History and Dialectics

History and Dialectics l. In the analysis of the mythical conceptual structuration, the notion of totality is important where nature and culture, and, men, animals, plants and planets are in a continuous dialectical relationship. As a matter of fact, nothing that is human or related to human beings in one form or another, asserts Levi-Strauss, is foreign to the mythical thought, and as such, the dialectical reason finds in it its true application. Levi-Strauss opposes the differentiation that Jean-Paul Sartre makes between the analytical reason and the dialectical reason. At times, Sartre considers the former as an error, and the latter as a verity, and at others, he thinks that both lead to the same truth. Sartre confers on the dialectical reason a reality, suis generis, i.e. it exists independent of the analytical reason, either as its antagonist, or as its complement. Levi-Strauss believes that their reality is relative. The dialectical reason is always a constituting reason, and the analytical process works within it. Dialectical reason is nothing "other than" the analytical reason; it "adds" to its analytical relation. In its dialectical process, the mythical thought integrates man in nature and in history. It covers the entire semiological universe of man. The ethnographic investigations across various cultures bring forth the invariants applicable to man, and at the same time, demonstrate the tremendous differentiation in the so-called existential situations of different men in different societies. When the historico-cultural contingence differs, when the kinship systems vary, when the social relationships imply different parameters in different groups, it is but natural that the "human condition" on which the existential understanding is based follows suit. The scientific reductions must first define their object of study ii1 such a way that the individual characteristics of the object-phenomenon be clearly delineated . Its distinctions are noted and the relationships of its constituent elements are properly differentiated . Secondly, the extreme complexity and the unique characteristics of different cultural structures lead us to a concept of humanity quite different from that of the pre-ethnographic studies . The scientific explanations do not go from complexity to simplicity, as was held earlier, but from an unintelligible complexity to an intelligible complexity. The ''I''is not opposed to the "other", nor man to the world. The verities are comprehended across other men of this world . They are real verities. In ethnology, Levi-Strauss finds the basic principle of all research, but for Sartre, it is only a point of departure, or another problematics which must also be taken into account. He wants to "make use of' the Marxist dialectics, Freudian psycho-analysis, and anthropological researches to further deepen the existential ｣ｯｭｰｾ･ｨｮｳｩ＠ of man. He is ,interested in founding an anthropology which is 05/09/2013 Digitised by: EMMRC, Punjabi University, Patiala 192 SEMIOTICS oF CoNCEPTUAL STRucTURES both historical and structural. But, as demonstrates Levi-Strauss, the last two concepts are used within the Western context. Sartre defines man by dialectics and dialectics by history, a given, well documented history. The societies which do not have the correspondence of European history are classified by Sartre as "cold" societies, and with the first hypothesis, the application of the dialectical reason in such a context, according to Sartre, will be only partial, if at all acceptable. The ethnographic and linguistic evolution, where no conscious mediations take place, are excluded from the gamut of Sartrian history. On the basis of the diachronic evolution of anthropological and linguistic structures for thousands of years in each society, however small it may be, Levi-Strauss argues, the only way we can understand human phenomenon of man's relation with nature and culture is to follow the individual structurations, exemplified best in the forms of myths which attest the repository of symbols, images, and mythemes in the unconscious psyche of any people. This ethnologic evolution guarantees the moral inconsistency and existential realisation of man across the vicissitudes of his varied history. The comprehension of man lies in the differences with others. 2. Levi-Strauss accuses Sartre of both ethnocentricity and ego-centricism. The Sartrian self is a prisoner of its own Cogito. The Cogito of Descartes enabled one to accede to the universal on the condition of its remaining psychological and individuaL that of Sartre only changes the prison . Now the group and the epoch will keep the subject enclosed in his shell. The Sartrian opposition of the " I" to the "Other" is extended, strangely enough, from the civilised to the primitive. Descartes cut man off from his society. Sartre cuts his society off · from other societies. As such, Sartrian existentialism remains captive of the problematics of its own society, and even when there is a discussion of anthropological differences; the primary concern is of the same nature as one fmds in the society that has