Levi-Strauss Interviewed, Part 1

Author(s): Didier Eribon

Source: Anthropology Today, Vol. 4, No. 5 (Oct., 1988), pp. 5-8
Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3032748
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 1. As we go to press, it
is reported(Times,21
September)that Britain
and the USA have now
also protestedto the
Romanian
Government.Editor.
interviewed
Levi-Strauss
by Didier Eribon - Part 1
We are pleased to publish
here two extracts in
English translationfrom
De Pres et de Loin (a
further two extracts will be
published in our December
issue), to markthe 80th
birthdayof Claude
Levi-Strausson 28
Novembernext. This is an
interviewin bookform
prepared by Didier Eribon,
a journalist with Le
Nouvel Observateur,
published at 89F by
Editions Odile Jacob,
Paris, who have kindly
granted us permission to
of Romanianshave been moved into the Szekler capital
Tirgu Mures (Marosvah6ly in Hungarian) in order to
change it into a Romanian town. Similar efforts are
being made to transformthe Transylvaniancapital Cluj
(Kolozsvar), where Hungariansnow account for only
one-third of the population. Even non-Romaniangeo-
graphicaland personalnames are now forbidden.
A forced ideological industrializationprogramme,an-
nounced to the world by Ceausescu in a speech on 3
March, which replaces villages with industrialsocieties
in miniature,is one of the weapons used to assist in the
assimilation of national ethnic minorities. When vil-
lages are destroyed, an area loses its local characteris-
tics, since the concrete tower blocks which replace
them can be found anywhere, and the inhabitantsare
not necessarily rehousedin the same area. Communities
are sometimes dispersed. Thus architecture also
becomes a political weapon since, as Gavin Stamp
points out, it is easier to control an urbanized semi-
proletariatliving in flats; the peasants are cut off from
their homes and from the land.
In the spring of last year, Romania publicly attached
Hungaryfor 're-establishingHorthy's fascist and chau-
vinistic thesis'. The reference was to A History of
Transylvania in three volumes, which had just been
published. Zoltan Szasz, one of the co-editors, believes
the criticism was an attemptto raise nationalistic senti-
ment and to divert attentionfrom the economic decline
of Romania. Thus according to the latest information,
Kolozsvzar and Brasov, two large cities, are virtually
unlit at night, and there was a typhoid epidemic in Bra-
sov in Spring 1987, due to the city's polluted sewers.
The Hungarian authorities, for their part, have re-
sponded by breaking the traditional silence regarding
the problems of their minority in Romania. On 20 Au-
gust, the 950th anniversaryof the death of St Stephen,
founder of Hungary, Imre Pozsgay of the Hungarian
Politburo criticized Romanian policies as 'incom-
prehensible and idiotic' and 'a shame to socialism'.
Matyas Szuros, Secretaryof the CentralCommittee,has
denounced Romania's actions on Radio Budapest and
Isvan Nemeskuirtywrites in Hungarian Quarterly:'This
situation has become so distressing that the Romanian
government may sooner or later be accused of ... de-
D.E. Was your family very much involved with the
arts?
C.L.-S. Yes, this was quite atavistic! My great-
grandfather, the father of my mother's father, was
called Isaac Strauss. Born in 1906 in Strasbourg, he
'made it' very young in Paris. He was a violinist and
had got together a little orchestra.He played a part in
making the music of Beethoven, Mendelssohn and
some others better known. In Paris, he worked with
Berlioz, who mentions him in his memoirs; and also
with Offenbach, for whom he wrote some of his fa-
mous quadrilles. We knew Offenbach by heart in my
family; his music lulled my whole childhood.
Strauss became conductor for court balls at the end
of the reign of Louis-Philippe. Then under Napoleon
III, organizerof the Casino at Vichy, which he ran for a
liberate cultural genocide and forcible assimilation.'
The Hungarianauthoritieshave permittedand reported
public demonstrationssuch as that which took place in
Budapest on 27 June 1988, which included a march to
the Romanian Embassy. Ceausescu responded by clos-
ing the HungarianConsulatein Cluj.
