THE NATURE OF HUMAN SOCIETY SERIES

Editors:

JULIAN PITT-RIVERS and ERNEST GELLNER

THE SAVAGE
MIND
(La Pensee Sauvage)
Claude Levi- Strauss

WEID E N F E L D AND N I C O L S ON
5 W INSLEY STREET LONDON WI

 1962 by Librairie Plon, 8, rue Garanciere, Paris-6

English Translation 1966 by George Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd

Made and printed in Great Britain by

The Garden City Press Limited
Letchworth, Hertfordshire

To the Memory
of
Maurice Merleau-Ponty

. ,

CONTENTS

PREFACE

(i)

THE SCIENCE OF THE CONCRETE

THE LOGIC OF TOTEMIC CLASSIFICATIONS

35

SYSTEMS OF TRANSFORMATIONS

75

TOTEM AND CASTE

CATEGORIES, ELEMENTS, SPECIES, NUMBERS

1 35

UNIVERSALIZATION AND PARTICULARIZATION

161

THE INDIVIDUAL AS A SPECIES

TIME REGAINED

217

H I STORY AND D IALECTIC

245

BIBLIOGRAPHY

271

I ND EX

.(
i

I L L USTRAT I O NS

(Between pages I48 and I49)

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Francois Clouet. Portrait of Elizabeth of Austria. (Photo:

Musee du Louvre)
Club used for killing fish (Photo: Huillard)
The opposite of totem.sm : Naturalized Man. Sketch by Le
Brun
Humanized Nature. Sketch by Grandville (Bibl. Nationale)
Alphabet of Birds (Musee National des Arts et Traditions
Populaires. Photo: Huillard)
Society of Animals (Musee National des Arts et Traditions
Populaires. Photo: Huillard)
Australian Churinga (Photo: Bandy)
Aranda water-colours (Photos: Australian Information Service)

P REFACE

This book is complete in itself, b ut the problems it discusses are

closely linked to those which I surveyed more hastily in a recent
work entitled Totemism (trans. Rodney Needham, London, 1 964).
Without wishing to oblige the reader to refer to it, it is proper to
draw his attention to the connection between the two : the first
forms a kind of historical and critical introduction to the second. I
have not, therefore, deemed it necessary to return, here, to the
theories, definitions and facts which have already been dealt with
at sufficient length.
Nevertheless the reader should know what is expected of him
on opening these pages : that he acquiesce in the negative conclu
sion which the first volume reached in regard to totemism ; for,
once it is clear why I believe thatthe anthropologists of former times
were the prey to an illusion, it is time for me to explore totemism's
positive side.
No one will suppose that, by placing the name of Maurice
Merleau-Ponty on the first page of a book whose final chapter is
devoted to a work of Sartre, I have intended to oppose them to one
another. Those who were close to Merleau-Ponty and myself
during recent years know some of the reasons why it was natural
that this book which develops freely certain themes of my lectures
at the College de France should be dedicated to him. It would have
been, in any case, had he lived, as the continuation of a dialogue
whose opening goes back to 1 93 0 when, in company with Simone
de Beauvoir, we were brought together by our teaching activities,
on the eve of receiving our final degrees. And, since death has
torn him from us, may this book at least remain devoted to his
memory as a token of good faith, gratitude and affection.

THE SAVAGE MIND

THE SCIENCE OF THE CONCRETE

Small differences are noted . . . they have a name for every one of
the coniferous trees of the region ; in these cases differences are not con
spicuous. The ordinary individual among the whites does not distinguish
(them) . . . Indeed, it would be possible to translate a treatise on botany
into Tewa . . . (Robbins, Harrington and Freire-Marreco, pp. 9, 12).

Conklin quotes the following extract from his field notes to illus
trate the intimate contact between man and his environment which
the native is constantly imposing on the ethnologist:

E. Smith Bowen scarcely exaggerates in the amusing description

she gives of her confusion when, on her arrival in an African tribe,
she wanted to begin by learning the language. Her informants
found it quite natural, at an elementary stage of their instruction,
to collect a large number of botanical specimens, the names of
which they told her as they showed them to her. She was unable
she
to identify them, not because of their exotic nature but because
.
plant
the
of
diversities.
arJ.d
had never taken an interest in the riches
world. The natives on the other hand took such an interest for
granted.
These people are farmers : to them plants are as important and familiar
as people. I'd never been on a farm and am not even sure which are
begonias, dahlias, or petunias. Plants, like algebra, have a habit of looking
alike and being different, or looking different and being alike ; conse
quently mathematics and botany confuse me. For the first time in my life
I found myself in a community where ten-year-old children weren't my
mathematical superiors. I also found myself in a place where every plant,
wild or cultivated, had a name and a use, and where every man, woman
and child knew literally hundreds of plants . . . (my instructor) simply
could not realize that it was not the words but the plants which baffled
me (Smith Bowen, p. 1 9) .

The reaction of a specialist is quite different. In a monograph in

which he describes nearly three hundred species or varieties of
medicinal or toxic plants used by certain peoples of N9.I!Iler
Rhodesia, Gilges writes:
It has always been a surprise to me to find with what eagerness the
people in and around Balovale were ready and willing to talk about their
medicines. Was it that they found my interest in their methods pleasing?
Was it an exchange of information amongst colleagues? Or was it to show
off their knowledge? Whatever the reason, information was readily forth
coming. I remember a wicked old Luchozi who brought bundles of dried
leaves, roots and stems and told me about their uses. How far he was a
herbalist and how far a witch-doctor I could never fathom, but I regret
that I shall never possess his knowledge of African psychology and his art
in the treatment of his fellow men, that, coupled with my scientific
medical knowledge, might have made a most useful combination (Gilges,
p. 20).

At o6oo and in a light rain, Langba and I left Parina for Binli . . . At
Aresaas, Langba told me to cut off several 10 x so em. strips of bark from
an napla kilala tree (Albizzia procera (Roxb.) Benth.) for protection
agamst the leeches. By periodically rubbing the cambium side of the
strips of sapanceous (and poisonous : Quisumbling, 1 947, 148) bark over
our ankles and legs - already wet from the rain -soaked vegetation - we
produced a most effective leech-repellent lather of pink suds. At one spot
along the trail near Aypud, Langba stopped suddenly, jabbed his walking
stick sharply into the side of the trail and pulled up a small weed; tawag
kugum buladlad (Buchnera urticifolia R. Br.) which he told me he will use
as a lure . . . for a spring-spear boar trap. A few minutes later, and we
were going at a good pace, he stopped in a similar manner to dig up a
small terrestrial orchid (hardly noticeable beneath the other foliage)
known as liyamliyam (Epipogum roseum (D. Don.) Lindl.). This herb is
useful in the magical control of insect pests which destroy cultivated
plants. At Binli, Langha was careful not to damage those herbs when
searching through the contents of his palm leaf shoulder basket for apug
'slaked lime' and tabaku (Nicotiana tabacum L.) to offer in exchange for
other betel ingredients with the Binli folk. After an evaluative discussion
about the local forms of betel pepper (Piper betle L.) Langba got per
mission to cut sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas (L.) Poir.) vines of two
vegetatively distinguishable types, kamuti inaswang and kamuti lupaw
. . . In the camote patch, we cut twenty-five vine-tip sections (about
7 5 em. long) of each variety, and carefully wrapped them in the broad
fresh leaves of the cultivated saging saba (Musa sapientum compressa (Blco.
Teoforo) so that they would remain moist until we reached Langba's
place. Along the way we munched on a few stems of tubu minuma, a type
of sugar cane (Saccharum officinarum L.), stopped once to gather fallen
bunga area nuts (Areca catechu L.), and another time to pick and eat the
wild cherrylike fruits from some bugnay shrubs (Antidesma brunius (L.)
Spreng). We arrived at the Mararim by mid-afternoon having spent much
of our time on the trail discussing changes in the surrounding vegetation
in the last few decades! (Conklin I, pp. 1 5-17).

This knowledge and the linguistic means which it has at its dis
there are distinct terms
posal also extend to morphology. In
for all or ::t1most all the parts of
1;d mammals (Hendrsi:l
and Harrington, p. g). Forty tenns are employed in the morpho
logical description of the leaves of trees or plants,. and there are
fifteen distinct terms for the different parts of a maize plant.
The Hanug6o have more than a hl}ndred and fifty trms for the
parts and properties of_plants. These provide categories for the
7

THE SAVAGE MIND

knowledge of the whole precedes knowledge of the parts. And

even if this is an illusion, the point of the procedure is to create or
sustain the illusion, which gratifies the intelligence and gives rise to
a sense of pleasure which can already be called aesthetic on these
grounds alone.
I have so far only considered matters of scale which, as we have
just seen, imply a dialectical relation between size (i.e. quantity)
and quality. But miniatures have a further feature. They are 'man
made' and, what is more, made by hand. They are therefore not
just projections or passive homologues of the object : they con
stitute a real experiment with it. Now the model being an artefact,
it is possible to understand how it is made and this understanding
of the method of construction adds a supplementary dimension.
As we have already seen in the case of 'bricolage', and the example
of 'styles' of painters shows that the same is true in art, there are
several solutions to the same problem. The choice of one solution
involves a modification of the result to which another solution
would have led, and the observer is in effect presented with the
general picture of these permutations at the same time as the
particular solution offered. He is thereby transformed into an active
participant without even being aware of it. Merely by contemplat
ing it he is, as it were, put in possession of other possible forms
of the same work ; and in a confused way, he feels himself to be
their creator with more right than the creator himself because the
latter abandoned them in excluding them from his creation. And
these forms are so many further perspectives opening out on to the
work which has been realized. In other words, the intrinsic value
of a small-scale model is that it compensates for the renunciation
of sensible dimensions by the acquisition of intelligible dimensions.
Let us now return to the lace collar in Clouet's picture. Every
thing that has been said applies in this case, for the procedure
necessary to represent it as a projection, in a particular space, of
properties whose sensible dimensions are fewer and ,smaller than
that of the object is exactly the reverse of that which science would
have employed had it proposed, in accordance with its function, to
produce (instead of reproducing) not only a new, instead of an
already known, piece of lace but also real lace instead of a picture
of lace. Science would have worked on the real scale but by means
of inventing a loom, while art works on a diminished scale to
produce an image homologous with the object. The former

THE SCIENCE OF THE CONCRETE

approach is of a metonymical order, it replaces one thing by

another thing, an effect by its cause, while the latter is of a meta
phorical order.
This is not all. For if it is true that the relation of priority
between structure and event is exactly the opposite in science and
'bricolage', then it is clear that art has an intermediate position
from this point of view as well. Even if, as we have shown, the
depiction of a lace collar in miniature demands an intimate know
ledge of its morphology and technique of manufacture (and had it
been a question of the representation of people or animals we
should have said : of anatomy and physical attitudes), it is not just a
diagram or blueprint. It manages to synthesize these intrinsic
properties with properties which depend on a spatial and temporal
context. The final product is the lace collar exactly as it is but so
that at the same time its appearance is affected by the particular
perspective. This accentuates some parts and conceals others,
whose existence however still influences the rest through the con
trast between its whiteness and the colour of the other clothes, the
reflection of the pearly neck it encircles and that of the sky on a
particular day and at a particular time of day. The appearance of
the lace collar is also affected by whether it indicates casual or
formal dress, is worn, either new or previously used, either freshly
ironed or creased, by an ordinary woman or a queen, whose
physiognomy confirms, contradicts or qualifies her status in a
particular social class, society, part of the world and period of
history . . . The painter is always mid-way between design and
anecdote, and his genius consists in uniting internal and external
knowledge, a 1being' and a 'becoming', in producing with his brush
an object which does not exist as such and which he is nevertheless
able to create on his canvas. This is a nicely balanced synthesis of
_
one or more artificial and natural structures and one or more
natural and social events. The aesthetic emotion is the result of this
union between the structural order and the order of events, which
is brought about within a thing created by man and so also in effect
by the observer who discovers the possibility of such a union
through the ork of art.
Several points are suggested by this analysis. In the first place,
the analysis helps us to see why we are inclined to think of myths
both as systems of abstract relations and as objects of aesthetic
contemplation. The. creative act which gives rise to myths is in
25

., I
!

THE SAVAGE MIND

THE SCIENCE OF THE CONCRETE

fact exactly the reverse of that which gives rise to works of art.
In the case of works of art, the starting point is a set of one or more
objects and one or more events which aesthetic creation unifies by
revealing a common structure. Myths travel the same road but
start from the other end. They use a structure to produce what is
itself an object consisting of a set of events (for all myths tell a
story). Art thus proceeds from a set (object + event) to the dis
covery of its structure. Myth starts from a structure by means of
which it constructs a set (object + event).
The first point tempts one to generalize the theory. The second
might seem to lead to a restriction of it. For we may ask whether
it is in fact the case that works of art are always an integration of
structure and event. This does not on the face of it seem to be
true for instance of the cedarwood Tlingit club, used to kill fish,
which I have in front of me on my bookshelf (Plate z). The artist
who carved it in the form of a sea monster intended the body of the
implement to be fused with the body of the animal and the handle
with its tail, and that the anatomical proportions, taken from a
fabulous creature, should be such that the object could be the cruel
animal slaying helpless victims, at the same time as an easily
handled, balanced and efficient fishing utensil. Everything about
this implement - which is also a superb work of art - seems to be a
matter of structure : its mythical symbolism as well as its practical
function. More accurately, the object, its function and its sym
bolism seem to be inextricably bound up with each other and to
form a closed system in which there is no place for events. The
monster's position, appearance and expression owe nothing to the
historical circumstances in which the artist saw it, in the flesh or in
a dream, or conceived the idea of it. It is rather as if its immutable
being were finally fixed in the wood whose fine grain allows the
reproduction of all its aspects and in the use for which its empirical
form seems to pre-determine it. And all this applies equally to the
other products of primitive art : an African statue or ')- Melanesian
mask . . . So it looks as if we have defined only one local and
historical form of aesthetic creation and not its fundamental pro
perties or those by means of which its intelligible relations with
other forms of creation can be described.
We have only to widen our explanation to overcome this diffi
culty. What, with reference to a picture of Clouet's, was provision
ally defined as an event or set of events now appears under a

broader heading : events in this sense are only one mode of the
contingent whose integration (perceived as necessary) into a struc
ture gives rise to the aesthetic emotion. This is so whatever the type
of art in question. Depending on the style, place and period the
contingent plays a part in three different ways or at three distinct
points in artistic creation (or in all of them). It may play a part in
the occasion for the work or in the execution of the work or in the
purpose for which it is intended. It is only in the first case that it
takes the form of an event properly speaking, that is, of conting
ency exterior and prior to the creative act. The artist perceives it
from without as an attitude, an expression, a light effect or a
situation, whose sensible and intellectual relations to the structure
of the object affected by these modalities he grasps and incorpor
ates in his work. But the contingent can also play an intrinsic part
in the course of execution itself, in the size or shape of the piece of
wood the sculptor lays hands on, in the direction and quality of its
grain, in the imperfections of his tools, in the resistance which his
materials or project offer to the work in the course of its accomplish
ment, in the unforeseeable incidents arising during work. Finally,
the contingent can be extrinsic as in the frst case but posterior,
instead of anterior, to the act of creation. This is the case whenever
the work is destined for a specific end, since the artist will construct
it with a view to its potential condition and successive uses in the
future and so will put himself, consciously or unconsciously, in the
place of the person for whose use it is intended.
The process of artistic creation therefore consists in trying to
communicate (within the immutable framework of a mutual con
frontation of structure and accident) either with the model or with
the materials or with the future user as the case may be, according
to which of these the artist particularly looks to for his directions
while he is at work . Each case roughly corresponds to a readily
identifiable form of art : the first to the plastic arts of the West, the
second to so-called primitive or early art and the third to the
applied arts. But it would be an oversimplification to take these
identifications very strictly. All forms of art allow all three aspects
and they are qnly distinguished from one another by the relative
proportion of each. Even the most academic of painters comes up
against problems of execution, for example. All the so-called primi
tive arts can be called applied in a double sense : first, because many
of their productions are technical objects and, secondly, because

z6

27

THE SAVAGE MIND

THE SCIENCE OF T H E CONCRETE

It is necessary to add that the balance between structure and

event, necessity and contingency, the internal and external is a
precarious one. It is constantly threatened by forces which act in
one direction or the other according to fluctuations in fashion, style
or general social conditions. From this point of view, it would seem
that impressionism and cubism are not so much two successive
stages in the development of painting as partners in the same enter
prise, which, although not exact contemporaries, nevertheless
collaborated by complementary distortions to prolong a mode of
expression whose very existence, as we are better able to appreciate
today, was seriously threatened. The intermittent fashion for
'collages', originating when craftsmanship was dying, could not
for its part be anything but the transposition of 'bricolage' into the
realms of contemplation. Finally, the stress on the event can also
break away at certain times through greater emphasis either on
transient social phenomena (as in the case of Greuze at the end of
the eighteenth century or with socialist realism) or on transient
. natural, or even meteorological, phenomena (impressionism) at the
expense of structure, 'structure' here being understood as 'struc
ture of the same level', for the possibility of the structural aspect
being re-established elsewhere on a new plane is not ruled out.

sides to reach the same score (Read, p. 429). This is treating a game
as a ritual.
The same can be said of the games which t<>;ok place among the
Fox Indians during adoption ceremonies. Their purpose was to
replace a dead relative by a living one and so to allow the fnal
departure of the soul of the deceased.* The main aim of funeral rites
among the Fox seems indeed to be to get rid of the dead and to
prevent them from avenging on the living their bitterness and their
regret that they are no longer among them. For native philosophy
resolutely sides with the living : 'Death is a hard thing. Sorrow is
especially hard'.
Death originated in the destruction by superna.tural powers of
the younger of two mythical brothers who are cultural heroes
among all the Algonkin. But it was not yet final. It was made so by
the elder brother when, in spite of his sorrow, he rejected the
ghost's request to be allowed to return to his place among the
living. Men must follow this example and be firm with the dead.
The living must make them understand that they have lost nothing
by dying since they regularly receive offerings of tobacco and food.
In return they are expected to compensate the living for the reality
of death which they recall to them and for the sorrow their demise
causes them by guaranteeing them long life, clothes and something
to eat. ' It is the dead who make food increase', a native informant
explains. 'They (the Indians) must coax them that way' (Michelson
I, pp. 369, 407).
Now, the adoption rites which are necessary to make the soul of
the deceased finally decide to go where it will take on the role of a
protecting spirit are normally accompanied by competitive sports,
games of skill or chance between teams which are constituted on
the basis of an ad hoc division into two sides, Tokan and Kicko.
It is said explicitly over and over again that it is the living and the
dead who are playing against each other. It is as if the living offered
the dead the consolation of a last match before finally being rid of
them. But, since the two teams are asymmetrical in what they
stand for, the outcome is inevitably determined in advance :

We have seen that there are analogies between mythical thought on

the theoretical, and 'bricolage' on the practical plane and that
artistic creation lies mid-way between science and these two forms of
activity There are relations of the same type between games and
rites.
All games are defined by a set of rules which in practice allow the
playing of any number of matches. Ritual, which is also 'played',
is on the other hand, like a favoured instance of a game, reinexn
bered from among the possible ones because it is the only one
which results in a particular type of equilibrium between the two
sides. The transposition is readily seen in the case of the Gahuku
Gama of New Guinea who have learnt football but who will play,
several days running, as many matches as a;e necessary for both
if not more real than, the objects of the physical world, but rather realistic
imitations of non-existent models. It is a school of academic painting in which
each artist strives to represent the manner in which he would execute his pictures
if by chance he were to paint any.

30

. This is how it is when they play ball. When the man for whom the
adoption-feast is held is a Tokana, the Tokanagi win the game. The
Kickoagi cannot win. And if it is a Kicko woman for whom the adoption* See below, p. 199 n.

31

THE SAVAGE MIND

feast is given, the Kickoagi win, as in turn the Tokanagi do not win
(Michelson I, p. 3 85).

And what is in fact the case? It is clear that it is only the living who
win in the great biological and social game which is constantly
taking place between the living and the dead. But, as all the North
American mythology confrms, to win a game is symbolically to
'kill' one's opponent ; this is depicted as really happening in in
numerable myths. By ruling that they should always win, the dead
are given the illusion that it is they who are really alive, and that
their opponents, having been 'killed' by them, are dead. Under the
guise of playing with the dead, one plays them false and commits
them. The formal structure of what might at first sight be taken
for a competitive game is in fact identical with that of a typical
ritual such as the Mitawit or Midewinin of these same Algonkin
peoples in which the initiates get symbolically killed by the dead
whose part is played by the initiated ; they feign death in order to
obtain a further lease of life. In both cases, death is brought in but
only to be duped.
Games thus appear to have a disjunctive effect : they end in the
establishment of a difference between individual players or teams
where originally there was no indication of inequality. And at the
end of the game they are distinguished into winners and losers.
Ritual, on the other hand, is the exact inverse; it conjoins, for it
brings about a union (one might even say communion in this con
text) or in any case an organic relation between two initially separ
ate groups, one ideally merging with the person of the officiant and
the other with the collectivity of the faithful. In the case of games
the symmetry is therefore preordained and it is of a structural kind
since it follows from the principle that the rules are the same for
both sides. Asymmetry is engendered : it follows inevitably from
the contingent nature of events, themselves due to intention, chance
or talent. The reverse is true of ritual. There is an asymmetry which
is postulated in advance between profane and sacred, faithful and
officiating, dead and living, initiated and uninitiated, etc., and the
'game' consists in making all the participants pass to the winning
side by means of events, the nature and ordering of which is
genuinely structural. Like science (though here again on both the
theoretical and the practical plane) the game produces events by
means of a structure ; and we can therefore understand why com
petitive games should flourish in our industrial societies. Rites
32

T H E SCIENCE OF T H E C ONCRETE

an n:yths, on the other hand, like 'bricolage' (which these same

societies only tolerate as a hobby or pastime), take to pieces and
r:construct sets of events (on a psychical, socio-historical or tech
meal plane) and us the as so many indestructible pieces for
structural patterns ll1 which they serve alternatively as ends or
means.

33

THE SAVAGE MIND

T H E L O G I C O F T O T E M I C C LA S S I F I C A T I O N S

superfluous to conjure up the bizarre hypotheses suggested to

philosophers by too theoretical a view of the development of
human knowledge. Nothing here calls for the intervention of a
so-called 'principle of participation' or even for a _mysticism
embedded in metaphysics which we now perceive only through
the distorting lens of the established religions.
The way in which this concrete knowledge works, its means
and methods, the affective values with which it is imbued are to
be found and can be observed very close to us, among those of
our contemporaries whose tastes and profession put them in a
situation in relation to animals which, mutatis mutandis, comes as
close as our civilization allows to that which is usual among all
hunting peoples, namely circus people and people working in
zoos. Nothing is more instructive in this respect, after the native
evidence just quoted, then the account given by the director of
the Zurich zoo of his first tete-a-tete - if one may so call it - with
a dolphin. He notes 'its exaggerated human eyes, its strange
breathing hole, the torpedo shape and colour of its body, the
completely smooth and waxy texture of its skin and not least its
four impressive rows of equally sharp teeth in its beak-like mouth',
but describes his feelings thus :

to invoke distinct principles to explain the conjunction of these

two attitudes in the thought of so-called primitive peoples.

Flippy was no fish, and when he looked at you with twinkling eyes from
a distance of less than two feet, you had to stifle the question as to whether
it was in fact an animal. So new, strange and extremely weird was this
creature, that one was tempted to consider it as some kind of bewitched
being. But the zoologist's brain kept on associating it with the cold fact,
painful in this connection, that it was known to science by the dull name,
Tursiops truncatus (Hediger, p. 1 38).

Comment like this from the pen of a man of science is enough to

show if indeed it is necessary, that theoretical knowledge is not
ip.compatible with sentiment and that knowledge can be both
objective and subjective at the same time. It also shows that the
concrete relations between man and other living creatures some
times, especially in civilizations in which science means 'natural
science', colour the entire universe of scientific knowledge with
their own emotional tone, which is itself the result of this primitive
identification and, as Rousseau saw with his profound insight,
responsible for all thought and society. But if a zoologist can
combine taxonomy and the warmest affection, there is no reason

Fallowing Griaule, Dieterlen and Zahan have established the

extensiveness and the systematic nature of native classification in
the Sudan. The Dagon divide plants into twenty-two main families,
some of which are further divided into eleven sub-groups. The
twenty-two families, listed in the appropriate order, are divided
into two series, one of which is composed of the families of odd
numbers and the other of those of even ones. In the former, which
symbolizes single births, the plants called male and female are
associated with the rainy and the dry seasons respectively. In the
latter, which symbolizes twin births, there is the same relation but
in reverse. Each family is also allocated to one of three categories :
tree, bush, grass ;* finally, each family corresponds to a part of the
body, a technique, a social class and an institution (Dieterlen I, 2).
Facts of this kind caused surprise when they were first brought
back from Africa. Very similar modes of classification had, how
ever, been described considerably earlier in America, and it was
these which inspired Durkheim's and Mauss's famous essay.
The reader is referred to it, but it is worth adding a few further
examples.
The Navaho ndians, who regard themselves as 'great classifiers',
divide living creatures into two categories on the basis of whether
they are or are not endowed with speech. The category of creatures
without speech consists of animals and plants. Animals are divided
into three groups, 'running', 'flying' and 'crawling'. Each of these
groups is further divided in two ways : into 'travellers by land' and
'travellers by water' and into 'travellers by day' and 'travellers by
night'. The division into species obtained by this means is not
always the same as that of zoology. Thus birds grouped in pairs
on the basis of a classification into male and female are in fact
sometimes of the same sex but of different kinds. For the assoda
tion is based on the one hand on their relative size and, on the
other, on their place in the classification of colours and the function
* Among the Fulani : plants with vertical trunks, climbing plants, creeping
plants, respectively subdivided into plants with and without thorns, with and
without bark and with or without fruit (Hampate Ba and Dieterlen, p. 23). Cf.
Conklin I, pp. 92-4 for a tripartite classification of the same type in the Philip
pines ('tree', 'creeper', 'grass') and Colbacchini, p . 202, for one in Brazil among
the Bororo ('trees' = land ; 'creepers' = air and 'marsh-plants' = water).

39

THE SAVA GE MIND

THE LOGIC OF TOTEMIC CLASSIFI CATI ONS

feet where maize will not ripen) further than it has perhaps ever
been done.
Over two hundred and fifty varieties are still distinguished in
native vocabulary and the figure was certainly higher in the past.
This taxonomy operates by using a term to designate the variety
and adding a qualifying adjective for each subvariety. Thus the
variety imilla 'girl' is subdivided either according to colour (black,
blue, white, red, blood-coloured) or according to other characteris
tics such as grassy, insipid, egg-shaped and so on. There are about
twenty-two main varieties which are subdivided in this way. In
addition, there is a general dichotomy between those which may
be eaten after simple cooking and those which can only be eaten
after being alternately frozen and fermented. A binomial taxonomy
also always uses criteria such as form (flat, thick, spiral, like cactus
leaf, lumpy, egg-shaped, in the shape of an ox tongue, etc.),
texture (mealy, elastic, sticky, etc.), or 'sex' (boy or girl) (La
Barre).
, It was a professional biologist who pointed out how many
errors and misunderstanding, some of which have only recently
been rectified, could have been avoided, had the older travellers
been content to rely on native taxonomies instead of improvising
entirely new ones. The result was that eleven different authors
between them applied the scientific name Canis azarae to three
distinct genera, eight species and nine different sub-species, or
again that a single v:ariety of the same species was referred to by
several different names. The Guarani of Argentine and Paraguay,
on the other hand, work methodically with names composed of
one, two or three terms. By this means they distinguish for
instance between large, small and medium felines : the dyagua ete
is the supreme example of the large feline, the mbarakadya ete of
the small wild cat. The mini (small) among the dyague (large)
correspond to the guasu (large) among the chivi, that is, the
medium-sized felines :

In a large part of the Cape York Peninsula in North Australia

foods are distinguished as 'plant' or ' animal' by means of two
special morphemes. The Wik Munkan, a tribe living in the valley
and estuary of the Archer River on the west coast, refine this
division . They prefix the name of every plant or food derived from
it with the term mai and every animal, as well as flesh or animal
food, with the term min. Similarly, yukk is used as a prefix for all
names of trees or terms referring to a stick, a piece of wood or
wooden object, koi for kinds of string and fibre, wakk for grasses,
tukk for snakes, kiimpan and wiink for straw and string baskets
respectively. And the same sort of construction of names with the
prefix ark allows types of scenery and their association to this or
that characteristic flora or fauna to be distinguished : ark tomp
sandbeach proper, ark tomp nintiin dune country behind the
beaches, ark pint'l coastal plains with brackish water, etc.
The natives are acutely aware of the characteristic trees, underscrub
and grasses of each distinct 'association area' , using this term in its
ecological sense. They are able to list in detail and without any hesitation,
the characteristic trees in each, and also to record the string, resin, grasses,
and other products used in material culture, which they obtain from each
association, as well as the mammals and birds characteristic of each
habitat. Indeed, so detailed and so accurate is their knowledge of these
areas that they note the gradual changes in marginal areas . . . My
informants were able to relate without hesitation the changes in fauna and
in food supply in each association in relation to the seasonal changes.

The native taxonomy allows the following zoological and botanical

genera, species and varieties to be distinguished : mai' watti'yi
(Dioscorea sativa var. rotunda, Bail.) ; yukk putta (Eucalyptus
papuana) - yukk pont (E. tetmdonta) ; tukk pol (python spilotes tukk oingorpiin (P. amethystinus) ; min piink (Macropus agilis) min ko'impia (M. rufus) - min lo'along (M. giganteus), etc. It is
therefore not too much to say, as the writer in question does, that
the arrangement of animals and plants, and the foods or tech
nological materials derived from them, bears some resemblance
to a simple Linnaean classification (Thomson pp. 1 65-7).

In general, native terms can be said to constitute a well-conceived

system, and, with a pinch of salt, they can be said to bear some resem
blance to our scientific nomenclature. These primitive Indians did not
leave the naming of natural phenomena to chance. They assembled tribal
councils to decide which terms best corresponded to the nature of species,
classifying groups and sub-groups with great precision. The preservation
of the indigenous terms for the local fauna is not just a matter of piety and
integrity ; it is a duty to science (Dennler, pp. 234 and 244).

