidon causes Pasiphae to lust afterthe bull. By the ingenuity of Daidalos, Pasiphae ischanged into a cow ancl has sex relations with thebul!, of which union is born the monster Minotaur,who annually devours a tribute of living youthsand maidens.

Comment: This is the inverse of story 1, thus:

(a) Kadmos veTsion: Bul! (Zeus) carries awayEurope, who has ahuman chilcl, Minos.Europe has ahuman brother, Kadmos, whois required to sacrifice a cow, sent from the

THE STORIES

1 I Kadmos, ElIrope, and the Dragon's Teeth

StOTY: Zeus (Gocl) in the 1'orm of a tame wildbul! (mecliator between wild and tame) seducesand carries off ahuman girl, Europe.

Europe's brother, Kadmos, and mother, Tele-'phassa, search for her. The mother dies and isburied by Kaclmos. Kadmos is then told to fol!ow aparticular cow (domestic animal: replacement ofthe sister ancl the mother). Where the cow stops,Kaclmos must found Thebes, having first sacrificedthe cow to Athena. (Cow 1'orms link between man

and gocls just as bul! formecl link between godsand man.) In seeking to pro vicie water for thesacrifice Kadmos encounters a clragon (monster)guarding a sacrecl pool. The dragon is a son ofAres, gocl of war. Kaclmos ancl the clragon engagein battle. Having killed the dragon, Kadmos sowsthe dragon's teeth (a clomestic action appliecl towilcl m aterial ). The crop is men (the Spartoi)without mothers. They kill one another, but thesurvivors coopera te with Kaclmos to found Thebes.Kadmos makes peace with Ares and marries his

¡(- ,',{ C'. (( ~. t .. / 11,'./ • " o" .~, ~ ( •• ' _ , • (' >t.-,...J\ ..A ._~_

~ ¡ :. ) ,. l... ).~. l l ,.,., I '.J ~. , •• , I ,~'1 ~~¡'(( ...t· , l' l' r . ( ( \. r, (: (.: 'í' , ¡. ' I I /,

CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS I 78

is Lévi-Strauss' thesis that the 1'unction 01'mythology iS

to exhibit publicly, though in clisguise; ordinariiy un­conséious paradoxes of this kincl (cf. page 63r Theunderlying assumption throughout the analysis is that

\ this '2:~duc~~ ~1:9_cJ~!;:_.whicharranges various pairs of: -. _ ..._.-.~

I~~g9..E~~_sin binary opposition along two axes, is im-,;: ~Iicit in t~e-'whoJe s~stem of mythology of whichll1e

,A (- ".~ hsted stones are partIcular examplcs.,,\tt.'\ ~._._.- .i' V .

¡ l •• 1 ~ ( , ¡

3 / Theseus, Ariadne, and the Minotaur

Story: Theseus, son of Poseidon by ahumanmother, is ranged against Minos, son of Zeus by ahuman mother. Ariadne, daughter of Minos andPasiphae (story 2), loves Theseus and betrays herfather by means of a thread. Theseus kills theMinotaur and elopes with Ariadne but deserts her.

C01J11nent: This is one of a group of closely re­lated stories in which a father 01' the father's double

(here Minos-Minotaur) is killed by his enemy be-

gods, and in the process he kills a monsterfrom whose remains come live humanbeings. But Kadmos is himself the monster.

(b) Minos version: Bull (Poseidon) cohabitswith Pasiphae, who has a monster child,Minotaur. Pasiphae has ahuman husband,Minos, who is required to sacrifice a bull,sent from the gods (which he fails to do).The bull is replaced by a monster who con­sumes human beings. But the monster =Minotaur = Minos-Bull is himself Minas.

In effect, the two stories have almost identical"structures"; one story is con verted into the otherby "changing the signs" -Le., bulls become cows,brothers become husbands, and so on.

The implication is the same as before. Again wehave a polarity Gods : Men :: Wild : Tame ::Monsters : Domestic Animals, with the Divine Bullan ambiguous creature linking the two sides. Againsexual relations between gods and men and thesacrifice of divine animals expresses the highlyequivocal alliance in which the friendship of thegods is bought only at enormous cost.

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81The Structure of Myth

cause of the treachery of the daughter, who lovesthe enemy; but the victorious enemy then punishesthe daughter by desertion 01' murder. Thus:

(a) Minos is at war with Nisos, King of Megara,a descendant of the autochthonous Kekrops.Nisos is preserved from death by a magiclock of hair. Skylla, daughter of Nisos, cutsoff the hair and presents it as a love tokento Minas. Minos kills Nisos but abandons

Skylla in disgust. Nisos is then turned intoa sea eagle in perpetual pursuit of his errantdaughter in the form of another sea bird(keiris ).

(b) Perseus, son of Zeus by the human Danae,is founder-King of Mycenae. The kingdompasses to Perseus' son Alkaios and then toElektryon, brother of Alkaios, who engagesin feud with Pterelaos, grandson of Nestor,another brother of Alkaios. Amphitryon, sonof Alkaios, is betrothed to Alkmene,daughter of Elektryon (his father's brother).Elektryon gives Amphitryon the kingdombut binds him by oath not to sleep withAlkmene until vengeance against Pterelaoshas been achieved.

In the course of the feud the sons ofPterelaos drive off Elektryon's cows and arecounterattacked by the sons of Elektryon.One son from each side survives. Amphit­ryon redeems the cattle but, as he is drivingthem home, one of the cows runs aside.Amphitryon flings a stick at the cow but thestick hits Elektryon, who is killed. Pterelaosis, like Nisos, preserved from death by amagic hair. Komaitho, daughter of Ptere-

80CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS

These stories add up to a variation of Lévi­Strauss' gene'ralization cited on page 69. The herowho is left on stage (Theseus in the. one case,Herakles in the other) is the son of ahumanmother by adivine father and therefore the oppo­si te of the autochthonous beings (such as Kekrops)who are born of the earth without reference towomen. Yct Lévi-Strauss' formula still applies, ex­cept that the problem of incest ("the overrating ofblood relations") and parricide/fraticide ("theunderrating of bloocl relations") is replacecl by the

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83The StTuctuTe of Myth

problem of exogamy ancl feud ("the overrating ofaffinal relations" -treachery by the errant daughter-and "the unclerrating of affinal relations"­murder of the potential father-in-law by the poten-tial son-in-law).

4 I Antiope, Zethos, and Amphion

StoTY: Kaclmos is succeeded as King of Thebes,first by a daughter's son, Pentheus, then by hisown son, polydoros, then by Labdakos, son of Poly­doros. Pentheus and Labdakos both become sacri­fices to Dionysos-their womenfolk in a frenzymistake them for wilcl beasts and tear them to

pieces. Laios, the next heir, is an infant, and thethrone is usurped by Lykos, Labdakos' mother'sfather's brother. Antiope, daughter of Nykteus, isbrother's claughter to Lykos. She becomes pregnant

by Zeus. Nykteus, clishonored, commits suicide,and the duty of punishing Antiope for her liaisonfalls on Lykos. Lykos and his wife, Dirke, captureand imprison Antiope, but not before she has givenbirth to twins, Zethos (a warrior) and Amphion (amusicían), who as infants are exposed on a moun­tain and (like Oiclipus) rescued by shepherds. Indue course the twins discover their mother andavenge themselves on Lykos and Dirke and reignjointly in Thebes.

