In antropologie (of volkekunde/etnologie) kan fisiese en sosiale aspekte onderskei word. Fisiese antropologie is dikwels darwinisties vertolk, terwyl sosiale antropologie die beginfase van sosiologiese kennis kan weerspieël. Veral sedert die Tweede Wêreldoorlog is dit egter problematies om primitiewe volke enigsins met diere te assosieer en daar mag eintlik nie van on- of onderontwikkelde mense gepraat word nie; hoogstens van ontwikkelendes. Diesulkes mag ook nie on- of minder beskaaf geag word nie. Hulle moet deesdae by voorkeur nie in 'n aparte dissipline (antropologie) bestudeer word nie, maar saam met ontwikkelde mense in sosiologie. Dit gaan om inklusiwiteit; die afbreking van onderskeide. Dit verduidelik waarom daar in die nuwe Suid-Afrika sterk beswaar teen die uitbeelding van Boesmans in die Suid-Afrikaanse Museum in Kaapstad was.
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009) is dalk die bekendste antropoloog. Veral Edmund Leach se boek, Lévi-Strauss (London: Fontana, 1970/1974, 128p), het sy denke in die Engelssprekende wêreld bekendgestel. Leach vestig die aandag daarop dat Lévi-Strauss in beperkte mate veldwerk gedoen het en dat sy geskrifte moeilik is om te verstaan. Daar is by Lévi-Strauss 'n neiging tot beeldspraak en 'n gebrek aan terminologiese vastigheid.
"His ultimate concern is to establish facts which are true about 'the human mind'" (p 7). In hierdie proses (veralgemening en vereenvoudiging met die klem op verhoudinge eerder as entiteite) kom empiriese gegewens nie altyd tot hulle reg nie. Lévi-Strauss: "Understanding consists in the reduction of one type of reality to another; ... true reality is never the most obvious of realities ... the problem is ... the relation ... between reason and sense-perception" (p 13). "Behind all sense there is a non-sense" (p 32). Geen wonder dat hy van mistisisme beskuldig word nie.
Lévi-Strauss se benadering word strukturalisme genoem. Hy wil die denkpatrone onderliggend aan alle vorme van menslike aktiwiteit vasstel. Hiervoor gebruik hy die linguistiek van Ferdinand de Saussure en Roman Jakobson as uitgangspunt. Hy wil die struktuur van primitiewe denke in die gees van hedendaagse mense terugvind. "He conceives of primitive peoples as 'reduced models' of what is essential in all mankind, but the resulting Rousseau-like noble savages inhabit a world very far removed from the dirt and squalor which is the field anthropologist's normal stamping ground" (p 18). "As his own field experience recedes further into the background he has become more and more obsessed with his search for universals applicable to all humanity, and increasingly contemptuous of the ethnographic evidence" (p 97-98).
"When cultural products are generated ... the process must impart to them certain universal (natural) characteristics of the brain itself. Thus, in investigating the elementary structures of cultural phenomena, we are also making discoveries about the nature of Man" (p 26). Wanneer 'n antropoloog volke navors "he is first of all impressed by the differences. Yet since all cultures are the product of human brains, there must be, somewhere beneath the surface, features that are common to all" (p 26).
"To discover the nature of Man we must find our way back to an understanding of how Man is related to Nature" (p 37). "The products of our Culture are segmented and ordered in the same way as we suppose the products of Nature to be segmented and ordered" (p 21). Dit gaan dus vir Lévi-Strauss om niks minder nie as om die hele werklikheid te verstaan en hy doen dit ingevolge binêre teenoorgesteldes, gebaseer op Hegel se tesis, antitese: hemel, aarde; natuur, kultuur; bewussyn, onderbewussyn; lewe, dood; lig, duisternis; heilig, profaan; goed, sleg; naak, geklee; kos: rou ('n natuurproduk), gekook ('n kultuurproduk).
Leach het geen hoë dunk van Lévi-Strauss se wetenskaplikheid nie. Hy "selected his evidence so as to fit his theory" (p 88). "He consistently behaves as an advocate defending a cause rather than as a scientist searching for ultimate truth" (p 20). "Lévi-Strauss always wants to force his evidence into moulds which are completely symmetrical" (p 91). "Lévi-Strauss seems to be more interested in an algebra of possibilities than in the empirical facts" (p 44). "Lévi-Strauss himself seems inclined to argue that if there are any ethnographic facts which are consistent with his general theory, then this alone is sufficient to prove that, in its basic essentials, the general theory is right" (p 110). Dan is daar ook Lévi-Strauss ("a master of the unexpected analogy", p 35) se mooi, verbeeldingryke taal wat onwetenskaplik aandoen en ernstige pogings om sy werk uit Frans te vertaal laat skipbreuk ly het. Teen die einde van sy boek is Leach se gevolgtrekking: "There can be no room for poets in the laboratory" (p 119).