In the face of such accuracy and care one begins to wish that every
ethnologist were also a mineralogist, a botanist, a zoologist and
even an astronomer . . . For Reichard's comment about the Navaho
applies not only to the Australians and Sudanese but to all or
almost all native peoples :

44

45

THE SAVAGE MIND

/'
'

1 , ! ,I

'
"

men by the supernatural animals who originally invented its tech

niques and procedures. The myths refer to them vaguely as 'bears'.
Informants seem to hesitate between the small black bear and
the animal termed glutton, wolverine or carcajou (Gulo luscus).
The specialists on the Hidatsa, such as Wilson, Densmore, Bowes
and Beckwith, did not altogether ignore the problem but they 1d
not attach great importance to it, since it was after all a mythcal
animal which was in question, and the identification of a myth1cal
animal might seem pointless, if not indeed impossible. In fac,
. however the whole interpretation of the ritual depends on th1s
identifiction. So far as interpretation of eagle hunting ritual is
concerned, bears are no help. But wolverines or carcajous - a
Canadian adaptation of an Indian word meaning 'bad-temper' are
' a different matter, for they have a very special place in folklore.
.
In the mythology of the Algonkin of the north-east the wolvenne
is the animal of craft and cunning. It is hated and feared by the
Eskimos of Hudson Bay as well as by the western Athapaskan and
coastal tribes of Alaska and British Columbia. If one pieces together
what is known about all these peoples one arrives at the same
explanation as that obtained independently from trappers by a
contemporary geographer : ' Gluttons are almost the only members
of the weasel family which cannot be trapped. They amuse them
selves in stealing not only trapped animals but also the hunter's
traps. The only way to get rid of them is to shot te' (Brouillette,
.
p. 55). Now, the Hidatsa hunt eagles by h1dmg m p1ts. Th ea?le
is attracted by a bait placed on top and the hunter catches 1t 1th
his bare hands as it perches to take !he bait. And so the techmque
.
presents a kind of paradox. Man is the trap but to play t1 part he
has to go down into the pit, that is, to adopt the pos1t10n ?f a
trapped animal. He is both hunter and hunted at the same tu1_1e.
The wolverine is the only animal which knows how to deal With
this contradictory situation : not only has it not the slightest fear
of the traps set for it ; it actually competes with the trapper by
stealing his prey and sometimes even his traps.
. .
It follows, if the interpretation which I have bgun to g1ve 1s
correct, that the ritual importance of eagle huntmg among he
Hidatsa is at least partly due to the use of pits, to the assumptwn
by the hunter of a particular low position (literally, and, as we a:e
.
just seen, figuratively as well) for capturing a quarry whch 1s m
the very highest position in an objective sense (eagles fly h1gh) and

so

THE LOGIC OF TOTEMIC CLASSIFICATIONS

also from a mythical point of view (the eagle being at the top of
the mythical hierarchy of birds).
Analysis of the ritual shows that it accords in every detail with
the hypothesis that there is a dualism between a celestial prey and
a subterranean hunter, which at the same time evokes the strongest
possible contrast between high and low in the sphere of hunting.
The extreme complexity of the rites which precede, accompany and
conclude an eagle hunt is the counterpart of the exceptional
position which eagle hunting occupies within a mythical typology
which makes it the concrete expression of the widest possilJle.
distance between a hunter and his game.
.
Some obscure features of the ritual become clear at the same
time, in particular the significance and meaning of the myths
which are told during hunting expeditions. They refer to cultural
heroes, capable of being transformed into arrows and masters of
the art of hunting with bows and arrows ; and therefore, in their
guise of wild cats and racoons, doubly inappropriate for the role
of bait in eagle hunting. Hunting w!th bows and arrows involves
the region or space immediately above the earth, that is, the .
atmospheric or middle sky : the hunter and his game meet in the
intermediate space. Eagle hunting, on the other hand, separates
them by giving them opposite positions : the hunter below the
ground and the game close to the empyrean sky.
Another striking feature of eagle hunting is that women have a
beneficial effect during their periods. This is contrary to the
belief held almost universally by hunting peoples, including the
Hidatsa themselves in the case of all except eagle hunting. What'
has just been said explains this detail also, when it is remembered
that in eagle hunting, conceived as the narrowing of a wide gulf
between hunter and game, mediation is effected, from the technical
point of view, by means of the bait, a piece of meat or small piece
of game, the bloodstained carcass of which is destined to rapid
decay. A first hunt to procure the bait is necessary in order for
the second hunt to take place. One hunt involves the shedding of
blood (by means of bows and arrows), the other does not (eagles
are strangled without any effusion of blood). The one hunt, which
consists in a close union of hunter and game, furnishes the means
of effecting a union between what is so distant that it looks
at first as if there is a gulf which cannot be bridged - except,_
precisely, by means of blood.
SI

THE SAVAGE MIND

Menstruation acquires a positive significance from three points

of view in a system of this kind. From a strictly formal point of
view, since one hunt is the reverse of the other, the role attributed
to menstruation is accordingly reversed. It is harmful in one case
because its similarity is too great, but it becomes beneficial in the
other where it has not only a metaphorical but also a metonymical
sense : it evokes the bait as blood and organic decay and the bait
is a part of the system. From the technical point of view the
bloodstained carcass, soon to be carrion, which is close to the
living hunter for hours or even days is the means of effecting the
capture, and it is significant that the same native term is used for
the embrace of lovers and the grasping of the bait by the bird.
Finally, at a semantic level, pollution, at least in the thought of
the North American Indians, consists in too close a conjunction
between two things each meant to remain in a state of 'purity'.
In the hunt at close quarters menstrual periods always risk
introducing excessive union which would lead to a saturation of
the original relation and a neutralization of its dynamic force by
redundancy. In the hunt at a distance it is the reverse. The
conjunction is inadequate and the only means to remedy its
deficiency is to allow pollution to enter. Pollution appears as
periodicity on the axis of successions or as putrefaction on that of
simultaneities.
One of these axes corresponds to the mythology of agriculture
and the other to that of hunting. This analysis therefore makes it
possible to arrive at a general system of reference allowing the
detection of homologies between themes, whose elaborate forms
do not at first sight seem related in any way. This result is of great
importance in the case of eagle hunting since it is to be found in
different forms (though always strongly imbued with ritual) almost
all over the American continent and among people of different
cultures, some hunters and some agriculturalists. The relatively
minor but positive role attributed to pollution by the Hidatsa, the
Mandan and the Pawnee (the variations of which can be interpreted
as a function of the social organization of each tribe) can therefore
be regarded as a particular case of something more general.
Another particular case is illustrated by the Pueblo myth of a
man betrothed to an eagle-girl. The Pueblo connect this myth
with another, that of the 'corpse-girl' and 'ghost-wife'. In this
case pollution has a function which is strong (involving the death,
52

THE L O G I C OF TOTEMI C CLASSIFICATIONS

instead of the sccess, of the hunter). For among the Pueblo, as

the Il_lYths explam, the blood of rabbits who are the prime object of
the ntual hunt must not be shed. Among the Hidatsa on the other
hand, it must be shed so that they can be used as th means of the
ritual hunt par excellence : the hunt of eagles, whose blood may
not be sed. The Pueblo indeed capture and rear eagles but they
do not kill them and some groups even refrain altogether from
keeping them for fear that they should forget to feed them and
let them die of hunger.
To return brieflytothe Hidatsa : other problems arise in connection
with the mythical role of the wolverine further north, in a region at
. area of the diffusion of this animal species.*
the ed?e of he aJor
I rIse this pomt to emphasize the fact that historical and geo
graphical problems, as well as semantic and structural ones, are
all related to the exact identification of an animal which fulfils a
mythical function : ulo luscus. This identification has an impor
.
tant beanng ?n the mterpretation of myths among peoples as far
from the regwn of the wolverine as the Pueblo or even in the
heart of tropical America, the Sherente of Central Brazil ho also
have the myth of the ghost wife. The suggestion is not however
that all these myths were borrowed from a northern culture in
spite of the great distance. Any question of this kind could arise
only in the case of the Hidatsa in whose myths the wolverine
figures explicitly. The most that can be said in the other cases is
tat analogos logical structures can be constructed by means of
different lexical resources. It is not the elements themselves but
only the relations between them which are constant.
This last remark leads us to another difficulty which must be
.
considered. The accurate identification of every animal, plant,
* The Hidatsa seem to have lived at various points in the state of North
Dakota for as long as their traditions go back.
As for the wolverine : it 'is a circumpolar species belonging to the northern
.
forested ara of both contments.
In North America it formerly ranged from the
northern hmit ?f trees south to New England and New York, and down the
Rocy Mounams t? Colorado, and down the Sierra Nevada to near Mount
.
Whitney! Cahforma (Nelson, p. 427). The Common Wolverine is found 'from
the Arctic Ocean and Baffin Bay southward and from the Pacific to the Atlantic
reaching the extreme north-eastern United States, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minne
sota, North Dakota, and down the Rocky Mountains into Utah and Colorado'
Anthony, p. I I). Speces W:hich appear to be synonymous have been reported
m the mountams of California and at Fort Union, North Dakota (id.).

53

1 J

!I

: !

THE SAVAGE MIND

THE LOGIC OF TOTEMIC CLASSIFICATIONS

stone, heavenly body or natural phenomenon mentioned in myths

and rituals is a complex task for which the ethnographer is rarely
equipped. Even this is not however enough. It is also necessary
to know the role which each culture gives them within its own
system of significances. It is of course useful to illustrate the
wealth and precision of native observation and to describe its
methods : long and constant attention, painstaking use of all the
senses, ingenuity which does not despise the methodical analysis
of the droppings of animals to discover their eating habits, etc.
Of all these minute details, patiently accumulated over the cen
turies and faithfully transmitted from generation to generation,
only a few are however actually employed for giving animals or
plants a significant function in the system. And it is necessary to
know which, since they are not constant from one society to another
so far as the same species is concerned.
The Iban or Sea Dayaks of South Borneo derive omens by
interpreting the song and flight of a number of species of birds.
The rapid cry of the Crested Jay (Platylophus galericulatus Cuvier)
is said to resemble the crackling of burning wood and so presages
the successful firing of a family's swiddens. The alarm cry of a
Trogon (Harpactes diardi Temminck) is likened to the death
rattle of an animal being slain and augurs good hunting. Again,
the alarm cry of the Sasia abnormis Temminck is supposed to get
rid of the evil spirits which haunt the crops by scraping them off
since it resembles the sound of a scraping knife. The 'laugh' of
another Trogon (Harpactes duvauceli Temminck) is a good omen
for trading expeditions and because of its brilliant red breast it is
also associated with the renown attending successful war and
distant voyages.
It is obvious that the same characteristics could have been given
a different meaning and that different characteristics of the same
birds could have been chosen instead. The system of divination
selects only some distinctive features, gives them an arbitrary
meaning and restricts itself to seven birds, the selection of which
is surprising in view of their insignificance. Arbitrary as it seems
when only its individual terms are considered, the system becomes
coherent when it is seen as a whole set : the only birds used in it
are ones whose habits readily lend themselves to anthropomorphic
symbolism and which are easy to distinguish from each other by
means of features that can be combined to fabricate more complex

messages (Freeman). Nevertheless when one takes account of the

wealth and diversity of the raw material, only a few of the innumer
able possible elements of which are made use of in the system,
there can be no doubt that a considerable number of other systems
of the same type would have been equally coherent and that no
one of them is predestined to be chosen by all societies and all
civilizations. The terms never have any intrinsic significance.
Their meaning is one of 'position' - a function of the history and
cultural context on the one hand and of the structural system in
which they are called upon to appear on the other.
Vocabulary already shows this selectiveness. In Navaho the
wild turkey is the bird which 'pecks' while the woodpecker is the
bird which 'hammers'. Worms, maggots and insects are grouped
under a generic term, meaning swarming, eruption, boiling,
effervescence. Insects are thus thought of in their larval state
rather than in their chrysalis or adult form. The name of the lark
refers to its extended hind claw while the English term 'horned
lark' derives from the protuberant feathers of its head (Reichard I,
pp. IO-I I).
When he began his study of the classification of colours among
the Hanun6o of the Philippines, Conklin was at first baffled by
the apparent confusions and inconsistencies. These, however,
disappeared when informants were asked to relate and contrast
specimens instead of being asked to define isolated ones. There
was a coherent system but this could not be understood in terms
of our own system which is founded on two axes : that of brightness
(value) and that of intensity (chroma). All the obscurities dis
appeared when it became clear that the Hanun6o system also has
two axes but different ones. They distinguish colours into relatively
light and relatively dark and into those usual in fresh or succulent
plants and those usual in dry or desiccated plants. Thus the natives
treat the shiny, brown colour of newly cut bamboo as relatively
green while we should regard it as nearer red if we had to classify
it in terms of the simple opposition of red and green which is
found in Hanun6o (Conklin 2).
In the same way, very closely related animals may often appear
in folklore but with a different significance in different instances.
The woodpecker and other birds of the same genus are a good
example. As Radcliffe-Brown has shown ( 2), the Australians'
interest in the tree-creeper is due to the fact that it inhabits the

54

55

THE SAVAGE MIND

THE L O G I C OF TOTEMIC CLASSIFICATIONS

hollows of trees ; but the Indians of the North American prairies

pay attention to quite a different feature ; the red-headed wood
pecker is believed to be safe from birds of prey since its remains
are never found (Schoolcraft). The Pawnee of the Upper Missouri,
a little further south (in common apparently with the ancient
Romans) associate the woodpecker with tempests and storms
(Fletcher 2), while the Osage associate it with the sun and stars
(La Flesche). The Iban of Borneo mentioned above give a sym
bolic role to one variety of woodpecker (Blythipicus rubiginosus
Swainson) because of its 'triumphal' song and the solemn warning
character attributed to its alarm cry. It is not of course exactly the
same bird which is in question in all these cases but the example
helps us to understand how different peoples can use the same
animal in their symbolism, employing unrelated characteristics,
habitat, meteorological association, cry, etc., the live or the dead
animal. Again, each feature can be interpreted in different ways.
The Indians of the south-west United States, who are agricult
uralists, regard the crow primarily as a garden pest, while the
Indians of the north-west Pacific coast, who live entirely by fshing
and hunting regard it as a devourer of carrion, and consequently,
of excrement. The semantic load of Corvus is different in the two
cases : plant in one, animal in the other ; man's rival when its
behaviour is like his own, his enemy when it is the reverse;
Bees are a totemic animal in Africa as well as in Australia. But
among the Nuer they are a secondary totem associated with
pythons, because the two species have similarly marked bodies. A
man who has pythons as a totem also refrains from killing bees or
eating their honey. There is an association of the same type
between red ants and cobras, because the literal meaning of the
latter is 'the brown one' (Evans-Pritchard 2, p. 68).
The semantic position of bees among the Australian tribes of
Kimberley is very much more complex. Their languages have
noun classes. Thus the Ngarinyin recognize three successive
dichotomies : first : into animate and inanimate things, then of the
animate class into rational and irrational, and finally, of the former
into male and female. In the languages with six classes, the class
of manufactured articles included honey as well as canoes on the
grounds that honey is 'manufactured' by bees just as canoes are
manufactured by men. It is thus understandable that in the

languages which have lost some classes animals and manufactured

goods have come to be grouped together (Capell).
There are cases in which one can make hypotheses with
regard to the logical nature of classification, which appear true
or can be seen to cut across the natives' interpretation. The
Iroquois peoples were organized into clans whose number and
names varied considerably from one to another. It is not however
unduly difficult to detect a 'masterplan' which is based on a funda
mental distinction between three kinds of clan : water clans (turtle,
beaver, eel, snipe, heron), land clans (wolf, deer, bear) and air
clans (sparrowhawk, ?ball). But even so the case of aquatic birds
is determined arbitrarily for being birds they could belong to the
air rather than to the water, and it is not certain that research into
the economic life, techniques, mythical imagery and ritual
practices would supply an ethnographic context rich enough to
decide this point.
The ethnographic data on the central Algonquain and the neigh
bouring Winnebago suggests a classification into five categories
which correspond, respectively, to land, water, the subaquatic
world, the sky and the empyream.* The difficulties begin when
one tries to classify each clan. The Menomini have fifty clans
which seem to be divisible into quadrupeds on dry land (wolf, dog,
deer), quadrupeds inhabiting swampy places (elk, moose, marten,
beaver, pekan), 'terrestrial' birds (eagle, hawk, raven, crow), aquatic
birds (crane, heron, duck, coot) and finally subterranean animals
(Hoffman, pp. 4 1-2). But this last category is particularly recalci
trant as many of the animals included in it (bear, turtle, porcupine)
could also be included in other classes. The difficulties would be
even greater in the remaining classes.
Australia presents similar problems. Durkheim and Mauss,
following Frazer, discussed the global classifications of tribes
like the Wotjobaluk, who bury their dead facing in a particular
direction which depends on the clan. (See illustration on
p. s S .)

s6

* 'Among the Winnebago, a number of other Siouan, and Central Algonquain

tribes, there was a fivefold classification; earth animals, sky animals, empyrean
animals, aquatic animals, and subaquatic animals. Among the Winnebago the
thunderbird belong to the empyrean ; the eagle, hawk, and pigeon, to the sky ;
the bear and wolf, to the earth ; the fish, to the water and the water spirit, below
the water' (Radin I, p. r 86).

57

THE SAVAGE MIND

nothing to suggest this in their designation as 'people of a different

speech' and 'white people' or as 'reds' and 'whites'. But why, one
may ask, are totems distinguished into 'uncles' and 'nephews' (in
the same way that the Hopi distinguish totems into 'mother's
brothers' on the one hand and 'father', 'mother' or 'grandmother'
on the other)* and why, more particularly, given this division, is it
sometimes the less 'important' animal which has the higher
position, wolves, for instance, being 'uncles' of bears and wildcats
those of the large felines called 'panthers' in the southern United
States? Again, why is the clan of the alligator associated with that
of the turkey (unless perhaps because both lay eggs) and that of
the racoon with the clan of the potato? In Creek thought the side
of the 'whites' is that of peace but the fieldworker was given a
hopelessly vague explanation : the wind (the name of a 'white' clan)
brings good, that is, peaceful, weather ; the bear and the wolf are
exceedingly watchful animals and therefore useful in the interests
of peace, etc. (Swanton I, p. 1 08 ff.).
The difficulties which these examples illustrate are of two types,
extrinsic and intrinsic. The extrinsic difficulties arise from our
lack of knowledge of the (real or imaginary) observations and the
facts or principles on which classifications are based. The Tlingit
Indians say that woodworms are 'clever' imd 'neat' and that land
otters 'hate the smell of human excretion' (Laguna, pp. 177, 1 88).
The Hopi believe that owls have a favourable influence on peach
trees (Stephen, pp. 78, 9 1 , 109). If these attributes were taken into
account in classifying these animals we might hunt for the key
indefinitely did we not happen to possess these small but precious
clues. The Ojibwa Indians of Parry Island number the eagle and
squirrel among their 'totems'. Fortunately a native text explains
that these animals are included as symbols of the trees they each
inhabit : hemlock trees ( Tsuga canadensis) and cedar trees ( Thuja
occidentalis) respectively (Jenness 2). The interest which the
Ojibwa have in squirrels is therefore really an interest in a kind <?f
tree. It has no connection with the great interest which the Asmat
of New Guinea also take in squirrels, for different reasons :

THE L O G I C OF TOTEMIC CLASSIFICATIONS

Parrots and squirrels are famous fruiteaters . . . and men about to go

headhunting feel a relationship to these beings and call themselves their
brothers . . . (because of the) parallelism between the human body and a
tree, the human head and its fruit (Zegwaard, p. 1 034).

A different kind of consideration leads to squirrels being forbidden

to pregnant women among the Fang of the Gabon. Squirrels
shelter in the holes of trees and a future mother who ate their flesh
would run the risk of the foetus copying a squirrel and refusing to
leave the uterus.* The same reasoning could equally well apply to
weasels and badgers, who live in burrows, but the Hopi follow a
different line of thought : they hold that the meat of these animals
is favourable to child-bearing because of their habit of working
their way through the ground and 'getting out' at some other
place when they are chased into a hole. They therefore help the
baby to ' come out quickly' - as a result of which they can also be
called on to make rain fall (Voth I, p. 34 n.).
An Osage ritual incantation makes a puzzling association
between a flower - Blazing Star (Lacinaria pycnostachya), a plant
used for food - maize, and a mammal - the bison. It would be
impossible to understand why they associate these things if an
independent source did not bring to light the fact that the Omaha,
who are closely related to the Osage, hunted bison during the
summer until blazing stars were in flower in the plains ; they then
knew that the maize was ripe and returned to their villages for the
harvest (Fortune I, pp. 1 8-9).
The intrinsic difficulties are of a different kind. They are due
not to our lack of knowledge of the objective characteristics used to
establish a connection between two or more terms in native
thought but to the polyvalent nature of logics which appeal to
several, formally distinct types of connection at the same time.
The Luapala of Northern Rhodesia provide a good illustration of
this feature. Their clans have the names of animals, plants or
manufactured articles and they are not 'totemic' in the usual sense

* An interpretation has been suggested in the case of an analogous distinction

in an African tribe: 'God is the father of the greater spirits of the air, and the
lesser of them are said to be children of his sons, of his lineage. The totemic
spirits are often said to be children of his daughters, that is, they are not of his
lineage, which is the Nuer way of placing them yet lower in the spiritual scale'
(Evans-Pritchard 2, p. 1 19).

* And not only squirrels : 'The worst danger threatening pregnant women is
from animal :Vho live or are caught in any sort of hole (in the ground, in trees).
One can posttively speak of a horror vacui. If a pregnant woman eats an animal
o this kind, te child might also want to stay in its hole, "in the belly", and a
_
ts to b expected. Similarly the parents must not, during this
dtcult btrth
penod, take out any btrds' nests which have been built into the hollows of trees,
and one of my employees, who had made a woman pregnant, absolutely refused
to make me a model of a loaf of cassava, on the grounds that it would have to be
hollow' (Tessman, vol. 2, p. 1 93).

6o

61

THE SAVAGE MIND

of the term, but, as among the Bemba and the Ambo, joking
relationships link them in pairs. The reasoning behind this has,
from our point of view, the same interest. As I showed in an
earlier book and am continuing to establish here, so-called
totemism is in fact only a particular case of the general problem of
classification and one of many examples of the part which specific
terms often play in the working out of a social classification.
The following clans stand in a joking relationship to each other
among the Luapula : the Leopard and Goat clans because the
leopards eat goats, the Mushroom and Anthill clans because
mushrooms grow on anthills, the Mush and Goat clans because
men like meat in their mush, the Elephant and Clay clans because
women in the old days used to carve elephants' footprints in the
ground and use these natural shapes as receptacles instead of
fashioning pots. The Anthill clan is linked with the Snake clan
and also with the Grass clan because grass grows tall on anthills
and snakes hide there. The Iron clan jokes with all clans with
animal names because animals are killed by metal spears and
bullets. Reasoning of this kind allows the definition of a hierarchy
of clans : the Leopard clan is superior to the Goat clan, the Iron
clan to the animal clans and the Rain clan to the Iron clan because
rain rusts iron. Moreover the rain clan is superior to all the other
clans because animals would die without it, one cannot make mush
(a clan name) without it, clay (a clan name) cannot be worked
without it, and so on (Cunnison, pp. 62-5).
The Navaho give many different justifications of the virtues they
ascribe to medicinal plants and their modes of employing them :
the plant grows near a more important medicinal plant ; one of the
plant's organs looks like a part of the body ; the odour (or feel or
taste) of the plant is 'right' ; the plant makes water the 'right' colour ;
the plant is associated with an animal (as food, or in habitat, or by
contact) ; the knowledge was revealed by the gods ; its uses were
learnt from someone else without any explanation : the plant is
found near a tree struck by lightning ; it is good for a certain ailment
in that part of the body or an ailment with similar effects, etc.
(Vestal, p. 58). The terms used to differentiate plant names among
the Hanun6o belong to the following categories : leaf shape, colour,
habitat, size/dimension, sex, habit of growth, plant host, growing
time, taste, smell (Conklin I, p. 131).
These examples, together with those given earlier, make it clear
6z

THE L O G I C OF TOTEMIC C LASSIFICATIONS

that such systems of logic work on several axes at the same time. '
The relations which they set up between the terms are most
commonly based on contiguity (snake and anthill among the
Luapula and also the Toreya of South India)* or on resemblance
(red ants and cobras which, according to the Nuer, resemble each
other in 'colour'). In this they are not formally distinct from other
taxonomies, even modern ones, in which contiguity and resem
blance also play a fundamental part : contiguity for discovering
things which 'belong both structurally and functionally . . . to a
single system' and resemblance, which does not require member
shp of the same system and is based simply on the possession by
objects of one or more common characteristics , such as all being
'yellow or all smooth, or all with wings or all ten feet high (Simpson,
pp. 3-4).
But other types of relation intervene in the examples we have
just examined. Relations may be established, in effect, on either
the sensibl lev:l the bodily markings of the bee and the pythons)
or on the mtelhg1ble level (the function of construction common
to the bee and the carpenter) : the same animal, the bee, functions,
as it were, at different levels of abstraction in two cultures. Again,
the connection can be close or distant, synchronic or diachronic
(the relation between squirrels and cedars for instance on the one
hand, and that between pottery and elephants' footprints on the
oter), static (mush and goat) or dynamic (fire kills animals, rain
'lulls' fire ; the flowering of a plant indicates that it is time to
return to the village), etc.
It is probable that the number, nature and 'quality' of these
logical axes is not the same in every culture, and that cultures could
be classified into richer and poorer on the basis of the formal
properties of the systems of reference to which they appeal in the
construction of their classifications. However, even those which
are the least well endowed in this respect employ logics of several
dimensions, the listing, analysis and interpretation of which would
require a wealth of ethnographic and general information which
is all too often lacking.
* 'The members of the sept, at times of marriage, worship anthills, which are
of snakes' (Thurston, vol. VII, p. 176). Similarly in New Guinea :
certam types of plans, as well as the animals and plants parasitic on them, are
thought of as belongmg to the same mythical and totemic unit' (Wirz, vol. II,
p. 21).

he h?mes

THE SAVAGE MIND

THE L O G I C OF TOTEMIC CLASSIFICATIONS

Two types of difficulties characteristic of 'totemic' logics have so

far been mentioned. The first is that we do not usually know
exactly which plants or animals are in question. We have seen that
an approximate identification is not adequate since native obser
vations are so precise and finally shaded that the place of each
element in the system often depends on a morphological detail or
mode of behaviour definable only at the level of varieties or sub
varieties. The Eskimos of Dorset carved effigies of animals out of
pieces of ivory no bigger than the head of a match with such
precision that, when they look at them under microscopes,
zoologists can distinguish varieties of the same species such as, for
example, the Common Loon and the Red Throated Loon
(Carpenter).
The second difficulty mentioned is that each species, variety
or subvariety could suitably fill a considerable number of different
roles in symbolic systems in which only certain roles are effectively
ascribed to them. The range of these possibilities is unknown to
us and for an understanding of the choices which are made we
need not only ethnographic data but also data from other sources zoological, botanical, geographical, etc. The rare cases where the
data are adequate make it clear that even neighbouring cultures
may construct totally different systems out of superficially identical
or very similar elements. If North American peoples can regard
the sun in some cases as a 'father' and benefactor and in others as
a cannibalistic monster thirsting for human flesh and blood, there
seems to be no limit to the variety of interpretations to be expected
when it is something as specific as the subvariety of a plant or
bird which is in question.
A comparison of colour symbolism among the Luvale of
Rhodesia and some Australian tribes of the north-east of the state
of South Australia provides an example of a case in which the
same very simple structure of opposites recurs but he semantic
loads are reversed. In the Australian tribes in question, the mem
bers of the matrilineal moiety of the deceased paint themselves
with red ochre and approach the body, while members of the other
moiety paint themselves with white clay and remain at a distance
from it. The Luvale also use red and white soil but white clay and
white meal are used by them as offerings to ancestral spirits and
red clay is substituted on the occasions of puberty rites because

64

red is the colour of life and fertility (C. M. N. White I, pp. 46-7).*
White represents the 'unstressed' situation in both cases, while
red - the chromatic pole of the opposition - is associated with
death in one case and with life in the other. In the Forrest River
district of Australia, members of a deceased person's own genera
tion paint themselves black and white and keep away from the
corpse while those of other generations do not paint themselves
and approach the corpse. 'Fhe opposition white/red is thus re
placed, without any change of semantic load, by an opposition
black + whitejO. Instead ofthe values given to white and red being
reversed, as in the previous case, the value of white (here associated
with black, a non-chromatic colour) remains constant, and it is the
content of the opposite pole which is reversed, changing from the
'super-colour' red to the total absence of colour. Finally, another
Australian tribe, the Bard, constructs its symbolism by means of
the opposition black/red. Black is the colour of mourning for even
generations (grandfather, Ego, grandson) and red the colour of
mourning for uneven generations (father, son), that is, those which
are not assimilated with the generation of the deceased (Elkin 4,
pp. 298 9). The opposition between two differently stressed terms
- life and death among the Luvale, ' someone else's death and "my"
death' in Australia - is thus expressed by pairs of elements taken
from the same symbolic chain ; absence of colour, black, white,
black + white, red (as the supreme presence of colour), etc.
The same fundamental opposition is found among the Fox, but
transposed from colour to sound. While the burial ceremony is in
progress 'those burying (the dead) talked to each other. But the
others did not say a thing to each other' (Michelson I, p. 41 1 ). The
opposition between speech and silence, between noise and the
absence of noise, corresponds to that between colour and the
absence of colour or between two chromatisms of different
degrees. These observations seem to make it possible to dispose of
theories making use of the concepts of ' archetypes' or a ' collective
unconscious'. It is only forms and not contents which can be
common. If there are common contents the reason must be sough
either in the objective properties of particular nature or artificial
entities or in diffusion and borrowing, in either case, that is,
outside the mind.
* As in China, where white is the colour of mourning and red the colour of
marriage.

, .

i
I
'

'!

,I
I, I
:

'

THE SAVAGE MIND

THE L O G I C OF TOTEMIC CLASSIFICATIONS

any such scheme, whether perceived consciously or not, should

have completely disappeared from native thought, and that after
this upheaval the three clan names might survive only as tradition
ally accepted titles with no cosmological significance. This outcome
is probably very common and explains why an underlying system
can sometimes be posited in theory even though it would be
impossible to reconstruct in practice. But it is also frequently the
case that things turn out otherwise.
On a first supposition the initial system will be able to survive
in the mutilated form of a binary opposition between sky and
water. Another solution could be derived from the fact that there
were originally three terms and that the number of the terms is
still the same at the end. The original three terms expressed an
irreducible trichotomy while the final three terms are the result of
two successive dichotomies ; between sky and water and then
between yellow and grey. If this opposition of colour were given a
symbolic sense, for instance with reference to day and night, then
there would be not one but two binary oppositions : sky/water and
day/night, that is a system of four terms.
It can be seen therefore that demographic evolution can shatter
the structure but that if the structural orientation survives the
shock it has, after each upheaval, several means of re-establishing a
system, which may not be identical with the earlier one but is at
least formally of the same type. Nor is this all. We have so far
considered only one dimension of the system and there are always
in fact several, not all of which are equally vulnerable to demog
raphic changes. Let us return to the beginning of the example. When
our imaginary society was at the stage of the three elements, the
division into three classes did not operate only on the plane of clan
names. The system rested on myths of creation and origin and
permeated the entire ritual. Even if its demographic basis collapses,
this upheaval will not have immediate repercussions on all planes.
The myths and rites will change, but only with a time-lag and as
if they possessed a certain residual vigour which for a time pre
served all or part of their original orientation. This latter will
therefore continue through the myths and rites, so as to maintain
new structural solutions along approximately the same lines as the
previous structure. If, for the sake of argument, we suppose an
initial point at which the set of systems was precisely adjusted, then
this network of systems will react to any change affecting one of

its parts like a motor with a feed-back device : governed (in both
senses of the word) by its previous harmony, it will direct the dis
cordant mechanism towards an equilibrium which will be at any
rate a compromise between the old state of affairs and the confusion
brought in from outside.
Whether they are historically correct or not, the traditional
legends of the Osage show that native thought itself may well
envisage this sort of interpretation, based on the hypothesis of a
structural adjustment of the historical process. When the ancestors
emerged from the bowels of the earth they were, according to
Osage tradition, divided into two groups, one peace-loving, vege
tarian and associated with the left side and the other warlike,
carnivorous and associated with the right. The two groups resolved
to ally themselves and to exchange their respective foods. In the
course of their wanderings, they met a third group, which was
ferocious and lived entirely on carrion, with whom they eventually
united. Each of the three groups was originally composed of seven
clans, making a total of twenty-one clans. In spite of the symmetry
of this three-clan division, the system was in disequilibrium since
the newcomers belonged to the side of war and there were fourteen
clans on one side and seven on the other. In order to remedy this
defect and to preserve the balance between the side of war and the
side of peace, the number of clans in one of the groups of warriors
was reduced to five and that in the other to two. Since then the
Osage camps, which are circular in shape with the entrance facing
east, consist of seven clans of peace occupying the northern half on
the left of the entrance and seven clans of war occupying the
southern half on the right of the entrance (J. 0. Dorsey I, 2). The
legend suggests twin processes. One is purely structural, passing
from a dual to a three-fold system and then returning to the earlier
dualism ; the other, both structural and historical at the same time,
consists in undoing the effects of an overthrow of the primitive
structure, resulting from historical events, or events thought of as
such : migrations, war, alliance. Now, the social organization of the
Osage, as it was to be seen . in the nineteenth century, in fact
integrated both aspects. Although they were each composed of the
same number of clans, the side of peace and the side of war were
in disequilibrium since one was simply 'sky' while the other, also
referred to as 'of the earth', consisted of two groups of clans
associated respectively with dry land and water. The system was

68

4-TSM

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THE L O G I C OF TOTEMIC CLASSIFICATIONS

thus at once historical and structural, composed of two and of

three classes, symmetrical and asymmetrical, stable and top
heavy . . .
Nowadays the reaction to a difficulty of the same kind is quite
different. Consider for instance this agreement to differ with which
a recent conference ended :

be explained by the combined action of two forces, one of demo

graphic origin which pushes it towards disorganization and the
other of speculative inspiration which pushes it towards a reorgani
zation as closely as possible in line with the earlier state of
affairs.
The Pueblo Indians provide a good example of this pheno
menon. Their villages present so many sociological variations on a
theme which looks as if it may be common to all of them. In
collecting data on the Hopi, Zuni, Keres and Tanoan, Kroeber at
one time believed he could show that 'a single, precise scheme
pervades the clan organization of all the Pueblos', even though each
village affords only a partial and distorted picture. This scheme
was supposed to consist of a structure with twelve pairs of clans :
rattlesnake - panther ; deer - antelope ; squash - crane ; cloud corn ; lizard - earth ; rabbit - tobacco ; Tansey-mustard - Chaparral
cock ; Katchina (raven - macaw ; pine - cotton wood) ; firewood
coyote ; a group of four clans (arrow - sun ; eagle - turkey) ; badger
- bear ; turquoise - shell or coral (Kroeber I, pp. 137-40).
This ingenious attempt to reconstruct a 'master plan' was
criticized by Eggan on the basis of fuller and less ambiguous
material than Kroeber had at his disposal in I 9 I s-I 6 when he made
his study. Another damaging argument could however also be
brought forward, namely that it does not seem possible that a
master plan should have survived the different demographic
changes in each village. Using Kroeber's own material, let us
compare the distribution of clans at Zuni (one thousand, six
hundred and fifty inhabitants in I 9 I 5 and in two Hopi villages of
the first mesa, the number of whose inhabitants Kroeber multi
plied by five (result : I ,6Io) to facilitate the comparison : see p. 72.
If one traces a curve showing the distribution of Zuni clans in
declining order of population and superimposes a curve of the
distribution of Hopi clans of the first mesa, it is clear that the
demographic development is different in the two cases and that the
comparison does not in principle allow the reconstruction of a
common plan (figure 3 , p. 72).
In these circumstances and even if we admit that Kroeber's
reconstruction may have done iolence to the facts at some points,
it is none the less remarkable that so many common elements and
systematic relations continue to exist in different local organiza
tions. This suggests a rigour, tenacity and fidelity to distinctions

M. Bertrand de JOUVENEL M. Priouret, would you like to say a few

words in conclusion?
It seems to me that we are faced with two
M. Roger PRIOURET
diametrically opposed theories. Raymond Aron follows the views of Andre
Siegfried, according to which there are two basic political attitudes in
France. This country is sometimes Bonapartist and sometimes Orleanist.
Bonapartism consists in the acceptance and even desire for personal
power, Orleanism in leaving the administration of public affairs to
representatives. In the face of crises like the defeat of 1 87 1 or a protracted
war like the one in Algiers, France changes in attitude, that is, turns from
Bonapartism to Orleanism as in 1 87 1 or from Orleanism to Bonapartism,
as on 1 3 May 1 95 8.
In my own view, on the other hand, the actual change, although not
entirely independent of these constants in French political temperament,
is connected with the upheavals which industrialization brings into
society. A different political analogy occurs to me. The coup d'etat of
2 December 1 85 1 corresponds to the first industrial revolution and
the coup d'etat of 1 3 May 1 95 8 to the second. In other words, history
shows that upheaval in the conditions of production and consumption
seems incompatible with parliamentary government and leads this
country to the form of authoritarian power which suits its temperament,
namely, personal power' (Sedeis, p. 20).
-

The Osage would probably have used these two types of opposi
tion, one synchronic and the other diachronic, as a point of
departure. Instead of expecting to be able to choose between them
they would have accepted both on the same footing and would
have tried to work out a single scheme which allowed them to
combine the standpoint of structure with that of event.
Considerations of the same kind could undoubtedly provide an

intellectually satisfying explanation of the curious mixture of

divergencies and parallels characteristic of the social structure of
the five Iroquois nations and, on an historically and geographically
larger scale, of the similarities and differences exhibited by the
Algonkin of the east of the United States. In societies with unilin
ear exogamous clans, the system of clan name is almost always
mid-way between order and disorder. And this, it seems, can only
70

7I

THE SAVAGE MIND

the aesthetic and the logical, and those who have tried to define
them in terms of only one or the other aspect have therefore
necessarily failed to understand their nature. Between the basic
absurdity Frazer attributed to primitive practices and beliefs and
the specious validation of them in terms of a supposed common
sense invoked by Malinowski, there is scope for a whole science
and a whole philosophy.

