Re-reading Lévi-Strauss: "The raw and the cooked" thirty years on.

Abstract

More than thirty years have gone by since the publication of Le cru et le cuit (1964). With this volume Levi-Strauss (1) inaugurated his ambitious trilogy entitled Mythologiques. In fact Du miel au cendres (1966) and Manieres de table (1968) followed thereafter. Mythologiques is of great interest for our purposes, not least because, from volume to volume, what remained constant among the varieties of titles is precisely an explicit reference to food, to the ways of preparing it and to the forms of consuming it. This, moreover, comes about in the very moment in which the French anthropologist goes ahead resolutely with his overall project, namely the building of an increasingly theoretical structural anthropology, ever less identifiable with an empirical collection of ethnographical descriptions organised in terms of geographical areas. It is not my intention here to summarise the entire volume. The specific contents are of interest only to specialists. I will concentrate instead for this Journal on certain passages which, far beyond the intentions of the author, offer to the student of eating behaviour wide-ranging material for meditation and, as far as I am concerned, the opportunity for some personal observations. Setting out from the analysis of a Bororo myth, namely the myth of the “Ara nest” (the so-called “myth of reference”), Levi-Strauss identifies a series of myths which have a “skeleton-structure” in common. In almost all cases, the hero is initially involved in an incestous situation, i.e. in an abusive union. This “fault” (not always condemned as such) is followed by a physical splitting between two realms, an irremediable separation between two poles: e.g. the hero having climbed a mountain (high) is no longer able to climb back down (low). This separation may be interpreted as a metaphysical disjunction between heaven and earth, or between life and death, or between the natural and the human, and so on. In almost all the myths in the series there is a common motif: the main hero, defined as son or as grandson, is presented as the victim of weight loss or in any case of a dra matic diminution that afflicts his body. The causes of such weight loss vary from myth to myth: it might be due to the lack of food provided by a sister; or to the failure of a mother who provided food; or to the con sumption of what Levi-Strauss brilliantly interprets as anti-food or negative food, as in the case of the young man poisoned dur ing his sleep by the farts of his witch grandmother. It frequently happens that within the same myth a certain object acting as food shifts from a positive to a negative sign. For exam ple, the hero of the myth of reference, in order to defend himself from hunger, kills a considerable number of lizards. He hangs from his belt those that are left over by way of provisions. These, however, start to decompose with the passage of time and they nearly kill him with their stink. The hero, hav ing fainted, is attacked by vultures which after eating the lizards, turn to the uncon scious young man and completely devour his buttocks with their beaks (a dramatic exam ple of the diminutio corporis mentioned above). This creates a further problem for our hero, since, deprived of his anus, he is no longer able to retain food. He is therefore obliged to make an artificial backside for himself out of a mixture of mashed tubers. The bodily diminutions described in the myths, however resembling bloody ampu tations, cannot be easily referred to the classic motif of castration as a punishmen for incest. Though an incest is often com mitted at the beginning, the context o amputations is not sexual, but clearly ali mentary. After all, as far as the remedy is concerned, the motif of the “artificial back side” is not at all a bizarre invention o Bororo mythology: the so-called anus-stop per is present as well in North America myths from New Mexico to Canada (1 It.trans. p. 75). Correspondence: Prof. Sergio Caruso, Ph.D., Facolta di Scienze Politiche Cesare Alfieri, Universita di Firenze, Via Laura 48 50121 Firenze, Italia