The conclusion of the InternationalHelsinki Feder-
ation for Human Rights Report S.O.S. Transylvaniais
that the Hungarianminority in Romania is the victim of
suppressionaimed at assimilation:
The rights of the Hungarianminorityin Romania, the most
numerous national minority in Europe, are assured not
only by the Helsinki Accords and the UN Conventions,but
also by the Romanianconstitution,bilateralagreementsbe-
tween Hungaryand Romania, and the Treaty of Paris after
the last World War. Because of this, the fate of the Hunga-
rians in Romania is not simply a domestic Romanian mat-
ter.
The Economist, in a recent issue, points out that West
Germany, whose own ethnic minority in Romania is
badly affected, is the only western country to have ob-
jected publicly.1 This is disgraceful. Anthropologists,
ethnologists and folklorists must speak out if our gov-
ernmentswill not. The Economist believes that interna-
tional ridicule of Ceausescu, known for his vanity,
might have some effect in slowing down the process.
And Ceausescu is no longer young. Amnesty Interna-
tional has found that its campaigns of letter-writingand
peaceful demonstrationshave been effective in securing
the release of prisonersof conscience in many cases.
Meanwhile the destructioncontinues. In the last few
years 10,000 ethnic Hungarianshave fled from Roman-
ia to their motherland,the first time that one communist
country has accepted refugees on this scale from an-
other. Last year Hungarysigned a western resolutionon
minority rights at the Human Rights Conference in
Vienna. In the words of Laszl6 CardinalPaskai, Arch-
bishop of Esztergom and Primate of HungarianCatho-
lics: 'These villages are not just small settlements of
relatively few people. They also constitute an integral
part of a country. They are homes of unique national
values and of folk culture.'
VenetiaNewall
long time. Afterwards,he succeeded Musard in charge
of balls at the Op6ra.He was at the same time a sort of
Cousin Pons, with a passion for antiques, in which he
traded.
D.E. Did your family keep any of them?
C.L.-S. There was a large collection of Jewish antiq-
uities which is now in the Mus6e de Cluny. A number
of objects which passed through his hands were ac-
quired by benefactors who gave them to the Louvre.
Whateverremainedwas sold on his death or sharedout
between his daughters. The remainder was looted by
the Germans during the Occupation. I still have a few
pieces of d6bris: such as the bracelet that Napoleon III
offered my great-grandmotherto thank her for hospi-
tality at the Villa Strauss in Vichy. This Villa Strauss,
where the emperor stayed, still exists. It has become a
5
 reproducethe extracts. bar or a restaurant,I don't rememberexactly, but it has my mother, the daughterof a rabbi, had grown up in a
Levi-Straussspent kept the name. differentatmosphere.
most of his childhoodin D.E. Was the memory of that past transmittedinto D.E. Did you know your grandfather,the rabbi?
Paris in the 16th family tradition? C.L.-S. Very well. I lived in his house during the
arrondissement.Thefirst C.L.-S. Certainly,for it was the family's most glori- first war. My mother and sisters had settled down there
extract,fromchapter1,
'D'Offenbacha Marx', ous period: they were near the throne! My great-grand- with their children while their husbandswere on active
describeshisfamily father used to visit Princesse Mathilde. My paternal service.
background.We then family lived amid memories of the Second Empire. D.E. Apart from the short period when you lived
jump to part of Chapter They also stayed close to it; as a child, I saw with my with your grandfather,you were brought up in a non-
16, 'Raceet politique', own eyes EmpressEug6nie. religious atmosphere,but the Jewish traditionwas per-
whichfocuses on the
D.E. You have told me that your father was a haps presentthere in spite of everything?
controversyin which
Levi-Straussbecame painter. C.L.-S. Not without hitches. My paternal grand-
involvedin the 1970s as C.L.-S. Yes, and two of my uncles as well. Prosper- motherwas still a practisingJew. However, on that side
an eminentsocial ous to start with, my paternalgrandfatherdied a ruined there lay dormanta touch of madness which showed it-
anthropologistand man. So that one of his sons - he had four boys and a self sometimes tragically, sometimes comically. One
influentialintellectual.