Comment: This story combines features from

story 3 with those of the better-known Oiclipusstoríes (6 and 7 below). The role of Amphitryonin 3 (b) is taken over by Zeus. The suicide ofNykteus is, in effect, a slaying of the father-in-lawby the son-in-law. Zethos ancl Amphion are sons ofZeus by ahuman mother; their opponent, Lykos,

82

laos, in love with Amphitryon, betrays her

father [as in (a)]. Amphitryon kiUs Ptere­laos but also kills Komaitho for her

treachery.Notice, first, that the killing of Elektryon on

account of an errant cow is metaphoric of thekilling of the other fathers on account of an errantdaughteT, and, second, that in each case there is aclash of loyalties, since the daughter must betraythe father in seeking to gain a husband. In thefirst two cases (Theseus, Minos) the potential hus­band rejects the sinful daughter, but in the thirdcase the "contradiction" is resolved by a duplicationof roles. Pterelaos is the double of Elektryon,Komaitho is the double of Alkmene. Amphitryonkills both the fathers, but his killing of Komaithoallows him to marry Alkmene.

(c) Alkmene now becomes the prototype of thefaithful wife. Nevertheless she is faithless,since she becomes the mother of Heraklesas the result of sexual union with Zeus,

who had impersonated her husband Amphit­ryon.

CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS

·1

5 / Thesells, Phaiclra, ancl Hippolytos

Story: Hippolytos is the son of Theseus byAntiope, Queen of the Amazons. Phaidra, daughter

is son oE the autochthonous Chthonios. In other

respects Antiope is a sort oE Antigone-Jokaste.Antiope, like Antigone, is imprisoned by her unde,

but where Lykos is father's brother of Antiope,Kreon is mother's brother of Antigone. Amphionand Zethos resemble Oidipus in that they are ex­posed on a mountain in childhood and seize the

throne after killing the king. But they kill the king. after discovering their true parentage, whereas

Oidipus kills the king first. They al so resemble

Eteokles and Polyneikes in that they are twins who

both claim the throne, but they rule together inamity, one as a warrior and one as a musician,whereas the Argives, both being warriors, kill oneanother. Like Oidipus, Amphion and Zethos are"mediators" between the sky gods and the under­world in that their mother Antiope is in the lineof Chthonios and their father is Zeus.

So far as the succession principIe is concernedAmphion and Zethos are the opposites of theSpartoi. The Spartoi are the autochthonous sons of

a Chthonian man-monster, Kadmos; Amphion and

Zethos are the sons of ahuman mother by a sky­deity, Zeus. But the final outcome is disaster. Am­

phion marries Niobe, by whom he has many chil­dren, but Niobe boasts of her fertility and the

whole family is destroyed by the wrath of the gods.Moral: Amity between brothers (Amphion-Ze­

thos) is ultimately no more fruitful than fratricide(Eteokles-Polyneikes) .

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85The Structure of Myth

of Minas, is wife to Theseus and step-mother' to

Hippolytos. Phaidra falls in lave with Hippolytos,who rejects her advances; Phaidra then accusesHippolytos of having tried to rape her. In revengeTheseus appeals to Poseidon to slay Hippolytos,and Hippolytos dies. Phaidra commits suicide.Theseus discovers his error and suffers remorse.

Cornrnent: This is very clase to being the inverseof the Oidipus story (7). Here the father kills theson instead of the son killing the father. The sondoes not sleep with the mother, though he is accusedof doing so. The mother commits suicide in bothcases; the surviving father-son suffers remorse inboth cases. It will be observed that the failure oE

Hippolytos to commit incest with his estep-) motherPhaidra has an even more negative outcome thanthe actual ineest of Oidipus with Jokaste.

Notice further that Phaidra is sister to Ariadne

e story 3). The roles are now reversed. Ins tead ofthe son-in-Iaw killing the father-in-Iaw because ofthe treachery of the daughter, the father kills theson because of the treachery of the mother.

6 / Laios, Chrysippos, and Jokaste

Story: During the reign of Lykos, Amphion, andZethos, Laios goes into banishment and is be­friended by Pelops. He falls in lave with Pelops'son, Chrysippos, whom he teaches to drive a

chariot. After returning to the throne of Thebes hemarries Jokaste but avoids sleeping with her be­eause of the prophecy that her son will kill him.

The conception which results in the birth of Oidipusfollows a bout of lust when Laios has got drunkat a religious feast. On the occasion when he en-

84CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS

countered Oidipus "at the crossroads," Oidipus wasa "young man driving a chariot." •

Cornrnent: The myth establishes an equivalencebetween Chrysippos and Oidipus, and the incestbetween Oidipus and his mother is matched byhomosexual incest between Laios and his son.

8 / Argives (Antigone, Eteokles, and Polyneikes)

Story: Oidipus has two sons, Eteokles and Poly­neikes, who are also his half-brothers, since theyare sons of Jokaste. Oidipus having abdicated,Eteokles and Polyneikes are supposed to hold thethrone alternately. Eteokles takes the throne firstand refuses to give it up; Polyneikes is banishedand leads an army of heroes from Argos againstThebes. The expedition fails. Eteokles and Poly­neikes kill each other. Antigone, in defiance ofKreon, performs funeral rites over Polyneikes. In

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87The Structure of Myth

Oidipus: son kil!s father and becomes paramour.Agarnernnon: paramour kills father inviting venge-

ance from the son.Odysseus: father merges with son and destroys the

would-be paramours. Odysseus has no descendants.Menelaos: paramour (P aris) is destroyed by a third

party and there is no heir (son).Hippolytos (story 5): innocent son, falsely accused

of being paramour, is killed by father.

What emerges from such a comparison is that eachstory is seen to be a combination of relational themes,that each theme is one of a set of variations, and thatwhat is significant about these relational themes is thecontrast between the variations.

The message contained in the whole set of stories­the ones 1 have spelled out at some length and the onesI have mentioned only by title-cannot readily be put

punishment she is walled up alive in a tomb, whereshe commits suicide. Later the sons of the deadheroes lead another expedition against Thebes andare triumphant.

Cornrnent: Lévi-Strauss' own treatment of stories

7 and 8 in conjunction with story 1 has alreadybeen given on pages 67-71.

It will be seen that if we proceed in this way therenever comes a point at which we can say that we haveconsidered "all the variants," for almost any story drawnfrom the general complex of classical Greek mythologytums out to be a variant in one way or another. If, forexample, we take as our central theme the Oidipuscomplex as understood by Freud-the story of a sonwho kills his father and then becomes the paramourof his mother-we shall find that the fol!owing well­known stories are all "variants." Thus:

86CLAUDE LÉVI-STllAUSS

7 / Oidipus

Story: The lOng (Laios) and the Queen (Jokaste)rule in Thebes. The son (Oidipus) is exposed on amountain with his ankles staked and thought tobe dead. He survives. The son meets the King­father "at a crossroads" and kills him. The Queen'sbrother (Kreon) acts as regent. Thebes is beset bya monster (Sphinx: female). The Queen's hand inmarriage is offered to anyone who will get rid ofthe monster by answering its riddle. Oidipus doesso. The monster commits suicide. The son assumesal! aspects of the deceased father's roleo On dis­covery, the Queen commits suicide; son-King (Oidi­pus) blinds himself and becomes a seer (acquiressupernatural sight).

