Lévi-Strauss: He Changed How We See Culture, but Ignored His Own
Appreciation
By Melvin Konner
The death of Claude Lévi-Strauss October 30 in Paris at age 100 closed an epoch in anthropology. His name was synonymous with structuralism, the dominant theory of culture in the late 20th century, and his mind and work were emblematic of French intellectual life at its most grand. Like Emile Durkheim, the great sociologist whose mantle he picked up and wore very comfortably, Lévi-Strauss was a Jew. But in neither case, nor in those of many other Jewish social thinkers, is it easy to find explicit Jewish references in their lives or work.
From his youth, Lévi-Strauss identified first and foremost — perhaps solely — as a Frenchman. But the Nazis and their French minions had other ideas. Serving in the army on the “impregnable” Maginot Line, Lévi-Strauss, like his comrades, fled the blitzkrieg, a stray cog in a broken army in disarray.
Somehow he evaded the nets cast by both the Germans and their collaborators among his countrymen, and in 1941 took up an academic life in New York. Quite properly, he recognized New York as a great cultural center, collecting not just intellectual light but the creativity of all the world’s traditions. He did well there, befriended by (among others) the father of American anthropology, Columbia’s Franz Boas — another, much more senior, Jewish immigrant.
In the early 1950s, Lévi-Strauss returned to France, where, in spite of everything, he felt he truly belonged. He had done superb fieldwork in Brazil along the way, and among many scholarly works published the semi-popular “Tristes Tropiques” — a pun that can mean “tropical encounters” and also “sad tropics.” It began, “Travelers and travelogues are two things I hate,” but its masterful prose was an unprecedented blend of ethnography and travelogue, intellectual challenge and tropical adventure.
Yet after this inspired account of a jungle trek, where the human landscape mattered more than the flora and fauna, he turned decisively to theory. He once frankly told an interviewer that he felt more comfortable in the study than in the field. In any case, what he did in his study, in the confines of his mind, changed the way we think about human behavior.
In works like “Totemism,” “The Savage Mind” and the magisterial, multi-volume “Mythologiques,” he explored the universals of human thought that he believed must underlie social structure and myth. Social rules, myths and rituals are as they are because, as Lévi-Strauss put it, they are “good to think” — social expressions of the way the mind is set up.
Above all, perhaps, he respected what he called the savage mind, and the adaptive knowledge even the most “primitive” people had about the world around them, notably botanical and zoological expertise. He also identified with those minds, using the term bricolage — the French handyman’s ability to make use of any materials available to build, repair and create — to describe their thought processes as well as his own.
In what way if any were these thoughts Jewish? As Durkheim, who began life as David Emile, was the son of a rabbi before being the father of sociology, so Lévi-Strauss was a Versailles rabbi’s grandson before fathering structuralism. Marx, long before them, had been descended from long lines of rabbis on both sides of his family, and Freud, also descended from rabbis, had been taken hand in hand to the synagogue by his father.
All these social thinkers lived and wrote as if their Jewishness was something to ignore, evade or criticize. None seems to have considered himself and his work a manifestation of centuries-old patterns of Jewish argument refracted through the prism of modernity. Einstein (a hard scientist who did acknowledge the value of the Jewish tradition) used to say half-seriously that he was reading the mind of God; Lévi-Strauss and his fellow social thinkers were reading the mind of man. For millennia their ancestors, including rabbis, had tried to do both, but none of them really acknowledged his debt to that tradition.
Lévi-Strauss, like Durkheim, wanted to be thoroughly French. As Durkheim saw the Dreyfus Affair as an aberration, so Lévi-Strauss saw the Vichy years as something that had little to do with his homeland. Later, inseparable from the French intellectual scene, he was elected to the Académie Française, and was very active in that centuries-old coterie of immortals. The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Code had emancipated the Jews of France, and temporary setbacks did not make them anything but French.