CHAPTER T H R E E

SYSTEMS OF TRAN S FO RMAT I O N S

As we have just seen, the practico-theoretical logics governing the

life and thought of so-called primitive societies are shaped by the
insistence on differentiation. The latter is already evident in the
myths underlying totemic institutions (Levi-Strauss 6, pp. 27-8
and 36--7) and it is also found on the plane of technical activity,
which aspires to results bearing the hallmark of permanence and
discontinuity. Now, on the theoretical as well as the practical plane,
the existence of differentiating features is of much greater impor
tance than their content. Once in evidence, they form a system
which can be employed as a grid is used to decipher a text, whose
original unintelligibility gives it the appearance of an uninterrupted
flow. The grid makes it possible to introduce divisions and con
trasts, in other words the formal conditions necessary for a
significant message to be conveyed. The imaginary example
discussed in the last chapter showed how any system of differen
tiating features, provided that it is a system, permits the organiza
tion of a sociological field which historical and demographic
' evolution are transforming and which is hence composed of a
theoretically unlimited series of different contents.
The logical principle is always to be able to oppose terms which
previous impoverishment of the empirical totality, provided it has
been impoverished allows one to conceive as distinct. How to
oppose is an important but secondary consideration in relation to
this first requirement. In other words, the operative value of the
systems of naming and classifying commonly called totemic derives
from their formal character : they are codes suitable for conveying
messages which can be transposed into other codes, and for
74

75

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SYSTEMS OF TRANSFORMATIONS

which was found, then the child may not even touch the tree on
which it grows. Ingestion or contact are regarded as a sort of
auto-cannibalism. The relation between the person and the object
is so close that the person possesses the characteristics of the object
with which he is identified. If, for example, it was an eel or sea
snake which was found, the child will, like these, be weak and
indolent, if a hermit crab, it will be hot-tempered ; or again, it will
be gentle and sweet-natured like the lizard, thoughtless, hasty and
intemperate like the rat or, if it was a wild apple which was found,
it will have a big belly the shape of an apple. These identifications
are also to be found at Motlav (the name of a part of Saddle Island)
(Rivers, p. 462). The connection between an individual on the one
hand and a plant, animal or object on the other is not general ; it
only affects some people. It is not hereditary and it does not involve
exogamous prohibitions between the men and women who happen
to be associated with creatures of the same species (Frazer vol. II,
pp. 8 1-3 , pp. 89-9 1 (quoting Rivers), and vol. IV, pp. 286-7).
Frazer regards these beliefs as the origin and explanation of those
found at Lifu in the Loyalty Islands and at Ulawa and Malaita in
the Solomon Islands. At Lifu a man before he dies sometimes
indicates the animal (or bird or butterfly) in whose form he will be
reincarnated. All his descendants are then forbidden to eat or kill
this animal. 'It is our ancestor', they say, and offerings are made to
it. Similarly Codrington observed that in the Solomon Islands
(Ulawa) the inhabitants refused to plant banana trees or eat
bananas because an important person, so he could be reincarnated
in them, had once forbidden it before his death.* In Central
Melanesia the origin of food taboos must therefore be sought in the
fanciful imaginations of particular ancestors. Frazer believed that
they were the indirect result and distant repercussions of the
cravings and sickly imaginings common among pregnant women.
He held that this psychological trait, which he elevated to the status
of a natural and universal phenomenon, was the ultimate origin of
all totemic beliefs and practices (Frazer, vol. II, pp. 106-7 et
passim).
The fact that the women of his period and circle of society

experienced cravings when they were pregnant and that the savage
Australian and Melanesian women also did so was enough to
convince Frazer of the universality and natural origin of the
phenomenon. He would have had otherwise to dissociate it from
nature and attribute it to culture, thus admitting that there could
in some way be direct, and so alarming, resemblances between late
nineteenth century European societies and those of the cannibals.
Now, apart from the fact that there is no evidence that pregnant
women the world over have crvings, their incidence has dimin
ished considerably in Europe in the last fifty years and they may
even have disappeared altogether in some sections of society. They
certainly occurred in Australia and Melanesia but in the form of an
institutional means of defining in advance certain aspects of the
status of persons or groups. And in Europe itself, it is unlikely that
the cravings of pregnant women will survive the disappearance of
a similar type of belief which fosters them - on the pretext of
referring to them - in order to diagnose (not predict) certain
physical or psychological peculiarities noticed after (not before) a
child's birth. Even if it were the case that the cravings of pregnant
women had a natural basis, this latter could not account for beliefs
and practices which, as we have seen, are far from being general
and which can take different forms in different societies.
Further, it is not clear what made Frazer give the 'sick fancies' of
pregnant women priority over those of old men at death's door,
except perhaps the fact that people must be born before they can
die. But by this reasoning all social institutions should have come
into existence in the course of a single generation. Finally, had the
system of Ulawa, Malaita and Lifu been derived from that of
Motlav, Mota and Aurora, the remains or survivals of the latter
should be found in the former. What is striking, however, is that the
two systems are exact counterparts of each other. There is nothing
to suggest that one is chronologically prior to the other. Their
relation is not that of an original to a derivative form. It is rather
that between forms symmetrically the reverse of each other, as if
system represented a transformation of the same group.
Instead of trying to discerg the priorities, let us think in terms of
groups and attempt to define their properties. We can summarize
these properties as a triple opposition : between birth and death on
the one hand, and between the individual or collective nature
either of a diagnosis or of a prohibition on the other. It is worth

* This fact is confirmed by Ivens, pp. 269-70, who puts forward a somewhat
different interpretation. However, he cites other prohibitions originating in
reincarnation of an ancestor. Cf. pp. 272, 468 and passim. Cf. also C. E. Fox for
beliefs of the same type at San Cristoval.

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SYSTEMS OF TRANSFORMATIONS

do not henceforth observe a taboo on this totem themselves. On the other

hand . . . they do observe a rigid prohibition on eating their madu, social
totem, which however is not the object of a cult (Elkin za, p. 1 8o).

Elkin's objection to Spencer and Gillen's account is therefore that

the supposition that the totemic spirits pass through a complete
cycle is inconsistent because it would involve a mixture of two
forms of totemism which, as he himself holds, cannot be assimi
lated. The most one could admit is that the cult totems which are
patrilineal, alternate between the two moieties within any given
male line.
Without claiming to decide, I shall restrict myself to referring
the reader to objections of principle which I have elsewhere put
forward against the analyses of Elkin with regard to particulars. It
is also worth pointing out that Spencer and Gillen were acquainted
with Arabanna culture when it was still intact while, on his own
admission, Elkin saw it only in an already advanced state of decay.
Even if Elkin's qualifications had to be accepted it would still be
the case that it is the living who pass through a cycle among the
Aranda while among their southern neighbours it is the dead. In
other words, what looks like a system among the Aranda is dupli
cated among the Arabanna into a prescription on the one hand and
a theory on the other. For the regulation of marriage by the assess
ment of totemic incompatibilities described by Elkin is a purely
empiral procedure, while the cycle of spirits obviously depends
only on theoretical considerations. There are also other differences
between the two groups which correspond to genuine inversions
and can be seen on all planes : matrilineal/patrilineal ; two moieties/
eight sub-sections ; systematic totemismfstatistical totemism ; and,
if Spencer and Gillen's analyses are exhaustive : exogamous
totemismfnon-exogamous totemism. It will also be observed that
the Aranda subsections are of great functional yield, since they are
transitive : the children of a marriage X = y are Z, z, that is, of a
different (social) group from their parents. The Araba:nna (totemic)
groups (the sociological function of which is also to regulate
marriage) have on the other hand a weak functional yield because
they are intransitive : the children of a marriage X = y are Y, y,
reproducing only their mother's group. Transitivity (whole or
partial according to whether Spencer and Gillen's or Elkin's
account is adopted) occurs only in the Arabanna spirit world where

a society similar to that of the living among the Aranda is

reproduced.
Finally, the same inversion can be seen in the role which terri
toriality plays in each tribe. The Aranda treat it as having a real
and absolute value. It is the only clearly meaningful content in
their system for from the beginning of time each place has always
belonged to one and only .one totemic species. Among the Ara
banna, due to the spirits' ability to move through a cycle, locality
loses much f its significance and the value accorded to it is
relative and formal. The totemic places are ports of call rather than
ancestral homes.
Let us now compare the social structure of the Aranda with that
of the Warramunga, a people further north who are also patrilineal.
Among the Warramunga totems are connected with moieties, that
is, their function is the reverse of the one which they have among
the Aranda and analogous (although in a different way) to that
which they have among the Arabanna, and their geographical
position is also the reverse in relation to the Aranda, being their
northern, while the Arabanna are their sourthern, neighbours.
Like the Arabanna, the Warramunga have paternal and maternal
totems, but, in contrast to what occurs among the Arabanna, it is
the paternal totems which are prohibited absolutely. The maternal
totems are permitted through the agency of the opposite moiety.
Among the Arabanna, on the other hand, it is the paternal totems
which are allowed to the opposite moiety through the offices of
the cult groups belonging to the same moiety.
The role given to the opposite moiety indeed lends itself to an
analysis by transformation. There is no reciprocity between
moieties in the rites of increase among the Aranda : each cult group
performs its rites as it pleases for the benefit of other groups who
are themselves free to eat the food made more abundant only
through the auspices of the officiating group. Among the Warra
munga, on the other hand, the moiety which eats the food actively
intervenes to make the other moiety perform the ceremonies from
which it benefits.
This difference leads to other related ones. In one case the rites
of increase are an individual, in the other a group, affair. Among
the Aranda the performance of the rites of increase, which is left
to the initiative of the man whose property they are, is of a statistical

84

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THE SAVAGE MIND

SYSTEMS OF TRANSFORMATIONS

it bears witness to the continuity of the individual over time, the

possibility of which might seem to be excluded by the Aranda
conception of mythical times.*
All these transformations could be systematically set out. The
Karadjera among whom a man dreams the totemic affiliation of his
future child, furnish an instance of a case the reverse of the Aranda
where it is the woman who experiences it. The increasingly exacting
nature of totemic prohibitions in North Australia provide a sort of
'culinary' equivalent of the restraints on marriage imposed by a
system with eight exogamous sub-sections. Thus some peoples
forbid a man, conditionally or absolutely, to eat not only his own
totem but also those of his father, his mother, his father's father
(or mother's father). Among the Kauralaig of the islands north of
Cape York Peninsula a person recognizes as a totem not only his
own but also those of his father's mother, mother's father and
mother's mother ; and marriage is forbidden in the four corres
ponding clans (Sharp, p. 66). The eating prohibitions resulting from
the belief that an ancestor is reincarnated in a species of animal or
plant were discussed above. The same type of structure is found in
the Melville and Bathurst islands but this time on the linguistic
plane. All the homophones of the name of the deceased are avoided
by his descendants even if they are terms in current use with only a
remote phonetic resemblance to it.t It is words rather than
bananas which are forbidden. The same ideas appear and disappear
in different societies either identical or transposed from one level
of consumption to another, sometimes applying to the treatment
of women, sometimes to that of foods, sometimes to the words
used in speech.
It is perhaps because Spencer and Gillen's material related to a
comparatively limited number of Australian tribes and was at the
same time remarkably full for each, that they were more acutely
aware than their successors of the systematic relations between the
different types. Later specialists' horizons came to be confined to
the small area which they themselves were studying ; and the sheer
quantity of data, together with their own caution, deterred even
those who did not abandon the idea of synthesis from looking for

laws. The greater our knowledge, the more obscure the overall
scheme. The dimensions multiply, and the growth of axes of
reference beyond a certain point paralyses intuitive methods : it
becoes impossible to visualize a system when its representation
.
reqmres a contmuum of more than three or four dimensions. But
the day may come when all the available documentation on Austra
lian tribes is tansfer ed to punched cards and with the help of a

computer the1r ent1re techno-economic, social and religious

structures can be shown to be like a vast group of transformations.
The idea is the more attractive since it is at least possible to
see why Australia should be a particularly favourable field for such
an experiment, more so than any other continent. In spite of the
contact and inter-change with the outside world which has also
taken place in Australia, Australian societies have probably
developed in isolation more than appears to have been the case
else';here. Moreover, this development was not undergone
.
pass1vely. It was des1red and conceptualized, for few civilizations
seem to equal the Australians in their taste for erudition and
speculatio? and wht sometimes looks like intellectual dandyism,
o d as th1s expresswn may appear when it is applied to people
.
wth so rud1mer:tary a level of material life. But lest there be any
m1stake about 1t : these shaggy and corpulent savages whose
physical resemblance to adipose bureaucrats or veterans of the
Empire makes their nudity yet more incongruous, these meticulous
a?epts in pactics which seem to us to display an infantile perver
slty - mampulatwn and handling of the genitals tortures the
'
industrious use of their own blood and their own excretion and
secretions (like our own more . discreet and unreflectina
habit of
b
m01stenmg postage stamps with saliva) were, in various respects,
eal snobs. They have indeed been referred to as such by a special1st, born and brought up among them and speaking their language
(T. G. H. Strehlow, p. 82). When one considers them in this light
it seems less surprising that as soon as they were taught accom
plishmets of leisure, they prided themselves on painting the dull
and studed water-colous one might expect of an old maid (Plate 8).
Grantmg that Austraha has been turned in on itself for hundreds
of thousands of years,* that theorizing and discussion was all the

* Cf. below, p. 238.

t As in various Indian tribes where the prohibition on uttering the names of
parents-in-law extends to all the words of which these names were composed.
Cf. below, p. 176.

* With the undoubted exception of the northern regions and these were not
witout contact with the rest of the continent. This is therefore only an approxi
matiOn.

88

SYSTEMS OF TRANSFORMATIONS

THE SAVAGE MIND

rage in this closed world and the influence of fashion often para
mount, it is easy to understand the emergence of a sort of common
philosophical and sociological style along with methodically
studied variations on it, even the most minor of which were
pointed out for favourable or adverse comment. Each group was
no doubt actuated by the only apparently contradictory incentives
of being like others, as good as others, better than others and
different from others, that is, of constantly elaborating themes only
the general outlines of which were fixed by tradition and custom.
In short, in the field of social organization and religious thought,
the Australian communities behaved like the peasant societies of
Europe in their manner of dressing in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. That each community had its own dress and
that this was composed of roughly the same elements for men and
women respectively was never called in question. It was in wealth
or ingenuity of detail alone that people tried to distinguish them
selves from, and to outdo, the neighbouring village. All women
wore coifs but they were different in different regions. In France
marriage rules of an endogamous kind were expressed in terms of
coifs ('Marry within the coif') just as Australian rules (of an
exogamous kind) were expressed in terms of sections or totemism.
Here, as elsewhere, among the Australian aborigines as in our own
peasant societies the combination of general conformity (which is
a feature of a closed world) with the particularism of the parish
results in culture being treated like themes and variations in music.
It is therefore conceivable that the favourable historical and geo
graphical conditions outlined have led to Australian cultures stand
ing in a relation of transformation with each other, possibly more
completely and systematically than those of other regions of the
world. But this external relation must not make us neglect the
same relation, this time internal, which exists, in a very much more
general fashion, between the different levels of a single culture.
As I have already suggested, ideas and beliefs of the .'totemic' type
particularly merit attention because, for the societies which have
constructed or adopted them, they constitute codes making it
possible to ensure, in the form of conceptual systems, the con
vertibility of messages appertaining to each level, even of those
which are so remote from each other that they apparently relate
solely to culture or solely to society, that is, to men's relations with
each other, on the one hand, or, on the other, to phenomena of a

1.'1

technical or economic order which might rather seem to concern

man's relations with nature. This mediation between nature and
culture, which is one of the distinctive functions of the totemic
opeator, ena?les us to sift out what may be true from what is
partial and distorted in Durkheim's and Malinowski's accounts.
They each attempted to immure totemism in one or other of these
two domains. In fact however it is pre-eminently the means (or
hope) of transcending the opposition between them.
This has been brought out very clearly by Lloyd Warner in the
case of the Murngin of Arnhem Land. These North Australians
xplain the origin of things by a myth which is also the basis of an
Iportant part of their ritual. At the beginning of time the Wawilak
sisters set off on foot towards the sea, naming places, animals and
plats as the went. One of them was pregnant and the other
arned her chll. Before their departure they had both indeed had
mcestuous reatwns with men of their own moiety.
After the birth of the younger sister's child, they continued their
.
JOUrney and one day stopped near a water hole where the great
snake Yurluggur lived who was the totem of the Dua moiety to
.
WIch the Sisters belonged. The older sister polluted the water
With menstrual blood. The outraged python came out caused a
deluge of rain and a general flood and then swallowed the women
and their children. When the snake raised himself the waters
covred the entire earth and its vegetation. When he lay down
agam the flood receded.
As Warner explains, the Murngin consciously associate the snake
.
With the rainy season which causes the annual inundation. In this
area the vaious seasonal changes are so regular that, as a geo
grpher ? omts out, hey can be pr:dicted almost to the day.
Ramfall IS often as high as fifty or sixty inches in two or three
months. It increases from just two inches in October to some ten
inches in ecember and fifteen in January. The dry season comes
equally rapidly. The graph of the rainfall recorded at Port Darwin
over a period of forty-six years might be a picture of the snake
Yurlunggur raised above his water hole with his head in the sky
and flooding the earth (figure 6, p. 92).
This division of the year into two contrasting seasons, one of
seven months and extremely dry and the other of five months with
heavy rainfll and grea tides which flood the coastal plains for
scores of miles, leaves Its mark on native thought and activities.
91

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THE SAVAGE MIND

SYSTEMS OF TRANSFORMATIONS

state of affairs. There are two seasons just as there are two sexes,
two societies, two degrees of culture (the 'high' - that of the
initiated - and the 'low' ; cf. Stanner I, p. 77 for this distinction).
On the natural plane, however, the good season is subordinate to
the bad, while on the social plane the relation between the corres
ponding terms is reversed. It is therefore necessary to decide how
to interpret the contradiction. If the good season is said to be male
on the grounds that it is superior to the bad season and that men
and the initiated are superior to women and the uninitiated (a
category to which women also belong) then not only power and
efficacy but sterility as well would have to be attributed to the
profane and female element. This would be doubly absurd since
social power belongs to men and natural fertility to women. The
other alternative is equally contradictory but its inconsistency can
at least be disguised by the double division of the whole society
into the two classes of men and women (now ritually as well as
naturally differentiated) and the group of men into the two classes
of old and young, initiated and uninitiated, according to the
principle that the uninitiated stand in the same relation to the inia
ted in the societyof men as women do to men within the society as
a whole. But in consequence men forego embodying the happy side
of existence for they cannot both rule and personify it. Irrevocably
committed to the role of gloomy owners 'of a happiness accessible
only through an intermediary, they fashion an image of themselves
on the model of their sages and old men ; and it is striking that two
types of people, women on the one hand and old men on the other,
constitute, as the means to and the masters of happiness respec
tively, the two poles of Australian society and that to attain full
masculinity young men must temporarily renounce the former and
lastingly submit to the latter.
The sexual privileges which old men enjoy, the control they
exercise . over an esoteric culture and sinister and mysterious
initiation rites are undoubtedly general features . of Australian
societies, and examples could also be found in other parts of the
world. I do not wish to claim that these phenomena are attributable
to what are obviously local natural conditions. In order to avoid
misunderstandings and in particular the charge of reviving an old
geographical determinism, this needs to be explained.
The first point is that natural conditions are not just passively
accepted. What is more they do not exist in their own righJ for

they are a function of the techniques and way of life of the people
who define and give them a meaning by developing them in a
particular direction. Nature is not in itself contradictory. It can
become so only in terms of some specific human activity which
takes part in it ; and the characteristics of the environment take on
a different meaning according to the particular historical and
technical form assumed in it by this or that type of activity. On
the other hand, even when raised to that human level which alone
can make them intelligible, man's relations with his natural
environment remain objects of thought : man never perceives them
passively ; having reduced them to concepts, he compounds them
in order to arrive at a system which is never determined in
advance : the same situation can always be systematized in various
ways. The mistake of Mannhardt and the Naturalist School was to
think that natural phenomena are what myths seek to explain, when
they are rather the medium through which myths try to explain
facts which are themselves not of a natural but a logical order.
The sense in which infrastructures are primary is this : first, man
is like a player who, as he takes his place at the table, picks up cards
which he has not invented, for the cardgame is a datum of history
and civilization. Second, each deal is the reult of a contingent
distribution of the cards, unknown to the players at the time. One
must accept the cards which one is given, but each society, like
each player, makes its interpretations in terms of several systems.
These may be common to them all or individual : rules of the game
or rules of tactics. And we are well aware that different players will
not play the same game with the same hand even though the rules
set limits on the games that can be played with any given one.
To explain the noticeable frequency of certain sociological
solutions, not attributable to particular objective conditions, appeal
must be made to form and not content. The substance of contra
dictions is much less important than the fact that they exist, and
it would be a remarkable coincidence if a harmonious synthesis of
the social and natural order were to be achieved at once. Now, the
form contradictions take varies very much less than their empirical
content. The poverty of religious thought can never be over
estimated. It accounts for the fact that men have so often had
recourse to the same means for solving problems whose concrete
elements may be very different but which share the feature of all
belonging to 'structures of contradiction'.

94

95

THE SAVAGE MIND

To return to the Murngin : one can see clearly how the system
of totemic symbols permits the unification of heterogeneous
semantic fields at the cost of contradictions which it is the function
.
'
of ritual to surmount by 'acting' them : the rainy season literally
engulfs the dry season as men 'possess' women, and the initiated
'swallow up' the uninitiated, as famine destroys plenty, etc. The
example of the Murngin is not however unique. There are sugges
tive indications of a 'coding' of a natural situation in totemic terms
in other parts of the world also. A specialist on the Ojibwa, reflect
ing on the symbolization of thunder as a bird which is so common
in North America, makes the following remark :
According to meteorological observations, the average number of days
with thunder begins with one in April, increases to a total of five in mid
summer (July) and then declines to one in October. And if a bird caledar
is consulted, the facts show that species wintering in the South begm to
appear in April and disappear for the most part not later than October . . .
The avian character of the Thunder Birds can be rationalized to some
degree with reference to natural facts and their observation (Hallowell, p.
32).

One must refer to meteorological data, as Warner did in the case

of Australia, to give a correct account of the personification of
natural phenomena, common in the Hawaiian pantheon. The gods
Kane-hekili (Male-in-the-form-of-gentle-rain), Ka-poha-Ka-a
(Male [
sky]-the-rock-roller) who is the same as Ka'uila
nuimakeha (Male- [ sky]-lightning-flash-great-streaking), etc.,
cannot be distinguished and accurately placed without certain
relevant information :
=

The downpours, which come in late January, February and March

predominantly and with greatest frequency and violence, develop in the
following sequences of meteorological phenomena : lowering dark cumu
lus over sea and uplands, with atmospheric stillness inducing an increasing
sense of ominous oppression ; 'dry' thunder, sharp and threatening if near,
like distant cannon if far away : followed very soon by slow, gentle pre
cipitation which increases rapidly to a downpour; with continuing heavy
thunder hen in the cloud and rain shrouded uplands, resounding and
thuddin , slo ly passing along the ridges or round the mountain's flank
and often then out to sea, where it resounds in dull thuds, and may return
in a direction opposite to that along the ridge, a phenomenon produced
by the miniature cyclonic action of winds, and by convection (Handy and
Pukui, part IV, p. 1 25 n).

If totemic representations amount to a code which makes it possible

to pass from one system to another regardless of whether it is
96

SYSTEMS OF TRANSFORMATI ONS

formulated in natural or cultural terms, then it may perhaps be

asked why it is that they are accompanied by rules of conduct. At
first sight at least totemism, or what is claimed as such, is some
thing more than a mere language. It does not just set up rules of
compatibility and incompatibility between signs. It is the basis of
an ethic which prescribes or prohibits modes of behaviour. Or at
least this consequence seems to follow from the very common
association of totemic modes of representation with eating
prohibitions on the one hand and rules of exogamy on the other.
The first answer is that this supposed association is the result of
a petitio principi. If totemism is defined as the joint presence of
animal and plant names, prohibitions apply to the corresponding
species and the forbidding of marriage between people of the same
name and subject to the same prohibition, then clearly a problem
arises about the connection of these customs. It has however long
been known that any one of these features can be found without the
others and any two of them without the third.
That this is so is particularly clear in the case of eating prohibi
tions, which form a vast and complex set of which the prohibitions
referred to as totemic (that is those resulting from a group's
affinity with a natural species or class of phenomena or objects) are
only a particular case. The Ndembu sorcerer, who is primarily a
diviner, must not eat the flesh of bush-buck because of its irregu
larly spotted hide, for if he did so his divination would stray from
the main point. There is a prohibition on the zebra for the same
reason, on animals with dark coats (which would cast a shadow
over his clairvoyance), on a species of fish with sharp bones because
they might prick the diviner's organ of divination, the liver, and
on several sorts of spinach with slippery leaves because they might
cause his powers of divination to slip away from him (V. W.
' Turner 2, pp. 47-8).
A Luvale boy may urinate only against the following trees during
the time of his initiation : Pseudo achnostylus deckendti, Hymeno
card_ia mollis, Afrormosia angolensis, Vangueriopsis lancijlora,
Swartzia madagascarinensis. These are hard woods symbolizing
the penis in erection, their fruits being associated with fertility and
life. He is also forbidden to eat the flesh of various animals : Tilapia
melanopleura, a fish with a red belly, the colour of blood ; Sarco
daces sp. and Hydrocyon sp. which have sharp teeth symbolizing
the painful after-effects of circumcision ; Clarias sp. whose slimy
97

THE SAVAGE M I N D

skin symbolizes difficulty in the healing of the scar; the genet whose
spotted skin symbolizes leprosy ; the hare with his sharp teeth and
'hot' chillies which symbolize painful healing, etc. Female
initiates are subject to analogous prohibitions (C. M. N. White, I,
2).
These prohibitions have been mentioned because they are
specialized, well-defined and rationalized with precision. They can
readily be distinguished from totemic prohibitions within the
general category of eating prohibitions and contrasted with them.
But Tessman's list of the very large number of prohibitions of the
Fang of the Gabon includes examples of intermediate as well as
extreme types - which explains why the question of whether the
Fang are totemic has been so hotly contested even by those
believing in the concept of totemism.
The prohibitions which the Fang call by the general term beki
may apply to men or to women, to the initiated to the uninitiated,
to adolescents or adults, to households in which a child is expected
or to those in which it is not. The reasons given for them are more
over of very different kinds. The inside of elephants' tusks may not
be eaten because it is a soft and bitter substance. The trunk of the
elephant may not be eaten for fear of softening limbs, sheep and
goats lest they communicate their panting. Squirrels are forbidden
to pregnant women because they make childbirth difficult (cf.
above [p. 61]). Mice are specially forbidden to girls because they
shamelessly steal manioc while it is being washed and the girls
would run the risk of being 'stolen' in the same way. Mice are
however also more generally forbidden because they live near
homesteads and are regarded as members of the family. Some
birds are avoided for such reasons as their ugly cry or their physical
appearance. Children may not eat the larvae of dragonfly because
it might make them unable to hold their urine.
The idea of a dietetic experiment envisaged by Tessman has
recently been taken up by Fischer with respect to the natives of
Ponapy who believe that the violation of food taboos results in
physiological disorders very like allergies. Fischer shows that
allergic disorders often have a psychosomatic origin even among
ourselves : in many patients they result from the violation of a
taboo of a psychological or moral kind. This apparently natural
symptom derives, then, from a cultural diagnosis.
Among the Fang, of whose prohibitions I have mentioned only
98
' ,, 1
,,

SYSTEMS OF TRANSFORMATIONS

a few taken at random from Tessman's imposing list, it is rather a

matter of religious analogies : horned animals associated with the
moon ; chimpanzee, pig, python, etc. because of their symbolic role
in particular cults. That the prohibitions result not from intrinsic
properties of the species to which they apply but from the place
they are given in one or more systems of significance is clearly
shown by the fact that the guinea fowl is forbidden to initiates of
the female cult Nkang while in male cults the reverse rule holds :
the cult animal is permitted to initiates but forbidden to novices
, (Tessman vol. 2, pp. 184-93).
Food prohibitions may therefore be organized into systems
which are extra- or para-totemic. Conversely, many of the systems
traditionally regarded as totemic include prohibitions which do not
concern food. The only prohibition on food recorded among the
Bororo of Brazil attaches to the meat of deer, a non-totemic species;
but the animals or plants after which clans and sub-clans are
named appear not to be objects of particular prohibitions. The
privileges and prohibitions associated with clans are found on a
different plane : that of techniques, raw materials and ornaments.
Each clan disting?ishes itself from others, especially at festivals,
by the use of certam feathers, mother-of-pearl and other substances
whose form and fashioning as well as nature are strictly laid down
for each clan (Levi-Strauss 2, ch. 1 9).
The northern Tlingit who inhabit the coast of Alaska also have
jealously guarded clan crests and emblems. But the animals
, depicted or evoked are only prohibited in a mock fashion : the
Wolf clan may not rear wolves nor the Crow clan crows and mem
bers of the Frog clan are said to he afraid of frogs (McClellan).
he central Algonkin have no food prohibitions applying to
the1r clans' eponymous animals. Clans are primarily differentiated
by the way they paint their bodies, their special clothes and the
custom of a special ceremonial food for each. Clan prohibitions are
never or hardly ever eating ones among the Fox and they are of
the most diverse kinds. The Thunder clan is not allowed to draw
on the west side of tree trunks nor to take their clothes off to wash.
The Fish clan is forbidden to build dams and the Bear clan to
climb trees. The Buffalo clan may not skin any cloven-footed
animal nor look at these animals while they are dying. Members of
the Wolf clan must not bury anyone belonging to their clan and
must not strike dogs of any kind. The Bird clan must not do any
99

r, , l

: I'

'

I ,

!I
I

'

, I

I I

THE SAVAGE MIND

SYSTEMS OF TRANSFORMATIONS

the food of this food. This remarkable transformation has been

found among some Chippewa Indian groups where the totem may
be killed and eaten but not insulted. If a native laughs at or insults
the eponymous animal of some other native, the latter informs his
clan. The clan prepares a feast preferably consisting of the food of
the totemic animal, for instance berries and wild nuts if the animal
in question is a bear. The insulter is formally invited and made to
gorge himself until he is, as the informants say, 'ready to burst' and
is prepared to recognize the power of the totem (Ritzenthaler).
Two conclusions can be drawn from these facts. In the first place
the fact that some species are forbidden and others permitted is not
attributable to the belief that the former have some intrinsic
physical or mystic property which makes them harmful but to the
concern to introduce a distinction between 'stressed' and 'unstres
sed' species (in the sense linguists give to these terms). Prohibiting
some species is just one of several ways of singling them out as
significant and the practical rules in question can thus be thought
of as operators employed by a logic which, being of a qualitative
kind, can work in terms of modes of behaviour as well as of images.
From this point of view some of the older reports may appear more
worthy of attention than has generally been supposed. The social
organization of the Wakelbura of Queensland, in east Australia,
was said to consist of four classes which were strictly exogamous
but, as one might put it, 'endo-culinary'. Durkheim already had
doubts about this last feature and Elkin points out that the evidence
for it depends on only a single, not very reliable, source. Elkin also
however mentions that a similar situation is depicted in Aranda
mythology : the totemic ancestors lived entirely on their own
particular food, while today the opposite is true : each totemic
group lives on the other totems and forbids its own.
This comment of Elkin's is important because it shows that the
suggested organization of the Wakelbura can be transformed into
Aranda institutions simply by inverting all its ten:IJ,S. Among the
Aranda totems are not relevant to marriage but they are relevant
to eating : totemic endogamy can take place while endo-cuisine
cannot. Among the Wakelburo where endo-cuisine is obligatory,
totemic endogamy seems to have been subject to a particularly
strict prohibition. The tribe in question has of course long been
extinct and the data on it are contradictory. (Compare the account
given by Frazer vol.. I, p. 423 and that given by Durkheim, p. 2 1 5,

n. 2). It is however striking that the symmetry with Aranda

institutions remains whichever account is accepted. The difference
is only that the relation between marriage rules and eating rules
would be supplementary in one case and complementary in the
other. Now, the examples of the feminine or masculine Fang cults
made it clear that 'the same thing' can be said by means of rules
which are formally identical but whose content alone is the
reverse. And in the case of Australian societies, when the 'stressed'
foods are few or even, as often, consist of a single species, their
prohibition provides the most effective method of differentiation.
But, if the number of stressed foods should increase (a common
phenomenon, as we have seen [p. 88] in the northern tribes who
respect their mother's, father's and mother's mother's totems as
well as their own) it is easy to see that, without any change in the
spirit of the institutions on that account the distinguishing stresses
would be reversed and as in photography, the 'positive' would be
easier to read than the 'negative' although both convey the same
information.
Eating prohibitions and obligations thus seem to be theoretically
equivalent means of ' denoting significance' in a logical system some
or all of whose elements are edible species. These systems can how
ever themselves be of different types, and this leads to a second
conclusion. There is nothing to suggest the existence of totemism
among the Bushmen of South Mrica in spite of their complicated
and exacting prohibitions on food. This is because their system
operates on a different plane.
All game killed by means of bows and arrows is forbidden, soxa,
until the chief has eaten a piece of it. This prohibition does not
apply to the liver which the hunters eat on the spot, but which
remains soxa to women in all circumstances. In addition to these
general rules, there are permanent soxa for certain functional or
social categories. For example, the wife of the man who killed the
animal can only eat the superficial covering of meat and fat of the
hindquarters, the entrails and the trotters. These pieces constitute
the portion reserved for women and children. The adolescent boys
have a right to the flesh of the abdominal wall, kidneys, genital
organs and udders and the person who killed the animal to the
ribs and shoulder blade from one side of it. The chief's part con
sists of a thick steak from each quarter and each side of the back
and a cutlet taken from each side (Fourie, p. 55).