·---e L A U DEL É v 1- S T H A U S s I 88 ..'into words; otherwise there would be no need for suchcircumlocution. But, roughly, what it amounts to issimple enough: if society is to go on, daughters mustbe disloyal to their parents and son s must destroy (re­place) their fathers.8

Here then is the irresolvable unwelcome contradic­tion, the necessary fact that we hide from consciousnessbecause its implications run directly counter to thefundamentals of human morality. There are no heroesin these stories; they are simply epics of unavoidablehuman disaster. The disaster always originates in thecircumstances that ahuman being fails to fulfill his orher proper obligations toward a deity or a kinsman, andthis, in part at least, is what Lévi-Strauss is getting atwhen he insists that the fundamental moral implicationof mythology is that "Hell is ourselves," which I take tomean "self-interest is the source of all evil."

But I must again remind the reader that this wholeexample is Leach imitating Lévi-Strauss and not a sum­mary of a Lévi-Strauss original. It has been necessaryto go to this length in order to display the "theme andvariations" aspects of a typical Lévi-Straussian analysis,but in all other respects the material is thin and atypical.There is a paucity of magical happenings and a monoto­nous concentration on the bed-rock issues of homicide

s Cf. Lévi-Strauss' own formula, cited on page 69. In myextended analysis Incest : Fratricide-Parricide : : Murder ofpotential father-in-Iaw : Exogamy : : "born from one" :"born from two" : : Society in which there is no succession(Odysseus) : Society in which there is succession (Oidipus).That the Odyssey has this static implication is confirmed byconsideration of a post-Homeric supplement which unsuc­cessfully attempts to resolve the puzzle by splitting thevarious roles: Telemachos, son of Odysseus and Penelope,has a half-brother, Telegonos, son of Odysseus and Kirke;Telegonos accidentally kills Odysseus and marries Penelope;Telemachos marries Kirke.

The Structure of Myth I 89

and sexual misdemeanor. In Lévi-Strauss' own examplesthese ultimate confiicts are usually transformed into alanguage code of some other kind.

For example, in his American case material many ofthe most perceptive of Lévi-Strauss' comparisons derivefrom analogies between eating and sexual intercourse.Clase paraIlels are not easily found in classical my­thology, but the stories relating to the ancestry of Zeus,which are themselves in certain respects duplicates ofthe Oidipus myth, wiIl serve as a partial illustration:

Gaea, Earth, first produces Uranos, Heaven, by spon­taneous generation. Then Uranos copulates with hismother. She bears the Titans. Uranos, jealous of hissons, thrusts them back into the body of their mother.Gaea, unable to tolerate this state of permanentgestation, arms the last of her sons, Kronos, with asickle with which he castrates his father. The dropsof blood faIl to earth and turn into the Furies, theGiants, and the Nymphs; the castrated member itselffalls to the sea and is transformed into Aphrodite,the goddess of love. Kronos then rules and is in turntold that he will be overthrown by his son, but whereLaios tried to save himself by abstaining from hetero­sexual intercourse (story 6 above) Kronos indulgeshimself but swaIlows his children as fast as they areborn. When Zeus is born the mother, Rhea, givesKronos a phallic-shaped stone instead of the newbornbabe. Kronos then vomits up the stone along withall the children previously consumed.

In this story, the ordinary act of sexual intercourse istransposed. Where in reality the male inserts a phallusinto the female vagina and thereafter children are bornthrough the vagina, in the myth the female inserts aphaIlus into the male mouth as a form of food andthereafter the children are born through the mouth in

•••••••

~.~-~U _,.

¡,.

the form of vomit. A erude nursery imagery, no doubt,but in Lévi-Strauss' view this exemplifies a very generalprinciple-"In the language [plan] of myth vomit isthe eorrelative and inverse term to eoitus and defeea­tion' is the eorrelative and in verse term to auditorycommunication" (Mythologiques II, p. 2Io)-and bythe time he has finished with it, he has linked up thissymbolism with modes of eooking, methods of makingfire, ehanges in the seasons, the menstrual periods ofyoung women, the diet of young mothers and elderlyspinsters, and Lord knows what else. To discover justhow one thing leads to another, however, the readermust pursue some inquiries on his own. Having startedat Mythologiques II (pp. 210-12), he will be led backto various other Lévi-Straussian references, but notablyto Mythologiques 1 (p. 344) and "The Struetural Studyof Myth," from whieh we started out. The journey iswell worth while, though the traveler will not neces­sarily be all that the wiser when he comes to the endof it.

Let me say again that even among those who havefound it extremely rewarding to apply Lévy-Strauss'structuralist techniques to the detailed study of particu­lar bodies of ease material, there is widespread skepti­cism about the reckless sweep with which he himselfis prepared to apply his generalizations. For example,consider the following:

With regard to the riddle of the Sphinx, Lévi-Straussclaims that it is in the nature of things that a mythicalriddle should have no answer. It is also in the nature of

things that a mother should not marry her own son.Oidipus eontradicts nature by answering the riddle; healso eontradiets nature by marrying his mother.

Now if we define a mythical riddle as "a questionwhich postulates that there is no answer" then the eon-

verse would be "an answer for whieh there was no

question." In the Oidipus stories disaster ensues beeausesomeone answers the unanswerable question; in anotherclass of myths of world-wide distribution, disaster ensuesbeeause someone fails to ask the answerable question.Lévi-Strauss cites as examples the death of Buddhabeeause Ananda failed to ask him to remain alive andthe disasters of the Fisher-King which are the eonse­quenee of Gawain-Pereival's failing to ask about thenature of the Holy Grail.

This kind of verbal juggling with the generalizedformula is quite typieal of Lévi-Strauss' hypothesis­forming proeedure, but sueh methods eannot show usthe truth; they only lead into a world where all thingsare possible and nothing sure.

CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS 90 The Structure of Myth 91

1I

!,

The catch, of course, as any pet-Ioving Englishman orAmerican will immediately recognize, is that thesebroad French generalizations do not holel up as soon asone crosses the Straits of Dover! A great many Englishdogs have names identical with those of their humanfrienels. Be that as it may, Lévi-Strauss then goes on tomake further learned generalizations about the namesFrench farmers give their cows:

L.......\rf~.

101WOTCIsand Things

Now the names given to cattle belong to a differentseries from birds' or elogs'. They are generally de­scriptive terms referring to the color of their coats,their bearing or temperament: "Rustaud," "Russet,""Blanchette," "Douce," etc.; these names have a meta-phorical character but they differ from the namesgiven to dogs in that they are epithets coming fromthe syntagmatic chain while the latter come fromthe paraeligmatic series; the former thus tend to

derive from speech, the latter from language. (TheSavage Mind, p. 206)

Here again, the Englishman is out of line, though hedoes better when it comes to racehorses! The trouble is

that Lévi-Strauss always wants to force his evidenceinto completely symmetrical molds:

If therefore birds are metaphoTical human beings anddogs metonymical human beings, cattle may bethought of as metonymical inhuman beings and race­horses as metaphoTical inhuman beings. Cattle arecontiguous only for want of similarity, racehorsessimilar only for want of contiguity. Each of these twocategories offers the converse image of one of the twoother categories, which themselves stand in the rela­

tion of inverted symmetry. (The Savage Mind, p. 207)But supposing the English evielence doesn't really fit?