Yet behind him, too, were the immortals of Jewish thought — the rigorous Talmudic sages, the philosophical Maimonides, the imaginative minds of Kabbalah and all their countless students and admirers. With two-tenths of a percent of the world’s people, Jews have won well over 20% of the Nobel Prizes, a hundred-fold excess, and that doesn’t count the human scientists mentioned here. Jewish thinkers turned their lenses on the modernity that had freed them; thinking outside the box of the dominant religion, they shaped 20th-century thought.
For Lévi-Strauss, as for Boas and other Jewish anthropologists, there was another dimension to being a cultural outsider: It drew them to a sympathetic view of simpler cultures, which most of their contemporaries viewed with disdain. The young intellectual who probably didn’t feel quite French — whose people were driven into hiding and murdered because of their odd and separate customs — became the fieldworker who penetrated the Amazon forest and recorded the odd customs of even more separate people, respecting and preserving them for posterity.
And, ironically, in the end it brought him back into the pantheon of the great minds of France; thus the country he loved so well acknowledged a debt to a man whose grandfather had led a congregation of French Jews in prayer and hovered over sacred books, trying with all his heart to read the minds of God and men, in words set down and debated far from Paris, at a time when no one in France could read. Modernity makes strange bedfellows, and even stranger disciples.
Melvin Konner is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Anthropology and an associate professor of psychiatry and neurology at Emory University. He is the author of “Unsettled: An Anthropology of the Jews” (Viking, 2003) and, most recently, “The Jewish Body” (Nextbook/Schocken). He blogs at jewsandothers.com.
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Love the second last paragraph. Growing up Jewish in a non-Jewish society gives us a unique and beneficial viewpoint. As we grow up different in our societies, we can appreciate societies that are different from ours.
Professor Konner is far too peremptory in his description of Freud's attitude to his Jewishness, and ignores the evidence in Yerushalimi's painstaking and rewarding book on the subject. That apart, Levi-Strauss went to Brazil to do the fieldwork he mentions before the Second World War. Segments of French Jewry (not the eastern European immigrants who populated the Parisian equivalent of the lower East Side, the East End of London, ot the Scheunenviertel in Berlin---around the Rue de Rosieres) were in fact much more assimilated than many Amerian Jews in the period between the wars. Their American counterparts were persons like Walter Lippman, the Ochs family, the Lehmans, the economist Seligman, and figures like Robert Oppenheimer. Professor Konner hints that he thinks of assimilation as a form of denial or betrayal----but perhaps it was a matter of choice. In any event, with Levi-Strauss we loose the last member of the generation which included de Beauvoir, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Aron, Lefebvre, Lacan---and which espoused a humanism of considerable value to Jews and Gentiles alike. A personal note. I hardly knew Levi-Strauss, but was a memnber of a small group of Oxford faculty who persuaded the university to give him an honorary degree. There were objections, not because he was Jewish but because his thought struck the resolutely unimaginative British as too speculative, that is to say, too French. The objectors were silenced when Oxford's senior anthropologist, EE Evans-Pritchard, reproached them with intellectual tribalism. Assez dit.....
“Tristes Tropiques” — a pun that can mean “tropical encounters” and also “sad tropics.”
Will someone explain the "pun." The French word "triste," as far as I know, does not mean "tryst." So is Prof Konner saying that there is a bilingual pun because Fr "triste" sounds like Eng "tryst." Is it established that C L-S intended that "pun?" How would his French readers know that the "pun is even there? Why would bilingual readers even imagine that the putative "pun" was being made?
MR.LEVI-STRAUSS LIVED DURING A VERY DIFFICULT PERIOD DURING THE W.W.II YEARS AND PROSECUTION WAS A REAL AND DANGEROUS ISSUE AT THAT TIME. ON THE OTHER HAND,FRENCH CITIZENS,MOST OF THEM,ARE VERY "LACHE" CONCERNING VERY PERSONAL MATTERS AND I PRESUME,HIS JEWISHNESS WAS ONE OF THOSE VERY PRIVATE ISSUES HE PREFERED TO HIDE VERY INSIDE HIS FRENCH VALUES.
