Page 112 - Contemporary Cultural Theory 3rd edition

ContCultural Theory Text Pages 4/4/03 1:42 PM Page 103

Semiology: from structuralism to post-structuralism

North America, for instance, venerated the eagle, not for itself,
but for the classificatory possibilities it provided: rather than an
eagle in general, it is a bald eagle, a golden eagle or a spotted
eagle; it is white, spotted or red; it is young, adult or old. These
differences then provide an analogous or parallel structure to that
of Osage society. For Lévi-Strauss, totemism was therefore a code
whose primary function is to express social difference by
analogy with the natural world: there is no mysterious identif-
ication between an individual or group and a totemic animal or
plant; the latter is significant only because of its position in a
series, its difference from others of the same or other species.
In this view, Freud’s Oedipus complex is merely one culturally
specific myth in a great chain of myths that deal with incest
prohibition.
In the second volume of Structural Anthropology, Lévi-Strauss
writes that ‘no civilization can define itself if it does not have at
its disposal some other civilizations for comparison’ (Lévi-
Strauss, 1976, p. 272). Here he identified three stages in the
history of western humanism that allowed the West to acquire
such a perspective on its own culture: Renaissance humanism,
which looked back to antiquity to define itself in comparison
with the past; ‘bourgeois’ humanism, when Europe became
aware of the Orient and came to define itself as superior; and
‘democratic’ humanism, which subscribes to an ethic of tolerance
and respect for different cultures (pp. 271–4). His own work was
intended as a contribution to this contemporary democratic
trend. Hence his suspicion of categories such as ‘progress’, and
the lack thereof, or the idea of some civilisations being ‘inside’
history, others ‘outside’ or closer to nature. Most societies, he
claimed, have experienced progress and technological develop-
ment. The difference is in the fact that western culture ‘has
proved to be more cumulative than others’ (p. 350).
The word ‘savage’ in the title of Lévi-Strauss’s The Savage Mind
is thus ironic. It was central to his argument, in fact, that suppos-
edly ‘savage’ thought was not at all savage, in the sense of being
either alien or primitive. Rather, he stressed that both totemic
religion and primitive ‘science’ actually ‘work’ perfectly well in
their own systemic terms. ‘This science of the concrete’, he wrote,

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