Well, no matter, the English are an illogical lot of bar­barians in any case.

Don't misunderstand me. The Savage Mind taken as

a whole is an entrancing book. The exploration of theway we (primitives anel civilizeel alike) use elifferentkinds of language for purposes of classification, and of

the way that the categories which relate to social (cul­tural) space are interwoven with the categories whichrelate to natural space is packed with immensely stimu­lating ideas. But you should not always believe what issaid! When, for example, Lévi-Strauss claims that the

100

municate with them by acoustic means recallingarticulated language.

Conseguently everything objective conspires to makeus think of the bird world as a metaphorical humansociety: is it not after a11 litera11y para11el to it onanother level? There are countless examples in my­thology and folklore to indicate the freguency of thismode of representation.

The position is exactly the reverse in the case ofdogs. 'Not only do they not form an independentsociety; as "domes tic" animals they are part of humansociety, although with so low a place in it that weshould not elream of ... elesignating them in thesame way as human beings .... On the contrary, wea110t them a special series: "Azor," "Méelor," "Sultan,""Fielo," "Diane" (the last of these is of course ahuman christian name but in the first instance con­

ceived as mythological). Nearly a11 these are likestage names, forming a series para11el to the namespeople bear in ordinary life or, in other words, meta­phorical names. Conseguently when the relationbetween (human and animal) species is sociallyconceived as metaphorical, the relation between therespective systems of naming takes on a metonymicalcharacter; and when the relation between species isconceived as metonymical, the system of namingas sumes a metaphorical character. (The SavageMind,pp. 204, 205)

CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS

1',tif'

II,1

\,

,¡-'1

<

11

;/

1

e L A U DEL É v 1 - S T R A U S s 1 104

so that hearing and sight and smell and taste andtouch, etc., seem all to be giving the same message. Theproblem then is simpl y to devise a means of breakingthe codeo Lévi-Strauss thinks he has solved this problem;even those who have doubts can hardly fail to beastonished by the ingenuity of the exercise.

The ninth chapter of La Pensée sau'Uage is of a differ­ent kind from the rest and I have already made someremarks about it (see pages 6-8). Here I will do no morethan repeat that what Lévi-Strauss seems to be sayingis that Sartre attaches much too much importance tothe distinction between history, as a record of actualevents which occurred in a recorded historical sequence,and myth, which simply reports that certain eventsoccurred as in a dream, without special emphasis onchronological sequence. History records structural trans­formations diachronically over the centuries; ethnog­raphy records structural transformations synchronicallyacross the continents. In either case the scientist, asobserver, is able to record the possible permutations andcombinations of an interrelated system of ideas andbehaviors. The intelligibility of the diachronic trans­formations is no greater and no less than the intelligi­bility of the synchronic transformations. By implícation,the only way to make sense of history would be to applyto it the method of myth analysis which Lévi-Strausshas exhibited in his study of American mythology.Whether such an argument could possibly have anyappeal to professional historians or philosophers ofhistory it is not for me to sayo Certainly it líes far offthe beaten track of conventional anthropology, whichfor nearly half a century has paid líttle attention eitherto grand philosophy or to speculative interpretations ofthe nature of history.

So let us go back to some conventional anthropology.

The Elementary Structures of Kinship•

VIAnd so at last we come to Lévi-Strauss' con­

tributions to kinship theory. This is technicalanthropological stuff, and readers who prefer adiet of souffié to suet pudding must mind theirdigestion.

This part of Lévi-Strauss' work was mostlypublíshed before 1949. I have ignored thechronology because, in this area of study, I amquite out of sympathy with Lévi-Strauss' posi­tion, but I must now try to explain what theargument is all about. One long-establíshedanthropological tradition, which goes back to thepublícation of Morgan's Systems of Consan­

guinity and Affinity of the Human Family ,(1871), is to attach especial importance to the">"./.way words are used to classify genealogically )) "related individuals. Although there are thou-sands of different human languages, all kin-term

1:'

I

I¡

~'---:-'j/-- t. r',,'/ f

f II~J.-v-- ..vv"'" ¿/;./

107The ElementaTY StTuctUTes of Kinship

and' not biological facts, and the two sets of data areoften so widely discrepant that it is often convenientto discuss kinship without any reference to biology, AIlthe same, any action which is labeled "kinship behavior"must in the last analysis have some tenuous link withbiology-it must trace back to the self-evident fact thata mother is "related" to her own child and that brothers

and sisters (siblings) of the same mother are relatedto one another,

Most kinship facts present themselves to the fieldanthropologist in two ways. In the first place, as 1 have

said, his informants use a ~~ship terminology-words :'/)such as father, mother, uncle, aunt, cousin, etc.-to l.s9.!~ out the people in their vicinity into sign.!ficanti:.?,~'ps; in the second place it emei-ges that !E_~!~_3\re ,

various sets of behaviors and attitudes which are con-o l )si~~-d .espeéi~lly- ~pprop:date o~ in:~pproprÚte)ietween\c.:,a~.Y,t":V<?:in9iviqualsdeel11ed to be .r~lat~d in ap~~ti_~uErw¿}-e.g., it may be 'said that aman should neverspeak in the presence of his mother-in-law or that itwould be a good thing if he were to marry a girl whofaIls into the same kin-term class as his mother's

brother's daughter,If we are trying to understand the day-to-day behavior

of people living in close face-to-face relationship, facts

such as these are clearly of great s.!g!1jfLc.anc~and agood deal of the l~~.!rªE.~hropo~?__ª-~'.s,_r~,s.~~E:?.-''ti~eis --~,---?t}_t~k.~J1.Ul?with discovering Nsfhow theseS~~_?_.~~!l:~_~\ofí~ ..

x:.~e!~~~_~the _~Y~!~!l1.?i::~:Y~~.!?,~~:~:~~~~~.5-~.the'¡~liystem of~~~~:'_lOral att~~~_d.~~,..\ar.~..H1teF;Qg!,!~~~~~~ut~A'or·the chau-borne 'anthropologrst, whether he be an In·

experienced student or a senior professor, the data ofkinship offer delights of quite another kind,

In its original context a kinship terminology is justa part of a spoken language; nothing particular sepa-

CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS I 106

1 See H. W. Scheffier, "Structuralism in Anthropology," inJacques Ehrmann, ed., StTuctll7'alis11l, a double issue ofYale FTench Studies, Nos. 36-37 (1966), pp. 75 ff.

systems belong to one or other of about half a dozen"types." How should we explain this? Lévi-Strauss doesnot follow Morgan at aIl closely, but he assumes, as we

might expect, that any particular system of kin terms isí a syntagm of the "system" of aIl possible systems, whichUis, in turn, a precipita te of a universal human psy­

chology. This line of thought is consistent with the"formal ethnography" of Lounsbury and others in theUnited States,J but is quite incompatible with the posi-

I tion of most British functionalist anthropologists. If'.pressed, the latter will argue that the different major

-'i')·' types of kin-term system are a response to different.,J . i i patterns of social organization rather than to any uni­

, ',:. 1" \, 1 'b f' h h . d1, l' . (. i\ "versa attn ute o t e uman mIn ./'. 1')

,',,,'))" i / AIl the same, despite their contempt for kinship\:-",/ ,) ,1: .. words, the functionalists attach great importance to\/ .' the study of kinship behavior. There is no mystery about

this. Anthropologists are usuaIly observing humanbeings in situations where the facilities for transportand communication are, by modern standards, very.bad. Most of the individuals under study spend theirwhole lives within a few miles of the locality in whichthey were born, and in such circumstances most neigh­bors are biological kin. This does not mean that thepeople con cerned wiIl always recognize one another askin or that they must inevitably attach special value toties of kinship, but they may do so, and the anthro­pologist's experience is that this is very likely.

