17.This letter was never published by
Nouvelle critique. It may be found in
Structural
Anthropology, p. 365 [pp. 340-41].
18.Tristes Tropiques, chap. 40: “In its own awy, and on its own level, each of them
corresponds to a truth. Between Marxist criticism which sets Man free from his first chains,
and Buddhist criticism, which completes that liberation, there is neither opposition nor
contradiction. (The Marxist teaches that the apparent significance of Man’s condition will
vanish the moment he agrees to enlarge the object that he has under consideration.) Marxism
and Buddhism are doing the same thing, but at different levels” (p. 476) [P. 395].
19.On this theme of chance, present in Race et histoire [published in French and English
(Race and History) Paris, 1952] and in
The Savage Mind, cf. above all the
Conversations, pp.
28—29 [pp. 24—26]; in developing at length the image of the gambler at the roulette wheel,
Lévi-Strauss explains that the complex combination that constitutes Western civilization, with
its type of historicity, determined by the use of writing, could very well have developed at the
beginning of humanity, it could have developed very much later, it developed at this moment,
“there is no reason why this should be so, it just is. However, you may say: ‘That is not very
satisfactory.’ “ This chance is soon after determined as the “acquisition of writing.” This is an
hypothesis that Lévi-Strauss admittedly does not abide by but of which he says “we should
begin by considering it as a possibility.” Even if it does not imply a belief in chance (cf. The
Savage Mind, pp. 22 and 291 [pp. 13—14 and 220] ), a certain structuralism must invoke it in
order to inter-relate the absolute specificities of structural totalities. We shall see how this
necessity is also imposed on Rousseau.
20.It concerns only a small subgroup which is followed by the anthropologist only in its
nomadic period. This subgroup has a sedentary life as well. In the introduction to the thesis
one will find: “It is unnecessary to emphasize that this is not an exhaustive study of
Nambikwara life and society. We were able to share the life of the natives only during
((338))
the nomadic period, and that alone would suffice to limit the range of our investigation. A
voyage undertaken during the sedentary period would no doubt bring essential pieces of
information and would correct the whole view. We hope one day to be able to under-take it”
(p. 3). Is this limitation, which seems to have been definitive, not particularly significant with
respect to the question of writing, which is clearly linked more intimately than most things
and in an essential way, with the phenomenon of sedentarity?
21.De l’origine du langage, Oeuvres complètes [Paris, 1848], Bk. VIII, p. 90. The
continuation of the text, that I cannot quote here, is most instructive if one is interested in the
origin and function of the word “barbarian” and other related words.
22. »La chine, aspects et fonctions psychologiques de l’écriture, » EP, p. 33.
23.”For thousands of years, after all, and still today in a great part of the world, writing has
existed as an institution in societies in which the vast majority of people are quite unable to
write. The villages where I stayed in the Chittagong hills in Pakistan [now Bangladesh] are
populated by illiterates; yet each village has a scribe who fulfills his function for the benefit
both of individual citizens and of the village as a whole. They all know what writing is and, if
need be, can write: but they do it from outside as if it were a mediator, foreign to themselves,
with which they communicate by an oral process. But the scribe is rarely a functionary or an
employee of the group as a whole; his knowledge is a source of power—so much so, in fact,
that the functions of scribe and usurer are often united in the same human being. This is not
merely because the usurer needs to be able to read and write to carry on his trade, but because
he has thus a twofold empire over his fellows” (p. 342) [pp. 290-91].
24.Histoire et ethnologie (Revue de metaphysique et de morale, [LIV, iii & iv,] 1949, [pp.
363–91] and Structural Anthropology, p. 33 [pp. 25-26]): “The anthropologist is above all
interested in unwritten data, not so much because the peoples he studies are incapable of
writing, but because that with which he is principally concerned differs from everything men
ordinarily think of recording on stone or on paper.”
25.Recalling, in “A Little Glass of Rum,” that “In the neolithic age, Man had already made
most of the inventions which are indispensable to his security. We have seen why writing need
not be included among these,” Lévi-Strauss remarks that man in earlier times was certainly
“no more free than he is today.” “But it was his humanness alone which kept him enslaved. As
he had only a very restricted control over Nature, he was protected, and to a certain degree
emancipated, by the protective cushion of his dreams” (p. 452) [p. 390]. Cf. also the theme of
the “neolithic paradox” in The Savage Mind, p. 22 [p. 13].
26.However, “the scientific mind,” Lévi-Strauss writes, “does not so much provide the right
answers as ask the right questions” (The Raw and the Cooked, p. 15) [p. 7].
27.”Facilitate,” “favor,” “reinforce,” such are the words chosen to describe the operation of
writing. Is that not to forbid every essential and rigorous determination of principle?
28.Cf., for example, Leroi-Gourhan, Le geste et la parole. Cf. also EP.
29.Many propositions of this type are to be found in Valéry.
30.Esprit [XXXI, cccxxii] (November 1963), p. 652. Cf. also The Raw and the Cooked, p. 35
[p. 26].
Part II: Chapter 2
1.La transparence et l’obstacle [Paris, 1958] p. 154. Naturally, I can only cite Rousseau’s
interpreters to indicate borrowings or to circumscribe a debate. But it goes without saying that
every reader of Rousseau is guided by the admirable edition of the Oeuvres complètes now in
progress at the “Bibliothèques de la Pléiade,” and by the masterful work of Messrs.
[François] Bouchardy, [Pierre] Burgelin, [Jean-Daniel] Candaux, [Robert] Derathé, [Jean]
Fabre, [Michel] Foucault, [Bernard] Gagnebin, [Henri] Gouhier, [Bernard] Groethuysen,
[Bernard] Guyon, [Robert] Osmont, [Georges] Poulet, [Marcel] Raymond, [Sven] Stelling-
Michaud and, here especially, Jean Starobinski.
2.Edition Garnier, p. 17. My references are to the Oeuvres complètes (Pléiade edi-