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logical orientation? Such a suggestion could, of course, be mistaken for
an abandonment of objective criteria, when what Levi-Strauss is really
doing is giving objectivity a new alignment, one that is proper
to
the
human sciences. Only linguistics among the latter qualifies as a hard
science; all the others, including anthropology, lack the requisite
generality and exactitude. Since the human sciences study man as man
it is impossible
to
approach them with the objectivity reserved for
chemistry or physics. This can be done only in proportion as man is
dehumanized into an object. And in this case it is no longer man being
studied and the human sciences, having focused beyond their stipu–
lated material, become indistinguishable from the natural sciences.
This impasse is surmounted on ly by relocating the ' line separating
observer and object.
A curious ambivalence marks Levi-Strauss's attitudes toward
knowledge and abstract thinking. While he often echoes the perennial
Eden myth in representing knowledge as alienating, he has himself
advanced the cause of abstraction to new levels. Despite his idealization
of archaic societies which, by some special wisdom perhaps, resist
historical change in our sense, Levi-Strauss remains the prototype of
the Western cosmopolitan academic.
Curious, too, are his thoughts on progress, It's all right to insist
that the superiority of technological civilization is merely apparent.
Blinded by our criteria, recognizing order only where we ourselves have
instituted it, we draw oursel ves into a vicious circle of conceptual
entrapment. Levi-Strauss seems to betray an unwitting adherence to
this science dominated perspective when he cites examples of its
employment by so-called primitives as evidence that they are, in certain
respects, as "advanced" as we. It's not easy, even for someone like Levi-
trauss,
to
discard the ethnocentric perspective from which we're
ordinarily bound
to
view other cu ltures. Our observations are preju–
diced as though made through a microscope set to a certain focus:
everything on either side of this focus appears blurred.
EDWARD MARCOTTE