The general background of kinship theory lies out­side the scope of this book, but there is one key pointwhich must be understood. When anthropologists talkabout kinship they are concerned with social behaviors

1

!l

CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS I 108

rates kinship words from other words-indeed m6stkinship words have non-kinship meanings. Here aretwo examples: If you address someone as "Father'O'Brien" you probably believe that he is both celibateand childless, and in the English East Anglian dialectthe word "mother" used to mean an unmarried girltHowever, if we ignore context and rely exclusively onorthodox dictionary definitions the words of any kin-

\:' ship' vocabulary can be treated as a closed set-the,:';11' elements of an algebraic matrix which refers exclusively

':.,\'\'\ /to genealogical connections. Once the words have been~," ",.'(, isolated in this way the investigator is tempted to be-\.~ ,'1 •

"~' \'~,: ¡' lieve that this set of terms is logically coherent, and'\ ", '

u jf' " ", that other sets of terms, derived in a similar way from, \) 'other languages, must have a comparable coherence.

(~).:\"_./ In this way the analysis of kinship terminologies be-

(". \comes an end in itself, to which the original facts on)'b \: the ground are related only as a tiresome and perhaps\ \ ).¡",.y~ misleading irrelevance.

\: \ \<,.;r In ~i.s earlier pap~rs, Lévi-Str.auss display~d a healthyI Dj'~J skeptiCIsm about thIS sort of thmg, but as hIS own field\i T~ experience recedes further into the background he has

, become more and more obsessed with his search for

universals applicable to all humanity, and increasinglycontemptuous of the ethnographic evidence. In a recentpaper he has remarked, with regard to the analysis ofkinship terminologies:

F. G. Lounsbury and 1. R. Buchler have pro ved thatthese nomenclatures manifest a kind of logical per­fection which makes them authentic objects ofscientific study; this approach has also permittedLounsbury to expose the unreliability of some of thedocumentary material we are accustomed to handlingwithout ever questioning its value. ("The Future ofKinship Studies," p. 13)

The Elementary Stmctures of Kinship I 10g

'My disagreement he re is basic. Lévi-Strauss has saidsomewhere that he considers that social anthropology is\

, a "branch of semiology," which would imply that its cen-\.\\tral'concern is with the internallogical structure of the,¿>}; ,l T"il

meanings of sets of symbols. But for me the real subjed~ e ¡=.;,:~;;t...~matter of social anthropology always remains the actual )(1("

social behavior of human beings. Whether or not kin- ·)i~::t'J·.Jship nomenclatures can be regarded as "authentic ob- -jects of scientific research" is perhaps a matter fordebate, but most emphatically the logical analysis ofthese term systems cannot be used to determinewhether any particular body of documentary materialis or is not "reliable."

Anyway, despite these later tendencies, Lévi-Strauss'main contribution to kinship theory has not been con­

cerned with the trivialities of kin-term logic but with ~''''''.:>the structure of conventional rules of marriage. This /)work is of interest to all anthropologists even thoughits details are open to the same kind of objection asbefore-namely, that Lévi-Strauss is liable to become

so fascinated by the logical perfection of the "systems") •......;..he is describíng that he disregards the empirical facts.//

The orthodox tradition of functional anthropology isto start any discussion of kinship behavior with a refer­ence to the elementary family. A child is related to bothits parents by ties of filiation and to its brothers andsisters by ties of siblingship. These links provide thebasic bricks out of which kinship systems are built up.Other discriminations depend on whether or not either \parent has children by another spouse, whether or not l', ¡ ..,t.r

affinal kinship (established by m arriage ) is or is nottreated as "the same" as kinship based in filiation andsiblingship, and so on.~

2 A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in PrimitiveSociety (Glencoe, m., 1952), p. SI.

CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS 110

Figure 6

iI

The Elementary Structures of Kinship I 111

relationships between me'mbers of A and members of emust in some sense be the "opposite of the relationshipsbetween members of B and the members of C.

A complete analysis of this superficially simple situa­tion woulcl require consideration of a wide variety of"types" of relationship-e.g., brother/brother, brother/sister, husband/wife, father/son, father/daughter,mother/ son, mother/ daughter, mother's brother/ sister'sson, mother's sister/sister's son, mother's brother/sister'sdaughter, mother's sister/sister's daughter, father'ssister/brother's son, father's brother/brother's son,father's sister/brother's daughter, father's brother/brother's claughter-ancl already the possible permuta­tions and combinations are enormous.

But Lévi-Strauss concentrates his attention on themuch more restricted set of alternatives available fortwo pairs of oppositions-namely, the contrast betweenbrother/sister and husbancl/wife, on the one hand, andthat between father/son and mother's brother/sister'sson on the other. Let us represent the alternativesofferecl by the first opposition (X) by the words "mu­tuality" (+) and "separation" (-), and the alternativesoffered by the second opposition (Y) by the words"familiarity" (+) and "respect" (-). Then we candraw up a matrix of possibilities of the same kind asthat discussed on page 20. Thus in Figure 7, +/ _ inColumn X stands for "mutuality/separation," but +/_in Column y stands for "familiarity/respect."

According to Lévi-Strauss' rather one-sided readingof the ethnographic evidence all four possible combina-tions actually occur, and he claims, on grouncls whichdo not seem very substantial, that this total system ofpossibilities is a human universal: "this structure is the v"-/

most elementary form of kinship which can existo It ,/ .../

/ +I I

• B ••

II I

.• e •

+ /I I.. -

A

ship of siblingship and the the relationship of affinity arethus structurally contrasted as: +/-. As a result of themarriage, a third group of siblings (C) will be gener­ated, and this new group will be related to each of theprevious groups, but how it will be related will clependon a variety of circumstances. All that one can say atthis stage is that if the system is one of unil-ineal descent,eithe1' pat1'ilineal (C~ A) 01' mat1'ilineal (C~ B) then the

, ;' Lévi-Strauss puts the emphasis elsewhere. Admittedly,y in the vast majority of societies, a child needs to have.~

'JLJ ~ two recognized parents before it can be accepted as a~ \" fully legitimate member of society, but the legitimacy,0l' , .of the child depends upon the relationship between the

J parents rather than the relationship between the parentsand the child. So Lévi-Strauss would claim that the

conventional analysis starts at lhe wrong place.The ~verage young aclult is a member of a group of

siblings (A) and, as a consequence of marriage, will bebrought into a new (affinal) kind of relationship withanother group of siblings (B). (See Fig. 6) The relation-

! l\./ 1/1/1:'''' ()::l.·(·· !¡.. ~, t' " .:',' >lo ••• \

A>, ... ,

!jl1,

!,!