girl - had to work very hardto help his family. brotherof my father's, obsessed with biblical exegesis
In the two concluding
extractsto be published My fatherwas placed in the Ecole des Hautes Etudes and not quite right in the head, committed suicide; that
in December,we have Commerciales. At the beginning of his active life, he was when I was three. Well before my birth, another
first a glimpse of startedto work at the Stock Exchange in a humble ca- brotherof my father's had himself ordained as a priest
Levi-Strauss'sNew York pacity. There he got to know Kahnweiler[dealerfor the to take revenge on his parents as a result of a quarrel.
period during the leading cubists] and they became friends. As soon as he For a time, the family counted among its number an
Second WorldWar,and
secondly a discussion of could, he turnedto painting which he had been passion- Abbe L6vi... I rememberhim much later, a junior em-
the structureand plan of ately fond of since childhood. ployee of the gas company, always in his best bib and
Mythologiques, My father and my mother were first cousins. In tucker,with a blond curled-upmoustache, smugly satis-
Le'vi-Strauss'sambitious Bayonne [where Levi-Strauss'smotherwas broughtup] fied with his person and his condition.
four-volumework on the my mother's eldest sister marrieda painterwho had his On my mother's side, my grandfatherthe rabbiwas a
analysis of South
Americanand North
hour of celebrity, Henry Caro- Delvaille; anothersister holy man of a self-effacing disposition, in whose house
AmericanIndian myth. marrieda painter,Gabriel Roby, who was Basque. For one observed the rites scrupulously.Three or four years
De Pres et de Loin him, life was even more difficult than for my father:his running, I attended all the festivals. As for his wife,
can be strongly health was fragile and he died young. even their daughtersdoubted that she had the faith. At
recommendedas a Was it on account of their family relationshipor be- Bayonne, she had them schooled in the convent be-
whole.. The threefinal
cause of connections between painters that my parents cause it was the best establishment.The elder daughter
chapterscover
Le'vi-Strauss'sthoughts got to know each other?I don't know. preparedfor Sevres [an Ecole Normale Sup6rieurefor
on literature,painting In any case, my motherwas living in Paris before her women] or even went there (I'm not sure which any
and music. marriage,for some of the time with the Caro-Delvaille more) at a time when orthodox people in the provinces
ClaudeLevi-Strauss family. She learnt shorthandtyping so as to become a thought that S6vriennes were she-devils. The rabbi's
was Professor at the wife had broad ideas!
secretary.
College de France from
1959 to 1982, and since D.E. Your father did not earn much money in his Although unbelievers,my parentsstill remainedclose
then has been Honorary careeras a painter. to the Jewish traditionof their childhoods. They didn't
Professor. His many C.L.-S. Less and less, as the tastes of the public celebrate the festivals, but they spoke about them. At
honoursinclude changed. Versailles, I was put through my barmizvah, without
membershipof the D.E. So your childhood was not that of a son of the any reasons being invoked other than not causing of-
AcademieFran(aise
since 1973 and
Parisianbourgeoisie? fence to my grandfather.
HonoraryFellowship of C.L.-S. It was, as regardsculture, for we lived in an D.E. You've never been worried by religious feel-
the RAI,which also artistic milieu; my childhood was very rich intellec- ings?
awarded him the Huxley tually. But we contendedwith materialdifficulties. C.L.-S. If by religion you mean a relationshipwith a
MemorialMedal in D.E. Do you have precise memories of this? personalGod, never.
1965.
C.L.-S. I rememberthe panics that could sometimes
The translationof
these extracts is by arise when there were no more commissions. Then my Below: an extractfrom chapter 16, 'Race et Politique'
JonathanBenthall. father,who was a great handyman,invented all sorts of
? Editions Odile little crafts for himself. At one time, the household em- D.E. In 1952, with the text entitled Race et histoire,
Jacob, September1988. barkedon printingfabrics. you left the perspective of pure social anthropologyto
We engraved linoleum-blocks, we coated solids with position yourself at the level that can be called 'politi-
a paste that was spread onto velvet so that multi-col- cal', which touched in any case directly on contempor-
oured metallic powders, scattered on top of it, would ary problems.
stick. C.L.-S. It was a commission. I don't think I would
D.E. And you took part in these activities? have writtenthat work myself on my own initiative.
