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PARTISAN REVIEW
Originally, structuralism , not only in anthropology , but in linguistics
and subsequently in other areas , was for French intellectuals what structural–
functionalism (Parson 'sWorldview which subsumes and orders all social facts
into social systems, personality systems, and their value-orientations) was for
their American counterparts: a system which inspired a flurry of academic
activity , created controversies and factions , and which , in the process , made
academic reputations for irs exponents , opponents , and commentators . And
just as structural-functionalism could only have been made up by an Amer–
ican, so structuralism could only have been thought up by a Frenchman . Both
of these Grand Theories are typical expressions of their own cultures : the
French theory claiming underlying rationality and science for a philosophical
flight of imagination, and the American one killing off imagination for a
display of science and rationality . Levi-Strauss might , of course, find some
underlying unity in these opposing approaches , another instance, as it were ,
of the undisclosed structures. But I prefer, for the moment , to look at the
surface-at the cultural, intellectual , and political implications of the two
" systems .' ,
Both Parsons and Levi-Strauss travelled abroad and brought back the
major components of their theories before working on them at home. Parsons ,
while studying in Europe, " found " a convergence between the concepts of
Pareto , Weber, Durkheim , and Marshall (he later replaced Marshall by
Freud) ; Levi-Strauss discovered his universal components of myth on his
anthropological explorations in South America . Both of them are convinced
that the social sciences can be as rigorous as the natural sciences , though both
are against any kind of positivism . But like Comte , both are so carried away by
their method that their substance is reduced to a constant restatement of
itself. Their findings become a function of their system, when, as Levi-Strauss
says, one stresses' 'those aspects of a subject which coincide with the properties
of[ one's] own thought. " But Parsons's empiricism, with its detailed chans of
personal and group behavior, involves dealing with observable data and
appears scientific-if only at first glance . Levi-Strauss's empiricism , on the
other hand, consists largely of the discovery of oppositions and of universal
rules in kinship structures. And although his assumption of similar opposi–
tions and rules in myths is systematically argued, it is nothing but an assump–
tion so long as the universal structures have not yet emerged to " prove" the
uniformity ofall cultures . This emergence is still awaited , and we still have no
clue to the form it will take .
Levi-Strauss , to uncover these universals , zeros in on the ' 'systematic
application of rules of oppositions such as high and low, heaven and earth,
land and water , near and far , left and right , male and female , in myths-to
uncover the deepest structures of thought and by implication their connec-