"

:1

1,

¡'

The Elementary Structures of Kinship I 113

."In human society it is the men who exchange the) \í{,.~J,l'women, and not vice versa," (Structural Anthropology, G up. 47)

To the nonanthropologist all this must seem highlyartificial, but for Lévi-Strauss it is a step in the directionof making the study of apparently freakish custom aproblem for scientific investigation; or, to put it differ­ently, it repres'ents the establishment of a generalizationfram diverse particulars.

In the history of anthropology the empirical factsemerged the other way round. Lowie, in his early text­book Primitive Society, gives a long series of examplesof the "avunculate," a term which he applies somewhatindiscriminately to almost any special '~7lationship link­ing a m~the(~ h~o!hé' with his siste(s son. a That suchspecial relationships existed in apparently randomworld-wide distribution has been known to ethnog­raphers for nearly a hundred years and the most diverseexplanations have been offered to account for such

customs. Some of these explanations seem to fit verywell with particular sets of local factS,4 but the apparentmerit of Lévi-Strauss' approach is that he offers a gen­eral theory which should apply wherever there is any~deology of unilineal descent.

Unfortunately, we must at once draw a caveat. As

may be seen from Figure 7, Lévi-Strauss originally

offered six positive examples to illustrate his thesis, but "-'¿l.he never considers the possibility of negative cases 5; ,which do not fit his logical schema. Moreover, the argu- .---VI.'! (ment, as presented, presumes that unilineal descent "~ ,l. ,) ,)

t.,L y\I . {

~J .. : ..3 R. H. Lowie, Primitive Society (New York, 1920), p. 78.4 See Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in PrimitiveSociety, Chapter 1; and J. Goody, "The Mother's Brother andthe Sister's Son in West Africa." ]ournal of the Royal An­thropological Institute, No. 89 (1959), pp. 61-88.

CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS 112

X

Y

mother'sPrincipIe

hus-brother/of

(Tribalbrother/band/father/sister'sDescent

Grollp)sisterwifesonson

Trobriand

-++MATRI- Siuai+-+LINEAL Dobu+-+

Kubutu

+-+PATRI- Cherkess ++ --LINEAL Tonga

-+-+Figure 7

'..

",,¡; ./

:I\ ,,'

\,\J ~"

>'~- f 1; ;~

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.,/ .~

is properly speaking the unit of kinship," and he thengoes on to say that "in order for a kinship structure to

/ exist, three types of family relations must always be

\ present: a relation of consanglliptty, a relation of\affinity and a relation of descent."

fñ my view, this argument is fallacious for a varietyof reasons, the most important being that Lévi-Strausshere confuses the notion of descent, a legal principIegoverning the transmission of rights from generationto generation, with the notion of filiation, the kinshiplink between parent and child. It is the same kind ofconfusion which leads him to suppose that the incest

\ \i.>' taboo is simply the converse of exogamy. Another point'''-'., ," \ on which the argument appears vulnerable is that it is

~, , ':( ','; male-centered, but here Lévi-Strauss finds his J'ustifica-• I •

t;¡ tion in the ethnography. He claims that his point of

J .,l,l. ",\: departure, the transaction by which a sister changes herLo,' {l'./ \.1 ~ role to that of wife, is preferable to its inverse, the

transaction by which a brother changes his role to thatof husband, on empirical rather than logical grounds:

{,O

J J ." J ' I ;'\. o{ f! r. e t.? .l t. t ¡f' (.0, f '(;. j. f"4 ~. !! ,~ ');~ I

... ' The Elementary Structures of Kinship I 115 f./"i7<!..the difference many anthropologists get them confused."G (.- ....j ..

The fact is that in all human societies of which we have Ij~-" ,t'. detailed knowledge, the conventions governing sex re- S,';;, ¡u·Y

lations are quite different from the conventions govern- rs: .I'D~,)J~·' I,.1' J

ing marriage, so there is no case for saying that in the :;.~,'1 ,.!~.f"'beginning the latter must have been derived from the (jformer,

Once past this initial hurdle, Lévi-Strauss goes on todiscuss the logical possibilities of systems of exchangeand then to consider certain rather specialized formsof marriage regulation as examples of these logicalpossibilities,

The argument about exchange, as such, is prettymuch in line with Mauss' Essai sur le don (1924) andwith the views of the British functionalists (for ex-

ample, Firth), The conventions of gift-giving are in- ¿ IfT­terpreted as symbolic expressions of something more (, I v>'l'H~

abstract, ~~twor~_~trel~ti~!2.~.!:I.~E~ .._~~ich.J!l!.k_s.,to- ~;~!:....y,i- •¡gether members orIbé society.!n quesu.0n. fli'é giving of (d •.i;.___ ._w_. __ .. u_". ~ _. __ ..~

womeñ--íninarriage añd the consequent forging of aspecial form of artificial kinship-that is to say, thecreation of the relationship between brothers-in-Iaw­is seen as simply a special case, an extension in theconverse direction of the process whereby gifts of foodare habitually exchanged on ceremonial occasions to ex­press the rights and obligations of existing ties of kin­ship and affinity. In the jargon of Barthes' semiology,"gift exchange" constitutes a "system," a general lan­guage code for the expression of relationships. "Ex­change of women" is one system within that "system";"exchange of valuable¡; other than women" is another.The routine sequence of exchanges which occurs in the

context of a particular marriage in a particular society

"R. Fox, Kinship and Marriage (London, 1967), p. 54.

(l u/. {.' !., ' " ! •.j' 1,. u." ," I ' . , I~ '.I -'. I ¡) ¡' ~ y. ,.' P" 1.1 I -. e.. 1'" T'l (; .7' J\..' .• • J J .... - I' !'- .... ". r

ll, r( .'! ',/ '., ..~\. \ • ~ / I I ,. f"

"1 f ~ " f•• , ( .)

CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS 114

systems are universal, which is wholly untrue, and,:be­cause it is untrue, Lévi-Strauss' final grandiose ftourisB-"the avuncular relationship, in its most general forro; .•is nothing but a corollary, now covert, now explicit,of the universality of the incest taboo" (StructuralAnthropology, p. 51) -seems to be reduced to nonsense.

However that may be, Lévi-Strauss' major kinshiptreatise, Les Stnlctures élémentaires de la parenté

(1949) is no more than an enormously elaborated andconvoluted version of this general proposition, and itsuffers throughout from the same defects. Logical argu­ments are illustrated by means of allegedly appropriate

'\() ,..ethnographic evidence, but no attention whatever is¡. /, paid to the negative instances which seem to abound.

i' ", •I The big book starts off with a very old-fashioned re-í ,'., view of "the incest problem" which brushes aside the

substantial evidence that there have been numeroushistorical societies in which "normal" incest taboos did

not prevaiL This allows Lévi-Strauss to follow Freud indeclaring that the incest taboo is the cornerstone ofhuman society. His own explanation of this allegedlyuniversal natural law depends upon a theory of socialDarwinism similar to that favored by the English nine­teenth-century anthropologist Edward Tylor. The lattermaintained that, in the course of evolution, humansocieties had the choice of giving their wo.menfolk awayto create political alliances or of keeping their womoo­folk to themselves and getting killed off by their nu­merically superior enemies, In such circumstances,natural selection would operate in favor of societies en­forcing rules of exogamy, which Tylor equated with theconverse of the incest taboo. So also does Lévi-Strauss,

The error is rudimentary: "The distinction between in­cest and exogamy , , , is really only the difference be­tween sex and marriage, and while every teenager knows

~

II7

Lineage B

I I• BI ••.