1 02

1 03

THE SAVAGE MIND

;r

'!

'I

, ,
i I

Ii

It might seem at first sight as if no system could be less like one

of 'totemic' prohibitions. Nevertheless a very simple transforma
tion allows one to pass from one to the other. One need only
substitute ethno-anatomy for ethno-zoology. Totemism postulates
a logical equivalence between a society of natural species and a
world of social groups. The Bushmen postulate the same formal
equivalence but in their case it is between the parts making up an
individual organism and the functional classes making up the
society, that is to say, the society itself is thought of as an organism.
Natural and social groupings are homologous in both cases and the
selection of a grouping in one order involves the adoption of the
corresponding grouping in the other, at least as a predominant form.*
The next chapter will be devoted entirely to an analysis of the
same kind (that is, one of a transformation within a group) of the
empirical relations which are found between endogamy and
exogamy. All that I want to do now is to indicate the connection
between this problem and the one which has just been discussed.
In the first place there is an empirical connection between
marriage rules and eating prohibitions. Among both the Tikopia of
Oceania and the Nuer of Mri<;a a husband abstains from eating
animals or plants which his wife may not eat. The reason for this
is that ingested food contributes to the formation of the sperm and
he would otherwise introduce the forbidden foods into his wife's
body during intercourse (Firth I, pp. 3 1 9-20, Evans-Pritchard 2,
p. 86). In the light of the preceding discussion, it is interesting to
observe that the Fang use the reverse argument. One of the many
reasons given in support of the prohibition applying to the inside
of elephants' tusks is that the penis might become as limp as the
gums of the pachyderm (which are apparently particularly so).
Out of consideration for her husband, a wife also obeys this
prohibition lest she should enfeeble him during intercourse
(Tessman, vol. 2, p. 1 92).
* So-called totemic societies also practise anatomical division but they use it to
make secondary distinctions : those between sub-groups of groups or individuals
belonging to the group. There is therefore no incompatibility between the two
sorts of grouping. It is rather their respective positions in the logical hierarchy
which is to be treated as significant. I shall return to this later, cf. p. 174.
If, as G. Dieterlin points out, the Dogon associate totems and parts of the
body of a sacrificed ancestor, it is by applying a classificatory system with an
inter-tribal application. Consequently the totemic groupings within each tribe,
which are made to correspond to parts of the body, are in fact already secondary
units.

1 04
I ,

:I

SYSTEMS OF TRANSFORMATIONS

Now, these comparisons are only particular instances of the very

profound analogy which people throughout the world seem to find
between copulation and eating. In a very large number of languages
they are even called by the same term.* In Yoruba 'to eat' and 'to
marry' are expressed by a single verb the general sense of which is
'to win, to acquire', a usage which has its parallel in French, wher
the verb 'consommer' applies both to marriage and to meals. In the
language of the Koko Yao of Cape York Peninsula the word kuta
kuta means both incest and cannibalism, which are the most
exaggerated forms of sexual union and the consumption of food.
For the same reason the eating of the totem and incest are expressed
in the same way at Ponapy ; among the Mashona and Matabele of
Mrica the word 'totem' also means 'sister's vulva', which provides
indirect confirmation of the equivalence between eating and
copulation.
If eating the totem is a kind of cannibalism then one understands
that the punishment of real or symbolic cannibalism should be
reserved for those who violate the prohibition - voluntarily or
otherwise. The symbolic roasting of the guilty in an oven in Samoa
i an example. And the equivalence is confirmed again by the
.
s1mllar custom found among the Wotjobaluk of Australia where a
man who has committed the crime of absconding with a woman
forbidden by the law of exogamy is really eaten by the totemic
group. Without going so far afield or invoking other exotic rites,
one can quote Tertullian : 'Through love of eating, love of impurity
finds passage' (De Jejune, I) and St. John Chrysostom : 'The
beginning of chastity is fasting' (Homilia I in Epistolam II ad
Thessalonicenses) .
These associations could be multiplied indefinitely. Those I have
given as examples show how hopeless it is to attempt to establish a
relation of priority between nutritional prohibitions and rules of
exogamy. The connection between them is not causal but metapho
rical. Sexual and nutritional relations are at once associated even
today. Cosider for instance slang expressions such as 'faire frire',
'passer a la casserole' etc. t But how is this fact and its universality
.
to be explamed? Here again the logical level is reached by semantic
impoverishment : the lowest common denominator of the union of
* Cf. Henry, p. 146 for a particularly telling South American example.

t i.e. 'fry' and 'put in the pot', terms used to refer to seduction as well as
cooking (trans. note).

10 5

f. .
'i ;

THE SAVAGE MIND

S Y S T E M S OF T R A N S F O R MA T I O N S

the sexes and the union of eater and eaten is that they both effect a
conjunction by complementarity :

animals but they adopt a communal attitude towards meat (in

terms of which animals distinct in species but edible resemble each
other as food). The group of attitudes can be represented in the
following way :

What is destitute of motion is the food of those endowed with locomo

tion ; (animals) without fangs (are the food) of those with fangs, those
without hands of those who possess hands, and the timid of the bold (The
Laws of Manu, v, 29).

I I
I '

The equation of male with devourer and female with devoured is

the more familiar to us and certainly also the more prevalent in the
world but one must not forget that the inverse equivalence is often
found at a mythological level in the theme of the vagina dentata.
Significantly enough this is 'coded' in terms of eating, that is,
directly (thus confirming the law of mythical thought that the
transformation of a metaphor is achieved in a metonymy). It may
also be the case that the theme of the vagina dentata corresponds to
a point of view, no longer inverted but direct, in the sexual
philosophy of the Far East where, as the works of Van Gulik show,
for a man the art of love-making consists essentially in avoiding
having his vital force absorbed by the women and in turning this
risk to his advantage.
This logical subordination of resemblance to contrast is clearly
illustrated in the complex attitude of some so-called totemic
peoples toward the parts of body of eponymous animals. The
Tikuna of the High Solimoes, who practise 'hypertotemic'
exogamy (the members of the Toucan clan cannot inter-marry
either among themselves or with the members of any clan called by
a bird name, etc.), freely eat the eponymous animal but they respect
and preserve a sacred part of it and use others as distinctive
ornaments (Alviano ). The totemic animal is thus resolved into an
edible part, a part to be respected and an emblematic part. The
Elema of Southern New Guinea observe a very strict prohibition
on eating their totems. Each clan however retains the exclusive
prerogative of using the beak, feathers, tail, etc. of its totem animal
for ornamental purposes (Frazer, vol. II, p. 41). There is thus in
both cases an opposition between edible and non-edible parts,
homologous to that between the categories of food and emblem. In
the case of the Elema it is expressed through a two-fold exclusivism
which may be either negative or positive : in relation to the totemic
species, each clan abstains from its meat but retains those parts of it
which display the characteristics of its species. The Tikuna are
equally exclusive with respect to the distinctive parts of the

i
I
'

I
I

i l

I I
i l

1 06
i

, I

I 'I I
I I

Tikuna:

Elema:

non-exclusive
\

exclusive

\
\
\
\
\
\
\
\
\
\
\
\
\
'
\

\
\
\
\
\
\
\
\
\

'
'

prohibition (-)

'

cedible parts
and common
properties)

prerogative C+>

( inedible

parts and
distinctive
properties)

The fur, feathers, beak and teeth can be mine because they are that
in which the eponymous animal and I differ from each other : this
difference is assumed by man as an emblem and to assert his
symbolic relation with the animal. The parts which are edible and
so can be assimilated are the sign of genuine consubstantiality but
which, contrary to what one might suppose, it is the real aim of
the prohibition on eating them to deny. Ethnologists have made
the mistake of taking only this second aspect into account and this
has led them to conceive the relation between man and animal to
be of a single kind : identity, affinity or participation. Matters are in
fact infinitely more complex : there is an exchange of similarities
and differences between culture and nature, sometimes as amongst
animals on the one side and man on the other and sometimes as
between animals and men.
The differences between animals, which man can extract from
nature and transfer to culture (either by describing them in terms
of opposites and contrasts and thus conceptualizing them or by
taking over concrete, non-perishable parts : feathers, beaks, teeth
which equally constitutes an 'abstraction') are adopted as emblems
by groups of men in order to do away with their own resemblances.
And the same animals are rejected as food by the same group of
men, in other words the resemblance between man and animal
resulting from the fact that the former can assimilate the flesh of

THE SAVAGE MIND

the latter is denied, but only in so far as it is perceived that te

reverse course would imply recognition on the part of men of thetr
common nature. The meat of any animal species must therefore not
be assimilated by any group of men.
It is clear that the second approach derives from the first, as a
possible but not necessary consequence : nutritional prohibitions
do not always accompany totemic classifications and the are
logically subordinate to them. They do not therefore ratse a
separate problem. If, by means of nutritional prohibitio?s, I?en
.
refuse to attribute a real animal nature to thetr humamty, tt ts
because they have to assume the symbolic characteristics by which
they distinguish different animals (and which furnish them with a
natural model of differentiation) to create differences among
themselves.

I I
, ,

CHAPTER F O U R

T O TEM AND C A S T E

Both the exchange of women and the excha11ge of food are means
of securing or of displaying the interlocking of social groups with
one another. This being so, we can see why they may be found
either together or separately. They are procedures of the same type
and are indeed generally thought of as two aspects of the same
procedure. They may reinforce each other, both performing the
actual function, or one performing it and the other representing it
symbolically. Or they may be alternatives, a single one fulfilling the
whole function or if that is otherwise discharged, as it can be even
in the absence of both procedures, then the symbolic representation
of it :
If . . . a people combines exogamy with totemism, this is because it has

chosen to reinforce the social cohesion already established by totemism

by superimposing on it yet another system which is connected with the
first by its reference to physical and social kinship and is distinguished
from, though not opposed to it, by its lack of reference to cosmic kinship.
Exogamy can play this same part in types of society which are built on
foundations other than totemism ; and the geographical distribution of
the two institutions coincides only at certain points in the world.
(Van Gennep, pp . 3 5 1).

However exogamy, as we know, is never entirely absent. This is due

to the fact that the perpetuation of the group can only be effected
by means of women, and although varying degrees of symbolic
content can be introduced by the particular way in which a society
organizes them or thinks of their operation, marriage exchanges
always have real substance, and they are alone in this. The exchange
of food is a different matter. Aranda women really bear children.
llut Aranda men confine themselves to imagining that their rites

I'

II

I I

I1
I

108
I
' I
I

1,

109

THE SAVAGE MIND

result in the increase of totemic species. In the former, although it

may be described in conventional terms which impose their own
limits on it, what is in question is primarily a way of doing some
thing. In the latter it is only a way of saying something.
Examples of 'accumulation' of some kind have attracted particu
lar attention, no doubt because the repetition of the same scheme
on two different planes made them look simpler and more consis
tent. It is mainly this which has led to the definition of totemism by
the parallelism between eating prohibitions and rules of exogamy
and to making this supplementary set of customs a special object
of study. There are, however, cases in which the relation between
marriage and eating customs is one of complementarity and not
supplementarity and where they are therefore dialectically related
to each other. This form clearly also belongs to the same group.
And it is groups in this sense, and not arbitrarily isolated trans
formations, which are the proper subject of the sciences of man.
In an earlier chapter I quoted a botanist's testimony with regard
to the extreme purity of types of seed in the agriculture of so-called
primitive peoples, in particular among the Indians of Guatemala.
We also know that there is intense fear of agricultural exchanges
in this area : a transplanted seedling may take the spirit of the plant
with it, with the result that it disappears from its original locality.
One may, then, exchange women but refuse to exchange seeds.
This is common in Melanesia.
The inhabitants of Dobu, an island to the south-east of New
Guinea, are divided into matrilineal lineages called susu. Husband
and wife, who necessarily come from different susu, each bring
their own seed yams and cultivate them in separate gardens without
ever mixing them. No hope for a person who has not his own seed :
a woman who has none will not succeed in marrying and will be
reduced to the state of a fisherwoman, thief or beggar. Seed which
does not come from the susu will not grow, for agriculture is poss
ible only by the use of magic inherited from the maternal uncle : it
is ritual which makes the yams swell.
These precautions and scruples rest on the belief that yams are
persons : 'Like women, they give birth to children . . .' They go
abroad at night and people wait for their return before harvesting.
This is the source of the rule that yams may not be dug too early
in the morning : they might not yet have returned. It is also the
source of the conviction that the fortunate cultivator is a magician
I IO

TOTEM AND CASTE

who has known how to persuade his neighbours' yams to move and
stablish themselves in his garden. A man who has a good harvest
IS reckoned a lucky thief (Fortune z).
Beliefs of the same type were to be found even in France until
recently. In the middle ages there was a penalty of death for 'the
sorceress who defiled and injured crops ; who, by reciting the
psalm Super aspidem ambulabis, emptied the fields of their corn to
fill er o:wn grana with this goodly produce'. Not so long ago at
Cubjac m the Pengord a magical invocation was supposed to
asure the ferson sing it of a good crop of turnips : 'May our
.
neighbours be as big as millet seed, our relations' as big as grains
of corn and our own as big as the head of Fauve the ox !' (Rocal,
PP I 64-s).
part from the modicum of exogamy resulting from the pro
.
hibited degrees, European peasant societies practised strict local
endogamy. And it is significant that at Dobu extreme endo-agricul
ture can act as the symbolic compensation for lineage and village
exogamy which is practised with repugnance and even fear. In
spite of the fact that endogamy within the locality - which consists
of beween four an tweny villages - is generally assured, marriage
even mt the next village IS looked on as putting a man at the mercy
of assassms and sorcerers and he himself always regards his wife
as a powerful magician, ready to deceive him with her childhood
friends and to destroy him and his (Fortune 2). In a case like this
no-agriclture reinforces a latent tendency towards endogamy
If md :ed It doe not express symbolically the hostility to the
.
nwlllmgly. practised rules of a precarious exogamy. The situation
IS symmetncally the reverse of that prevailing in Australia where
food prohibitions and rules of exogamy reinforce one another as
'
we ve seen i more symbolic and clearly conceptual way in the
patnhneal societies (where the food prohibitions are flexible and
tend to be formulated in terms of moieties, that is, at a level which
is alrea?y abstract and lends itself o a binary coding by pairs of
.
.
oppositiOn) and m a more literal and concrete fashion in the
matrilineal societies (where the prohibitions are rigid and stated in
terms of clans which one might often be hesitant to regard as
members of systematic sets, given the determining part of demo
graphic and historic factors in their genesis).
Apart from these cases of positive or negative parallelism, there
are others in which reciprocity between social groups is expressed

III

THE SAVAGE MIND

only on one plane. Omaha rules of marriage are formulated very

differently from those of the Aranda. Instead of the class of the
spouse being precisely specified, as it is among the Aranda, any
clan not expressly forbidden is permitted. On the plane of food,
however, the Omaha have rites very similar to the intichiuma :* the
sacred maize is entrusted to particular clans who annually distri
bute it to the others to vitalize their seeds (Fletcher and La
Flesche). The totemic clans of the Nandi of Uganda are not
exogamous ; but a remarkable development of clan prohibitions,
not only on the plane of food but also on those of technical and
economic activities, dress and impediments to marriage based on
some detail or other of the personal history of the forbidden spouse,
compensates for this 'non-functionality' in the sphere of marriage
exchanges (Hollis). No system can be constructed from these differ
ences : the distinctions recognized between the groups seem rather
to spring from a propensity to accept all statistical fluctuations. In
a different form and on a different plane, this is also the method
employed by the systems termed 'Crow-Omaha' and by contemp
orary Western societies to ensure the overall equilibrium of
matrimonial exchanges. t
This emergence of methods of articulation more complex than
those resulting just from rules of exogamy or food prohibitions,
or even of both at once, is particularly striking in the case of the
Baganda (who are near the Nandi) because they seem to have
accumulated all the forms. The Baganda were divided into forty
clans, kika, each of which had a common totem, miziro, the con
sumption of which was forbidden by virtue of a rule of food
rationing : by depriving itself of the totemic food, each clan leaves
more of it available to other clans. This is the modest counterpart
of the Australian claim that by refraining from consuming its
totem each clan retains the power to increase it.
As in Australia, each clan is characterized by its links with a
territory, among the Baganda generally a hill. There is a secondary
totem; kabiro, as well as the principal totem. Each Baganda clan
is thus defined_ by t\VO totems, food prohibitions and a territory.
There are also prerogatives such as eligibility of its members for
* See below, p . 226.

t Rightly or wrongly, Radcliffe-Brown (J, pp. 32-3) treats the Nandi kinship
system as an Omaha system.
I I2

TOTEM AND CASTE

the ingship or ?ther honours, the right to provide royal wives,

makmg and canng for the royal emblems or utensils, ritual
obligations to provide other clans with certain kinds of food, and
technical specializations : the Mushroom clan, for instance, makes
all the bark cloth, and all blacksmiths come from the clan of the
Tail-less Cow, etc. Finally, we find some prohibitions, such as that
the women of a particular clan cannot be the mothers of male
children of the blood royal, and restrictions with regard to the
bearing of proper names (Roscoe).
In cases like this it is no longer very clear what type of society is in
question. There can, for instance, be no doubt that the totemic
lans of the Bagada also function as castes. And yet at first sight
It seems that nothmg could be more different than these two forms
of institution. We have become used to associating totemic groups
with the most 'primitive' civilizations and thinking of castes as a
feature of highly developed, sometimes even literate, societies.
Moreover, a strong tradition connects totemic institutions with the
strictest exogamy while an anthropologist asked to define the con
cept of a caste would almost certainly begin by mentioning the
rule of endogamy.
It may therefore seem surprising that between about 1 830 and
1 85o, the first investigators of Australian societies often referred to
their marriage classes as 'castes' even though they had some idea
of their function (Thomas, pp. 34-5). These intuitions which have
the freshness and vivacity of a perception of societies which were
still intact, and a vision undistorted by theoretical speculation, are
?o to be despised. Without going to the root of the problem now,
It 1s clear that there are at least superficial analogies between
Australian tribes and societies with castes. Each group has a
specialized function indispensable to the collectivity as a whole and
complementary to the functions assigned to other groups.
This is particularly clear in the case of tribes whose clans or
moieties are bound together by a rule of reciprocity. Among the
Kaitish and the Unmatjera, northern neighbours of the Aranda,
anyone wo gathers wild seeds in the territory of a totemic group
named after these seeds must ask the headman's permission before
eating them. It is the duty of each totemic group to provide the
other groups with the plant or animal for whose 'production' it is
specially responsible. Thus a man of the Emu clan out hunting on

113

TOTEM AND CASTE

THE SAVAGE MIND

his own may not touch an emu. But if, on the other hand, he is in
company he is permitted and even supposed to kill it and offer it
to hunters of other clans. Conversely, when he is alone a man of
the Water clan may drink if he is thirsty but when he is with others
he must receive the water from a member of the other moiety,
preferably from a brother-in-law (Spencer and Gillen, pp.
I 59-6o). Among the Warramunga each totemic group is respons
ible for the increase and availability to other groups of a particular
plant or animal species : 'The members of one moiety . . . take
charge . . . of the ceremonies of the other moiety which are des
tined to secure the increase of their own food supply'. Among the
Walpari as well as the Warramunga the secondary totemic prohi
bitions (applying to the maternal totem) are waived if the food in
question is obtained through the agency of a man of the other
moiety. More generally and for any totem, there is a distinction
between the groups which never eat it (because it is their own
totem), those which eat it only if it is procured through the agency
of another group (as in the case of the maternal totems), and those
which eat it freely in any circumstances. Similarly in the case of
the sacred water-holes, women may never approach them, uniniti
ated men may approach but not drink from them, while some
groups drink from them on the condition that the water is given
to them by members of other groups who can themselves drink
freely from them (Spencer and Gillen, pp. I 64, I 67). This mutual
interdependence is already to be seen in marriage which, as
Radcliffe-Brown has shown in the case of Australia (but the same
could equally well be said of other clan societies such as the
Iroquois), was based on reciprocal gifts of vegetable food (fem
inine) and animal food (masculine) : the conjugal family in these
cases was like a miniature society with two castes.
There is thus less difference than would appear between
societies which, like some Australian tribes, assign a distinctive
magico-economic function to totemic groups and, for instance,
the Bororo of Central Brazil, among whom specialists are in charge
of the same function of 'liberating' the food production - whether
animal or vegetable - for the whole group (Colbacchini). This
leads one to doubt whether the opposition between .endogamous
castes and exogamous totemic groups is really radical. There seem
to be connections between these two extreme types, whose nature

would appear more clearly if we could show that intermediate

forms exist.
I have drawn attention elsewhere to a feature of so-called totemic
institutions which in my own view is fundamental to them. The
homology they evoke is not between social groups and natural
species but between the differences which manifest themselves on
the level of groups on the one hand and on that of species on the
other. They are thus based on the postulate of a homology between
two systems of diferences, one of which occurs in nature and the
other in culture. Indicating relations of homology by vertical lines,
a 'pure totemic structure' could thus be represented in the follow
ing way :
NATURE :

species

+ species 2 + species 3 +

CULTURE :

group

+ group

+ group

3 +

. . . . . species n
. . . . group n
.

This structure would be fundamentally impaired if homologies

between the terms themselves were added to those between their
reltions or if, going one step further, the entire system of homo
logies were transferred from relations to terms :

: '

NATURE :

species

+ species 2 + species 3 +

CULTURE :

group

+ group

2 + group

.....

species n

. . . . . group n

In this case the implicit content of the structure would no longer

be that clan I differs from clan 2 as for instance the eagle differs
from the bear but rather that clan I is like the eagle and clan 2 like
the bear. In other words, the nature of clan I and the nature of
clan 2 would each be involved separately instead of the formal
relation between them.
Now, the transformation whose theoretical possibility has just
been considered can sometimes be directly observed. The islanders
of the T ?rres Straits have totemic clans, numbering about thirty
at Mabmag. These exogamous patrilineal clans were grouped into
two moieties, one comprising terrestrial and the other marine
animals. At Tutu and Saibai this division seems to have corres
ponded to a territorial division within the village. The structure
was already in an advanced state of decay at the time of Haddon's
expedition. Nevertheless, the natives had a very strong sense of the
physical and psychological affinity between men and their totems
and of the corresponding obligation of each group to pursue the
us

'

'
'

THE SAVAGE M I N D

TOTEM AND CASTE

appropriate type of behaviour. Thus the Cassowary, Crocodile,

Snake' Shark and Hammer-headed Shark clans were said. to love
fighting and the Shovel-nosed Skate, Ray and Sucker-Fish clans
to be peace loving. The Dog clan was held to be unpredictable,
dogs being of a changeable disposition. The members of the
Crocodile clan were thought to be strong and ruthless and those
of the Cassowary clan to have long legs and to run fast (Frazer,
vol. II, pp. 3-9, quoting Haddon and Rivers). It would be inter
esting to know whether these beliefs are survivals from the old
organization or whether they developed as the exogamous rules
decayed.
.
The fact is that similar, though not equally developed, behefs
have been observed among the Menomini of the Great Lakes and
among the Chippewa further north. Among the latter, people of
the Fish clan were reputed to be long-lived, frequently to go bald
or to have thin hair, and all bald people were assumed to come from
this clan. Peoples of the Bear clan, on the other hand, had long,
thick, coarse hair which never went white and they were said to be
ill-tempered and fond of fighting. People of the Crane cia? .had
loud ringing voices and provided the tribe with its orators (Kmietz,
pp. 76-'7)
Let us pause for a moment to consider the theoretical implica
tions of views like these. When nature and culture are thought of
as two systems of differences between which there s a f?rml
analogy, it is the systematic character of each domam which IS
brought to the fore. Social groups are distinguished from one
another but they retain their solidarity as parts of the same whole,
and the rule of exogamy furnishes the means of resolving this
opposition balanced between diversity and uity. Bt if socil
groups are considered not so much from the pont of view of thIr
reciprocal relations in social life as each on their own account, m
relation to something other than sociological reality, then the idea
of diversity is likely to prevail over that of unity. Each social group
will tend to form a system no longer with 0ther s0cial groups but
with particular differentiating properties regarded as hereditary,
and these characteristics exclusive to each group will weaken the
framework of their solidarity within the society. The more each
group tries to define itself by the image which it draws from a
natural model, the more difficult will it become for it to maintain
its links with other social groups and, in particular to exchange its

sisters and daughters with them since it will tend to think of them
as being of a particular 'species'. Two images, one social and the
other natural, and each articulated separately, will be replaced by a
socio-natural image, single but fragmented :*

u6
I I

NATURE :
CULTURE :

species

species 2

species 3

group

group

group

species

group

It is of course only for purposes of exposition and because they

form the subject of this book that I am apparently giving a sort of
priority to ideology and superstructures. I do not at all mean to
suggest that ideological transformations give rise to social ones.
Only the reverse is in fact true. Men's conception of the relations
between nature and culture is a function of modifications of their
own social relations. But, since my aim here is to outline a theory
of superstructures, reasons of method require that they should be
singled out for attention and that major phenomena which have no
place in this programme should seem to be left in brackets or given
second place. We are however merely studying the shadows on the
wall of the Cave without forgetting that it is only the attention we
give them which lends them a semblance of reality.
This said, to avoid misunderstanding we can summarize what has
gone before as an account of the conceptual transformations mark
ing the passage from exogamy to endogamy (or vice versa). Some,
at any rate, of the Algonkin tribes, who furnished the last examples,
had a hierarchical clan structure which one might suspect would
lead to some difficulty in the functioning of exogamous rules form.
ulated in egalitarian terms. But it is in the south-east of the United
States, in the tribes of the Muskogi linguistic group, that hybrid
institutional forms, half-way between totemic groups and castes,
can be seen most clearly; and this also explains the existing uncer
tainty as to whether they are endogamous or exogamous.
The Chickasaw may perhaps have been exogamous at the clan
* It will perhaps be objected that in the above mentioned work (6), I denied
that totemism can be interpreted on the basis of a direct analogy between human
groups and natural species. But this criticism was directed against a theory put
forward by ethnologists and what is in question here is an - implicit or explicit native theory which indeed corresponds to institutions that ethnologists would
refuse to class as totemic.

I I7

THE SAVAGE MIND

TO TEM AND CASTE

level and endogamous so far as their moieties were concerned. The

latter in any case had the feature , highly unusual for structur of
this type, of displaying an exclusivism verging on mutual hostlhty.
Illness and death were often attributed to the sorcery of people of
the opposite moiety. Each moiety performed its rites in jealous
isolatio n; members of the other moiety who witnessed them were
punishable by death. The same attitude exsted among the Cr.ek :
with regard to moieties it is strikingly remimscent of that prevath?g
towards totemic groups among the Aranda. Each performed tts
rites 'among themselves' although only 'the others' were to benefit
from them. And this, it is worth remarking in passing, shows that
endo-praxis and exo-praxis are never definable separately and in
absolute terms. As Morgan demonstrated against McLennon, they
can only be defined as complementary aspects of an ambiguous
relation to self and to others.
The moieties, which probably formed opposite sides in com
petitive games, were considered to differ in temperamet and
habitat : one was warlike and preferred open country while the
other was pacific and lived in forests. They may also have ? een
ordered hierarchically as is suggested by the terms somettmes
applied to them : ' [people of the] hickory-choppigs' [substantial
habitations] and ' [people of the] worn-out place hovels] . How
ever these hierarchical psychical and functwnal dtfferences were
priarily manifested ;t the level of clans or their subivisions
into hamlets. In native accounts of the past, comments hke these
about each clan or hamlet constantly occur, like a leit-motiv :
'They were very peculiar people . . . they were not like others. . . .
they had customs and traditions of their own . . .' These peuhan
ties were of all sorts of different kinds : place of restdence,
economic activity, dress, food, talents and tastes.
.
.
The Raccoon people were said to live on sh and wtld
those of the Puma lived in the mountains, av01ded water of
they were very frightened and lived principally o game. The
Wild Cat clan slept in the daytime and hunted at mght, for they
had keen eyes ; they were indifferent to women. Mmbers of .the
Bird clan were up before day-break : 'They were hke real btrds
in that they would not bother anybody . . . The people .of this
clan have different sorts of minds, just as there are dtfferent
species of birds'. They were said to live well, to be polygamous,
disinclined to work, and prolific.

uS

I
'I

The people of_jhe Red Fox clan were professional thieves,

loving independence and living in the heart of forests. The
'wandering Iksa' were nomadic and improvident but nevertheless
enjoyed robust health 'for they did not do anything to run them
selves down'. They moved slowly, thinking that they were going
to live for ever. The men and women paid little attention to their
dress or appearance. They were beggars and lazy. The inhabitants
of 'the bending-post-oak' house group lived in the woods. They
were of a changeable disposition, not very energetic, given to
dancing, always anxious and full of care. They were early risers and
clumsy. The High Corncrib house group people were respected in
spite of their arrogance : they were good gardeners, very indus
trious but poor hunters, they bartered their maize for game. They
were said to be truthful and stubborn, and skilled at forecasting
the weather. As for the Redskunk house group : they lived in
dugouts underground (Swanton 2, pp. 1 90-2 13).
This material was collected at a time when the traditional
institutions no longer existed except in old informants' memories
and it is plain that it is partly made up of old wives' tales. No
society could allow itself to 'act nature' to this extent or it would
split up into a whole lot of independent, hostile bands, each
denying that the others were human. The data which Swanton
collected consist of sociological myths as well as or rather than
ethnographic facts. Nevertheless, their wealth, the resemblances
they have among themselves, the unity of the underlying scheme,
the existence of similar data for neighbouring groups all suggest
that even if the real institutions were different, we have here at
least a sort of conceptual model of Chickasaw society which has the
extremely interesting feature of recalling a society with castes,
even though the attributes of the castes and their relations to each
other are coded in terms of natural species, that is, after the
manner of totemic groups. Further, the relations held to exist
between clans and their eponyms are like those found in classical
'totemic' societies : the clan is descended from the animal or
alternatively a human ancestor of the clan contracted a marriage
with one in mythical times. Now, these societies, which are at the
very least conceived of as if they were composed of 'natural'
castes - or, in other words, in which culture is thought of as a
projection or reflection of nature - are the link between the societies
classical authors used to illustrate their conception of totemism
I I9

!'

THE SAVAGE MIND

TOTEM AND CASTE

(the tribes of the plains and of the south west) and societies such
as the Natchez which afford one of the rare examples of genuine
castes known in North America.
We have thus established that in the two classical territories of
so-called totemism, the institutions defined with reference to this
misleading notion can either also be characterized from the point
of view of their function, as in Australia or, as in America, make
way for forms which are still conceived on the model of totemic
groups although they operate more like castes.
L et us now turn to India, also classical territory but of castes.
I shall try to show that through their influence institutions tradi
tionally thought of as totemic undergo a transformation exactly the
reverse of that in America : instead of castes conceived in terms of
a natural model we have here totemic groups conceived in terms
of a cultural model.
Most of the totemic names found among certain tribes in Bengal
derive from animals or plants. This is the case with some sixty
seven totems recorded among the Oraon of Chota Nagput with
the exception of iron which, as there is little point in proscribing
its consumption, is forbidden to come into contact with lips or
tongue. This prohibition is thus still formulated in terms that
make it approximate to an eating prohibition. Among the Munda
of the same region, the majority of the three hundred and forty
exogamous clans recorded have animal or plant totems, the
consumption of which is forbidden. Totems of a different kind are
however already noticeable : full moon, moonlight, rainbow,
months of the year, days of the week, copper bracelet, verandah,
umbrella, professions or castes such as that of basket-maker and
torch-bearer (Risley, vol. II and Appendix). Further west, the
forty-three names of the Bhil clans are divided into nineteen plant
and seventeen animal names and seven relate to objects : dagger,
broken pot, village, thorny stick, bracelet, ankle ring, piece of bread
(Koppers, pp. I 18-1 9)
It is towards the south that the reversal in the relation of natural
species and objects or manufactured goods becomes particularly
conspicuous. Few plants and scarcely any animals figure in the
names of the clans of the Devanga, a caste of weavers in the
Madras area. On the other hand, the following names are found :
buttermilk, cattle-pen, money, dam, house, collyrium, knife,
scissors, boat, lamp, cloths, female clothing, ropes for hanging pots,

old plough, monastery, funeral pyre, tile. Sixty-seven exogamous

clans are recorded among the Kuruba of Mysore. They have
aimal ?r plant names or names like the following : cart, cup,
silver, flmt, roll of woollen thread, bangle, gold, gold ring, pickaxe,
coloured border of cloth, stick, blanket, measure, moustache, loom,
bamboo tube, etc. (Thurston, vol. II, p. 1 60 ff., vol. IV, pp. 141-2).
It is possible that this phenomenon is a peripheral rather than a
southern one for one is inclined here to recall the mythical role
which some south-east Asian tribes ascribe to manufactured
objects such as sabre, knife, lance, needle, post, rope, and so on.
However this may be, in India the manufactured objects from
which clans take their names receive special respect, like totemic
plants and animals. Either they constitute the object of a cult at
marriages or alternatively the respect paid to them takes a bizarre
and specific form. Among the Bhil for example, the clan of the
broken pot must collect pieces of a particular kind of pottery and
give them burial. At times a certain freedom of invention is per
ceptible : the Arisana gotram of the Karuba bears the name of
turmeric, but as it is held to be inconvenient to be deprived of so
essential a condiment, the Korra grain replaces it as the forbidden
food.