C.L.-S. I even created the patterns! There was an- D.E. How did this commission arise?
other period when my fathermade little tables in imita- C.L.-S. UNESCO asked a number of authors to
tion lacquer in the Chinese style. He also made lamps write a series of booklets on the racial question: Michel
with inexpensive Japanese prints stuck onto the glass. Leiris was one, I was another...
Anything was all right so as to pay the monthly bills. D.E. There you affirm the diversity of cultures, you
D.E. Have you kept some picturesby him? put in question the idea of progress, and you proclaim
C.L.-S. Few, because as a result of the plundering the necessity of 'coalition' between cultures...
that went on, my parents were left with nothing at the C.L.-S. In general, I was seeking a way to reconcile
end of the war; not even a bed... the notion of progress with culturalrelativism. The no-
D.E. You have spoken of the collection of Jewish tion of progress implies the idea that certaincultures, at
antiquitiesbuilt up by your great-grandfather.Had your given times or in given places, are superior to others,
parentsmaintaineda religious commitment? because they have produced works which those others
C.L.-S. My parents were complete unbelievers. But have shown themselves incapableof. And culturalrela-

6
Claude Levi-Strauss, own text again.
photographedrecently D.E. What was most shocking in 'Race and culture'
by Louis Monier.
was perhapsthe idea which you advanced, that cultures
want to oppose one another.
C.L.-S. At the end of Race and history, I emphas-
ized a paradox. It is the difference between cultures
which makes their meeting fertile. Now this interaction
e:i brings about progressive homogenization: the benefits
- ~~~~~~1 which cultures draw from these contacts derive to a
great extent from their qualitative separation,but in the
course of their exchanges, these separationsdiminish to
the point of disappearing.Is that not what we are wit-
nessing today? By the way, this idea that during their
evolution cultures tend towards a growing entropy
which results from their mixing - presented in a text
which you said just now had become a classic of anti-
racism, and that delights me - comes in a straightline
tivism, which is one of the bases of anthropological from Gobineau, though he is denounced as a father of
thought - at least in my generation and the one before racism. Which goes to show the disorder in people's
it (for it is challenged by some people today) - con- minds at the presenttime.
tends that there can be no absolute criterionfor judging The views of Gobineau have, moreover, a very mod-
one culture as superior to another. I tried to shift the em tinge, for he realized that little islands of order can
problem's centre of gravity. form, by means of the effect that he called - and this is
If at certain times and in certain places, some cul- very modern too - 'a correlation in the different parts
tures 'move' while others 'don't move', this is not, I of the structure'.He gave examples. These successful
said, because of the superiorityof the former, but be- equilibria between mixtures contribute, as he saw, to
cause historical or geographicalcircumstanceshave en- militate against a decline which he saw as irreversible.
gendered a collaborationbetween cultures that are not What can be concluded from that, except that it is
unequal (nothing permits such an evaluation)but differ- desirable for cultures to maintain their diversity or for
ent. They begin to move by borrowing from one an- them to be renewed in their diversity? Only - and this
other or by seeking to oppose one another. They fer- is what my second text pointed out - one must agree to
tilize or stimulate one another mutually; Whereas at pay the price: that is to say, that cultures attached to
other periods or in other places, cultureswhich stay iso- their own respective life-styles and value-systems keep
lated, as if in a closed world of their own, experience a an eye on their particularities:and that this disposition
stationarylife. is healthy, not at all pathological as some would have
D.E. This text has become a classic of anti-racism, us believe. Each culture develops thanks to its ex-
and is even read in secondary schools. Is it in reaction changes with other cultures. But each one must put up
against this vulgate that you prepareda second text in a certain resistance, otherwise very quickly it would
1971, this time entitled 'Race et culture'? have no more to exchange which belonged to it specifi-
C.L.-S. That also arose from a UNESCO com- cally. Absence of and excess of communication are
mission, for a solemn conference designed to inaugur- both dangerous.