I I• B2 ••

I I• B3 •.

x

Th~ Elementary Structures of Kinship

Lineage A

Figure 8

I I• Al ..A

I . unl• A2 .•

I I• A3 •••.

ti A crass-causin is a causin af the type "mother's brother'schild" al' "father's sister's child" as distinct fram a parallelcausin, wha is a causin af the type "mather's sister's child"al' "father's brather's child."

societi.es (e.g., Congo Pygmies and Kalahari Bushmen)'.dQ not have systems of unilineal descent.

However, let me try to expound Lévi-Strauss' thesis.First let us consider Figure 8 as an elaborated form ofFigure 6 (page 110) in which two unilineal descentgroups are represented as three generations of siblingpairs: Al, A2, A3 on the one hand, and Bl, B2, B3 onthe other. Let us suppose that Al and Bl are allied bymarriage, either because the Al male is married to theBl female 01' vice versa, 01' because both of thesemarriages have taken place. Then, in the jargon ofanthropology, the B2 siblings are classificatory firstcross-cousins of the A2 siblings, while the B3 siblingsare classificatory second cross-cousinsG of the A3 sib­lings. Lévi-Strauss first of all considers various kinds ofhypothetical marriage conventions which would havethe effect of perpetuating an alliance between the Agroup and the B group once it had been established.

II6CLAUDE LÉV1-STRAUSS

is a syntagm of the "system." The methoclology b:breaking the cocle is the same as that which has beeJlclescribecl in earlier chapters. The marriage.~y,stems of

..... ' ". " .,." , , ....----..,.".clifferent".§OGi~ties are treatecl-'as paraclign.!~tic;;trans-----.--, ' .. '" . ----...

formations of an unclerlying common logical structure.Ho;;~~~r,' Lévi~Strauss cloes not regarcl ~ar~i~ge(i.e .•the exchange' of women between men) as just onealternative system of exchange among many; it isprimary. He claims that because, in the case of women.

-:.h th~ relationship symbolized by the exchange is also--

constituted by the thing exchanged, the relationshipand its symbol are one and the same, and the givingof women in marriage must be considered the mostelementary of all forms of exchange. It must be deemedto have preceded (in evolution) the exchange of goods,where the sign and the relationship that is signifiecl aredistinct.

As with the case of the earlier avunculate argument,Lévi-Strauss' discussion of marriage rules in Les Struc­tures élémentaires de la parenté (1949) was distortedby his erroneous belief that the great majority of primi­tive societies have systems of unilineal descent By nowhe has come to realize that this was a mistake, and thereis an interesting contrast between pages 135-36 of thefirst edition and pages 123-24 of its 1967 successor. Inthe latter he weakly concludes: "Nevertheless, sincethis book is limited to a consideration of elementarystructures, we consider it is justifiable to leave proví­sionally on one side examples which relate to undiffer'entiated filiation." [!] Incidentally, as time goes on, itbecomes increasingly difficult to understand just whatLévi-Strauss really means by "elementary structures."The reader nceds to appreciate that the great majorityof what are usually considered to be "ultraprimitive"

\ Ix..

C)U'·\c' ¡tJ >-.,

!> \. \, i'\,"y j,

.~., ,¡.,,/, .•1., •

( ;1.' \"

If, for example, the exchange were directly r~cipr~31,so that the A males always exchanged sisters with the'

B males, this would be the equivalent of a marriage ruleexpressing preference for marriage with a mother'sbrother's daughter or a father's sister's daughter. But adifferent kind of over-all political structure would resultif the rules required an exchange of sisters with asecond cousin, so that, for example, aman marries bismother~s mother's brother's daughter's daughter or bismother's father's sister's daughter's daughter.

As a further complication he suggests that very simpleorganizations of this kind can be usefully distinguishedas "harmonic" or "disharmonic." He recognizes only twotypes of descent-patrilineal and matrilineal-and twotypes of residence-virilocal and uxorilocal. (In anthro­pological jargon a virilocal residence rule requires awife to join her husband on marriage, an uxorilocal rulerequires a husband to join his wife.) Systems which arepatrilineal-virilocal or matrilineal-uxorilocal are har­monic; systems which are patrilineal-uxorilocal ormatrilineal-virilocal are disharmonic.

All these arguments are highly theoretical. By somestretching of the evidence some parts of the discussioncan be illustrated by ethnographic facts which have beenreported of the Australian Aborigines, but the latter arein no sense typical of primitive societies in other partsof the world, and there is no justification for Lévi­Strauss' apparent postulate that once upon a time allultraprimitive human societies operated in accordancewith an Australian structural model. On the contrary,there are good grounds for supposing that they did not.

However, for what it is worth, Lévi-Strauss maintains,on logical grounds, that harmonic structures are un­stable and that disharmonic structures are stable, so

Rules of the second kind have just the same practicalconsequence as rules based on a reciprocal exchange ofsisters, so they are of no serious interest, though Lévi-

II9

] "matrilateral cross-cousinmaniage rule"

1 "patriLHeral cross-cousinmarriage rule"

The Elementary Structures of Kinship

mother's brother's daughterapproved but

father's sister's daughterforbidden

father's sister's daughterapproved but

mother's brother's daughterforbidden

that systems of the first type will tend to evolve into the"second type, rather than vice versa, or alternatively thatharmonic systems of "restricted exchange" provide thebase from which have emerged harmonic systems of"generalized exchange." These terms need further ex­planation.

Lévi-Strauss classes all varieties of directly reciprocalsister exchange as falling into one major categoryéchange restreint (restricted exchange) which he dis­tinguishes from his other major category échangegénéralisé (generalized exchange). In res tricted ex­change, so the argument goes, aman gives away a sisteronly if he has a positive assurance that he will get backa wife; in generalized exchange he gives away his sisterto one group but gambles that he will be able to getback a wife from some other group. The poli tic al alli­ance is widened-the individual gets two brothers-in­law where previously he had only one-but the risksare greater. Asymmetrical arrangements of this kindare equivalent to marriage rules in which marriagewith one cross-cousin is approved and marriage withthe other forbidden, e.g.:

.'118CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS

Figure 9

I

I

1 ••.

I

The Elementary Structures of Kinship I 121

Either the X group give their sisters to the Z group.direct, 01' else through several intermediary groups ofsimilar kind: in any event the women whom the Zs

e take in as wives are the equivalents of the women whomthe Xs give away as sisters.