Despite his great accomplishments and awards, there's something ever-so depressing about Levi-Strauss and other "Jewish" intellectuals' denials of what they were at their essence. To use their cultural and ethical uniqueness while never identifying the source of this uniqueness (as if this obvious fact was irrelevant)is an expression of most pathetic self-loathing.
Norman Birnbaum “Professor Konner is far too peremptory in his description of Freud's attitude to his Jewishness, and ignores the evidence in Yerushalimi's painstaking and rewarding book on the subject.”
I read Yerushalmi’s book and he concentrated mostly on Moses and Monotheism. Freud has a “Jewish history” outside his writings. He forbade his wife to light candles on Friday which was a cruel thing to do. He also adopted the “German Jewish” superior attitude toward Oestjuden. Most importantly, when he finally left Vienna with the help of Mussolini he left behind close family members who were later sent to the death camps. In many ways Freud’s delusion were those of the delusions of the assimilated intellectual Jew who thought of themselves as “exceptions.”
“That apart, Levi-Strauss went to Brazil to do the fieldwork he mentions before the Second World War.
This is true, but he should at least have written about the fact that as an important intellectual he was made an exception when he was given a visa in 1941 to come to New York. What happened to the family he left behind?
It’s important to understand how many Jewish intellectuals left their families behind only to be killed. This is an unimaginable act of betrayal.
“Segments of French Jewry (not the eastern European immigrants who populated the Parisian equivalent of the lower East Side, the East End of London, ot the Scheunenviertel in Berlin---around the Rue de Rosieres) were in fact much more assimilated than many Amerian Jews in the period between the wars. Their American counterparts were persons like Walter Lippman, the Ochs family, the Lehmans, the economist Seligman, and figures like Robert Oppenheimer.”
Segments yes, but what is this supposed to mean?
“Professor Konner hints that he thinks of assimilation as a form of denial or betrayal----but perhaps it was a matter of choice.”
Yes, they chose to betray their families as well as their heritage.
“In any event, with Levi-Strauss we loose the last member of the generation which included de Beauvoir, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Aron, Lefebvre, Lacan---and which espoused a humanism of considerable value to Jews and Gentiles alike.”
Not really if you consider the long term influence of the Nazi Heidegger on many members of this generations. Moreover, you said that assimilation which is what they preached is “a matter of choice,” how then can you say that it was of considerable value to Jews? You can’t have it both ways, Norman.
Are you also counseling assimilation?
Decisions can affect an entire household. G-D lives in us.
It is written...Psalm 23..He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake.
Let us hope, that he seeked the LORD, and was given the breath of the Almighty.
For it is written.....The Spirit of G-D made me (flesh below, death one breath) but the breath of the Almighty gives me life. ( son of G-D, above,the breath of eternal life)
Jer.27 speaks of how G-D wants us to act...living in an other country.
Jeremiah 27....And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carrried away captives, and pray unto the LORD for it: for in the peace there of shall ye have peace.
Proverbs 25....Confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble is like a broken tooth, and a foot out of joint.
Judging by Peter Gay's biography of Freud, he was very conscious of his Jewishness and tried hard to avoid psychiatry becoming a Jewish science.
Most religions have come out or taken a part of another in some way. Truth is a lost thing....the only one that has truth is G-D, the only place to find wisdom is G-D.
Christians...come out of many diffrent religions even from the Jewish religion, which now has as many diffrent sets as other religions of the world. There is no more unity, they all have created a little place were they can worship their god..... The dung, you don,t give"....." is found in Isaiah.....2 Enter the caves of the rocks and the holes of the ground, from the terror of the LORD.
Chapter 2 of Isaiah....O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD! The words means UNITY. ONE G-D, WALKING----WITH OUT SINS, SO NOT TO DEFILE OUR G-D MOST HIGH.
The children of great promised .....need to wake up...turn. The world is walking in error...a dark pit...G-D is dressed in His battle dress every thing will turn ... We need to turn, repent and put sin out before it is to late....G-D is on the move....haven't you seen it?
Read Isaiah 2...The vertict is in----"guilty"---four ways, read it.