Dit bring my by die boek waaroor ek eintlik wou skryf, Patrick Wilcken se Claude Lévi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory (London: Bloomsbury, 2011, 375p; ook 'n eBook). In dié boek val die klem nie op biografiese besonderhede nie. Dit is veeleer 'n ernstige poging om Lévi-Strauss se werk te probeer verstaan. "His prose is instantly recognisable and impossible to imitate; his approach to his subject matter so idiosyncratic that for much of his career it defied systematic criticism" (p 4). Hy het oor die vermoë beskik van "intuitive model-building ... Lévi-Strauss captured a culture through fragments, filling the gaps in his mind, conjuring models as if from thin air" (p 72).
Oor die aantekeninge wat hy tydens veldwerk gemaak het: "The overall impression is of an artist trawling for ideas, rather than an academic at work" (p 92). "From a professional perspective ... Lévi-Strauss's fieldwork fell well short of the standards of the time" (p 106). Lévi-Strauss: "I realised early on that I was a library man, not a fieldworker" (p 107). "In a late interview he characterised him as a philosopher, a man of ideas" (p 107). "Lévi-Strauss's cultural engine was an aesthetic contraption that worked, but to no discernible end" (p 187).
"His floral prose masked a lack of rigour" (p 256). "Lévi-Strauss admitted it took him several reads of a draft ... before he fully understood his own line of reasoning" (p 268). Een van sy vertalers het aan hom gesê: "If you do not mean what I put, then I do not understand what you mean" (p 255). Sy duistere geskrifte ("the stream of consciousness of one mind", p 14) maak allerhande vertolkings moontlik en was invloedryk. "It was through his influence that the immediate post-war world of Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir ceded the high ground to the likes of Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes and Jacques Lacan in the 1960s" (p 12). "He was interested in mid-century artistic preoccupations: the subversive power of the subconscious, the importance of myth, irrationality and juxtaposition" (p 129). "For Lévi-Strauss, existentialism agonised over the very material that should be filleted out and discarded" (p 206).
In sy jeug was Lévi-Strauss paternalisties en ten gunste van kolonialisme. Later het hy dit en Europa-gesentreerde sienings verwerp, insluitende modernisme in die kunste. "It was possible that the West was even entering an a-pictorial age in which art would disappear altogether" (p 236, ook p 295). [Eerder die teenoorgestelde het gebeur.] Die Weste het hy toe beskou as "a corrosive force that was dissolving mankind's cultural achievements" (p 59). Na die Tweede Wêreldoorlog, waarin sy pasifisme gefaal het, het hy apolities geword. "It was a mistake to pigeonhole political realities in the framework of formal ideas" (p 145).
"What remained was a conservative instinct that would never really leave him for the rest of his life" (p 151). Hy was bv nie ten gunste van Algerië se onafhanklikheid nie. Hy was "reassessing his earlier support for decolonisation, on the grounds that indigenous peoples were often worse off under newly independent regimes" (p 307). Toe sy tuisstad, Parys, as 'n na-oorlogse uitvloeisel van kolonialisme al hoe meer multikultureel word, het hy dit as 'n bedreiging vir sy eie kultuur ervaar. "He reserved his harshest judgement for Islam, a religion he saw as dangerously exclusive and xenophobic" (p 213, ook p 319).
In 1971 het Unesco hom betrek by die International Year for Action to Combat Racism."Lévi-Strauss used the address to question whether the fight against racism, as it had been conceived, was not feeding a process of cultural decay – 'driving towards a world civilisation, itself likely to destroy the ancient individualism to which we owe the creation of the aesthetics and spiritual values which make our lives worthwhile'. Although vehemently opposed to racism, Lévi-Strauss trod a fine line, arguing that a degree of cultural superiority, even antipathy, between groups was necessary to maintain a distance that would preserve customs and ideas otherwise degraded through contact. The modern world's embrace of mutual acceptance and multiculturalism was snuffing out the sparks of creativity generated by cultural exchange" (p 306).
Johannes Comestor