Lévi-Strauss recognizes that the difficulties in the

way of maintaining such a system of "circulating con- I ~ (jnubium" for any length of time must be very consider- a'lc:ll~eable, and he claims that, in practice, the marriage 1.,J(J (

circles will always break down into hierarchies such ;:;1.(:' y ,that the intermarrying lineages wiIl be of different (v;~/<' e', .

status. The resulting marriage system would then be ., ;;;~ .­

hypergamous, with the groups at the top receiving ,.:,,!~t>!¡):.1" ~

women as tribute from their social inferiors. "'{;,_~:~..-- ~~.IStarting out on this fragile base, échange généralisé ti oo."'"

is then developed into a principIe which explains theevolution of egalitarian primitive society into a hier­archical society of castes and classes.

Thus reduced, the theory sounds preposterous, andeven when presented at fulllength it is still open to allkinds of criticism of the most destructive sort, and yetthere is an odd kind of fit between some parts of the / j

theory and some of the facts on the ground, even ..,j''¡" ~t:though, at times, the facts on the ground perverselyturn Lévi-Strauss' argument back to front! For example,the systems in which hypergamous hierarchy is carriedto the wildest extremes are associated with dowry ratherthan bride-price, while the systems in which matrilateralcross-cousin marriage is the rule mostly take the formin which the wife givers rank higher than the wifereceivers.7

'In the 1967 and 1969 editions of his book Lévi-Straussattempted to mask the fact that he had ever made thisethnographic error but the resulting patchwork in his textonly leads to inconsistency. See Leach (1969).

zy

I---~ ,- IA= •.•.

I I r-- ---- 1

.....=. A

x

,--- -1

.....=.

I H~

• A=.

•I ------¡ I I I I

• A.=. A=. A

Such diagrams seem to contain a paradox: where willthe men of Group Z get their wives? Where will thesisters of the men of Group X find their husbands?Lévi-Strauss discusses this puzzle at enormous length.Any summary of the argument, let alone of the rivalarguments produced by other authors, would be pre­posterously misleading, but perhaps the heart of thematter is this: the system illustrated in Figure 9, as itworks out in practice, must be in some sense circular.

e L A U DEL É v 1- S T R A U S S 120

Stiauss devotes much attention to their aIleged óccur­rence and they have been the source of much anthro­pological argument. Rules of the first type ("matrilateralcross-cousin marriage") are much more common, and'though Lévi-Strauss was by no means the first personto bring them into serious discussion, he did manageto make a number of theoretical observations which

proved te)be of considerable practical significance.A matrilateral cross-cousin marriage rule, if it were

strictly enforced, would produce a chain of lineages ina permanent affinal alliance of wife givers and wifereceivers (Figure 9).

But of course, there is no such identity. If 1 give an

object into the possession of someone else, 1 no longerpossess it myself. Possibly 1 sha11 gain something elsein exchange and possibly 1 retain some residual c1aimon the original object, but 1 have limited my previousrights. If, on the other hand, 1 transmit a message to

marriage rules and kinship systems as a sort of

1_ ~ .•. language that is to say a set of operations designed-./ (' r d to insure, between individuals and groups, a certain

, ¡l< l' ( , ,,' ..{ í, type of communication. The fact that the "message"_".~~,).'I ' would here be constituted by the women of the group

.,~'? }"J 11 who ciTCtLlate between clans, lineages or familiesL "Ir " (and not, as in the case of language itself, by the

J Í' )l'l\¡ .!¡lv ,- words of the group circulating between individuals)l.,;,~: . /' in no way alters the fact that the phenomenon con-

1;'" ,,'''' ¡'- sidered in the two cases is identica11y the same.y¡v .;; 1; i' (Anthropologie structurale, p. 69; cf. Stmctural An­

thropology, p. 61, where a different and much lessliteral translation is offered)

~ .Lévi-Strauss himself seems inclined to argue that if. •

there are any ethnographic facts which are consistf¡lntwith his general theory, then this alone is sufficient to •

prove that, in its basic essentials, the general theory isright, but even his most devoted fo11owers could hardlyaccept that kind of proposition.

Elsewhere Lévi-Strauss has claimed that the superi­

ority of his method is demonstrated by the fact that avast multiplicity of types and subtypes of human societyis here reduced to "a few basic and meaningful princi­

pIes" (Mythologiques 1, p. 127), but he fails to point outthat the vast majority of human societies are not covered

by his basic and meaningful principIes at a11!Moreover,there seems to be a major fa11acy at the very root of hisargument. According to Lévi-Strauss we need to think of

123, The Elementary Structmes of Kinship

. . someone else by making a speech utterance, 1 do not

deprive myself of anything at a11; having shared myinformation with one lis tener 1 can repeat the operationand share it with another.

Certainly there is some kind of analogy between thetwo frames of reference-a collectivity of lineageswhich intermarry forms a "kinship community" in asense which is, up to a point, comparable with the"speech community" formed by any collectivity of indi­viduals who habitua11y converse with one another. But,as Lévi-Strauss himself has pointed out in a different

context, the concept of !!!::.~tl1~lit'y-of sharing cº,~rrlOn /fiJ)r~~o.~rces-is in important respects diametrically op- ~posed to the concept of recipTociYi-the exchange ofdi~~i.!lc::tbut :equivalent resoúr'ces.¡ (Structural Anthro­pology, p. 49)

However, irrespective of the merits of the particularcase, the reader should note that Lévi-Strauss' over-allprocedure for the analyses of marriage alliances is justthe same as that which we have discussed elsewhere

in the context of myth and totemism and the categoriesof cooking. He treats the possible preferences for mar-riage with a cousin of such and such a category asforming a set of logical alternatives, adherence towhich will result in different over-all patterns of socialsolidarity within the total society. These different kin- /4'/1 dLJP

ship systems, superimposed, constitute a set of para- ';>,/"';

digms e in the sense discussed on pages 48-50) which ·.9i,/.,••L­are manifested ea) in sets of kinship terms and (b) in /V"'''''f (e·,·,

institutions of marriage and exchange. Taken a11 tO-c2)f~f:t, jgether the paradigms will provide us with clues as tO(iY)k¡.,'.'(the internalized structurallogic of the human mind ... j}~·, ~ '

The argument is systematic: first we consider so- <." "'Ie

cieties with two intermarrying groups, then four, theneight, then a sequence of more complex asymmetrical

122CLAUDE LÉV1-STRAUSS

e L A U DEL É v 1 - S T R A U S Sil 24

types. It is all so elegantly done that even the mostskeptical professional may find some difficulty in de­tecting the precise point at which the argument runsoff at a tangent. In my view the end product is in largemeasure fallacious, but even the study of fallacies canprove rewarding.

Machines for the Suppression of Time••

VIILet us go back to the beginning and try to pullthe argument together. Lévi-Strauss' quest is toestablish facts which are universally true of the"human mind" (esprit humain). What is uni­

versally true must be natural, but this is para­doxical because he starts out with the assumptionthat what distinguishes the human being fromthe man-animal is the distinction between cul­ture and nature-Le., that the humanity of manis that which is non-natural. Again and again inLévi-Strauss' writings we keep coming back tothis point: the problem is not merely "in whatway is culture (as an attribute of humanity)distinguishable from nature (as an attribute ofman)?" but also "in what way is the culture ofHomo sapiens inseparable from the natureof humanity?"

Lévi-Strauss takes over from Freud the idea

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