But this heterogeneity is most apparent in India where a high

proportion of totemic names are names of manufactured objects,
that is, of products or symbols of functional activities which because they are clearly differentiated in a caste system - can serve
to express distinction between social groups within the tribe or the
caste itself. It is as if in America the rudiments of castes had been
contaminated by totemic classifications, while in India the vestiges

1 20

I 2I

Heterogeneous lists of clan names are known in other parts of the

world. Perhaps significantly, they are particularly found in the
north of Australia, the part of the continent most subject to outside
influences. Individual totems such as a razor blade or money have
been noted in Mrica :
When I asked [the Dinka] what I myself should invoke as my clan
divinity, it was half-jokingly suggested that I should invoke Typewriter,
Paper, and Lorry, for were these not the things which had always helped
my people and which were passed on to Europeans by their ancestors?
(Lienhardt, p. n o).

THE SAVAGE M I ND

TOTEM AND CASTE

for establishing relations of complementarity and co-operation

among themselves. In other words, men conceive these relations
on the model of their conception of the relations between natural
species (and at the same time of their own social relations). There
are in fact only two true models of concrete diversity : one on the
plane of nature, namely that of the diversity of species, and the
other on the cultural plane provided by the diversity of functions.
The model illustrated by marriage exchanges lying between these
two true models, has an ambiguous and equivocal character.
Women are alike so far as nature is concerned and can be regarded
as different only from the cultural angle. But ifthe first point of view
is predominant (as is the case when it is the natural model which is
chosen as the model of diversity) resemblance outweighs differ
ence. Women certainly have to be exchanged since they have been
decreed to be different. But this exchange presupposes that
basically they are held to be alike. Conversely, when the other
viewpoint is taken and a cultural model of diversity adopted,
. difference, which corresponds to the cultural aspect, outweighs
resemblance. Women are only recognized as alike within the limits
of their respective social groups and consequently cannot be
exchanged between one caste and another. Castes decree women
to be naturally heterogeneous ; totemic groups decree them to be
culturally heterogeneous. And the final reason for this difference
between the two systems is that castes exploit cultural hetero
geneity in earnest while totemic groups only create the illusion of
exploiting natural heterogeneity.
All this can be expressed in a different way. Castes, which are
defined on the basis of a cultural model, really exchange cultural
objects. But they have to pay a price for the symmetry they
postulate between nature and culture : in that the castes are them
selves composed of biological beings, they are constrained to
conceive their natural product according to a natural world, since
this product consists of women whom they both produce and are
produced by. It follows that women are made diverse on the model
of natural species and cannot be exchanged any more than species
can cross with one another. Totemic groupings make the reverse
sacrifice. They are defined on the basis of a natural model and
exchange natural objects - the women they produce and are pro
duced by naturally. The symmetry postulated between nature and
culture involves in that case the assimulation of natural species to

the cultural plane. In the same way that women who are homo
geneous so far as nature is concerned are declared to be heterogeneous
from the point of view of culture, so natural species, which are
heterogeneous so far as nature is concerned are proclaimed to be
homogeneous from the point of view of culture : culture asserts
them all to be subject to the same type of beliefs and practices since
in the eyes of culture, they have the common feature that man has
the power to control and increase them. Consequently, men by
cultural means exchange women who perpetuate these same men
by natural means and they claim to perpetuate species by cultural
means and exchange them sub specie naturae : in the form of food
stuffs which are substitutable for each other since they all provide
nourishment and since, as with women also, a man can satisfy
himself by means of some foods and go without others in so far as
any women or any foods are equally suitable to achieve the ends
of procreation or subsistence.

1 24

We thus arrive at the common properties of which occupational

castes and totemic groups provide contrary illustrations. Castes
are heterogeneous in function and can therefore be homogeneous
in structure : since the diversity of function is real, complement
arity is already established on the level of reality and the operation
of marriage exchanges - between the same social units - would be
a case of 'accumulation' of functions (why this is of no practical
value has been shown above [cf. p. 109]). Conversely, totemic
groups are homogeneous so far as their function is concerned, for it
makes no real yield and amounts to no more tan a repetition of
the same illusion for all the groups. They therefore have to be
heterogeneous in structure, each being destined for the production
of women of a different social species.
In totemism, consequently, purported reciprocity is constructed
out of modes of behaviour homogeneous with each other and
simply juxtaposed. Each group similarly imagines itself to have
magical power over a species, but as this illusion has no foundation
it is in fact no more than an empty form and as such identical to
the other forms. The true reciprocity results from the articulation
of two processes : the natural one which comes about by means of
women, who procreate both men and women, and the cultural one
which men bring about by characterizing these women socially
when nature has brought them into existence.
1 25

THE SAVAGE MIND

In the caste system reciprocity is manifested by specialization

of function and it is practised on the the cultural plane. The
valencies of homogeneity are therefore freed ; from being formal,
the analogy postulated between human groups and natural species
becomes substantial (as the example of the Chickasaw and the
quotation from the Laws of Manu [cf. p. xo6]: shows) an true
reciprocity being otherwise, secured, endogamy IS made vallable.
There are, however, limits to this symmetry. Totemic groups
certainly give an imitation of gift-giving which has a function. But,
apart from the fact that it remains imaginary, it is nt ultral
.
either since it must be classed, not among the arts of CIVIhzatwn,
but as a fake usurpation of natural capacities which man as a
biological species lacks. Certainly also the equivalent of food
prohibitions are found in caste systems but, significantly enough,
they are principally expressed in the reverse form of 'endo-cuisine'
and moreover they occur on the level of the preparation, rather
than the production of food, in other words, on the cultural Plane.
.
They are precise and detailed but mainly with respect to cuhnary
operations and utensils.
.
Finally, women are naturally interchangeable (fro the pm?t of
.
view of their anatomical structure and the physiological functwns)
and in their case culture finds the field open for the great game of
differentiation (whether this is thought of in a positive or a negative
way and used therefore as a basis for exogamy on the one hand or
endogamy on the other). Foods however are not alt? gethe able to
.
be substituted for each other. The game reaches Its hmits more
quickly in this second domain for one is mh less inclined t class
all foods as totemic since, as we have seen, It IS harder to do Without
turmeric than korra. Now, this applies even more to occupational
functions. Because they really are different and complementary,
they allow the establishment of reciprocity in its truest form. On
the other hand, they exclude negative reciprocity and so set bounds
to the logical harmony of caste systems. Each caste remans partly
'endo-functional' ; it cannot forbid rendering also to Itself the
differentiating services it is called on first of all to provide for the
other castes, since these have been ruled to be irreplaceable. Or
who would shave the barber ?
Introducing (socially) instituted diversity into a single atural
.
species, the human species, is not therefore the same as proJectmg
the diversity (naturally) existing between animal and plant
1 26

TOTEM AND CAS'l'E

species on to the social plane. Societies with totemic groups and

exogamous sections i? vain believe that they manage to pll"ty the
.
.
arne . game With species which are different, and women who are
Identical. They do not notice that since women are identical it
flls to the social will to make them different, while species being
different, no one can make them identical, in the sense of all sub
jects in the same way to human will. Men produce other men they
'
do not produce ostriches.
Ne:ertheless i remains true that we can on a very general plane
perceive an eqmvalence between the two main systems of diff
ere?ces to which men hve had recourse for conceptualizing their
.
.
.
scml relatwns. Simphf
ymg a great deal, it may be said that castes
picture themselves as natural species while totemic groups picture
natural species as castes. And this must be refined : castes natura
lize a true culture falsely, totemic groups culturalize a false nature
truly.
In both views it must be granted that the system of social
.
fctwns corresponds to the system of natural species, the world of
hvmg creatures to the world of objects, and we must therefore
recognize the system of natural species and that of manufactured
objects as two mediating sets which man employs to overcome the
opposition between nature and culture and think of them as a
whole. But there is also another means.
Severa hunting tribes in North American say that at the begin
.
mug of tlme bffal?es were ferocious beasts and 'all bone'. They
were not only medible to man but also cannibal. Men were thus
once the fod of the animal which later came to be their prime
.
food but which was at that tlme
the reverse of a food since it was
animal food in its inedible form : bone. How is so complete a
change to be explained?
It came to pass, according to the myth, that a buffalo fell in love
with a girl and wanted o marry her. This girl was the only member
.
of her sex m a commumty of men, for a man had conceived her after
being pricked by a thorny plant. The woman thus appears to be
the product of a negative union, between nature hostile to man (the
bush f thorn) and humn antinature (the pregnant man). In spite
of their affectwn for their daughter and their fear of the buffalo
men thought it wise to agree to the marriage and they collected
together presents, each of which was to stand for a part of the
buffalo's body : a war-bonnet was to become the backbone a
'
1 27

THE SAVAGE MIND

quiver of otter-skin the skin on its chest, a ":oven blnket the

paunch, a pointed quiver the stomach, moccasms the kidneys, a
.
bow the ribs etc. Nearly forty correspondences are enumerated m
this way (cf. D orsey and Kroeber, no. 1 , for a version o this myh).
The marriage exchange thus functwns as a mechamsm servmg
to mediate between nature and culture, which wre ori?inally
regarded as separate. By substitutin? a cultural archttectomc for a
supernatural primitive one, the alhance creates a second nature
over which man has a hold, that is a mediatized nature. After these
occurrences buffaloes became ' all flesh' instead of ' all bone' and
edible instead of cannibal.
.
The same sequence is sometimes reversed as tr;t the N avho
myth which ends in the transformation of a woman mto canmbal
.
she-bear : exactly the converse of a canmbal buffalo bemg trns
formed into a husband. The metamorphosis is exten?ed m a
scattered pattern which follows the model of the dtffeences
between wild species : the vagina of the ogress turned mto a
hedgehog, her breasts into pinyon nuts and acorn, er paunch
into other seeds ('alkali' : sporobolus cryptandrus, azrotes, Tor.),
the trachea turned into a medicinal plant and the ktdneys mto
mushrooms, etc. (Haile-Wheelwright, p. 3).
.
.
These myths are an admirable expresstn of the w:ay m whtch
marriage exchanges can furnish a model dtrectly apphcable to the
mediation between nature and culture among peoples where to
temic classifications and functional specialization, if present at all,
have only a very limited yield. This confirms ;vat I uggested
above namely first that the 'system of women ts, as 1t were, a
middl term btween the system of (natural) living creatures and
the system of (manufactured) objects and secondly that each
system is apprehended as a transforation within a single group.
The system of living creatures ts the ony one of the three
systems which has an objective existence outstde rna? and that of
.
functions the only one which has a completely soctal extstence,
that is, within man. But the completeness of each on one plae
explains why neither is readily handled on the other : a fod m
general use cannot be wholly 'totemized' at least not . wtth?ut
a kind of cheating* and, equally, castes cannot avotd bemg
* We read the following about the 'clan divinities' of the Dinka-which the
. t tems : , . . . few are of an
older authors would have had no hesitation in calhng
y
?
dietetic importance, and where they are the respect patd to them may yet permtt

128

TOTEM AND CASTE

endofunctional while they serve to construct a grandiose scheme

of reciprocity. Reciprocity is not therefore absolute in either case. It
is, as it were, blurred and distorted at the periphery. Logically
speaking, the reciprocity of marriage exchanges represents an
equally impure form since it lies mid-way between a natural and a
cultqral model. But it is this hybrid character which allows it to
function perfectly. Associated with one or the other form, or with
both, or present on its own, as the case may be, the reciprocity of
marriage exchanges alone can claim universality.
The first conclusion which emerges from this analysis is that
totemism, which has been rendered amply formal in 'primitive
language', could at the cost of a very simple transformation equally
well be expressed in the language of the regime of castes which is
quite the reverse of primitive. This is already sufficient to show
that we are here dealing not with an autonomous institution, which
can be defined by its distinctive properties and is typical of certain
regions of the world and certain forms of civilization but with a
modus operandi which can be discerned even behind social struc
tures traditionally defined in a way diametrically opposed to
totemism.
Secondly, we are in a better position to resolve the difficulty
arising from the fact that so-called totemic institutions include not
only the conceptual systems we have chosen to consider but also
rules of action. For I have tried to show that food prohibitions
are not a distinctive feature of totemism ; they are also found
associated with other systems which they similarly serve to ' stress'
and conversely systems of names deriving from the natural king
doms are not always accompanied by food prohibitions : they can
be ' stressed' in diverse fashions.
Further, exogamy and food prohibitions are not objects distinct
from the nature of society, which should be studied separately or
between which causal relations could be discovered. As language
shows almost anywhere, they are two aspects or two modes serving
t o give concrete expression to a praxis which as a social activity can
be turned outwards or inwards and which always has these two
orientations even although they manifest themselves on different
them to be eaten'. Thus the clan of the Giraffe consider that they can eat the
meat of this animal provided only that they do not shed its blood (Lienhardt,
pp. I I4-IS) .

1 29

planes and by means of different codes. If the relation between

totemic institutions and castes can be regarded as superficially
identical to one between exogamy and endogamy (we have seen
that things are in fact more complex), between species and func
tion, and finally between a natural and cultural model, it is
because a similar scheme emerges in all the empirically observ
able and apparently heterogeneous cases and it is this which
furnishes scientific investigation with its true subject of study.
There is an analogy between sexual relations and eating in all
societies, but either the man or the woman may occupy the
position of eater or eaten according to the case and the level
of thought. This can but indicate the common requirement that
terms should be differentiated from each other and each identified
unequivocally.
Here again I do not mean to suggest that social life, the relations
between man and nature, are a projection or even result, of a con
ceptual game taking place in the mind. 'Ideas', Balzac wrote, 'form
a complete system within us, comparable to one of the natural
kingdoms, a sort of bloom whose iconography will be traced by a
man of genius who will pass perhaps as mad.'* But more madness
than genius would be required for such an enterprise. If, as I have
said, the conceptual scheme governs and defines practices, it is
because these, which the ethnologist studies as discrete realities
placed in time and space and distinctive in their particular modes
of life and forms of civilization, are not to be confused with praxis
which - and here at least I agree with Sartre (p. I 81)- constitutes the
fundamental totality for the sciences of man. Marxism, if not Marx
himself, has too commonly reasoned as though practices followed
directly from praxis. Without questioning the undoubted primacy
of infrastructures, I believe that there is always a mediator between
praxis and practices, namely the conceptual scheme by the opera- tion of which matter and form, neither with any independent
existence, are realized as structures, that is as entities which are
both empirical and intelligible. It is to this theory of superstruc
tures, scarcely touched on by Marx, that I hope to make a
contribution. The development of the study of infrastructures
proper is a task which must be left to history - with the aid of
demography, technology, historical geography and ethnography.

H. De Balzac, 'Louis Lambert' in: Oeuvres completes, Bibl. de la Pleiade,

Vol X, p. 396.

130

'

TOTEM AND CASTE

THE SAVAGE MIND

It is not principally the ethnologist's concern, for ethnology is first

of all psychology.
All hat I claim to have shown so far is, therefore, that the
.
talectic
of superstructures, like that of language, consists in set
tmg up constiutive units (which, for this purpose, have to be
defined uneqmvocally, that is by contrasting them in pairs) so as
to be able by mea?- of them to elaborate a system which plays the
part of a synthesimg operator between ideas and facts, thereby
.
trnm.? the latter mto signs. The mind thus passes from empirical
IverIty to conc:ptual simplicity and then from conceptual
stmphcity to meamngful synthesis.
Te ost appropriate conclusion to this chapter is an illustration
of this tdea by a native theory. The Yoruba myth, a veritable
Totem an Taboo before the fact, takes the complex edifice of
.
denommatwn and prohibition to pieces bit by bit.
Wht is in question is the explanation of the following rules. On
th: t rd da after a child is born, a priest is called in to give the
.
chid Is Orzsh and Its ewaws' . The Orisha is the creature or thing
which It worhips, ad the child may not marry anyone who has
the same Orzsha. his creture or thing becomes the principal
ewaw of the person m questwn who passes it on to his descendants
for four generations. His son takes as his second ewaw his father's
wife's animal ewaw. The son of this son in turn takes his father's
wife's third or vegetable ewaw. And the son of the son of this son
takes the same relative's fourth ewaw, i.e. a rat, bird or snake.
.
In native thought these complicated rules are based on an
original division of people into six groups : that of the fisherman
that of 'omens' : fish, snake and bird ; that of the hunter ; tha
of quadrupeds ; that of the farmer; that of plants. Each group
comprises both men and women, giving twelve categories
altogether.
To begin '_Vith unions were incestuous within each group,
.
?rother marrymg sister.
The same Yoruba term is used for marr
Iage, I?eal, ownership, merit, gain and earnings or winnings.
.
Marrymg and eatmg are one and the same thing. Using A and B
to represent a brother and sister of the first group C and D a
?rother and sser of the second group and so o, the initially
mcestuous positiOn can be summarized in the table :

AB

2
CD

3
EF

4
GH

13 1

5
IJ

6
KL

THE SAVAGE MIND

TOTEM A N D CASTE

Human beings however soon got tired of this monotonous ' diet',
so the son of the couple AB took the female product of CD and
so on for EF and G H etc. :

takes H ; group 5 needs a plant and takes J ; group 6 needs a

plant and takes I :

CDB

ABD

GHF

EFH

KLJ

IJL

Even then they were not satisfied and so the fisherman made war
on the hunter, the hunter on the farmer and the farmer on the
fisherman, and each appropriated the other's product. The result
was that from then on the fisherman ate flesh, the hunter the
products of the soil and the farmer fish :
ABDF

CDBH

EFHJ

GHFL

IJLB

KLJ D

By way of reprisal, the fisherman demanded the products of the

soil, the farmer flesh and the hunter fish :
ABDFJ

I
, ,

CDBHL

EFHJB

GHFLD

LJLBF

KLJDH

Things could not go on like this, so a great palaver was called

and the families agreed that they would give their daughters in
marriage to one another ; and charged the priests to prevent con
fusion and disorder by the rule that a wife continues to worship her
own Orisha after marriage but her children do not inherit it. The
Orisha represented by the second letter in each series (viz. BD
FHJL) thus drop out in the next generation and the systems of
ewaws becomes :
ADFJ

CBHL

EHJB

GFLD

ILBF

KJDH

In future each person's ezvaws were to consist of one Orisha, one

'omen', one animal and one plant. Each ewaw would continue in
the family line for four generations, after which the priest would
renew it. So A C E G I K now drop out and a male Orisha is
needed to complete the ewaws. A person whose index is ADFJ
(group I) can marry a child of group 2 whose ewaws are all
different. A and C are therefore permutable and similarly E and G,
I and K :
DFJC

BHLA

HJBG

FLDE

LBFK

FJCB

HLAD

JBGF

BFKJ

DHIL

The letters F H J L B D now drop out in turn. Being short of

meat groups I and 2 marry H and F respectively ; short of plants,
groups 3 and 4 marry L and J ; short of fish, groups 5 and 6 marry
D and B :
JCBH

LADF

BGFL

DEHJ

FKJD

HILB

J L B D F H drop out and the male Orishas come to the fore

again :
CBHL

ADFJ

GFLD

EHJB

KJDH

ILBF

As there are said to be two hundred and one Orishas of which

about half are male, and also a considerable number of omens,
animals and plants which are used for designating impediments to
marriage, the number of possible combinations is very high
(Dennett, pp. I76-8o).
No doubt, what we have here is just a theory in the form of a
fable. The author who recorded it mentions various facts which
seem, if not to contradict it, at least to suggest that things did not
function with this perfect regularity in his day. But, as theories go,
the Yoruba seem to have been able to throw more light than
ethnologists on the spirit of institutions and rules which in their
society, as in many others, are of an intellecutal and deliberate
character.* Sensible images undoubtedly come in, but they do so
as symbols : they are counters in a game of combinations which
consists in permuting them according to rules without ever losing
sight of the empirical significants for which, provisionally, they
stand.
* The example of the Ashanti among whom a boy inherits his father's, and a
girl her mother's, food prohibitions, equally suggests that the spirit of such
systems is 'logical' rather than 'genealogical'.

JDHI

In the next generation the letters D B H F L J drop out. Group .

I needs fish and takes B ; group 2 also needs fish and takes D ;
group 3 needs meat and takes F ; group 4 also needs meat and
I32

LDEH

6-TSM

I33

CHAP TER F I VE

CATE G O R I E S , E LEMEN T S , SPE C I E S , .

NUMBERS

In inquiring into the nature of mythical thought Boas came to the

conclusion in 1914 that the ' essential problem' was to know why
'human tales are preferably attached to animals, celestial bodies,
and other personified phenomena of nature'. (Boas 5, p. 490).
This problem is in fact the last remnant of the speculations about
totemism but it seems possible to solve it.
I have already tried to show that the heterogeneous beliefs and
customs arbitrarily collected together under the heading of totem
ism do not rest on the idea of a relationship of substance between
one or more social groups and one or more natural domains. They
are allied to other beliefs and practices, directly or indirectly linked
to classificatory schemes which allow the natural and social universe
to be grasped as an organized whole. The only distinctions which
could be introduced between all these schemes derive from pref
erences, which are never exclusive, for this or that level of
classification.
All the levels of classification in fact have a common characteris
tic : whichever, in the society under consideration, is put first it
must authorize - or even imply - possible recourse to other levels,
formally analogous to the favoured one and differing from it only
in their relative position within a whole system of reference which
operates by means of a pair of contrasts : between general and
particular on the one hand, and nature and culture on the other.
The mistake which the upholders of totemism made was arbi
trarily to isolate one level of classification, namely that constituted
by reference to natural species, and to give it the status of an
135

THE SAVAGE MIND

institution, when like all levels of classification it is in fact only one

among others and there is no reason to regard it as more important
than, say, the level operating by means of abstract categories or
that using nominal classes. What is significant is not so much the
presence - or absence - of this or that level of classification as the
existence of a classification with, as it were, an adjustable thread
which gives the group adopting it the means of 'focusing' on all
planes, from the most abstract to the most concrete, the most
cultural to the most natural, without changing its intellectual
instrument.
In the work referred to above, Boas was doubtful whether the
predilection which is so frequent for classification based on a
natural model could be adequately explained by the ' distinctness
and individualization of species of animals . . . [which] set them
off more clearly as characters of a tale than the undifferentiated
members of mankind' (loc. cit.). Boas did, however, touch on an
important truth here. To have recognize<{ it he need only, contrary
to a commonly held position, have been prepared, instead of
reducing the story or myth to a mere narrative, to try to discover
the scheme of discontinuous oppositions governing its organization
behind the mythical ' discourse'. Furthermore, the natural 'dis
tinctiveness' of biological species does not furnish thought with a
means of access to other distinctive systems which have their own
repercussions on it. All things considered, if it is the case that zoo
logical and botanical typologies are employed more often and more
readily than other typologies, this can pnly be by reason of their
intermediate position as logically equidistant from the extreme
forms of classification : categorical and singular. There is a balance
be.tween the point of view of extension and that of comprehension
in the notion of a species : considered in isolation, a species is a
collection of individuals ; in relation to other species, however, it is
a system of definitions. Moreover each of these individuals, the
theoretically unlimited collection of which makes up the species, is
indefinable in extension since it forms an organism which is a
system of functions. The notion of species thus possesses an in
ternal dynamic : being a collection poised between two systems, the
species is the operator which allows (and even makes obligatory)
the passage from the unity of a multiplicity to the diversity of a
unity.

CATEGORIES, ELEMENTS, SPECIES, NU MBERS

As I have tried to show elsewhere (6, p. 1 33 if.), Bergson dis

cerned the importance of the part which, in view of its logical struc
ture, the notion of species was to play in the critique of totemism.
But there is every reason to fear that, had he been forced to make
his analysis more specific, he would have restricted it to the sub
jective and practical aspect of the relation between man and the
natural world, of the kind exemplified by someone asking what
there is for lunch today and being wholly satisfied with the answer
'veal'. In fact the importance of the notion of species is to be
explained not so much by a propensity on the part of the practising
agent to dissolve it into a genus for biological and utilitarian reasons
(which would amount to extending to man the famous dictum that
it is grass in general which attracts the herbivore)* as by its pre
sumptive objectivity : the diversity of species furnishes man with
the most intuitive picture at his disposal and constitutes the most
direct manifestation he can perceive of the ultimate discontinuity
of reality. It is the sensible expression of an objective coding.
It is a striking fact that modern biology turns to schemata
resembling those used in Communication Theory to explain the
diversity of species. We cannot here embark on problems outside
the ethnologist's province. But if it were true, as biologists hold,
that the anatomical, physiological, and ethnological diversity of
some two million living species may be analysed in terms of varia
tions of the chromosomes which are reducible to a periodicity in
the distribution of four distinct groups on the molecular chain,
then we could perhaps grasp the deeper reason for the special
significance man has see!}- in the notion of species. We should
understand how this idea can furnish a mode of sensory appre
hension of a combination objectively given in nature, and that the
activity of the mind, and social life itself, do no more than borrow
it to apply it to the creation of new taxonomies. This would serve
to resolve the apparent mystery of the fascination which the notion
of species has always possessed for men, of which the obscure
41 Which indeed is as false in the case of animals as of man. The attempts to
establish national parks in Africa to preserve species threatened with extinction
comes up against the difficulty that even if the pasturage is of sufcient area, the
animals only use it as a home-base and go far beyond the limits of the reserve in
search of grasses richer in protein than the pastures allotted to them for the
simplistic reason that they are sufciently extensive (Grzimek, p. zo). It is thus
not grass but the difference between species of grass which interests the
herbivore
. .

1 37

THE SAVAGE MIND

CATEGORIES, ELEMENTS, SPECIES, NUMBERS

fascination which totemism has had for ethnologists would just

constitute a particular case.
The natural sciences for a long time regarded themselves as con
cerned with 'kingdoms', that is, independent and sovereign
domains each definable by its own characteristics and peopled by
creatures or objects standing in special relations to one another. This
view, which is now out-moded but still the 'commonsense' one,
could not but obliterate the logical power and the dynamism of the
notion of species, since in this light species appeared as inert and
separate classes, confined within the limits of their respective
'kingdoms'. The societies which we call primitive do not have any
conception of a sharp division between the various levels of classi
fication. They represent them as stages or moments in a continuous
transition.
The Hanun6o of the Southern Philippines divide the universe
into what can and what cannot be named. What can be named is
distinguished into things on the one hand and persons or animals
on the other. When a Hanun6o utters the word 'plant' he excludes
the possibility that the thing of which he is speaking should be a
rock or a manufactured object. The class of 'herbaceous plant' in
turn excludes other classes of plants such as 'woody plant', etc.
Among herbaceous plants, the term 'pepper plant' is differential
in relation to 'rice plant', etc. 'Houseyard pepper' excludes 'wild
pepper', and 'houseyard chile pepper' excludes 'houseyard green
pepper' ; finally, 'cat-penis' specifies the individual in question as
not being a member of the five other varieties or taxa which the
native culture distinguishes within the group of houseyard peppers
(Conklin, 4, p. 1 3 1).
This mode of operation, which can be represented by a series of
dichotomies, has been described in the following way :

Hanun6o and botanical classification decrease rapidly as we approach the

higher-level, more inclusive categories (Conklin I, pp. u s-17 and
p. 162).

While not to be confused, nor categorically equated, with the botanical

concept of species, the Hanun6o plant type does exhibit one similar
feature : barring mistaken identification, plant type names are mutually
exclusive . . . Each of the 1 ,625 Hanun6o plant types* has a full specific
name differing in at least one component from all others. . . . Full plant
names are made up of from one to five, free, full-word lexical units. The
most common form is a binomial combination . . . Similarities between
* Of which soc to 6oo are only edible (I.e., p. 141) and 406 of purely medicinal
use (I.e., p. 1 88). These 1,625 types, grouped into 890 categories by indigenous
thought, correspond to 6so genera and about 1 ,100 species in scientific botany
(I.e., pp. 122-3).
. .

In fact the classes which correspond to Linnaean categories (pepper

plant : Capsicum sp. , houseyard pepper : Capsicum annum L., wild
pepper : Capsicum frutescens L.) do not belong either to the same
level or to the same side of the system of dichotomies. And above
all the domain of scientific botany is cut off neither from the
popular botany practised by the gardener or housewife nor from
philosophers' and logicians' categories. It is mid-way between them
and makes it possible to pass from one to another and to concep
tualize each level with the help of a code borrowed from another
(cf. diagram [p. 141]).
The Subanun, another Philippine tribe, classify diseases on the
same principle. They begin by distinguishing skin diseases from
wounds. They subdivide skin diseases into ' inflammations', ' sores'
and ' ringworm'. Each of these three forms is further specified by
means of several binary oppositions : simple/multiple, hidden/
exposed, severe/ mild, shallow j deep, distal j proximal (Frake,
p. 1 29)
The documentation adduced in Chapters I and 2 in conjunction
with these examples shows how commonly zoological and botanical
classifications do not constitute separate domains but form an
integral part of an all-embracing dynamic taxonomy the unity of
which is assured by the perfect homogeneity of its structure, con
sisting as it does of successive dichotomies. One consequence of
this feature is that it is always possible to pass from species to cate
gory. Again there is no inconsistency between the system (in evidence
at the top) and the lexicon whose role becomes progressively more
dominant as one descends the ladder of dichotomies. The problem
of the relation between continuous and discontinuous receives a solu
tion in terms of origin since the universe is represented as a
continuum made up of successive oppositions.
This continuity is already apparent in the scheme which governs
the liturgy of seasonal rites among the Pawnee Indians : the posts of
the lodge where the celebration takes place are chosen, according to
their orientation, from four species of trees painted in different
colours, which themselves correspond to directions symbolizing the
seasons which together make up the year :
1 39

THE SAVAGE MIND

CATEGORIES, ELEMENTS, SPECIES, NUMBERS

function of war is the prerogative of one of the two moieties which

together constitute the tribe).*

apparently the right and left hands rather than feet, but we have
already noticed the particular attention which the Osage pays to
the lower extremities). A Kaguru man uses his left hand for making
love and a woman her right hand (that is, the hands which are
impure for each sex respectively). The first payment which has to
be made to a healer, before treatment can begin, is made with the
right hand, the last with the left, etc. The nomadic Fulani of the
Sahel zone of the Niger, the Bororo of Africa, seem, like the Kaguru,
to associate the right side with men and - in the temporal order with what comes first, the left side with women and what comes
after.* Symmetrically, the masculine hierarchy goes from south to
north and the feminine from north to south, so that, in the camp,
the woman places her calabashes in order of decreasing size, with
the largest to the south, while a man fastens his calves in the reverse
order (Dupire).
To return to the Osage : the number thirteen, as we have seen, is
first of all the sum of the two social groups, right and left, north and
south, winter and summer ; thereafter it is specified concretely and
developed logically. In the image of the rising sun, in which the
beholder venerates the source of all life (thus facing east, which
means that the south is on his right and the north on his left), t the
number thirteen can symbolize the union of two terms : six and
seven, sky and land, etc. But when it relates to a star the solar sym
bolism is particularly attached to the sky moiety. Hence there come
to be other concrete specifications of the number thirteen, in this
case reserved to sub-groups of the other moiety : thirteen foot
prints of the black bear to represent the notable actions of the land
clans and thirteen willow trees to represent those of the water clans
(La Flesche 3 , p. 147).
Thirteen is thus the expression of a double human totality : collec
tive, since the tribe is made up of two asymmetrical moieties (quanti
tatively : one is single, the other divided ; and qualitatively : one in

Thus the quality and the unity of the two great divisions of the tribe
might be symbolized as a man or an animal, but the Hon' -ga great
division must always represent the right side of the man or animal and the
Tsi' -zhu the great division of the left. This idea of the duality and unity
of nature was not only reflected in the tribal organization but, in former
times, instilled in the minds of the people by certain personal habits, as
for instance members of the Hon' -ga great division when putting on their
moccasins put the moccasin on the right foot first, while members of the
Tsi' -zhu great division put the moccasin on the left foot first (La Flesche
3 . p . n s).