ate an internationalyear of struggle against racism. D.E. How do you explain that your 1952 text was so
D.E. You have said about what happened,'This'text successful and not the second?
caused a scandal and that was its aim!' C.L.-S. The first was published as a little book; the
C.L.-S. Which was perhaps a little strong... One other, a lecture, has never appearedon its own. And if
thing is certain: it did make a scandal, in UNESCO in the first was judged orthodox but the second book not,
any case. Twenty years after Race et histoire, they I cannot help it: they form a whole. I would add that
asked me to speak again about racism, probablyexpect- the second text, where I tried to introduce the conclu-
ing that I would repeat what I had already said. I don't sions of population genetics, is more difficult to read.
like to repeat myself, and above all, many things had Already now with Race and history, every year school-
happenedduringthose twenty years, one of them being, children come to see me, write to me or telephone me
as far as I was concerned, a growing annoyance pro- saying 'We have an essay to write and we understand
voked by periodic displays of good feelings, as if that nothing!'
alone could be enough. D.E. What would you do if UNESCO were to ask
It seemed to me on the contraryfirst that racial con- you today for a new lecture on the same subject?
flicts could only get worse, and second that, in the C.L.-S. There's no danger!
minds of the public, a confusion was being created D.E. But newspapers and the radio often ask your
aroundnotions such as racism and anti-racism;and that advice on the question of racism and on the whole you
by dint of widening them in an ill- considered way, refuse to reply...
people were feeding racism instead of weakening it. C.L.-S. I don't want to reply because, in this field,
D.E. You were speaking this time of the differences there is total confusion, and because whatever I say
that separate and oppose cultures. Which ran against will, I know in advance, be misinterpreted.
the grain of your earlier speech. As a social anthropologist,I am convinced that racist
C.L.-S. Not at all. People didn't read the earliertext, theories are both monstrousand absurd.But in making
or only half of it. One critic, writing I think in L'Huma- the notion of racism commonplace, in applying it at
nite [the French Communist newspaper], wanted to random,people empty it of content and risk ending up
prove that I had changed my position, and he quoted a at a result which is the opposite of what they want. For
Claude Le'vi-Straussin
Oxfordto receive an
long passage from 'Race and culture' in support. Ac- what is racism? A precise doctrine, which can be
honorarydoctorate, 6 tually, this passage had already appearedin Race and summed up in four points. First, that a correlationexists
June 1964. history. As it seemed well phrased to me, I used my between genetic heritage on the one hand and intellec-

7
 tual aptitudesand moral dispositions on the other. Sec-
ond: that this heritage on which the aptitudes and dis-
positions are held to depend is common to all the mem-
bers of certain human groups. Third: that these groups
called 'races' can be hierarchized in terms of the
quality of their genetic heritage. Fourth:that these dif-
ferences authorize those 'races' held to be superior to
command and exploit others, maybe to destroy them.
The theory and the practice are indefensible for a num-
ber of reasons which, following other authorsor at the
same time as them, I set out in 'Race and culture' with
as much vigour as in Race and Histoiy. The problem of
relationships between cultures is situated on another
level.
D.E. So that, in your eyes, hostility felt by one cul-
ture towardsanotheris not racism?
C.L.-S. Yes it is, if it is active hostility. Nothing can
authorizeone culture to destroy or even to oppress an-
other. Such negation of other people has inevitably to
rely on transcendentreasons: those of racism, or equi-
valent reasons. But it is a fact which has always existed
that cultures, while respecting one another, can feel
more or less affinity with one another. That is a norm
of human behaviour. In denouncing it as racist, one
risks playing the enemy's game, for many naive people
will say to themselves 'Well, if that is racism, I am a
racist'.
You know how attractedI am by Japan. If in Paris,
in the underground,I see a couple that seems to be
Japanese, I will look at them with interest and sym-
pathy, ready to do them a service. Is that racism?