I found you have copyrighted some of the writtings that were given you.
You do not think that is wrong??? Your taking words, would you take my teeth also ....like the men in the camps....that took the gold, from the dead.
No, no, your better than that, your a Jew, you think? ....you are no better! On line the other day I was playing with my name, someone told me my name Miriam Chartier was in the bible code. So I wanted to see if my name....Grace Carberry was there also. What I found, upset me greatly, I found a story that I wrote as a young girl. The book is called Annie's Angel...by Grace Carberry Froncko. My drawings, my story.
When I was young my father would give my sisters money for the bus and did not give me any. When I asked, " you didnot leave me any," he would say, "I didn't think you were going." If I got to school 2 to 3 days a week I was lucky. I was needed home. I once tryed to get on the bus without paying, and the driver wanted my dime. He didnot believe me I had no money, my sisters did. He thought I was trying to keep it for candy. So, I walked. One day, it was snowing and he stoped the bus and said "get in"....I told him, no, had no money, he said get in, no was may answer. A few days passed, he tryed again, this time a diffrent aproach, ....your sisters , he said, told me, you tell great story, and if you tells us a story, you ride free. I had many stories, of my family and friends, and angels were a big part of my stories. Things, would happen to me that never in a life time would happen to others, I was filled.
I know there is nothing I can do, this must be a test from G-D, This story I made up was made to heal my heart that was going through such a bad time..... My words are free....if they help others good, that is enough of a pay back.
I remember making the drawings for this woman, she would be about 80 or more now, she bothered me, so much for the drawings my sisters remember it.... I didnot know, I was so trusting.. I called this publisher, he was very nice, but didnot help me much, I told him I belived it to be mine the work of my self as a young girl. What I realy wanted to know was how did she get the work. He told me the woman was about 55 and she had a man do the drawings... No, no, no, these are a young girl drawings....I told him, not a man. He also added her name was Grace Carberry Franko.....so hard to believe, we would have the same name and the same story.. I asked him, please ask her did some one tell her this story. I know there is nothing I can do...But if I did not discover her Forward I would not have found what you have copyrighted about what I have written.....also.
There is reason for this, G-D will show me.... Forward....good by...I would have liked to stay, but you are like this woman.... I treasure G-D with me, people, not money,& power.
Thank you all for your comments.
Regarding the bilingual pun: It may be a stretch, but Lévi-Strauss had been in the U.S. for years by the time he chose his title, and was in all likelihood aware of the English word "tryst." That word, incidentally, derives ultimately (via the Middle English "trist") from the Old French "triste," meaning a waiting place in hunting.
Regarding the Jewishness of the various social theorists, including L-S, I did not say that they were not aware of it, I said they avoided publicly acknowledging it or openly detached themselves from it by being critical of Jews and Judaism. I did not say that they owed it to the world, the Jews, or themselves to acknowledge their debt to Jewish tradition and especially their remarkable rabbinical heritages, I just said it's interesting that they didn't.
Regarding the statement that "MR.LEVI-STRAUSS LIVED DURING A VERY DIFFICULT PERIOD DURING THE W.W.II YEARS AND PROSECUTION WAS A REAL AND DANGEROUS ISSUE AT THAT TIME," I would simply say that he lived some 64 years from the end of that war until last month, and at some point during that lifetime of years prosecution or persecution was no longer real and dangerous for him in Paris.
For an interesting attempt to analyze the Jewishness, or more accurately the retreat from Jewishness, in Tristes Tropiques, see David Damrosch, "The ethnic ethnographer: Judaism in Tristes Tropiques," which appeared in Representations, vol. 50, pp. 1-13, 1995.
Incidentally, as is almost always the case with newspaper and magazine articles, I did not choose the title of my piece. The version on my website, www.jewsandothers.com, is called "Claude Lévi-Strauss: Secular Rabbi, Non-Jewish Jew." It includes a stunning photo of L-S in the field in Brazil in the 1930s.
Thanks again to all for your comments,
Mel Konner
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