I want here to digress for a moment to point out that this meticulous
rigour in the practical application of a logical system is not an
isolated phenomenon. At Hawaii the death of a chief was marked
by violent manifestations of mourning. The participants wore their
loin cloths around their neck instead of loins. This vestimentary
inversion of high and low was accompanied by (and no doubt also
signified) sexual licence. The importance of the opposition between
high and low was expressed in a large number of prohibitions. A
receptacle containing food must not be covered by any object which
may have been walked on or sat on ; it was forbidden to sit on a
pillow or to use it as a footrest, to lay your head on a seat cushion, to
sit above anything containing food, or, for menstruating women,
to use as pads anything but material from old skirts worn below the
waist :
The old time Hawaiians used to talk often, when I was a small child, of
the terrible custom the Whites had of using a sheet sometimes to lie upon
and sometimes to lie under - they (the Whites) did not seem to know that
what belonged above (ma luna) should remain above and what belonged
below (ma lalo) should stay below . . .
In a hula school conducted by my cousin Ilala-ole-o-Ka'ahumanu,
one of the pupils thoughtlessly draped her skirt over her shoulder. The
hula master spoke sharply to her, saying 'What belongs above should stay
above, and what belongs below should stay below' (Ko luna, no luna no
ia; Ko lalo no lalo no ia). (Handy and Pukui, Part VI, p. 165, and Part
VII, pp. 3 1 6, 3 17).

"" The responsibility for this analysis, which is not given in the texts, is my
own.

* Cf. Diamond for an analogous spatio-temporal system in the same region.

t The officiant is painted red 'to express his craving that through the sun his
life may be made fruitful and that he may be blessed with a long line of descend
ants'. When his whole body has been painted red, 'a dark line is drawn on his
face running upward from one cheek to the forehead, then across to the opposite
side and downward to the middle of the other cheek. This line represents the
dark horizon line of the earth and is called a "snare" or an enclosure into which
all life is drawn and held captive'. (La Flesche 3, p. 73).

144

1 45

Recent studies (Needham 3 , Beidelman) show the refinement with

which the Mrican tribes of Kenya and Tanganyika exploit the, to
them, fundamental opposition between right and left (usually

. LES

CHT$; H U A i-ns

3 The opposite of totemism : Naturalized Man. Sketch by Le Brun

L cS R E N A R D S

Club used for killing fish

Humanized

N ature.

Sketch by

Grandville

rJl
"0
..

'+<
0
..
(\)
.D
el
..c:

..&
-<
"'

I
I

1.'

Society of Animals

Australian Churinga

CATEGORIES, ELEMENTS, SPECIES, NUMBERS

appears as a conceptual tool with multiple possibilities for detotal

izing or retotalizing any domain, synchronic or diachronic, concrete
or abstract, natural or cultural.
Thus it is never, properly speaking, the eagle which the Osage
invoke. For, according to the time and circumstances, it is eagles of
different species which are in question : the golden eagle, the spotted
eagle, the bald eagle, etc., or eagles of different colours : red, white,
spotted, etc. ; or finally eagles at different stages of their life : young,
old, etc. This three-dimensional matrix, a genuine system by means
of a creature, and not the creature itself, constitutes the object of
thought and furnishes the conceptual tool.* Were the image not so
trivial one would be tempted to compare this tool to a utensil with
crossed metal blades which is used for cutting potatoes into slices
or chips : a 'preconceived' grid is applied to all the empirical situa
tions with which it has sufficient affinities for the elements obtained
always to preserve certain general properties. The number of pieces
is not always the same nor is the form of each absolutely identical
but those which come from the centre remain in the centre, those
which come from the periphery on the periphery . . .
As medial classifier (and therefore the one with the greatest yield
and the most frequently employed) the species level can widen its
net upwards, that is, in the direction of elements, categories, and
numbers, or contract downwards, in the direction of proper names.
This last aspect will be considered in detail in the next chapter. The
network to which this twofold movement gives rise is itself cross-cut
at every level, for there are a great many different manners in which
these levels and their ramifications can be signified : nomenclature,
differences of clothing, bodily paintings or tattoos, ways of being or
behaviour, privileges and prohibitions. Each system is therefore
defined with reference to two axes, one horizontal and one vertical,
which correspond up to a point with Saussure's distinction between
syntagmatic and associative relations. But 'totemic' thought, unlike
speech, has this in common with mythical and poetical thought
that, as Jakobson has established for the latter, the principle of
equivalence acts on both planes. The social group can code the
message without any alteration in its content by means of different
* 'We do not believe', as an Osage explained 'that our ancestors were really
animals, birds, etc., as told in traditions. These things are only wa-wi-ku-ska'-ye
(symbols) of something higher' (J. 0. Dorsey, I, p. 396).

1 49

THE SAVAGE MIND

CATEGORIES, ELEMENTS, SPECIES, NUMBERS

lexical elements : as a categoric oppos1t10n : high/low, or as an

elemental one : skyjearth, or again as a specific one : eagle/bear. And
equally it has the choice of several syntactic procedures to assure the
transmission of the message : nomenclature, emblems, modes of
behaviour, prohibitions, etc., used either alone or together.*
Were the task not so immense, a classification of these classifica
tions could be undertaken. Systems would be distinguished accord
ing to the number of categories they employ - ranging from two to
several dozen - and according to the number and choice of elements
and dimensions. They would then be distinguished into macro- and
micro-classifications, the former being characterized by the
admission of a large number of animal and plant species to the
status of totems (the Aranda recognize more than four hundred) and
the latter by having totems all, as it were, inscribed within the limits
of the same species. The Banyoro and Bahima in Mrica provide an
* Considered separately, in their component parts and their respective rela
tions with their surroundings, a suburban villa and a stronghold are syntagmatic
sets : their elements are related to each other by contiguity: container and con
tent, cause and effect, end and mean, etc. What, as a bricoleur, Mr Wemmick of
Great Expectations undertook and realized (cf. above, p. 17) was the establish
ment of paradigmatic relations between the elements of these two chains : he can
choose between villa and castle to signify his abode, between pond and moat to
signify the piece of water, between flight of steps and drawbridge to signify the
entrance, between salad and food reserves to signify his lettuces. How has this
come about?
It is clear that to begin with his castle is a small-scale model, not of a real
castle but of a castle signified by camouflages and fittings which have the func
tion of symbols. He has not indeed acquired a real castle through these trans
formations, but he has well and truly lost a real villa, since his fantasy binds him
to a whole number of servitudes. Instead of living as a bourgeois, his domestic
life becomes a succession of ritual actions, the minute repetition of which serves
to promote, as the sole reality, the paradigmatic relations between two equally
unreal syntagmatic chains : that of the castle which has never existed and that
of the villa which has been sacrificed. The first aspect of bricolage is thus to
construct a system of paradigms with the fragments of syntagmatic chains.
But the reverse is equally true. His old father's deafness lends Mr Wemmick's
castle a real value : a stronghold is normally provided with cannons ; and his
father is so deaf that only the noise of a cannon can penetrate to him. The initial
syntagmatic chain, that of the suburban villa, is objectively broken by the
paternal infirmity. Father and son, its sole inhabitants, lived juxtaposed without
it being possible to establish any relation whatever between them. The villa need
only become a castle for the cannon, fired daily at nine o'clock, to institute an
effectual form of communication. A new syntagmatic chain thus results from
the system of paradigmatic relations. A practical problem is solved : that of com
munication between the inhabitants of the villa, but thanks to a total reorganiza
tion of the real and the imaginary, whereby metaphors take over the mission of
metonyms, and vice versa.
x so

instance ?f this. Clans are named after particular types or parts of

cws : stnped cow, brown cow, cow in full milk, etc., cow's tongue,
_
tnpe, heart, kidneys,
etc. The systems may equally be distinguished
by the number of their dimensions. Some are purely animal, some
purely plant, oters appeal to manufactured articles, and yet others
JUXtapose a vanable number of dimensions. They can be simple
(one name or one totem per clan) or multiple as in the case of the
Melanesian tribes who define each clan by a plurality of totems : a
bird, a tree, a mammal, and a fish. Finally, the systems can be
homogeneous like that of the Kavirondo where the totemic lists are
composed of elements of the same type : crocodile, hyena, leopard,
baboon, vulture, crow, python, mongoose, frog, etc. Or they can be
heterogeneous, as the totemic lists of the Bateso illustrate : sheep,
sugar cane, boiled bones of meat, mushroom, antelope (common to
sevral clans), sight of the forbidden antelope, shaved skull, or
agam, those of certain north-east Australian tribes : sexual passion,
adolesce?ce, various diseases, named places, swimming, copulation,
the makmg of a spear, vomiting, various colours, various physical
states, heat, cold, corpse, ghost, various accessories of ritual various
'
manufactured objects, sleep, diarrhoea, dysentery, etc.*
Such a classification of classifications is perfectly conceivable but
so many documents would have to be gone through and dimensions
of such variety taken into account to realize it, that even if we
confined ourselves to the societies for which the data are sufficiently
full, accurate, and comparable among themselves, it could not be
done without the aid of machines. Let us therefore content ourselves
with mentioning this programme, reserved for the ethnology of a
future century, and return to the most simple properties of what I
am, for convenience, calling the totemic operator. A description
with the help of a diagram, and considering only a small portion of
the cell (for we are making it begin at the species level and arbi
trarily restricting the number of species, and also the number of
parts of the body, to three each), is sufficient to give an indication
of its complexity (figure 8).
It can be seen that the species admits first empirical realizations :
Seal species, Bear species, Eagle species. Each includes a series of
* 'It app ars that a totem my be any enduring element of the physical or
.
mental env1ro ent, e1ther un_1qe conceptual entities, or, more frequently,
.
classes or species of things, actlv!tles, states, or qualities which are constantly
recurring and are thus considered to be perdurable' (Sharp, p. 6g).

151

CATEGO RIES, ELEME NTS, SPECIE S, NUMBE RS

THE SAVAGE MIND

. . . which apportions to each of the 2100 species, of plants for in
stance, a presiding angel in heaven, and assigns this as the motive of the
Levitical prohibition of mixtures among animals and plants (Tylor, vol.
I I, p. 246).

In the present state of knowledge, the figure of two thousand

appears to correspond well, in order of magnitude, to a sort of
threshold corresponding roughly to the capacity of memory and
power of definition of ethnozoologies or ethnobotanies reliant on
oral tradition. It would be interesting to know if this threshold has
any significant properties from the point of view of Information
Theory.
A recent student of initiation rites among the Senufo has brought
to light the role of fifty-eight figurines which are shown to novices
in a determinate order, and form, as it were, the canvas of the
instruction imparted to them. These figurines represent animals
or persons, or symbolize types of activities. Each therefore
corresponds to a species or to a class :
The elders present a certain number of objects to the neophytes . . .
This inventory, sometimes very lengthy, constitutes a sort of lexicon of
symbols and the different possible modes of using them are indicated. In
the most developed poro the men learn in this way to handle the ideo
graphical supports of a way of thought which manages to assume a truly
philosophical character (Bochet, p. 76).

;i
i ,

In other words, in systems of this type there is a constant passage

in both directions between ideas and images, grammar and lexicon.
This phenomenon, to which I have drawn attention several times
already, raises a difficulty, namely, whether it is legitimate to
postulate, as it might be objected I have implicitly done, that these
systems are motivated at all levels. Or, more precisely : are what
we have here genuine systems, where images and ideas, lexicon
and grammar are always united by strict and invariable relations,
or must we acknowledge that there is a certain measure of con
tingence and arbitrariness at the most concrete level - that of
images and lexicon - which casts doubt on the systematic nature
of the whole? This problem arises whenever one claims to have
discovered a logic of clan names. As I showed in an earlier chapter,
one almost always comes up against a difficulty which may at
first seem insurmountable. The societies which claim to form a
coherent and articulated system (whether the 'stress' of the
1 54

II

system is on names, modes of behaviour, or prohibitions) are also

collectivities of living beings. Even if, consciously or unconsciously
they apply rules of marriage whose effect is to keep the social
structure and rate of reproduction constant, these mechanisms
ne:rer fnction perf:ctly ; and they are also endangered by wars,
epidemics, and fammes. It is thus plain that history and demo
graphic development always upset the plans conceived by the
wise. In such societies there is a constantly repeated battle between
synchrony and diachrony from which it seems that diachrony must
emerge victorious every time.
What this means in relation to the problem just raised is that
the nearer we get to concrete groups the more we must expect to
fi d ar?itrry distinctions and denominations which are explicable
pnmanly m terms of occurrences and events and defy any logical
arrangement. 'Everything is a potential totem', it is said of tribes
of North-west Australia which already number such things as
'white fellow' and 'sailor' among their totems in spite of the recent
date of their first contact with civilization (Hernandez).
Certain tribes of Groote Eylandt, in the east of Arnhem Land,
are divided into two moieties comprising six clans. Each clan
possesses one or more miscellaneous totems : winds, ship, water,
animals and plant species, stones. The 'wind' totems are probably
connected with the annual visits of the Makassans and the same is
true of the 'ship' totem, as a myth referring to the manufacture of
ships by the Makassans in the island of Bickerton demonstrates.
Other totems are borrowings from natives of the interior. Some
are in the process of being abandoned while others are recent
introductions.
Consequently, the author of these remarks concludes it would
be imprudent to regard the choice and distribution of to;ems as an
attempt to fit various features of the environment into the dualist
scheme : 'the list . . . is in fact a product of historical accretion
rather than any attempt to systematize the natural environment
according to some philosophical scheme .' There are totemic songs
inspired by two known ships, the Cora and the Wanderer, and
eve':, smce there was an air-base established on one clan's territory
dunng the War, by the Catalina flying boats. Facts of this kind lead
us to think that some totems may have had their origin in historical
events, all the more so because in the language of the tribes in
question the same word is used to refer to totems, myths, and any
.

I55

THE SAVAGE MIND

CA TEGOIUES, ELEMENTS, SPECIES, NUMBERS

species of beautiful, unusual, or curious object, such as a particu

larly attractive beauty-spot or a pretty little phial of medicine. The
aesthetic inspiration and individual invention, no less than the
events, speak in favour of contingence (Worsley).
I referred to the role of the aesthetic imagination in the elabora
tion of classificatory systems several times in the first chapter of
this book. It is a role already recognized by theorists on taxonomy,
which, in Simpson's words, 'is also an art' (p. 227). There is
nothing disquieting about this aspect of the problem ; quite the
contrary. But what of historical factors?
Linguists have been well aware of this problem for a long time
and Saussure resolved it very clearly. Saussure, who laid down the
principle (for which the evidence seems to us today much less
conclusive) of the arbitrary character of linguistic signs, himself
concedes that this arbitrariness admits of degrees and that the sign
may be relatively motivated. So much is this the case that languages
can be classified in terms of the relative motivation of their signs :
the Latin inimicus is more strongly motivated than the French
ennemi (which is less readily identified as the reverse of ami) ; and
signs are also differently motivated within a single language : the
French dix-neuf is motivated, while the French vingt is not. For
the word dix-neuj'suggests it own terms and other terms associated
with it'. If the irrational principle of the arbitrariness of the sign
were applied without restriction, it 'would lead to the worst sort
of complication . . . But the mind contrives to introduce a principle
of order and regularity into certain parts of the mass of signs, and
this is the role of relative motivation'. In this sense we might say
that some languages are more lexicological and others more
grammatical:

broken open to intoduce elements taken from elsewhere and

there is no doubt that these additions often entail modificatin of
he system. reover, 'they do not always succeed in getting
mcorporated m 1t and the systematic appearance is then disturbed
or temporarily put in abeyance.
The example of he nine hundred survivors of some thirty
.
Austrahan tnbes whtch were haphazardly regrouped in a Govern
ment Settlement provides a tragic illustration of this constant
struggle between history and system. The Settlement contained
(in 1934) about forty wooden cottages, supervised dormitories
sergate by sex, a school, a hospital, a prison, ships ; and the
mtsswnanes (unlike the natives) could enjoy themselves to their
hearts' content : in the course of a few months, visits were made
by Non-Conformists, Presbyterians, the Salvation Army, Church
of England, and Roman Catholics . . .
I mention these facts not for polemical reasons but because
they make the maintenance of traditional beliefs and customs seem
so highly improbable. The natives' first response to the regrouping
was, however, the adoption of a common terminology and of rules
of correspondence for harmonizing the tribal structures which
were basically ones of moieties and sections in the whol: of the
relevant region. A native, asked what his section was, could there
fore give the reply : ' I am so-and-so in my own lingo - that is
Wungo here.'
The distribution of totemic species between moieties does not
seem t have been uniform, which is hardly surprising. But the
.
regulanttes and the systematic way in which the informants
solved each problem is all the more striking. Except in one region,
opossum belongs to the Wuturu moiety. Fresh water is Yanguru
along the coast but in the west it belongs to the Wuturu moiety.
The natives say : 'nearly always cold skin with Wuturu and feathers
with Yanguru', so that Wuturu had water, lizard, frog, etc., and
Yanguru mu, uck, and other birds. But where the frog was in
the oppostte m01ety to the opossum another principle of opposition
was brought to the rescue : both kinds of animal hop and this
resemblance is ascribed to the fact that the frog is the opossum's
'fathe:' an i a matrilineal society father and son belong to
opposite m01et1es :

'I

Not because 'lexical' and 'arbitrary' on the one hand and 'granunar'
and 'relative motivation' on the other, are always synonymous, but
because they have a common principle. The two extremes are like poles
between which the whole system moves, two opposing currents which
share the movement of language : the tendency to use the lexicological
instrument (the unmotivated sign) and the preference given to the gram
matical instrument (structural rules) (Saussure, pp. 133-4).

For Saussure, therefore, language moves from arbitrariness to

motivation. The systems we have been considering so far on the
other hand go from motivation to arbitrariness : conceptual
schemes (at the limit, simple binary opposition) are constantly
1 56

, ' ',,,

When informants worked out lists of totem contained in each moiety,

1 57

THE SAVAGE MIND

CATEGORIES, ELEM:ENTS, SPECIES, NUMBERS

they invariably reasoned along these lines : trees and' the birds which made
which grew alongside
their nests in them were in the same moiety ;
creeks or in water-holes and swamps were in
same moiety as water,
fishes, water-fowl, lily-roots. 'Eaglehawk, p)ain turkey, everything that
flies all work together. Carpet snake [Python variegatus] and ground
goanna [Varanus Gould?] all work together
, :._ they travel together in olden
time' (Kelly, p. 465).

The same species sometimes figures in both moieties. This is so in

the case of the Python variegatus (carpet-snake) ; but the natives
distinguish four varieties according to their skin markings and
these varieties are divided between the moieties in pairs. The same
holds for the varieties of turtle. The grey kangaroo is Wuturu and
the red Yanguru but they would not fight with each other in battle.
Another native group say that certain natural species belong to
fire and others to water : opossum, bee, and sand goanna ( Varanus
eremius ?) are said to 'own fire', Python variegatus (carpet-snake),
Leipoa ocellata (scrub turkey), lizard, and porcupine 'own water'.
It was claimed that long ago the ancestors of the group in question
had fire, and the people living in the scrub had water. They joined
up and shared water and fire. Finally, each totem was specially
related to a species of tree, and a branch of the relevant clan tree is
placed in the grave of a deceased member of the clan. The emu is
i
said to own box tree (Bursaria sp. ?), porcupine and eagle-hawk
own certain varieties of acacia (brigalow), opdssum another acacia
(Kidji), the carpet-snake owns sandal wood, and the sand goanna
bottle-tree (Sterculia ?). In the western groups the dead were
buried facing east or west according to the moiety (I.e., pp.
461-6).
So, although the social organization is reduced to chaos by the
new conditions of life imposed on the natives and the lay and
religious pressures to which they have been subjected, the theoret
ical attitude continues to flourish. When it is no longer possible
to retain the traditional interpretations, others are worked out
which, like the first, are inspired by motivations (in Saussure's
sense) and by schemes. Social structures previously simply juxta
posed in space are made to correspond at the same time as the
animal and plant classifications of each tribe. According to their
tribal origin, the informants conceived the dual scheme on the
model of opposition of resemblance, and they formalized it in

1 58

terms of kinship (father and son) or directions (east and west) or

elements (land and sea, water and fire, air and land), or again in
terms of the differences or resemblances between natural species.
They took these various procedures into account also and sought
to formulate rules of equivalence. If the process of deterioration
were halted, there is no doubt that this syncretism could serve as
the starting point of a new society, for working out an entire
system with all its aspects adjusted.
This example shows how the logical dynamism, which is a
property of the system, succeeds in overcoming what, even for
Saussure, does not constitute an antinomy. Apart from the fact
that systems of classification, like languages, may differ with
respect to arbitrariness and motivation without the latter ceasing to
be operative,* the dichotomizing character which we have found in
them explains how the arbitrary aspects (or those which appear to
us arbitrary, for one can never be sure that a choice which is
arbitrary for the observer may not be motivated from the point of
view of indigenous thought) come to be grafted on to the rational
aspects without altering their nature. I have represented systems
of classification as 'trees' ; and the growth of a tree is a good illus
tration of the transformation just mentioned. A tree is, as it were,
strongly motivated so far as its lower parts are concerned : it must
have a trunk and the trunk must be nearly vertical. The lower
?ranches already allow more arbitrariness : their number, although
1t may be expected to be limited, is never fixed in advance nor is
the orientation of each and its angle in relation to the truk. But
tese aspects nevertheless remain bound by reciprocal relations,
smce the larger branches, given their own weight and the foliage
laden branches they hold up, must balance the pressures which
theY: apply at the comn point of support. The part played by
.
mottvatwn, however, dtmmtshes, and that of arbitrariness increases
progressively as we turn our attention higher : the terminal
branches can no longer compromise the tree's stability nor alter its
characteristic shape. Their multiplicity and insignificance has
freed them from the initial constraints and their general distribu
tion can be explained either as a series of repetitions, on an ever
diminishing scale, of a plan which is also written into the genes in
* As the Lovedu of South Mrica say : 'The ideal is to return home' for "The
only place one never returns to is the womb" ' (Krige, p. 323).

1 59

THE SAVAGE MIND

their cells or as the result of statistical fluctuations. The strucure,

.
intelligible at the start, in branching ot eaces a ort of mertla r
logical indifference. Without contradtctmg 1ts pnma;y atre, 1t
can thereafter undergo the effect of multiple and vaned mctdents
which occur too late to prevent an attentive observer from
identifying it and classing it. in a genus.

CHAPTER S I X

U N IVE R S AL I ZAT I O N A N D
PART I C U LARI ZAT I O N

\.
.

I:
!

The antinomy which some believe they have detected between

history and system* would seem to be present in the cases con
sidered only if we were not aware of the dynamic relation between
the two aspects. There is room between them for a diachronic and
non-arbitrary construction providing a transition from one to the
other. Starting from a binary opposition, which affords the simplest
possible example of a system, this construction proceeds by the
aggregation, at each of the two poles, of new terms, chosen because
they stand in relations of opposition, correlation, or analogy to it.
It does not, however, follow from this that the relations in question
have to be homogeneous. Each 'local' logic exists in its own right.
It consists in the intelligibility of the relation between two
immediately associated terms and this is not necessarily of the same
type for every link in the semantic chain. The position is some
what comparable to that of inexperienced players in a game of
dominoes who consider only the value of the adjacent halves in
joining the pieces but manage to continue the game none the less
for their lack of previous knowledge of its composition.
The logic of the system need not, therefore, coincide at every
* But this disillusioned reflection on the part of one of the champions of purely
historical ethnology is enough to convince one that these two notions are of value
only as limiting cases : 'The present state of Zande clans and that of their totemic
affiliations can only be understood in the light of the political development of
Zande society, even though it can be for us only a glimmering light. Hundreds
of thousands of people of different ethnic origin all jumbled up - the ethnologist
in Mrica may sometimes sigh for some neat little Polynesian or Melanesian
island community !' (Evans-Pritchard, 2, p. 1 21).

1 60

1.

1 61

THE SAVAGE MIND

oint with the set of local logics inserted in it. This general logi
an be of a different order. It is then definable by the umber n
nature of the axes employed, by the rules of rns rrat :k;
it ossible to pass from one to another, an na y y .
a
inrtia of the system, that is, its greater or less receptiveness to
unmotivated factors.
The so-called totemic classifications, the berlefs and pracflCes1
connected with them, are only one aspect .or mode of thls. genera
systematic activity. From this point of VleW I have so far n
little more than develop and deepen some comments of a
Gennep's :
Every ordered society necessa .1y c1asses not only its human members,
but also the objects d creaturn of a: =t'=s according to their
i psychic character
external form, sometunes accor mg . .
griculture or in
istic,
sometimes
according
to
their
utihty
as
oo
f
d
. dustry, or for the producer or consumer N:i
g entitles us to
regard any one system of 1ass\
'fi t'on say the zoological system of
totemism or the cosmographIC sys Ior he occupational system (castes)
as prior to the others (Van Gennep, PP 345-6).
A footnote makes it clear that Van Gennep was fully conscious of
the boldness and novelty of this passage :
It will be seen that I do not accept Durkheim's vew (F_ormes, p . 3
f li g creatures (meludmg man) l
that the cosmic. classi'ficatiOn
own view the
material objects is a conseqenc of totemi m. In
special f;7t o::c l
I?Y is not e;en a
o
nuance
0 :=I!v = s!I:mponents: F?r
peoples without totemism alo posess a system f classification which m
thi case too. is ?ne of the pno::l: 0 their eneral system of
! r lay anlmagico-religius
social organizatiOn and as sue
institutions. Examples ar the on.ental stems Chinese and Persian
dualism, Assyro-Babyloman cosmograp sm, he so -called magical
system of sympathetic correspondences, etc.I
. of
Van Gennep's demonstration is inadequat, hoever, 1. splte
these sound views, for he continued to beheve m oemlsm s a
institutional reality. He no longer tried to make lt lto a c assl
ficatory system from which all others derived, but he stlll attempt.ed
to preserve a distinctiven.es for it coparable to that of a specJes
objectively identifiable. w1thm a genus
. ?f t temic k' hip is thus composed of three elements :
The notion

o
and cosmic, classificatory
sm l . i
?Y: !:l::Ii he c}t:71 goup to ceatures or. objects
tretically belonging to the group. What characterizes totemism . .

UNIVER,SALIZATION AND PARTICULARIZATION

is . . . the particular combination of these three elements, just as a certain

combination of copper, sulphur, and oxygen mal{es copper sulphate

(I.e.).

vm

1 62

I
I

Although so near the truth, Van Gennep thus remained a prisoner

of the traditional classification in whose framework he was content
to confine his argument. In neither his own nor his predecessors'
writings can one find any foundation for the rash comparison he
brings in support of his thesis. That copper sulphate is a chemical
substance, in spite of the fact that none of its constituent elements
are exclusive to it, is due to the fact that their combination results
in a set of differential properties : form, colour, flavour, effect on
other substances and on biological beings, all properties which are
not found together in anything else. But the same is not true of
totemism, however it may be defined. It is not a substance in an
ethnological kingdom, but consists rather of rough qualities of
varying elements, whose thresholds are arbitrarily selected by each
theorist and whose presence, absence, or degree involves no
specific effects. The most that can be discerned in the cases tradi
tionally diagnosed as 'totemic' is a relative inflation of the classi
ficatory scheme at the species level, without any real change in its
nature or structure. Moreover, we are never sure that this inflation
is an objective property of the scheme and not just the result of the
particular conditions under which the observation was conducted.
The work of the late Marcel Griaule, of G. Dieterlein, G. Calame
Griaule, and D. Zahan among the Dogon and the Bambara has
shown in the course of its development over twenty years how the
observers have gradually had to connect the 'totemic' categories,
originallyisolated in conformity with the fiat of traditional ethnology,
with facts of a different order, so that they have now come to look
like no more than one of the points of view from which a system of
several dimensions may be comprehended.
All that can therefore be conceded to the upholders of totemism
is the special position devolving on the notion of a species considered
as a logical operator. But this discovery considerably antedates the
earliest speculations about totemism, having been formulated first
by Rousseau (Levi-Strauss 6, pp. 142-6) and then, with reference
to issues considered in this work, by Comte. Comte sometimes
employed the notion of taboo but, although he could have been
acquainted with Long's book, the idea of totemism seems to have
remained unknown to him. It is all the more significant that in his
1 63

;I

il

'I
i
I

I!

i. :
I

'
'

I
I .
I

I'
1.

THE SAVAGE MIND

discussion of the passage from fetishism to polytheism (where he

would probably have put totemism), Comte makes it a consequence
of the emergence of the notion of species :
When' for example, the similar vegetation of the different trees in a
forest of oaks had finally to lead to the representation, in theological con
ceptions, of what their phenomena presented in coon, this abstract
being was no longer the fetish belonging to any t:ee} 1t became th Go_d
of the forest. So the intellectual passage from fet1sh1sm to polythe1sm 1s
essentially reducible to the inevitable preponderance of specific over
general ideas (52e lec,:on, vol. V, p. 54).
Tylor, the founder of modern ethnology, appreciated_ the use that
could be made of Comte's idea, which, he remarks, ts even more
applicable to this special category of deities, the deified species :
The uniformity of each kind not only suggested a common parentage,
but also the notion that creatures so wanting in individuality, with quali
ties so measured out as it were by line and rule, might not be independent
arbitrary agents, but mere copies from a common model, or mere instru
ments used by controlling deities (Tylor, vol. II, p. 243).
The logical power of the specific operator can also be illustrated in
other ways. For this allows domains very different from ach othr
to be integrated into the classificatory scheme, thus affordmg classi
fications a means of going beyond their limits : either extendig to
domains outside the initial set - by universalization, or alternatively
by particularization - taking the classificatory approach past its
natural bounds, that is, to individuation.
The first point can be dealt with briefly. A few xaples are su
cient. So little is the species 'grid' confined to socwlogtcal categ?nes
that (notably in America) it sometime serves to o:der a domam as
restricted as that of diseases and remedtes. The Indtans of the south
east United States attribute pathological phenomena to a conflict
between men, animals, and plants. Vexed with men, animals sent
them diseases. Plants, who were friends of men, retorted by supply
ing remedies. The important point is that ach species posesses a .
specific disease or remedy. Thus, accordmg to the Chtckaw,
stomach disorders and pains in the legs come from snakes, vomttmg
from dogs, aches in the jaw from deer, pains in the abomen _from
bears, dysentery from skunks, nose-bleeding from sqmrrels, Jaun
dice from otters disturbances of the lower part of the abdomen
and the bladde; from moles, cramp from eagles, eye diseases
1 64

UN IVERSALIZATION AND PARTI CULARIZATION

and somnolence from owls, pain in the joints from rattle-snakes, etc.
(Swanton, z) .
Similar beliefs are found among the Pima of Arizona. They attri
bute throat diseases to the badger, swellings, headaches and fever to
the bear, diseases of the throat and lungs to the deer, children's
diseases to the dog and coyote, stomach trouble to the gopher or
prairie-rat, ulcers to the jack-rabbit, constipation to the mouse,
nose-bleed to the ground-squirrel, haemorrhages to the hawk and
eagle, syphilitic sores to the vulture, children's fevers to the Gila
monster, rheumatism to the horned toad,* 'white fever to the lizard,
kidney and stomach troubles to the rattle-snake, ulcers and paralysis
to the turtle, internal pains to the butterfly, etc. (Russell).t Among
the Hopi, who are a day's march from the Pima, an analogous classi
fication is based on the organization into religious orders, each of
which can inflict a punishment in the form of a particular disease :
abdominal swelling, sore ears, horn-like swelling on the top of the
head, deafness, eczema on the upper part of the body, twisting and
twitching of the face and neck, soreness in the bronchial tubes, bad
knee (Voth 2, p. 1 09 n.). The problem of classifications could un
doubtedly be tackled from this angle and some curious resem
blances, symptomatic of logical connections which could be of
considerable importance, might be found between distant groups
(the association of the squirrel and nose-bleeding, for instance,
seems to recur in a large number of North American peoples).
The specific categories and the myths connected with them can
also serve to organize space, and the classificatory system is then
extended on a territorial and geographical basis. A classic example
is the totemic geography of the Aranda, but there are other people
equally exacting and subtle in this respect. In Aluridja territory a
rocky site measuring five miles round the base was recently dis
covered and described in which every accident of relief corresponds
to a phase of ritual in such a way that this natural rock illustrates the
structure of their myths and the order of the ceremonies for the
natives. Its north side is the side of the moiety of the sun and of the
* It may be noted, in support of the considerations adduced earlier (pp. 64-5)
that it is probably the same behaviour on the part of this animal which suggests
entirely different associations to the American Indians and the Chinese. The
Chinese ascribe aphrodisiac virtues to the flesh of the phrynosoma or to the wine
in which it has been macerated because the male holds on to the female so hard
during copulation that he does not let go even when caught.
t For closely related ideas among the Papago, cf. Densmore.
7-TSM

I,

II

THE SAVAGE MIND

UNIVERSALIZATION AND PARTI CULARIZATION

ritual cycle Kerungera, its south side that of the moiety of the shade
and the ritual Arangulta. Thirty-eight points on the base of the
plateau are named and annotated (Harney).
North America also furnishes examples of mythical geography
and totemic topography, from Alaska to California as well as in the
south-west and north-east of the continent. In this respect the
Penobscot of Maine exemplify a general tendency on the part of the
northern Algonkin to interpret all the physiographic aspects of the
tribal territory in terms of the peregrinations of the civilizing hero
Gluskabe and other mythical personage or incidents. An elongated
rock is the hero's canoe, a streak of white rock represents the entrails
of the moose he killed, Kineo mountain is the overturned cooking
pot in which he cooked the meat, etc. (Speck 2, p. 7).
Again, in the Sudan, a mytho-geographical system has been dis
covered which covers the entire Niger valley, and thus extends over
more than the territory of any single group, and in which is trans
lated down to the minutest detail a conception of the relations
between different cultural and linguistic groups which is at once
diachronic and synchronic.
This last example shows that the systems of classification not
only permit the 'furnishing', as it were, of social time (by means of
myths) and of tribal space (with the help of a conceptualized topo
graphy). The filling in of the territorial framework is accompanied
by enlargement. In the same way that, on the logical plane, the
specific operator effects the transition to the concrete and individual
on the one hand and the abstract and systems of categories on the
other, so, on the sociological plane, totemic classifications make it
possible both to define the status of persons within a group and to
expand the group beyond its traditional confines.
Primitive societies have, and not without justification, been said
to treat the limits of their tribal group as the frontiers of humanity
and to regard everyone outside them as foreigners, that is, as dirty,
coarse sub-men or even non-men : dangerous beasts or ghosts. This
is often true, but what is overlooked when this is said is that one of
the essential functions of totemic classifications is to break down
this closing in of the group into itself and to promote an idea some
thing like that of a humanity without frontiers. There s evidence of
this phenomenon in all the classical areas of so-called totemic organ
ization. In a region in West Australia the clans and their totems 'are
grouped together into a number of what may be called inter-tribal

totemic divisions' (Radcliffe-Brown I, p. 214). This is equally true

of other parts of the same continent :

166

I have ascertained that in 167 cases (s6%) out of 300 names of common
totemic animals, the Western Aranda and the Loritja use the same or
similar terms ; and comparison of totemic plant names used by the
Western Aranda and Loritja shows that the same terms are found in both
languages to refer to 147 of the 220 species of plants which I recorded
(6iJ'o) (C. Strehlow, pp. 66--7).

