re: Anthropology: Claude Levi-Strauss, 1908-2009 (Alain de Benoist, France)

Alain de Benoist writes:

I am very pleased that there was at least one WAISer, David Westbrook (8 November), to send a comment to mark Claude Lévi-Strauss’s death. I also appreciate learning that the first book published by David was illustrated by the Belgian Surrealist Paul Delvaux, an artist I like very much.

David wrote that he was never sure how seriously Lévi-Strauss took science, including his own, and that “his structuralism [became] the target of post-structuralist critiques.”

On 8 October 1991, Lévi-Strauss gave an interview to the daily newspaper Le Monde, where he expressed the opinion that social sciences, compared to “hard” sciences, “are sciences only as the result of a flattering deception” (“par une flatteuse imposture”). The reason, he explained, is that the realities that the social sciences try to know and to understand “have the same level of complexity as the intellectual means used to catch them”–while the objects of the “hard” sciences are generally less complex than the means used by the mind to understand them.

Lévi-Strauss is mainly known for his book Tristes tropiques, which attracted a large general readership. However, his most important work is Les structures élémentaires de la parenté (1949). In his works on race, he criticized racism as well as antiracism. He described his method as “structural analysis,” which explains why he was so frequently labelled a “structuralist.” However, he never recognized himself fully in “structuralism,” especially in philosophical structuralism (Barthes, Derrida, etc.), which was always very foreign to him. He was nearer to the so-called “structuralism” of the famous Indo-Europeanist Georges Dumézil (who discovered in the 1930s the functional character of the “tripartite ideology” of the Indo-Europeans). When Dumézil, who was his friend (and mine), was elected to the Académie française, he was officially “received” by Lévi-Strauss.

Claude Lévi-Strauss was also the only social anthropologist or ethnologist ever elected to the Académie française.

JE comments: And as I understand it, Lévi-Strauss was also the only member of the Académie ever to reach the age of 100.

re: Anthropology: Claude Levi-Strauss, 1908-2009 (David Westbrook, US)

David Westbrook writes, on the death (30 October) of anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss:

The news that Levi-Strauss has died arrives like an announcement that
Merlin has died. On the one hand, we had so long heard his name, many of
us assumed that he was already dead. On the other hand, for those of us
who knew he was still alive, he was already so old, certainly in the
pantheon, as good as immortal–actually dying seemed rather
superfluous. But at the age of 100, surely that means something?

L-S was a giant. Alain de Benoist pointed out that he valorized particular
cultures, the various modalities of humanity that are the forte of the
anthropologist. True enough, but the opposite is equally true: L-S also
insisted on “the human” that underlay all cultures–perhaps to be
articulated in structuralist terms. This more universalist and
“scientific” (although I was never sure how seriously L-S took science,
including his own–very French, that) tendency, in fact, was what made
his structuralism the target of post-structuralist critiques. Of course,
it was these very same critiques that guaranteed L-S his place in the
pantheon, i.e., the rebellion of the next generation proved L-S was a
cultural figure.

Looking back, with some distance now, I think it was really important to
insist, particularly in the years after WWII, in which the French had
acquitted themselves badly and the Germans horrifically, even while the
U.S. and the USSR threatened to blow everything up, on the human as
such. L-S reminds me, in this regard, of Faulkner–a great spirit in
dark days.

To repeat myself, L-S was a giant. My education was woefully inadequate
in this regard, but giants are hard to avoid, and so, over the years, I
kept running into L-S, stumbling over him. After a while, the accidental
(for me) character of L-S’s work and especially influence became
amusing. My first published book was illustrated with paintings by the
Belgian Surrealist Paul Delvaux, whose work seemed very apt for what I
was trying to say. It emerged that L-S was a big fan, who wrote the
Preface to a major edition of Delvaux’s works. The man who taught me
most of what I know about securities law, a great lawyer who should have
been an anthropologist, turned out to have been a serious student of L-S.
And an overly generous critic did me the great honor of saying that my
understanding of anthropology reminded him of anthropology in the age of
L-S (he didn’t actually compare my work favorably to Claude’s, but we
were in the same sentence, and that’s good enough for me). My pamphlet
was supposed to go to the great one this year, but that didn’t happen. I
won’t deny fantasizing about having a blurb from Claude on the second
edition. You get the point: here there be giants.

And now this giant is gone. And that is worth some thanks for a truly
notable life, perhaps a prayer, certainly a log on the fire on a
November evening, and a toast.

JE comments: Very poetically stated. In 2009 the world has lost many giants, but Levi-Strauss was one of the biggest.

By his “pamphlet,” David Westbrook is referring to his sweeping reflection on anthropology today, Navigators of the Contemporary: Why Ethnography Matters. All WAISers should read it.

Anthropology: Death of Claude Levi-Strauss (Alain de Benoist, France)

Yesterday I asked Alain de Benoist off-Forum for his thoughts on the death of Claude Levi-Strauss, the “father of modern anthropology,” who died on 30 October at the age of 100. Alain writes:

Claude Lévi-Strauss’s death was not unexpected, as he was 100 years old. He was certainly the last of the “big” French theoreticians of the post-WWII period. I liked very much his writings (actually, I published an article by him in one of the journals I edit). Most of his works were dedicated to defending the diversity of peoples, races and cultures against ethnocentrism and against any kind of political and cultural universalism. He is considered a “classic” in the University. Many articles about his life and works will appear in the media.

JE comments: Levi-Strauss was a titan in the fields of critical theory and cultural studies, whose works (Tristes Tropiques, The Raw and the Cooked, etc.) were mandatory reading for graduate students in the Humanities. We used to joke about his “other” job, that of jeans manufacturer…

Many, many luminaries of the twentieth century have passed away in 2009. Claude Levi-Strauss was one of the greatest.