nourished him. In ethnology, and linguistics, the notion of totality goes by itself. Without it, there can be no anthropological investigation. In philosophy, there has always been the tradition of abstract; absolute verity, verified with the concept of totality in terms of symbolic logic, and, in terms of constructed structures. These constructs are absolutely perfect, but they do not render account of the totality of natural human structures which are only constituting, and are always in disequilibrium, or, in a process of continuous dialectical relationship. In structural analysis, a totality is first decomposed analytically, then recomposed following its general dialectics . The Sartrian approach is admirable, says Levi-Strauss, but it is only a point of departure. It is an excellent example of a case study, of the French revolutionary dialectics of the individual and the group, in Critique and in Flaubert, but the method is so devised that with the difference in the nature of society, it becomes inapplicable. It is reduced to an inductive investigation while dialectics is primarily deductive. A Cogito that is enclosed in the individualistic empiricism gets lost in the impasse of social psychology. The text-objects of the analysis of existentialism and ethnography are very different from each other. When the scientist-subject places himself in a situation before the culture-object of different people, his 05/09/2013 Digitised by: EMMRC, Punjabi University, Patiala HISTORy AND DIALECTICS 193 whole perspective changes. The dialectical process remains the same, but its application undergoes certain changes according to the nature of the object. Marx had underscored this point when he emphasized the differences in conceptual framework for different modes of production. 3. The qualitative distinction, proposed by Sartre, between the primitive and the civilised in tenns of their "constituted" dialectics, vis-a-vis the constituting dialectics, is the real problem. Sartre, with all his sympathy for the underprivileged and his engagements to fight for their welfare, cannot accept that these primitive people have a culture which has undergone a series of mediations of the highest intellectual order. In ethnographic literature, there are nwnerous examples of the natives presenting complicated solutions of their kinship structures or mythemes . Sartre considers this knowledge as naive and synthetic. At the most, he accords to it the status of analytical reasoning, but as Levi-Strauss points out, the analytical reason is a dialectical reason in progress . 4. The ethnographic, cultural structures are best represented in a language whose structuration ofboth,diachronic and synchronic orders is realised in absolute objectivity visa -vis the subject. The rules of phonology or syntax are not due to any subjective mediation of the type referred to by Sartre. These linguistic structures are, in a way, situated outside the subject. They represent what may be called the unconscious heritage of a people. They are due to social praxis, and, their becoming is assured by collective participation. They are a resultant of interaction of parple, the speech variations within a community, with langue, the overall structure that ensures both continuity and consistency. This process of collective dialectics is common to language as well as other cultural vehicles of communication such as myths and symbols. Cultural symbols, archetypal or otherwise, are highly crystallised forms of communication structures which evolve over a period of centuries with the collective participation of a people. They englobe vast domains of semiotic complexes, and, are a product of intense intellectual activity. Their functions , like the functions of symbols in logic, are denotative which are comprehended at the level of cognition. The cultural heritage of man, like language or mythology, is a heritage whose logic or reasoning is not known to man. It represents a non-reflexive totality. 5. Sartre pretends to apply the "progressive-regressive" method which is quite common in human sciences. But, Levi-Strauss believes that Sartre leaves this method at its first step only, whereas that of Levi-Strauss is a continuous process . In ethnology, one begins with the contemporary facts followed by all possible information of the historical antecedents which can shed light on the synchronic structuration. Myths, for example, are both synchronic and diachronic at the same time. The historical prospection on synchrony is then observed across the transformations it undergoes horizontally. It is at the level ofthe transformational process that the hierarchy of historical mediations of different aspects of conceptual structuration is 05/09/2013 Digitised by: EMMRC, Punjabi University, Patiala 194 SEMIOTics oF CoNcEPTUAL STRUCTURES most evident. The original. individual totality is examined with reference to, and across, other totalities which are structurally related to it. The discovery of dialectical reason submits the analytical reason to an imperative exigence, that pf taking account of dialectical reason. This constant requirement forces a continuous