Analogous observations have been made in America among the

Sioux and the Algonkin. The Menomini Indians, who belong to the
latter, entertain a :

. . . general belief in the common relationship of not only the indi

viduals of a certain totem within the tribe, but of all persons of a similarly
named totem of another tribe belonging to the same linguistic family;
and in the belief of the Menomini this extended also to tribes other than
those of the same linguistic family (Hoffman, p. 43).
Similarly, among the Chippewa :

All members with the same totem regarded themselves as related even
though of different villages or different tribes . . . When two strangers met
and found themselves to be of the same totem they immediately began to
trace their genealogy, . . . and the one became the cousin, the uncle, or
the grandfather of the other, although the grandfather might often be
the younger of the two. The ties of the totem were considered so strong
that if a quarrel should happen between a person with the same totem as a
bystander and a cousin or other near relative of the latter but with a
different mark, the bystander would side with the person with the same
totem whom perhaps he had never seen before (Kinietz, pp. 69-70).
This totemic universalization not only breaks down tribal frontiers
and creates the rudiments of an international society. It also some
times goes beyond the limits of humanity in a biological, and no
longer merely sociological, sense, when totemic names are applic
able to totemic animals. This occurs among the Australian tribes of
the Cape York Peninsula in the case of dogs* - also referred to as
'brothers' or 'sons' according to the group (Sharp, p. 70 ; Thomson)
- and among the Ioway and Winnebago Indians in the case of dogs
and horses (Skinner 3, p. 1 98).
* Among the Wik Munkan a dog is called Yatut 'extracting bones of . . . the
totem fish' if his master is of the Bone-fish clan, Owun 'illicit or stolen meeting'
if his master is of the Ghost clan (Thomson, pp. 161-2).

THE SAVAGE MIND

I have given a brief indication of how the meshes of the net can
stretch indefinitely in accordance with the dimensions and gener
ality of the field. It remains to be shown how they can also shrink
to filter and imprison reality but this time at the lower limit of the
system by extending its action beyond the threshold which one
would be inclined to assign to all classification, that beyond which
it is no longer possible to class, but only to name. These extreme
operations are in fact less widely separated than they might appear
and, when seen in the perspective of the systems we are studying,
they may even be superposed. Space is a society of particular places
as people are landmarks within the group. Places and individuals
alike are designated by proper names, which can be substituted for
each other in many circumstances common to many societies. The
Yurok of California provide one example among others of this
personified geography, where trails are conceived of as animated
beings, each house is named, and the names of places replace
personal names in current usage (Waterman).
An Aranda myth well expresses this feeling of correspondence
between geographical and biological individuation : the earliest
divine beings are shapeless, without limbs, and welded together
until the coming of the god Mangarkunjerkunja (the fly-catcher .
lizard), who proceeded to separate them and fashion them indivi- \
dually. At the same time (and is this not indeed the same thing ?) he
taught them the arts of civilization and the system of sections anJ
sub-sections. The eight sub-sections were originally divided into
two main groups : four land ones and four water ones. It was the god
who 'territorialized' them by allotting each site to a pair of sub
sections. Now, this individuation of territory corresponded to bio
logical individuation in another way as well, in that the totemic
mode of fertilizing the mother explains the anatomic differences
observable among children. Those with fine features were con
ceived by the operation of a ratapa, embryo-spirit ; those with large
features by magical projection of a rhomb into a woman's body ;
children with fair hair were direct reincarnations of totemic
ancestors (C. Strehlow). The Australian tribes of the Drysdale
River, in Northern Kimberley, divide all kinship relations, which
together compose the social 'body', into five categories named after
a part of the body or a muscle. Since a stranger must not be ques
tioned, he announces his kinship by moving the relevant muscle
(Hernandez, pp. 228-9). In this case, too, therefore, the total system
x68

UNIVERSALIZATION AND PARTICULARIZATION

of social relations, itself bound up with a system of the universe,

can be projected on to the anatomical plane. In Toradja there are
fifteen terms to name the cardinal points which correspond to the
parts of body of a cosmic divinity (Woensdregt). Other examples
could be cited, from ancient Germanic kinship terminology as
well as from the cosmological and anatomical correspondences
of the Pueblo and Navajo Indians and the Sudanese Negroes.
It would certainly be instructive to make a detailed study of the
mechanics of this homological particularization in a sufficient
number of cases. Its general relation with the forms of classification
we have encountered so far can be seen clearly in the following
derivation :

If
(group a) . ; (grqup b) : : (bear species) : (eagle species)
then
(member of a) : (member y of b) : : (member l of bear) :
(member of eagle)
r

These formulae have the advantage of throwing into relief a

problem traditionally discussed in Western philosophy, though the
question of whether or not, or in what form, it arises in exotic .
societies has received little attention : I mean the problem of organic
ism. The equations above would be inconceivable were it not for
the postulate of a fairly general correspondence between the 'mem
bers' of society and if not the members themselves, then at least the
attributes of natural species : parts of the body, characteristics
details, ways of being or behaviour. The available evidence on this
subject suggests that a great many languages equate parts of the
body, regardless of the diversity of orders and families, or sometimes
even of kingdoms, and that this system of equivalence is susceptible
of very considerable extensions (Harrington).* Morphological
classifiers therefore function in addition to and alongside the
specific classifiers. The theoretical account of these remains to be
given, but we have seen that they operate on two planes : that of
anatomical detotalization and that of organic retotalization.
These are equally interdependent, as we have shown in the case
* In America the following equivalences are found : horns (quadrupeds) siphon
eyestalks (Molluscs) = antennae (arthropoda) ; penis (vertebrates)
(molluscs) ; blood (animals) = juice (plants) ; slobber (babies' ;t: saliva of adult8)
= excretion ; byssus of mussel = tie, string, etc. (Harrington).
=

THE SAVAGE MIND

UNIVERSALIZATION AND PARTI CULARIZATION

has euristi value to thought founded on the operation of dicho

tomtes, but ts also an expression of a property of what exists : either
everything, or nothing, makes sense.*
Let us now return to the ethnographic facts at the point at which
we left them. Almost all the societies I have mentioned construct
their proper names from clan appellations. The proper names of
the Sauk, who furnished our last example, are said always to be
related to the clan animal : either because they mention the name of
the animal itself, or because they suggest one of its habits, attributes
or charactristic qualities (real or mythical), or because they refe;
to some ammal or object with which it is associated. Sixty-six names
of the Bear clan, eleven of the Bison dan, thirty-three of the Wolf
cln, twenty-three of the Turkey clan , forty-two of the Fish clan,
thtrty-seven of the Great Sea clan, forty-eight of the Thunder clan,
fourteen of the Fox clan, and thirty-four of the Deer clan have been
recorded (Skinner 2).
The list of Osage proper names which belong to clans or sub
clans, althouh fragmentary, is long enough to occupy forty-two
quarto pages m La Flesche 4 (pp. 122-64). The rule of formation is
the same as among the Sauk. Thus for the Black Bear clan we have :
Flashing-eyes (of the bear), Tracks-on-the-prairies, Ground
cleared-of-grass, Black-bear-woman, Fat-on-the-skin of the black
bear, etc. Among the Tlongit of Alaska 'all names . . . are felt to
belong. to a particuar sib : and some have even been designated as
belongmg to a parttcular ,house" or "lineage" ' (Laguna, p. 185).
These examples can be multiplied, for similar ones are found in
almost all the Algonkin and Sioux tribes and in those of the north
west coast, that is to say, in the three classical domains of 'totemism'
in North America.
South America provides illustrations of the same phenomenon,
notably an:ong the Tupi Kawahib, whose clans possess proper
names denved from the eponym (Levi-Strauss 3). The proper
names of the Bororo also seem to belong to particular clans or even
to powerful lineages. Those who have to depend on the good will of
other clans for aving a name are said to be 'poor' (Cruz).
The connectwn between proper names and totemic appellations
is found in Melanesia :

the psychological aspect of personal destiny and its social aspect,

which is the result of the giving of a name to each individual.
Thus we reach the final level of classification : that of individua
tion, for in the systems we are considering here individuals are not
only ranged in classes ; their common membership of the class does
not exclude but rather implies that each has a distinct position in it,
and that there is a homology between the system of individuals
within the class and the system of classes within the superior cate
gories. Consequently, the same type of logical operation links not
only all the domains internal to the system of classification but also
peripheral domains which might, by their nature, have been sup
posed to escape it : at one extreme (owing to their virtually unlimited
extension and their disregard of principle) the physico-geographical
substratum of social life and even social life itself, overflowing the
mould in which it was cast; and at the other extreme (by reason of
their concrete nature which is equally given) the ultimate diversity
of individual and collective beings, which, so it has been claimed,
were named only because they could not be signified (Gardiner).
Proper names do not therefore constitute a mere practical modal
ity of classificatory systems which could be mentioned after the
other modalities. They raise a problem for ethnologists, even more
than for linguists. The problem for linguists is the nature of proper
names and their place in the system of the language. We are con
cerned with this problem but also with another, for we are faced with
a twofold paradox. We need to establish that proper names are an
integral part of systems we have been treating as codes : as means of
fixing significations by transposing them into terms of other signi
fications. Would this be possible if it were true, as logicians and some
linguists have maintained, that proper names are, in Mill's phrase,
'meaningless', lacking in signification? Again, and this is the most
important point, we have conceived of the forms of thought with
which we have been concerned as totalizing thoughts, which exhaust
reality by means of a finite number of given classes, and have the
fundamental property of being transformable into each other. How
could this quantified thought, to which, on the practical plane, we
attributed the great discoveries of the neolithic revolution, have been
both theoretically satisfying and effectively applied to the concrete,
if the latter contained a residue of unintelligibility - to which, in the
last analysis, concreteness itself is reducible - which is essentially
recalcitrant to signification? The principle of all or nothing not only

* Evrything, except the existence of what exists, which is not one of its
properties (cf. below, p. 255).

1 72

1 73

THE SAVAGE MIND

The totemic system [of the Iatmul] is enormously elaborated into a

series of personal names, so that every individual bears names of totemic
ancestors - spirits, birds, stars, pots, adzes, etc., etc. - of his or her clan,
and one individual may have thirty or more such names. Every clan has
hundreds of these polysyllabic ancestral names which refer in their
Etymology to secret myths (Bateson, p. 127).

UNIVERSALIZATION AND PARTICULARIZATION

are most often found juxtaposed) the proper name refers to a partial
aspect of the animal or plant entity just as it corresponds to a partial
aspect of the individual being - in general, and in particular, in those
societies in which an individual receives a new name at every impor
tant point of his life. Neighbouring societies, moreover, employ the
same constructions for forming in some cases personal names
(borne by individual members of a clan group) and in others collec
tive names (borne by bands, lineages, or groups of lineages, that is,
sub-groups of a single clan).
Two parallel detotalizations are thus involved : of species into
parts of the body and attitudes, and of social segments into indivi
duals and roles. But just as the detotalization of the concept of a
species into particular species, of each species into its individual
members, and of each of these individuals into organs and parts of
the body could, as I tried to show with the help of a figurative model,
issue into a retotalization of the concrete parts into abstract parts
and of the abstract parts into a conceptualized individual, so here
the detotalization takes place in the form of retotalization. Kroeber's
observations about proper names among the Miwok of California
serve to provide a final example and at the same time open up a new
perspective :

The position seems to have been the same throughout Australia. 'By
knowing a native's name, if one knew the Aranda language well
enough, it would seem one would also know his or her totem by,
deduction' (Pink, p. 1 76). Another observation, relating to the
Murngin of Arnhem Land, echoes this one : 'The names of the
living are all taken from some part of the totemic complex and refer
directly or indirectly to the totem' (Warner, p. 390). The proper
names of the Wik Munkan also derive from their respective totems.
For instance, for men whose totem is the fish barramundi (Osteo
glossum), which they spear : the-barramundi-swims-in-water-and
sees-a-man, the barramundi-moves-its-tail-as-it-swims-around-its
eggs, the-b.-breathes, the-b.-has-its-eyes-open, the-b.-breaks-a
spear, the-b.-eats-mullet, etc. And for women whose totem is the
crab : the-crab-has-eggs, tide-takes-crabs-out-to-sea, the-crab
stops-down-hole-and-is-dug-out, etc. (McConnel, p. 1 84). The
tribes of the Drysdale River region have proper names derived from
clan appellations, as the author quoted above underlines : 'Proper
names . . . always bear relation to one's totem' (Hernandez).
It is clear that these individual appellations belong to the same
system as the collective appellations discussed above and that,
through the intermediary of the latter, one can, with the help of
transformations, pass from the horizon of individuation to that of
more general categories. Every clan or sub-clan possesses a quota of
names which only its own members can bear and, just as an indivi
dual is part of the group, so an individual name is 'part' of the
collective appellation, either in the sense that it may cover the whole
animal, and the individual names correspond to its parts or limbs,
or that the collective appellation may depend on an idea of the
animal conceived at the highest level of generality and the individual
appellations correspond to one of its predications in time or space :
Barking-dog, Angry-bison, or there may be a combination of both
procedures : Flashing-eyes-of-the-bear. The animal may be subject
or predicate in the relation so expressed : The-fish-moves-its-tail,
Tide-takes-crabs, etc. Whichever procedure is employed (and they

There are no subdivisions of any sort within the moieties. Associated

with each, however, is a long list of animals, plants and objects ; in fact,
the native concept is that everything in the world belongs to one or the
other side. Each member of a moiety stands in relation to one of the
objects characteristic of his moiety - a relation that must be considered
totemic - in one way only: through his name. This name given him
in infancy by a grandfather or other relative, and retained through
life, refers to one of the totem animals or objects characteristic of his
moiety.
Nor is this all: in the great majority of cases the totem is not mentioned
in the name, which is formed from some verbal or adjectival stem, and
describes an action or condition that might apply equally well to other
totems. Thus on the verb hausu-us are based the names Hausu and
Hauchu, which connote, respectively, the yawning of an awakening bear
and the gaping of a salmon drawn out of the water. There is nothing in
either name that indicates the animals in question - which even belong
to opposite moieties. The old men who bestowed them no doubt an
nounced the totemic reference of the names ; the bearers, and their family,
kin, and more intimate associates, knew the implication; but a Miwok
from another district would have been uncertain whether a bear, a salmon,
or one of a dozen other animals was meant (Kroeber 2, pp. 453-4).

1 74

175

I'

THE SAVAGE MIND

UN IVERSALIZATION AND PARTICULARIZATION

This feature does not appear to be peculiar to the Miwok. Lists of

clan names among the Sioux tribes contain plenty of analogous
examples and what Kroeber says also coincides with a characteristic
of the Hopi Indians' system of naming. Thus the name Cakwyam
tiwa, the literal meaning of which is 'Blue (or green)-having-come
out' can refer to the matured flower of the tobacco plant or to that
of the Delphinium scaposum or again to the germination of plants in
general, depending on the clan of the donor of the name. Similarly,
the name Lomahongioma, ' Stand up' or 'rise gracefully' can refer
to the stem of the reed or to the erect wings of the butterfly, etc.
(Voth 3 , pp. 68-9).
The prevalence of the phenomenon raises a psychological prob
lem, relevant to the theory of proper names, which I shall come back
to later. I want now just to emphasize that the relative indeterminacy
of the system corresponds, virtually at least, to the phase of retotal
ization : proper names are formed by detotalizing species and by
deducting a partial aspect of them. But by stressing exclusively the
fact of the deduction and leaving the species which is the subject of
it indeterminate, there is a suggestion that all the deductions (and
so all the acts of naming) have something in common. A unity
divined at the heart of diversity is claimed in advance. From this
point of view, too, the dynamics of individual names derives from
the classificatory systems we have been analysing. It consists of
approaches of the same type, and similarly oriented.
Further, it is striking that systems of prohibitions with the same
characteristics are to be found on the plane of individual appellations
as well as on that of collective names. In some cases the plant or
animal serving as a social group's eponym may not be used as food
by that group ; in other cases, however, it is the linguistic use of the
plant or animal serving as an individual's eponym which is pro
hibited. It is possible to some extent to pass from one plane to the
other. Proper names of the type to which we have so far confined
ourselves are usually formed by an imaginary dissection of the body
of the animal, inspired by the gestures of the huntsman or the
cook ; but they can also be formed by linguistic dissection. In the
tribes of the Drysdale River region in North Australia, the woman's
name Poenben is formed from the English 'spoon', an implement
associated, as one might expect, with the totem 'white-fellow'
(Hernandez, p. 218).
In Australia, as well as in America, we find prohibitions on the

use of the names of the dead which 'contaminate' any words with a
phonetic resemblance to these names. The Tiwi of the Melville and
Bathurst islands taboo not only the proper name 'Mulankina' but
also the word 'mulikina' which means : full, filled, enough (Hart).
This usage finds a parallel in that of the Yurok of California : 'When
Tegis died, the common word tsis, "woodpecker scalps", was not
uttered in the hearing of his relatives or by them' (Kroeber 2, p. 48). *
The Dobu islanders forbid the use of proper names between
individuals temporarily or permanently connected by a 'species' tie
through being companions on a voyage, eating together, or sharing
the favours of the same woman, as the case may be (Bateson).
Such facts have a double claim on our interest. In the first place,
they afford an indisputable analogy with food prohibitions, which
have been wrongly associated with totemism alone. In the same
way that at Mota a woman is 'contaminated' by a plant or animal, as
a result of which she gives birth to a child subject to the correspond
ing eating prohibition, and at Ulawa it is the dying man who 'con
taminates' by his incarnation in an animal or plant species which his
descendants are then forbidden to consume, so, by homophony, a
name 'contaminates' other words, the use of which then comes to be
forbidden. Secondly, this homophony defines a class of words, to
which the prohibition applies because they belong to the same
'species', and which thus acquires an ad hoc reality comparable to
that of animal or plant species. These 'species' of words 'stressed' by
the same prohibition bring together both proper names and common
names. And this is a further reason for suspecting that the difference
between the two types of words is not as great as we were near to
admitting at first.

1 76

1 77

The customs and procedures which I have just mentioned are not
found in all exotic societies nor even in all those which designate
their segments by animal and plant names. The Iroquois, who are
an instance of the latter, seem to have a system of proper names
entirely distinct from the system of clan appellations. Their names
most commonly consist of a verb with an incorporated noun or a
noun followed by an adjective : In-the-Centre-of-the-Sky, He
raises-the-Sky, Beyond-the-Sky, etc. ; Hanging-Flower, BeautifulFlower, Beyond-the-Flowers ; He-announces-Defeat (or Victory),
,
* There are other examples in Elmendorf and Kroeber 1 960, which was not
available to me at the time of writing this section.

THE SAVAGE MIND

UNIVERSALIZATION AND PARTICULARIZATION

person giving the name is almost always thought of as being acted

upon, not as acting ; the victim of the envy and hatred of others'.
This moral passivity, which projects upon the child an image of the
self created by others, finds expression on the linguistic plane :
' . . . the two verbs "to lose" and "to forget" . . . are used in Lunyoro
with the thing forgotten as the subject, the forgetter as the object . . .
The loser or forgetter does not act upon things, they act upon him
. . . ' (Beattie, p. 104 and n. 5).
Different as this method of forming personal names is from the
one considered above, the two are found side by side among the
Banyoro and the Lugbara. Special names are reserved for children
whose birth was marked by some notable circumstance.
Among the Lugbara we find, for instance : Ejua for a male twin
and Ejurua for a female twin ; Ondia for a boyand Ondirua fora girl,
if their mother was previously thought to be barren ; 'Bilene' ('for
the grave') for a child who is the frst of several children to survive
(Middleton, pp. 34-5 ). These names exist before the individuals
who bear them and they are assigned to them on account of the
position which is objectively theirs but in which other individuals
may equally find themselves, and which the group regards as
charged with significance. They differ in every respect from names
which are freely invented by a determinate individual for another
equally determinate individual and express a transitory state of
mind. Are we to say that the former denote classes and the latter
individuals? Both are, however, equally proper names and the cul
tures in question are so well aware of this that they consider them
substitutable for each other : should the occasion arise, a Lugbara
mother can choose between the two methods of naming.
There are, moreover, intermediate types. A feature in which they
resemble the second kind was provisionally disregarded in classi
fying Hopi names in the first category. Although they have to relate
to an objective order (in this case that of clan appellations) the rela
tion is not with the clan of the bearer of the name (as it is, for
example, among the Yuma) but with that of its donor.* The name I

bear refers to an aspect not of the plant or animal which serves as

my clan eponym but of that which serves as my sponsor's clan
eponym. This objectivity subjectivized by another, of which I am
the vehicle, is no doubt concealed by the indeterminate nature of
the names which, as we have seen, do not refer explicitly to eponyms.
But it is also reinforced in two ways : by the fact that one needs to
refer back to the concrete social circumstances in which the name
was conceived and attributed in order to understand it ; and by the
donor's relative freedom to follow his own inclinations in creating
_
only that he respects the initial restriction that it
the name provided
must be possible to interpret the name in terms of his own clan
ap?ellation. Mutatis muandis, this was also the position among the
M1wok where the (eqmvocal and invented) name has to relate to
beings or things attached to the moiety of the person named.
What we ?ave here are thus two extreme types of proper name
between which there are a whole series of intermediate cases. At
ne extreme, the nam: is an identifying mark which, by the applica
twn of a rule, estabhshes that the individual who is named is a
member of a preordained class (a social group in a system of groups
a status by birth in a system of statuses). At the other extreme th;
name is a free creation on the part of the individual who give; the
name and expresses a transitory and subjective state of his own by
meaxs of te person he names. But can one be said to be really
_
nammg m either case? The choice seems only to be between identi
fying someone else by assigning him to a class or, under cover of
giving him a name, identifying oneself through him. One therefore
?evr names : ne classes someone else if the name is given to him
m vutue of h1s characteristics and one classes oneself if in the
belief that one need not follow a rule, one names somene else
' freely', that is, in virtue of characteristics of one's own. And most
commonly one does both at once.
Suppose I buy a pedigree dog. If I determine to preserve his value
and prestige and to transmit them to his descendants, then I shall
have scrupulously to observe certain rules in the choice of his name,
these rules being mmdatory in the society of pedigree dog owners
_
_ to belong. Usually the dog will in any case already
to whiCh I asp1re

* This rule is reminiscent of that of the Australian tribes of Cherburg, Queens

land. Every individual has three names. The first is associated with the bearer's
totemic place and the other two with the father's totem, although totemic
affiliations are transmitted in the maternal line. Thus a woman whose personal
totem is opossum has the name Butilbaru, which designates a particular dried
up-creek-bed, and two names derived from her father's totem - in this case,
emu - which means 'emu moves his head this way and that' and 'old emu walking

I 8o

p and d?wn'. The s?n. of an opossum father is called 'Karingo' (the name of a
little sprmg), Myndtbambu : 'the opossum when his chest is slit up' and
Mynwhagala : 'opossum up the tree, now down', etc. (Kelly, p. 468).

181

THE SAVAGE MIND

1

have been given a name on the initiative and responsibility of the

kennels where he was born, and when I acquire him he will already
have been registered with the authorized dog-breeders' association.
The name will begin with an initial which by convention corres
ponds to the animal's year of birth and it will sometimes be com
pleted by a prefix or affix connoting its breedg, much in the
manner of a patronymic name. I am, of course, at hbert;y to dress
my dog differently. It still remains te cse tat this m1maure
poodle to which, for the purpose of calhng h1m, h1s master has gtven
the name 'Bow-wow', bears the name of 'Top-Hill Silver Spray' in
the registers of the British Kennel Club, this name being composed
of two terms, the first connoting a particular kennel and the second
representing an available name. Only the choice of a term of addres
is therefore left to the owner's initiative. The term of reference 1s
stereotyped and since it connotes both a date of birth and member
ship of a group it is, as we shall see later, identical with the product
of the combination of what ethnologists call a clan name and an
ordinal name.
I may, on the other hand, regard myself as free to name my dog
according to my own tastes. But if I select 'Medor' I shall be classed
as commonplace; if I select 'Monsieur' or 'Lucien', as eccentric and
provocative ; and if I select 'Pelleas' as an aesthete.
Moreover, the name selected must also be a member of the class
of dog-names which is conceivable in the civilization to which I
belong and one which is available, if not absoutely, then at leat
relatively, that is, not chosen already by my netghbour. My dog s
name will therefore be the product of the intersection of three
domains : it is a member of a class, a member of the sub-class of the
names vacant within the class, and a member of the class formed by
my own wishes and tastes.
It is clear that the problem of the relation between proper names
and common names is not that of the relation of naming and signi
fying. One always signifies, either ?neself or someone lse. It is only
here that there is a choice, rather hke that open to a pamter between
representational and non-representatonal art, which am?unt to no
more than a choice between assignmg a class to an tdenttfiable
object or, by putting it outside a class, making th object a means of
classing himself by expressing himself through. 1t.
From this point of view, systems of appellat10ns also have thetr.
'abstracts'. Thus the Seminole Indians form adults' names by
182

UNI VER SAL IZATIO N AND PAR TI

CUL ARI ZAT ION

emploing sevral series of a few elem , combine

d without regard
for e1r meanmg There 1s. a 'moral'ents
seri
es
:
wis
e,
;
mahcwus, etc. ; a morphological' series : square, crazy, cautious,
elongated, etc. ; a 'zoologcal' series : wolf, eagle, round' spherical
By means of these, by takmg a term from each seribeaver, puma, etc:
them, they form the name 'crazy-spherical-pues and juxtaposing
ma' (Sturtevant
p. o8).
s

'

The ethnographic study of personal names has

constantly encoun
terd difficulties of a kind well analyse
d
by
Tho
trahan example of the Wik Munkan, who inhabitmson in the Aus
of t.he Cape York Peninsula. On the one hand, the western side
denved from totems and depend on sacred and proper names are
but, on the oter, they are conn cted with sociesoteric knowledge ;
al personality and

are the occas10n of customs, nte

s,
and
pro
hibi
accounts they are inextri:abl associated with tions. On both
y
a mor complex
.
system of appellatwn
s, whtch mcludes the kinship termes nor
mally
use.d as terms of adress, and therefore profanely,
and
sacr
ed
nam
es
whtch themselves mclude proper names and tote
mic
app
ella
tion
s.
But ven granting this distinction between sacr
ed
and
pro
fan
e,
it
remams the case that proper names (sacred) and kins
fane) used as terms of address are individual term hip terms (pro
appellations (sacred) and kinship terms (profan s while totemic
reference are group terms. For this reason, the e) ued as terms of
sacred and profane
aspects are bound up together.
An?ther difficulty arises from the multiplicity
of prohibitions
affect!ng the use of proper names. The
Wik
Mu
nka
n forbid any
mentwn of a name or names for three years afte
r
the
dea
th of their
bearr, that is, until his mummified body has bee
n
burn
t.
There are
certam names, such as those of his sister or his wife
's
bro
ther
which
a n:an may r:ever m:ntio . An inquirer committing
the
blu

der of
askmg them lS supphed wtth a substitute name whi
ch
mea
ns
liter
ally
'no name', 'without name' or 'the second born'.
There is a final difficu!ty, due to the large num
of categories of
arne. Amog te Wtk Munkan, the followiber
ng
tmgmsd : kish1p terms, niimp kimpan ; names must be dis
or ondit10 ; mcknames, niimpyann, literally ; 'namindicating status
as crawler (for someone partly paralysed) or 'the e nothing' . such
finally true proper names, niimJ: . Ony kinship left-handed' ; and
used as terms of address except m penods of mouterms are normally
rning when names
183

THE SAVAGE MIND

corresponding to the nature of the mourning are employed, the

meaning of which is : widower or widow, or alternatively, 'afflicted
by the loss of a relative', the relative being specified as a (elder or
younger) brother or sister, child, nephew or niece (parallel or cross),
or grandparent. Later on we shall encounter a parallel usage among
the tribes of the interior of Borneo.
The procedure for forming proper names is of articar iterest.
Each individual has three personal names : an umb1hcal name,
niimp kort'n, a big name, niimp pi'in, and a little name, niimp miiny.
Big and little names are all derived from totems or attributes of
totems and they are therefore owned by clans. Big names rlate to
the head or top half of the totemic animal, little names to 1ts legs,
tail or the lower half of its body. Thus a man of the Bonefish clan
wili have Piimpikiin, 'the man strikes' (the head), as his big name
and Yiink 'leg' ( = the narrow base of the tail) as his little name,
while a woman of the same clan will be called Pamkotjiitta and
Tippunt (fat) 'of the belly'.
The umbilical names are the only ones which can come from a
clan, or even sex, other than the bearer's. As soon as a child is born,
before the placenta is delivered, an authorized person shakes the
umbilical cord and at the same time a number of names are called,
first names of men of the paternal lineage, then women's names, and
finally names of men of the maternal lineage. The name spoken at
the moment the placenta is delivered becomes the child's name. The
cord is no doubt often manipulated to produce the desired name
(Thomson). We thus have here, as in the cases instanced above, a
method of forming names which reconciles requirements of an
objective order with the play (which is partly free within the limits
of this order) of inter-personal relations.
This apparently (but falsely) 'probabilistic' technique with
respect to birth corresponds to ones recorded in other Australian
tribes on the occasion of death to determine, not the name of the
new born, but that of the supposed murderer. The Bard, Ungarin
yin, and Warramunga put the corpse between the branches of a tree
or on a raised platform. They lay out a circle of stones or row of
sticks on the ground directly beneath. Each unit represents a
member of the group and the guilty man will be indicated by the
exudations of the corpse flowing towards his stick or stone. In North
Western Australia the body is interred and as many pebbles put on
the tomb as the group contains members or suspects. The pebble
184

UNIVERSALIZATION AND PARTICULARIZATION

found to be bloodstained indicates the murderer. Or again the

dead man's hairs are tugged one by one and each time the name of a
suspect is mentioned : the first hair to come out identifies the
murderer (Elkin 4, pp. 305-6).
It is clear that all these procedures are formally of the same type
and that they have a striking characteristic which they share with
the other systems of proper names of societies with finite classes.
It was shown above that in such systems (which no doubt illustrate
a general state of affairs) names always signify membership of an
actual or virtual class, which must be either that of the person named
or of the person giving the name, and that all the differences between
names attributed in accordance with a rule and invented names can
be reduced to this slight distinction. It is worth adding that this
distinction does not correspond, except perhaps superficially, to
that drawn by Gardiner between 'disembodied' and 'embodied'
names, the former being chosen from a compulsory and limited list
(like that of the Saints of the Calendar) and so borne simultaneously
and successively by a large number of individuals, and the latter
given to a single individual like Vercingetorix and Jugurtha. The
former seem in fact to be of too complex a nature to be definable by
the only characteristic retained by Gardiner. They class the parents
who selected their children 's names in a milieu, in a period, and in a
style ; and they class their bearers in various ways : in the first place,
because a John is a member of the class of Johns, and secondly,
because every christian name has a conscious orunconscious cultural
connotation which parades the image others form of its bearer, and
may have a subtle influence in shaping his personality in a positive
or negative way.*
Now, all this could also be shown in the case of 'embodied' names
did we not lack the ethnographic background. The name Vercinge
torix only appears to be confined to the victor at Gergovia because
we know so little about the Gauls. Gardiner's distinction does not,
therefore, concern two types of names but two situations in which
the observer faces either the system of names of his own society or
that of a society foreign to him.
* ' . . . children's names were chosen by their parents . . . and scholars have
frequently honoured colleagues by naming discoveries after them. But the choice
involved has often not been an entirely arbitrary one. Parents are guided by
social and religious traditions, scholars by a rule of priority. Everyone reveals the
nature of his preoccupations and the limits of his horizon by his choice' (Brondal,
p. 230).