D.E. If you look at them with sympathy, no; but if
you had told me 'I look at them with hatred' I would
have replied, yes.
C.L.-S. And yet, I based my reaction on physical
appearance,behaviour, the sound of the language. In
daily life, everyone does the same to place an unknown
person on the geographic map... A lot of hypocrisy
would be needed to try and outlaw this kind of approxi-
mation.
D.E. Are there physical appearanceswhich generate
antipathyin you?
C.L.-S. You mean ethnic types? No, certainly not.
They all include sub-types, some of which seem attrac-
tive to us, others not. In some Indian communities in
Brazil, I felt surroundedby beautiful individuals;others
seemed to offer me the spectacle of a degraded hu-
manity. The Nambikwara women seemed to me in
general more beautiful than the men; the opposite was
the case with the Bororo. Making such judgments, we
apply the canons of our culture. But the only valid ca-
nons in the circumstancesare those of the people con-
cerned.
In the same way, I belong to a culture which has a
distinctive life-style and value-system, so that very dif-
ferent culturesdo not attractme automatically.
D.E. You don't like them?
C.L.-S. That would be saying too much. If I study
them as a social anthropologist,I do it with all the ob-
jectivity and indeed all the empathy of which I am ca-
pable. That doesnit prevent certainculturesfrom hitting
it off less easily than others with my own.

Engendering
knowledge
The politics of ethnography(Part 1 - to be concluded)

Ethnography cused upon ethnographyand definitions of it as a form

A poem written by R.D. Laing captures the mood of
PAT the postmodemist,reflexive era:
CAPLAN
This article is based on
the second Audrey
RichardsMemorial
Lecturedelivered at
Rhodes House, QAford,
on 18 May. We are
publishing it in two
parts, of which the
second, largely
concerned with
anthropologyand
feminism, will appear in
the December issue.
Dr Caplan started by
saying that Audrey
Richards(1899-1984)
had been a 'livingproof
for women studentsof
her generation that
'womencould be and
were good
anthropologists'.She
mentionedRichards's
presidential address to
the African Studies
Association in 1967,
which recalled what it Within anthropology,much attention is currentlyfo-
The theoretical and descriptive idiom
of much research in social science
adopts a stance of apparent 'objective' neutrality.
But we have seen
how deceptive this can be.
The choice of syntax and vocabularyis a political act
that defines and circunmscribes the manner in which facts'
are to be experienced.
Indeed, in a sense
it goes further
and even creates thefac ts that are studied
The 'data' (given) of research
are not so much given
as taken
out of a constantlyelusive matrixof happenings.
We should speak of captarather than data.
The quantativelyinterchangeablegrist
that goes into the mills
of reliability studies and rating scales
is the expression
of a processing that we do on r-eality
not the expression
of the processes of reality. (in Weaver1973)
of knowledge. Roy Ellen suggests that it has many
meanings - at one and the same time, it is something
we do/study/use/read/and write (1984:7). Ethnography
lies at the boundary of two systems of meaning and
raises the question, how do we translateanotherculture
through the vehicle of our own language? This in turn
takes us back to the oft-debatedquestion - what is cul-
ture itself? Increasingly, it has been seen as manufac-
tured, both by informants and anthropologists,and in
the process, as contested. The protagonistsin this con-
test are the ethnographer,the subjects/informants,and
the audience/reader.I shall deal with each of these in
turn.
How do we represent another culture - can we?
should we? What is the ethnographer?Archivist, trans-
lator, midwife, writer of fiction, trickster,bricoleur, in-
quisitor, and intellectual tourist (see various contribu-
tors to Clifford 1986) are just some of the recent sug-
gestions. The standard monograph which has charac-
terized British and American social anthropologyfor so
many years has come in for some heavy criticism.
Aside from the fact that, as many have pointed out, it is
usually extremely boring, it also fails to include the ob-
server in its analysis: the ethnographerappears briefly
in the preface, as if to establish the authorityand credi-
bility of having actually 'been there', but then promptly
disappearsfrom the main text. This means that his or