extension of the programme of the analytical reason and transforms its axiomatics. The dialectical reason, however, cannot take stock of its own genesis, nor of the analytical reason. This open-end structural method leads to a profound understanding of the text-object. Sartre has not followed Marx and Freud in their totality. He has retained only half of their method. From the point of view of Marx and Freud, man has significance only when he is placed in a context of significance. But this significance is not all that "good", not all that complete: the superstructures are lost causes which find their realisation in a social milieu. It is, therefore, futile to look for the ''true" significance with the help of historical evidence. What Sartre calls dialectical reason is nothing but a reconstruction of hypothetical structuration which cannot alter the verity. Thus, Sartre makes use of his historicism to make a qualitative distinction between the primitve and the civilised. It is the so-called historical consciousness that defines the verity of social structures for Sartre. This is, in no way, a schema of concrete history, but an abstract schema of men making history as it can appear in its becoming in the fom1 of a synchronic totality. As such, Sartre situates himself vis-a-vis history, says LeviStrauss. as the primitives vis-a-vis the eternal past. Consequently, in the system of Sartre, history plays precisely the role of a myth . 6. The continuous and simultaneous structurations and transformations are the distinctive features of the intellection of mythology. In it are condensed both the synchronic and the diachronic aspects of an object. It represents an intellective activity of "bricolage" where the prospective ensemble of significance is applied on the historical, and, more often than not, pre-historical residues crystallised in the form of symbols and images, which are inhabited or ''possessed" by cultural significance. This structuration is prismatic. It resembles the infinity of images shown across a prism, each image presenting a totality that is interlinked with other totalities. These images are highly complex entities which can be collected and comprehended through parallel and corresponding transformations . Levi-Strauss calls this process of intellection, "analogic". The "constituted" structure ofSartre is a point of departure on which are exercised the operations of"constituting" structures, ad infinitum. Each element ofbricolage is apprehended in its "discontinuity", and, is placed in a situation of significance, that is accorded to it by the new structuration. The pre-historic residues are by definition found in a state of discontinuous equilibrium. This is, in fact, true of all other partial totalities that any history presents to man. These sub-ensembles are observed in a prospection of the global signifying ensemble. The mythical thought is thus situated at the cross-roads of perception and conception. It is always apprehended in its "becoming", in the process of its transfonnation. 05/09/2013 Digitised by: EMMRC, Punjabi University, Patiala H!STOR Y AND DIALECTICS 195 7. The text-object.of Sartre's Critique, the French Revolution, can be compared with the infinite images of a prism . It represents a multitude of events and their interactions at both the individual and the· collective levels. These "automatic" reactions are motivated by an inner subconscious nourished by the intense intellectual activity of the pre-revolutionary France, and the historical determinations of class Structure. The history of this revolution can lead to different prospections as we witness in the numerous "histories" of the French Revolution. These are all the histories of the historians which are critically analysed by Sartre. Each historical agent selects, divides, and reorganizes the sequence of events he wants to describe and interpret. There is no other method. There is no history in the absolute, pure sense ofthe tenn: it is always a "history for". There is the history of the Revolution for the Jacobins, and the other for the aristocracy. Both may report the events in their exactitude, but each of them places the events in a different ensemble of significance, exactly like the transformations operated upon mythology. The mythology of the French Revolution has its set of transformations, and, it is across these transformations that one can observe the variety of prospections, and, perhaps arrive at the interrelationships of different ensembles of "truth". This is all that a scientist means by the "intelligibility" of an ensemble of significance. The individual action and reaction are placed in the significance of that of the group, and, their prismatic union is analytically reorganised to present to the dialectical reason, a prospection of its constituting aspect. The human praxis is not an isolated phenomenon. It is neither closed in a given social milieu, nor in a given historical·process. There is an inbuilt interconnection between corresponding histories, but this correspondence is analogic and structural, and, not genetic. 05/09/2013 Digitised by: EMMRC, Punjabi University, Patiala