Lévi-Strauss 'sJourney totheTropics SILVIANO SANTIAGO Translated byMarceldeLima 'Allethnography ispartphilosophy, anda gooddeal oftherest isconfession.' Clifford Geertz, TheInterpretation ofCultures As the firstchaptersof Tristes Tropiques unfold,Claude Lévi-Strauss makesitclearto hisreaderthathisjourneyto Braziland, lateron, his contactwithitsIndianswereboth productsof chance.1'A somewhat perversewhimon the partof [professor] George Dumas',2added to mundane circumstances of the Frenchuniversity milieu,at the time favoured culturalsponsoroftheeliteof theLatinAmericancountries, led Lévi-Strauss, thena youngteacherat a provincial lycée, to takepart in thecosmopolitan Frenchuniversity mission, whoseaim wasto strike at theprovincialism implicit within thefoundation and establishment of theFaculty ofPhilosophy, Sciencesand Letters oftheUniversity ofSäo Paulo (USP). Lévi-Strauss explains: 'My career was decided one Sunday in the autumnof1934,atnineo'clockinthemorning, bya telephonecall [...]. "Do youstillwanttostudy anthropology?" - "Mostcertainly." - "Then applyfora postas a teacherofsociology at theUniversity ofSäo Paulo. The suburbsare fullofIndians,whomyoucan study at theweekends" (p. 55). In Europe,eveneducatedpeoplestill helda distorted viewofthe demographic situation in theformer Americancoloniesand, in Brazil, wheretheIndianswereno longersuburban, onlya fewtribes existedin distant unexploredareas. Being'a Sundayanthropologist' (p. 135) amongtheoutskirts ofthe city ofSäo Paulo- a pale copyofthatcity he hadbeen 'falsely promised' byGeorgeDumas's spokesman- would allow the scientist merelyto 1The appearance of chance as a generatingmodel in the discontinuity of the evolutionary processis characteristic of the textsbyLévi-Strauss. See, forinstance,his thesison the birth of the phoneticlanguage: 'Whatevermayhave been the momentand the circumstances of its appearance in theascentofanimallife,languagecan onlyhavearisenall atonce. Thingscannot have begun to signify gradually'.Claude Lévi-Strauss, Introduction totheWork ofMarcelMauss, trans.Barbara Freeman (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), p. 59. On the 'theme of chance' see alsoJacquesDerrida,Writing andDifference, trans.Alan Bass (London: Routledge& Kegan Paul, 1978), and OfGrammatology, trans.Gayatri Spivak(Baltimore:The JohnsHopkins University Press,1976). 2 Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques, trans. Johnand Doreen Weightman(Harmondsworth: Penguin,1976), p. 18. Hereafterthepage numberscorrespondingto a quotationare givenin bracketsin thetext. 8 SILVIANO SANTIAGO map the new whitecolonistswho had settledtherearound the time of the Abolitionof Slavery. Syriansand Italiansdominated.Amonga raggedpopulationhe notedtheblondhairand blue eyesthatbetrayed a Germanicorigin.He caughtsightofmany Japanesewhowerein fact agricultural dwellers of theoutskirts. Unlikethe old colonizingsailors, theselatecolonizersofthecountry came,in mostcases,fromthemost wretched strata oftheEuropeanruralpopulationand hadbeenexcluded fromthe advance of Westerncivilizationby industrialization. They travelled to Brazilto make America. And theyweremaking it.Theywere ambitious menon their first voyage. Theydidnotregardtheshipas their home,northesea as a mystery tobe unveiledand conquered.Theysaw thenewand distant landas an endinitself, thatis,as a placeofresidence and labour,as a promiseofquickenrichment. In the poor suburbs,instead of the autochthonousIndians, the ethnographer foundrather different travellers, thedescendants ofblack slaves.Unlikehisprofessors and contemporaries, stillexcitedaboutthe successoftheDakar-Djibouti cultural mission(1931-33),Lévi-Strauss was notfacingauthentic Negroes.3He musthave askedhimself whether it wouldbe worth usingthetermNegro in thispartoftheplanet,wherethe Indiansno longerdweltaroundthetowns and wheretherewasa * great racialdiversity' thatallowedmixtures ofallsorts. Itwasnotthefocusofhis interest, thoughitwouldbe ofgreater interest tohisfellow countryman, thesociologist RogerBastide.4 Lévi-Strauss issensitive tothetricks thatthepassingoftimeindifferent regionsoftheplanetplayon theobserver. Havinga paradigmatic vision5 3See thecontribution '1933,February - Negrophilia', byJames Clifford, in DenisHollier (ed.), A New History ofFrench Literature (Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press,1994) pp. 901-08.Astotherevealing andsymptomatic absence ofAmerindian cultures from theFrench artistic worldofthelate 1920sand early1930ssee alsoJamesClifford, 'On Ethnographic Surrealism', inComparative Studies inSociety andHistory, 23 (1981),539-64.One issurprised at thelittle attention given totheclassic work ofAlfred Metraux, MarcelMauss'sdisciple anda member oftheTrocadero group- seeAlfred Metraux, La civilization matérielle destribus TupiGuarani (Paris: P.Geuthner, 1928). 4Among theFrenchmen whohelpeddeprovinciahze theUSF,itwasRoger bastide whoopted for studies onacculturation, interested primarily intheAfrican culture inBrazil. The'principle ofcutting', formulated byhimas he analysed theAfro-Brazilian religions, institutes thejourney between twosocialandcultural worlds as themeasure ofnon-marginalization. The Negrocan be,atthesametime andwithout conflict, anardent adeptofCandomblé andaneconomic agent perfectly adapted tomodern rationality. SeeRoger Bastide, Lesreligions africaines auBrésil (Paris: PUF,i960). 5 Hereweareusing Roman Jakobson 'sconcept toconfigure themeaning ofa linguistic unit. 'ForJakobson theinterpretation ofanylinguistic unitsetsforth, at anygivenmoment, two independent intellectual mechanisms: comparison tothesimilar units(=that couldtherefore substitute it, which belong tothesameparadigm), establishing therelation with coexisting units (=that belong tothesamesyntagma) .Hence,themeaning ofaword isdetermined simultaneously bytheinfluence ofthosewhich arearounditwithin discourse, andbytheevocation ofthose which couldhavetaken itsplace'.Oswald Ducrot andTzvetan Todorov, Dicionário dasciencias da linguagem (Lisbon: Publicacöes DomQuixote, 1973),p. 140. LEVI-STRAUSS'S JOURNEY TO THE TROPICS 9 ofhumanhistory, whosetheoretical backingistobe foundinLinguistics as a basisforethnographic studies, he interprets each particular culture thathas been builtor implanted on thisor thatgeographicspace. The cultural contrasts betweentheOld and theNewWorlds, as wellas other similarcontrasts - achronological bynatureand bydefinition, in...