2. Appraising Lévi-Strauss
The merits of the “Race and History” paper, and the perspectives it represents, can first be itemised. Its use of semiotic anthropology, as a method for argument about cultural anthropology and social construction, reflected his ongoing disputation with forms of historiography and historical analysis, and the left wing political heritage of his earlier education. His disputation was two edged; on the one hand, many historical and ethnographic studies were prone to local contexts and factual reference that epitomised the superficial empirical studies that he sought to revise in anthropology. On the other hand, and of more immediate relevance to the 1952 paper, was the larger narrative of history overly influenced by a historiography of progress, racial superiority, social evaluation and western civilisation (Champagne 59-66). His paper involved dialectic, or even a diatribe, against claims of civilisation and progress in the West. Lévi-Strauss’s position regarding such claims was one of denial rather than dialectical argument. In what can be seen as an anticipation of Foucault’s understanding of structure as discourse, and the relation between discourse and power, Lévi-Strauss did not argue against historiography of progress so much as deny its theoretical status. After the experience of World War Two, the “drole de guerre”, modern history could not be theorised (Doss 127). History was a study of “cumulative” homogenising power and control, of what he termed “false evolutionism”, against which he set forth an alternative vision of cultural and social difference, which was grounded in anthropology (Lévi-Strauss 38-39). Lévi-Strauss did not see the future of postcolonial societies in terms of any evolutionary dialectic with their colonial pasts – that is not strictly post colonial – rather he saw their political independence as a political manifestation and rediscovery of their early historical social origins and construction. Following the aporetic trauma of World War II, He sought a deep foundational basis for social justice and identity, one that transcended the legacy of colonialism and state based political control. When he talks about “the future history of the world” and “stirrings of new life” (Lévi-Strauss 46) it is reasonable to detect his youthful left wing European aspirations, dashed during the Second World War, reformed from industrial society and reformulated on the international, post war stage.
His contention with reified historiography involved defence of the “complexity and diversity” present in varying degrees all human cultures, and in particular early or so called primitive ones. His paper argued that apparently simple technical operation like fire making were embedded in complex structures and cultural laws – that early societies could seem more complex than the efficient, centralised forms of national government. By 1952 he could confidently claim structural or semiotic linguistics as a methodology for unlocking the systemic nature of human cultures, in a way that created insights for contemporary social change.
His paper’s argument for “dynamic tolerance” can seem to extend cultural relativism across all cultures, including Western. Lévi-Strauss positioned his semiotic methodology against philosophy as well as history. Questions about human nature, consciousness and social ethics could not be left to an abstract debate, but needed to be grounded on a rigorous analysis of the systemic nature of cultural phenomena. “Race and History” demonstrated its author’s admirable semantic crusade against a wide range of misconceptions and presumptions, about “primitivism”, “progress”, human nature and social order. He substituted a parallel story of cultural evolution against modernist Darwinian history of social progress, complexity in place of primitivism, divergence for convergence, and variation for sameness.
How did he conceive society outside of the cumulative pressure of power and homogeneity? In the kinship systems of the Australian aboriginals he argued for the human discovery of “the mathematical laws governing ‘social systems’”. The Arunta people, he claimed, were without “exaggeration” the “founders of sociology as a whole.” Kinship was an early, if not first, leap into social organization. The transformation of biological determination of incest to a social law of exchange involved the symbolic construction of society. Linguistic or signs became the foundational operation of human culture and technical operation.
A commendation of Lévi-Strauss can be made in terms of the tri-continental nature of his studies. Commencing with the study of Brazilian Indians outside Sao Paulo in his 1934, Triste Tropiques, his works cover a wide, typically southerly hemispheric spectrum, of unity of peoples in diversity, and one “collaborative” order from many, from Africa, Australia, Melanesia, and North and South America. The 1952 paper seems to embody a quest to redefine and challenge what we might call global culture that has implications for any political understanding of an international order. Having left behind the possibility of an empirical, local methodology as well as colonial narratives, he seemed unconstrained in the grandeur of plans for a revised structural anthropology.
The 1952 paper sought to use cultural analysis as a premise, or “universally applicable formula”, for “collaboration” between nations and peoples, and “a summons to fresh activity” by “international institutions”. Lévi-Strauss clearly identified with postcolonial political processes, and his paper has an evangelical edge and “dynamic attitude, consisting in the anticipation, understanding and promotion of what is struggling into being” in his contemporary world.