Claude Levi-Strauss

The Structural Study of Myth

This is another irritably difficult piece whose the demerits of unnecessary complexity seem to far outweigh the merits of whatever the assertions made in terms of the usefulness for our prelim. It's difficult to tell if this work is a pure junk or the work of a genius, but anyway, I decided to summarize its main points as follows, disregarding the portions that don't make sense.

The Nature of Myth

Myth is both historical and a-historical, it combines the elements of reversible and non-reversible time. That is, while myth speaks of the past, it is also at the same time the embodiment of timeless values that explains the past, present as well as the future.

The Problems with Former Studies of Myth

The former studies of myth tended to reckon that individual and isolated elements which compose myth each embody meanings independent of the other constituents. Rather, Levi-Strauss asserts here that individual constituent units of myth are not meaningful by themselves, and only by looking at the way these elements combine one can properly interpret myth.

How, then, the above-mentioned method of study should be pursued

The proper unit of analysis for the study of myth is what Levi-Strauss calls the gross constituent units. Further, it is not just these units by themselves that are the focus of the study, but rather the bundles of relations of these gross constituent units that ultimately become the units of study. Apparently, however, the identification of these gross constituent units are rather difficult process by trial and error - "breaking down its story into the shortest possible sentences, and writing each sentence on an index card bearing a number of corresponding to the unfolding of the story" (p. 211).

Anyhow, let's suppose this initial process of identifying the proper units of analysis had been done. Next step in the analysis of myth is the plotting of these units of analysis (bundles of gross constituent units) onto the two-dimensional table, with rows representing diachronic sequences (or, the time-specific sequences of events) and the columns representing the synchronic (timeless) meanings attached to events. This scheme works because, as mentioned earlier, myth has elements of both historicity and a-historicity (This discussion being rather abstract, see the tables on either p. 214 or p. 220 and you sort of get an idea what the author is doing, yet overall it is more confusing than the first time we have learned the loglinear analysis). Further, two-dimensional table will soon turn into a three-dimensional one, for myths do not come in one convenient version for good but there are numerous variations of basically same myth. One needs one table for each variant of these myths, then. Finally, we can now reach the stage of the actual analysis of myth. The relationship of numerous constituent units in the constructed table are likely to be so complex that to map them out completely we would probably need the help of a computer, Levi-Strauss says.

Critique, Relevance

Why should we engage in this sort of super-complicated analysis in the first place anyway? The reason for Levi-Strauss must be that, there is a firm belief that beneath the layer of surfacial meanings there is the existence of underlying structure that is universal for human minds, and it is the task for a social scientist to discover that universal structure which exists largely at the unconscious level. In fact, this is the basic assumption that structuralism, the school on the sociology/anthropology of culture that became vogue in the 60s and for which Levi-Strauss was the leading figure, held. Of course, number of authors in our prelim reading list doesn't share such an assumption. Instead, they argue for the socially constructed nature of all reality, stressing the open, fragmentary, and arbitrary character of culture while denying the existence of the objectively identifiable universal laws of human culture. Though they are all rather different in their approach, Berger and Luckmann, Weber, Geertz, Goffman and Comaroffs would be in this camp. On the other hand, one characteristic Marx and Durkheim, as well as Bourdieu and Williams (though the latter two are much more ambiguous as to their what their philosophical stance is), share is that they all regard social science to be an objectively valid science. In fact, The Dictionary of Sociology notes that Levi-Strauss is reputed to be a scholar heavily influenced by both Durkheim and Marx. In effect, we again see a sort of an epistemological divide that I have mentioned in the critique of Geertz.