THE SAVAGE MIND

UNIVERSALIZATION AND PARTICULARIZATION

This said, it is easier to extract the principle underlying the Wik

Munkan system of names. They construct people's names in a way
analogous to that in which we ourselves construct species names. To
identify an individual, they first combine two class indicators, a
major and a minor (the 'big' and 'little' names respectively). This
set already produces the dual effect of attesting the bearer's member
ship of a totemic group, by evoking meanings well-known to be its
exclusive property, and of circumscribing the position of the indivi
dual within the group. The combination of the big and little names
is not itself individuating. It delimits a sub-set of which the bearer
of the name, along with others provisionally defined by the same
combination, is a member. It is therefore the 'umbilical' name which
completes individuation, but the principle on which it is based is
quite different. For one thing it can be either a 'big' or a 'little' name
(of the same or another clan), either a masculine or a feminine name
(irrespective of the bearer's sex). Then again, its attribution is a
function not of a system but of an event : the coincidence of a
physiological effect (theoretically independent of man's will) and a
point in an enumeration.
Let us now compare this trinome with those of scientific botany
and zoology. Consider in botany : Pscilocybe mexicana Heim, or in
zoology : Lutrogale perspicilata maxwelli. The first two terms of each
trinome assigns what is under consideration to a class and sub-class
belonging to a preordained set. But the third term, which is the
discoverer's name, completes the system by recalling an event. It is
a series, not a group, term.
There is no doubt a difference : in scientific trinomes the dis
coverer's name adds nothing to the identification, which is already
completed by the first two terms ; it is merely a tribute to their
author. This is not, however, quite accurate. The statistical term
has a logical, as well as a moral, function. It brings into evidence the
system of distinctions employed by the author in question or one of
his colleagues and so enables the specialist to effect the transforma
tions necessary to resolve problems of synonymy : to know, for
instance, that Juniperus occidentalis Hook and Juniperus utahensis
Engelm., which might be thought to be different without the dis
coverer's or sponsor's name, are in fact the same thing. The function
of the statistical term in scientific taxonomies is consequently
exactly the reverse of that which it fulfills among the Wik Munkan.
It makes it possible to associate, not dissociate ; instead of attesting

the perfection of a unique way of making distinctions, it brings into

evidence a plurality of possible ones.
The case of the Wik Munkan is only of particular demonstrative
value because of the strangeness of the technique conceived by the
natives, which throws a harsh light on the structure of the system.
But this structure is readily found in the societies from which all
our examples were taken. Among the Algonkin, for instance, a
complete personal name consists of three terms :* a name derived
from the clan appellation, an ordinal name (expressing the order of
birth in the family), and a military title, that is, in this case, one
'mechanical' and two 'statistical' terms of different power. There
are more military titles than ordinal names and the probability of
the same combination being repeated in the case of two distinct
people is all the smaller because, although the former derive from a
group which is obligatory as a group, the choice exercised among
all the possible names by the giver of the name will be dictated,
among other considerations, by the need to avoid duplications. This
is a good opportunity to make the point that the ' mechanical' or
'statistical' character is not intrinsic : it is defined in relation to the
person of the donor and that of the bearer. The name derived from
the clan appellation identifies the bearer without question as a
member of a given clan but the way it is chosen from a list is governed
by complex historical conditions : names currently vacant, the
donor's personality and intentions. Conversely, ' statistical' terms
unequivocally define an individual position in the system of
natal statuses or in the military hierarchy;\but actual occupation of
these positions is an outcome of demographical, psychological, and
historical circumstances, that is to say, the future bearer is not
determined objectively.
This impossibility of defining proper names otherwise than as a
means of allotting positions in a system admitting of several dimen
sions is also brought out by another example, drawn from contem
porary societies. For the social group taken as a whole, the second
term, in names like John Smith and John Robinson, denotes t\J.e
class and the first the individual. John Smith belongs, first, to the
class Smith and in this class he occupies an unequivocal position as
John. Within the class Smith, he is John Smith as distinct from

! 86

* Two terms among the Lacandons of Mexico, who speak the Mayan language.
They form names by the employment of a binome composed of an animal name
and an ordinal name (Tozzer, pp. 42-3 and 46-7).

THE SAVAGE MIND

Peter Smith, Andrew Smith, etc. So little is it a case of a 'proper'

name that, within a more restricted group, the logical relation
between the terms is reversed. Suppose there is a family whose
members all address each other by their christian names in the usual
way and where a brother and brother-in-law both happen to have
the same christian name, John. The ambiguity will be dispelled by
the discriminative apposition of the patronym to the christian name.
Thus when one member of the family says to another, 'John Smith
phoned', he no longer in fact refers to the same binome : the pat
ronym has become a nickname. For the members of the family in
question there is, first, a class of Johns, within which ' Smith' and
' Robinson' secure individuation. The functions of the binomial
terms are reversed according to whether they are seen in the context
of the administration or of a particular social group.
Given that the same term can, depending only on its position in a
context, play the part either of a class indicator or of an individual
determinant, it is fruitless to enquire, as many ethnologists have
done, whether the appellations in use in this or that society really
constitute proper names. Skinner admits this in the case of the Sauk
but doubts it in the case of their neighbours the Menomini, whose
names seem rather to be honorific titles, limited in number and to
which an individual accedes for his lifetime without power to trans
mit them to his descendants (Skinner 2, p. 17). Similarly, among the
Iroquois :

Clearly the individual name . . . is only to a very limited extent com

parable to our personal name. It must rather be conceived of as a sort of
ceremonial designation, and also as a more intimate expression of one's
membership in a clan than is involved in the association with a clan
name (Goldenweiser, p. 367).
As for Wik Munkan proper names :

,, .

Although I have called them 'personal names' they are really group
names and signify membership of, and solidarity with, a totemic group
(Thomson, p. 1 59).
These reservations are due to the fact that the list of names which
are the property and prerogative of each clan is often restricted and
that two people cannot bear the same name simultaneously. The
Iroquois have 'guardians' to whom they entrust the task of remem
bering the repertoire of clan names and who always know which
J88

UNIVERSALIZATION AND PARTI CULARIZATION

names are available. When a child is born the ' guardian' is sum
moned to say which names are 'free'. Among the Yurok of Cali
fornia, a child can remain without a name for six or seven years,
until a relative's name becomes vacant through the death of its
bearer. On the other hand, the taboo on the dead man's name comes
to an end after a year if a young member of the lineage puts it back
into circulation.
Some names seem still more perplexing : these, like the ones given
in Africa to twins or to the first child to survive after a series of still
births, assign some individuals a place in a rigid and restricted taxo
nomic system. The Nuer reserve the names of birds which fly low,
such as guinea fowl, francolin, etc., for twins. In effect, they regard
twins as creatures of supernatural origin like birds (Evans-Pritchard
2, discussion in Levi-Strauss 6). The Kwakiutl of British Columbia
express an analogous belief in their association of twins with fish.
Thus the names Salmon-Head and Salmon-Tail are reserved for
children whose birth immediately precedes or succeeds that of
twins. Twins themselves are believed to be descended either from
olachan (if they have small hands) or from Oncorhynchus kisutch
(Silver-Salmon) or from Oncorhynchus nerka (Sockeye-Salmon).
The diagnosis is made by an old man who is himself a twin. In the
first case he names the male twin Making-Satiated and the female
twin Making-Satiated-Woman ; in the second case the names are
Only-One and Abalone-Woman respectively ; and in the third
Head-Worker and Head-Dancer (Boas 4, part I, pp. 684-93).
Among the Dogon of the Sudan there is a very strict method of
allotting proper names : each individual's position is plotted on the
basis of a genealogical and mythical model where each name is
linked with a sex, a lineage, and an order of birth and with the
qualitative structure of the group of siblings to which the individual
belongs : himself a twin, first- or second-born before or after twins,
boy born after one or two girls, or vice versa, boy born between two
girls or vice versa, etc. (Dieterlen 3).
Finally, one is often hesitant to regard as proper names the ordinal
names found among most of the Algonkin and Sioux, among the
Mixe (Radin 2), the Maya (Tozzer) and in the south of Asia (Bene
dict), etc. Let us confine ourselves to one example, that of the
Dakota, among whom the system is particularly developed, with the
following names corresponding to the order of birth of the first
seven girls and the first six boys :
1 89

THE SAVAGE MIND

GIRLS

Wino'ne
2. Ha'pe
3 Ha'psti
4 Wiha'ki
5 Hapo'nA
6. HapstinA
7 Wihake'da
1.

BOYS

Tcaske'
Hepo'
Hepi'
Watca'to
Hake'
Tatco'

CHAPTER SEVEN

(Wallis, p. 39).

Terms which replace proper names at different stages of initiation

can be put in the same category. The Australian tribes in the north
Dampier Land have a series of nine names given to novices before
the extraction of teeth, then before circumcision, before the ritual
bleeding, etc. The Tiwi of the Melville and Bathurst islands off
North Australia give novices special names according to their grade.
There are seven men's names covering the period from the fifteenth
to the twenty-sixth year and seven women's names going from the
tenth to the twenty-first year (Hart, pp. 286-7).
However, the problems which arise in these cases are no different
from that raised by the custom with which we are acquainted in our
society whereby an eldest son is given his paternal grandfather's
christian name. 'Grandfather's name' can also be regarded as a title
which is both obligatory and exclusive. There is an imperceptible
transition from names to titles, which is connected not with any
intrinsic property of the terms in question but with their structural
role in a classificatory system from which it would be vain to claim
to separate them.

THE I N D IVID UAL AS A S P E C I E S

The naming system of the Penan, who are nomads of the interior of
Borneo, enables us to give a more precise account of the relation
between the terms to which we should be inclined to reserve the
title of proper name and others which seem at first sight to be of a
different kind. Depending on his age and family situation, a Penan
may be designated by three sorts of terms : a personal name, a
teknonym ('father of so-and-so', 'mother of so..rand-so') and, finally,
what one feels like calling a necronym, which expresses the kinship
relation of a deceased relative to the subject : 'father dead', 'niece
dead', etc. The western Penan have no less than twenty-six distinct
necronyms, corresponding to the degree of kinship, relative age
of the deceased, sex and the order of birth of children up to the ninth.
The rules governing the use of these names are of surprising com
plexity. Simplifying a great deal, we can say that a child is known by
its proper name until one of his ascendants dies. If it is a grandfather
who dies, the child is then called Tupou. If his father's brother dies
he becomes Ilun and remains so until another relative dies. He then
receives a new name. A Penan may thus pass through a series of six
or seven or more necronyms before he marries and has children.
At the birth of their first child a father and mother adopt a
Teknonym expressing their relation to the child whose name forms
part of it. Thus : Tama Awing, Tinen Awing, 'father (or mother) of
Awing'. Shoitld the child die, the telmonym is replaced by a nec
ronym : 'Eldest child dead.' When the next child is born a new
teknonym takes the place of the necronym, and so on.
The position is further complicated by the special rules relating
to siblings. A child is called by his own name if all his brothers and
191

THE INDIVIDUAL AS A SPECIES

THE SAVAGE MIND

sisters are alive. If one of them dies he takes on a necronym 'elder

(or younger) sibling dead', but the necronym is abandoned at the
birth of a new brother or sister and he uses his own name again
(Needham I, 4).
There are many obscurities in this description and it is difficult to
see how the various rules affect each other in spite of the fact that
they appear to be functionally related. The system as a whole is
definable by three types of periodicity : in relation to his ascendants,
an individual passes from necronym to necronym ; in relation to his
siblings he passes from autonym (the term it is convenient to use for
proper names in a system of this kind) to necronym ; and in relation
to his children he passes from teknonym to necronym. But what is
the logical relation between these three types of terms and again
between these three types of periodicity? Teknonyms and nec
ronyms refer to a kinship tie and are therefore 'relational' terms.
Autonyms do not have this characteristic and can be opposed to
them from this point of view : an autonym only determines a 'self'
by contrast to other 'selves'. This opposition between 'self' and
' other', implicit in the autonym allows in return a distinction
between the teknonym and the necronym. The former contains a
proper name (which is not that of the subject and it can be defined as
expressing a relation to an 'other' self. The necronym contains no
proper name at all and consists in the statement of a kinship relation,
which is that of an unnamed 'other' with a 'self', equally unnamed.
It can therefore be defined as an 'other' relation. And finally, this
relation is negative since the necronym mentions it only to declare
it extinct.
The relation between autonym and necronym emerges clearly
from this analysis. It is one of inverted symmetry :
AUTONYM

relation
present ( + ) or
absent (- ) :
opposition
between self
( + ) and other
( ):
-

NECRONYM

+
+
1 92

A rst conclusion becomes apparent at the same time : the autonym,

which we have no esitation in considering as a proper name, and
the necronym, which has the features of a simple class indicator
belong in fact to the same group. One passes from one to the othe;
by means of a transformation.
Let us now turn to the teknonym. What is its relation with the
other two types of term, in particular with the necronym? It is
_ to say that the teknonym connotes the entry into life on an
temptmg
othr self, while the necronym refers to the departure of an other
self mto death, ut this is too simple for it does not explain why the
teknnm mentwns the self of an other (autonym being incorpor
_ the necronym may be reduced to a negation of the
ated m it) while
other relation without reference to a self. There is, therefore, no
formal symmetry between the two types.
In te study which I have used as the point of departure for this
analysts, Needham makes the interesting comment :

Something very slightly similar to death-names is seen in the older

Englsh usage of 'widow' as a title . . . , the contemporary French and
Belgian use of 'veuve', and similar usages in many other countries of
Europe. But these are so far from death names in nearly every respect
that they can provide no pointers to understanding (Needham I, p. 426).
This is gving up too soon. To have perceived the implications of his

observatiOn, Needham need only have noticed, in the examples he

quotes, the connection between the right to a necronym and the
prior psession of a name in every way comparable to a teknonym.
In tradttwnal French usage 'veuve' (widow) incorporates a proper
name but th masculne 'veuf' (widower) or ' orphelin' (orphan) does
.
not. Why th1s exclusivtsm? The patronym belongs to the children in
their own right ; it is, we say, a classifier of lineages in our societies.
Children's relation to a patronym is therefore not affected by the
death of parents. This is all the more true in the case of men whose
relation to their patronym remains immutable whether ;hey be
unmarried or widowed.
It is otherwise with women. If a woman's husband dies she
becomes '":idow so-and-so' ; but this is only because during her
,
_
husband s hfettme,
she was , the wife of so-and-so', in other words
had alredy relinquished her autonym in favour of a term expressin
her relatiOn to an other self. And this is precisely how we defined the
teknonym. In this case, of course, 'teknonym' would not be the
appropriate word. We could coin the term andronym (Greek ()(.O[J.p,

193

J '

THE SAVAGE MIND

THE INDIVIDUAL AS A SPECIES

husband) to preserve the parallel but there is little_point in this as the

identity of structure is immediately apparent without recourse to
neologism. In French usage the right to a necronym thus depends
on the possession of a name analogous to a teknony : bcause my
self is defined by my relation to an other s_el my I_dentlt can be
preserved at this other's death only by retammg
this relawn, _un
changed in form but governed fro now n by a n_egatlve sign.
'Widow Smith' is the wife of a Smith who IS not extmct but who
now exists only in his relation to that other who defines herself
through him.
It will be objected that in this example both terms are contructed
in the same way, by adding a kinship relation to a patronymtc deter
minant while, as I have pointed out, the necronym among the
Penan ontains no proper name. Before resolving this difficulty, let
us consider the series of siblings where autonym and necronym
alternate. Why autonym and not a term analogous to teknonym,
say a 'fratronym' ofthe type 'brother (or siste_r) of so-and-.so'? The
answer is easy : the personal name of the chtld ho has JUS been
born (whose brothers and sisters are thereby eheved of thetr nec
ronyms) is brought into play elsewhere. It ts used t for the
parents' teknonym and they have in soe way appropnated It for
inclusion in the particular system by which they are efine . '_fhe
name of the last-born is thus separated off from the senes of sibhngs
and as the other siblings can be defined neither through it nor
thrugh that of their dead brother _or siser (sine ne is no longer
in the 'key of death', as it were, but m the key of hf ), they fal back
on the only course left open to them : the rsumptwn of thetr_own
name which is also their proper name. But, It must be emphasized,
this is only in default of 'other' relations hich have either become
unavailable because they are turned to a different use or not relevant
because the sign governing the system has changed.
The clarification of this point leaves us with only two problems :
the use of teknonyms by parents, and the absence of proper names
in necronyms, a problem we came across just now. At first sight the
former seems to raise a question of content and the second one of
form. But they are in fact a single problem amenable to one and te
same solution. The names of the dead are never mentioned, and this
suffices to explain the structure of the necronym. So far as the
teknonym is concerned, the inference is clear : the re.aso?- why
parents may no longer be called by their name when a child
1s born

is that they are 'dead' and that procreation is conceived not as the
addition of a new being to those who exist already but as the substi
tution of the one for the others.
cusom ?f fobidding the use of proper names during
. -h: Tiwi
mttiatwn
and chdd-btrth 1s also to be understood in this way :

1 94

The birth of a child is, to a native, a most mysterious affair and the
woman is regarded as being intimately in touch with the spirit world.
H ne her name as part of herself is invested with a ghostly character and
thts IS expressed by the tribe in treating her husband as if she did not
exist, as if she were dead in fact and for the time being no longer his wife.
.
_ m
She IS
touch with the spirits and the result will be a child for her
husband (Hart, pp. 288-9).

A remark of Needham's suggests a similar interpretation in the case

of the Penan. The teknonym, he says, is not honorific and not to have
a child is not a matter of shame.
If you have no child, informants say, . . . it is not your fault. You are
sorry because there is no one to replace you, no one to remember your
name . . . But you are not ashamed. Why should you be? (I.e., p. 4 17).

Te couvade can be explained in the same way for it would be a

m1stake to suppose that a man is taking the place of the woman in
labour. The husband and wife sometimes have to take the same
precautions because hey are identified with the child who is subject
to great dangers dunng the first weeks or months of its life. Some
times, frequently for instance in South America, the husband has to
tak even greater precautions than his wife because, according to
native the?rie f coceptio? and gestation it is particularly his
person wh1ch 1s 1dentified With that of the child. In neither event
dos the father play. the part of the mother. He plays the part of the
child. Anthropologists are rarely mistaken on the first point; but
they yet more rarely grasp the second.
Three conclusions can be drawn from this analysis. In the first
place, pr_oper names, far from constituting a category apart, form a
group _wtth ther terms which differ from them even though they
are umted Wtth them by structural relations. The Penan themselves
think of thse terms as class indicators : they speak of' entering into'
a necronym, not of taking or receiving it.
Secondly, proper names occupy a subordinate position in this
complex . system. It is really only children who overtly bear their
names, etther because they are too young to be structurally qualified
by the family and social system or because the means ofqualification
1 95

THE SAVAGE MIND

THE INDIVIDUAL AS A SPECIES

have, for the time being, been suspended in favour of their parents.
Proper names thus undergo a truly loical devaluation. They re
the mark of being 'unclassed' as candidates for a class, of bemg
temporarily obliged to define themselves either as unclassed (as in
the case of siblings resuming the use of their autonyms) or alter
natively by their relation to an unclassed person (like parents when
they assume a teknonym). When, however, death caues a breach in
the social fabric, the individual is, as it were drawn m. Thanks to
the necronym, which has an absolute logical priority over other
forms, his proper name, a mere place in the queue, is replaced ?Y a
position in the system, which from the mst general p mt of view,
can therefore be considered as formed of discrete quantified classes.
The proper name is the reverse of the necronym, of which the
teknonym in turn presents an inverted image. The case f the Pena
is to all appearances the opposite of that of the Algokm, Iro quos
and Yurok. Among the former a person must await a relative s
death to be rid of the name he bears, while often among the latter
he must await it to succeed to his name. But in fact there is as great a
logical devaluation of names in the latter case as there is in the
former :
The individual name is never used in either direct address or indirect
reference to relatives the relationship term doing service in all such cases.
Even when addressi g a non -relative, the individual name is very seldom
used the form of address consisting in a relationship term, according to
the r lative age of the speaker and the person addressed. Only when o
relatives are referred to in conversation is it customary to use the mdt
vidual name' which even then will not be used if the context plainly
indicates the person referred to (Goldenweiser, p. 367).

So among the Iroquois too, and in spite of the differences pointed

.
.
'
out, a person is left unclassed only when there IS no a1 ternatlve. *

* To avoid using proper names, the Yurok of California have coneived a

system or appellations composed of a root corresponding to a place of reside?-ce
.
a village or house - and a suffix, which differs for men and women, descnbmg
their marital status. The men's names refer to the wife's place of birth and the
women's to the husband's place of birth. The suffix of te name indicates whet?er
it is a case of a patrilocal marriage by purchase, a matnlocal one or a free umn,
whether the marriage has been dissolved through the death of h';lsband or wife
or by divorce, etc. Other affixes, entering into the names of children and te
unmarried, refer to the place of birth of their living or deceased mothe, or their
deceased father. Thus the only names employed are of one of the followmg types :
Married to a woman of
; Married to a man of --; Has a 'simi' hus and in
the house of birth of
; Is 'half' married to a woman of
; Widower
belonging to
; Divorced from a woman (or man) of -- ; Woman of ---

--

--

--

All sorts of beliefs have been invoked to explain the very common
prohibition on pronouncing the names of the dead. These beliefs
are real and well authenticated but the question is whether they
should be regarded as the origin of the custom, as one of the factors
which have contributed to reinforce it or perhaps even as one of its
consequences. If the explanations I have given are correct, the pro
hibition on the names of the dead is a structural property of certain
systems of naming. Proper names are either already class operators
of alternatively they provide a temporary solution for those awaiting
classification. They always represent classes at their most modest.
In the limiting case, as among the Penan, they are no more than the
means, temporarily unclassed, of forming classes or again, as it were,
bills drawn on the logical solvency of the system, that is on its
discounted capacity to supply the creditor with a class in due course.
Only newcomers, that is, the children who are born, raise a problem :
there they are. Any system which treats individuation as classifica
tion (and I have tried to show that this is always so) risks having its
structure called in question every time a new member is admitted.
There are two types of solution to this problem, and intermediate
forms between them. If the system in question consists of classes of
positions, it has only to command a reserve of unoccupied positions
sufficient to accommodate all the children born. The available
positions being always more numerous than the population, syn
chrony is protected against the vagaries of diachrony, at least in
theory. This is the Iroquois solution. The Yurok are less farsighted.
Among them, children have to wait their turn ; but as they are
nevertheless assured of being classified after a few years, they can
remain temporarily undifferentiated while awaiting a position in a
class, which the structure of the system guarantees them.
Everything is different when the system consists of classes of
relations. It is then no longer the case that one individual ceases to
exist and another replaces him in a position labelled by means of a
proper name which outlasts any particular person. For the relation
itself to become a class term, proper names, which present the terms
related as o many distinct entitles, have to be eliminated. The ulti
mate units of the system are no longer single member classes with a
train of successive living occupants, but classed relations between
who allows a man to live with her, has a lover or illegitimate children ; His father
was of -- ; Their late mother was -- ; Unmarried person of -- ; etc.
(Waterman, pp. 214-rS ; Kroeber in : Elmendorf and Kroeber, pp. 372-4, n. r ) .
8-TSM

1 97

THE SAVAGE MIND

the dead or even those who are so in effect (parents are described as
dead by contrast with the life they have created) and the living,
whether really living or in effect so (new born children who have a
proper name so that their parents may be defined in relation to them
until the real death of an ascendant allows them in turn to be
defined in relation to him). In these systems, the classes are thus
composed of different types of dynamic relations associating entries
and departures, while among the Iroquois and other societies of the
same sort, they are founded on a collection of static positions which
may be vacant or occupied.*
The prohibition on the names of the dead does not therefore raise
a separate problem for anthropology. A dead person loses his name
for the same reason that - among the Penan - a living person loses
his ; when the living Penan enters the system he assumes a nec
ronym, that is tc say, he becomes one of the terms in a relationship,
of which the other - since he is dead - no longer exists save in that
relation which defines a living person with reference to him. Finally,
for the same reason as the dead lose their names a mother and father
lose theirs also when they assume a teknonym, resolving in this way
(until the death of one of their children) the difficulty created for the
system by the procreation of a supernumerary member. The latter
must wait 'outside the door' as a named person until someone's
departure allows him to make his entrance. Then two beings of
whom one did not previously belong within the system and the
* Consequently, systems of relations, unlike systems of positions whose dis
continuous nature is evident, tend rather to be continuous. Another Penan usage
shows this clearly, although Needham (2), who also records it, rejects an explan
ation which in fact seems very plausible. The reciprocal terms 'grandparent'
and 'grandchild' replace the usual, closer terms for members of the same nuclear
family when one of the two persons involved is in mourning. Is not the point
that the person in mourning is looked upon as having moved over somewhat
towards death and so further away than he was from his closest relatives? Death
loosens the ties of kinship network. Needham is unwilling to allow this because
he regards what is in fact one problem as several : the mourner does not call a
son, daughter, nephew or niece or their spouse 'grandchild' because the same
mourning directly or indirectly affects them but quite simply by way of recipro
city. All the examples Needham, mentions confirm this except that of a young
child who suffers a slight mishap (has fallen down, received a blow or whose food
has been stolen by a dog) and is called on that occasion by the necronym
normally reserved for those who have lost a grandparent. But my account covers
this case also since the child is placed metaphorically in mourning by the damage
done to him and, due to his tender years, a slight injury to his well-being (actual
in the case of a fall or potential in that of a loss of food) is enough to drive him
back towards death.

THE IND IVIDUAL AS A SPECIES

other ceases to do so are merged in one of the classes of relations of

which the system is composed.
Some societies jealously watch over their names and make them
last practically for ever, others squander them and destroy them at
the nd of every individual existence. They then get rid of them by
_
forbiddmg them and coin other names in their place. But these
apparently contradictory attitudes in fact merely express two aspects
of a constant property of systems of classification : they are finite
nd inflexible in form. By its rules and customs, each society, to
Impose a structure on the continuous flux of generation, does no
more than apply to a rigid and discontinuous grid, and a slight shift
in its logic is enough to secure this in one position or the other : either
the system of proper names forms the finest mesh of the filter of
which it is, consequently, an essential part ; or alternatively, it is left
outside while retaining all the same the function of individuating
the continuous and thus setting up in a formal manner discontinuity,
_
which can then be seen as a preliminary condition of classification.
In both cases, too, the dead as their distance from the grid increases,
lose their names which are either taken by the living as symbols of
posiions which must always be filled* or are done away with under
the Impact of the same movement which, at the other end of the
grid, extinguishes the names of the living.
The Tiwi system of naming, to which I have referred several
times, is intermediate between these two forms. In the first place,
proper names are meticulously confined to a single bearer :
It i i possible for any two people to have the same name . . . Although
the Ttwt number nearly eleven hundred people at the present time, and
each one of these has on an average three names, a careful study of these
three thousand three hundred names failed to reveal any two as being
identical (Hart, p. 281).

This proliferation of names is further increased by the number and

variety of prohibitions relating to them. These prohibitions extend
* n the Fox myth of the origin of death, the person in mourning is told : Now
.
th1s Is what you are to do. You, i.e. you and the deceased, must always release
_ hold an adoption feast). Then the soul of the dead will safely and
each ther (t.e.
speedily go yonder. You must adopt someone. And you must think exactly the
same of that towrd them. And you will be related to him exactly (as you were to
the dad). rr:hat 1s the only way the soul of your relative may depart safely and
speedily (Michelson, I, p. 41 1). The text is eloquent about the fact that in this
'
case too, the quick drive out the dead.

199

THE INDIVIDUAL AS A SPECIES

THE SAVAGE MIND

finch ' Guillaume', the wren 'Bertrand' or 'Robert', the water-rail

'Gerardine', the sparrow-owl ' Claude', the eagle-owl 'Hubert', the
crow ' Colas', the swan ' Godard' . . . This last name also refers to a
significant social condition for it was applied to husbands whose
wives were in labour (Witkowski, pp. 5 01-2).* Names of species
for their part seem to have some of the features of proper names.
Following Brondal, t Gardiner admits this in the case of the scien
tific terminology of zoology and botany :

in two directions. As I mentioned in an example,* they attach in the

first instance to all the words in current use which sound like the
names of the deceased ; and they apply not only to the latter, but
also to all the names which the deceased gave to others, whether they
wel."e his own or someone else's children. A young child with only
one name, given by his father, would become nameless if h_is father
died and would remain so until another name came to him from
elsewhere (l.c., p. 282). Every time a woman remarries, her husband
gives new names not just to his predecessor's hildren but to all te
children his wife has borne throughout her hfe whoever was their
father. As the Tiwi practise a form of polygyny chiefly favouring old
.
men a man has little hope of marriage before the age of thuty-five
'
and women pass from husband to husband. This is due to the
difference in age between husband and wife which makes it very
likely that a husband will die before his wife. No one can therefore
boast a definitive name until his mother's death (id., p. 283).
A system as strange as this would remain incomp rehesible were
it not for an hypothesis which suggests an explanatwn of It, amely,
that relations and positions are here put on the same footmg. In
addition, the abolition of a relation involves in each case that of the
proper names which were a function of it either socially (names
.
bestowed by the deceased) or linguistically (words which resemble
the deceased's names). And every creation of a new relation starts a
process of renaming within the domain of the relation.

The name Brassica rapa easily evokes the thought of a botanist classi
fying a number of specimens which to the lay mind are much alike, and
to one of which he gives the name Brassica rapa, just as a parent names
his baby. We have no such thought about the word turnip, and Brassica
rapa is simply the scientific name for the ordinary turnip. We may find
confirmatory support for regarding Brassica rapa as a proper name, or
at least as much more of a proper name than turnip, in the fact that we
do not say This is a Brassica rapa, or These are fine specimens of Brassica
rapa. In so saying we appeal to the name of any single example of the
type, whereas in speaking of a certain vegetable as a turnip, we appeal to
the similarity of that vegetable to others of its kind. The difference of
linguistic attitude is a mere nuance, but it is a real one. In the one instance
the sound of the name, what we usually describe as 'the name itself' , is
more in the foreground than in the other instance (Gardiner, p. 5 2).

This account illustrates the author's central thesis that : 'proper

names are identificatory marks recognizable, not by the intellect,
but by the senses' (l.c., p. 41). Now, we justified the assimilation of
botanical and zoological terms to proper names by showing that in
a very large number of societies proper names are constructed in
the same way as species named in the natural sciences. A conclusion
diametrically opposed to Gardiner's follows from this. Proper names
seemed to us to have close affinities with species names, in particular
when their role was clearly that of class indicators, that is, when

Some ethnographers have approached the problem of proper names

from the angle of kinship terms :
Logically, terms of relationship may be regarded as ranking between
proper names and pronouns. They occupy a position between both and
.
might be called individualized pronouns or generahzed proper names
(Thurnwald, p. 3 5 7).

But if this transition is likewise possible it is because from the

ethnological point of view, proper names always appear as terms
which are generalized or have a generalizing function. In thi. respet
they do not differ fundamentally from the names of species, s IS
shown by the popular tendency to attribute names of human bemgs
to birds in accordance with their respective species. In French, the
sparrow is 'Pierrot', the parrot 'Jacquot', the magpie 'Margot', the
* pp. 176-7.

200

: '

* It is very significant that even so limited and simple a series includes terms
from different logical sphere. 'Pierrot' can be a class indicator since one can say
'There are lhree pierrots on the balcony'. But 'Godard' is a term of address. As
the author of the article on this word in the Dictionary de Trevoux ( 1 732 ed.) so
excellently puts it : 'Godard is the name given to swans. When one calls them,
when one wants them to come, one says to them : " Godard, Godard, come
Godard, come. Here Godard". Jacquot and perhaps Margot seem to have an
intermediate role.' (Cf. Rolland, Faune, Vol. II on the human proper names
given to birds.)
t From the point of view of eternity, particular species of plants and animals
and simple substances are unique things of the same king as, for example, Sirius
or Napoleon (Brondal, p. 230).

201

THE SAVAG E MIND

THE IND IVIDUAL A S A SPECIES

terms, referring to the colour of their coats, their bearing or tempera

ment : ' Rustaud', ' Rousset', 'Blanchette', 'Douce', etc. (cf. Levi
Strauss 2, p. 280). These names often have a metaphorical character
but they differ from the names given to dogs in that they are
epithets coming from the syntagmatic chain, while the latter come
from a paradigmatic series ; the former thus tend to derive from
speech, the latter from language.
Finally, let us consider the names given to horses - not ordinary
horses whose place approximates more or less closely to that of cattle
or that of dogs according to the class and occupation of their owner,
and is made even more uncertain by the rapid technological changes
of recent times, but racehorses, whose sociological position is clearly
distinguishable from the cases already examined. The first question
is how to define their position. They cannot be said to constitute an
independent society after the manner of birds, for, they are products
of human industry and they are born and live as isolated individuals
juxtaposed in stud farms devised for their sake. On the other hand,
they do not form part of human society either as subjects or as
objects. Rather, they constitute the desocialized condition of exist
ence of a private society : that which lives off race-courses or fre
quents them. Another difference, in the system of naming, corres
ponds to these, although two reservations must be made in drawing
this comparison : the names given to racehorses are chosen in
accordance with particular rules which differ for thoroughbreds and
half-breds and they display an eclecticism which draws on learned
literature rather than oral tradition. This said, there is no doubt that
there is a significant contrast between the names of racehorses and
those of birds, dogs or cattle. They are rigorously individualized
since, as among the Tiwi, two individuals cannot have the same
name ; and, although they share with the names given to cattle the
feature of being formed by drawing upon the syntagmatic chain :
'Ocean', 'Azimuth', 'Opera', 'Belle-de-Nuit', 'Telegraphe', 'Luci
ole', 'Orvietan', 'Weekend', 'Lapis-Lazuli', etc., they are dis
tinguished from them by the absence of descriptive connotation.
Their creation is entirely unrestricted so long as they satisfy the
requirement of unambiguous individuation and adhere to the par
ticular rules referred to above. Thus, while cattle are given descrip
tive names formed out of words of discourse, the names assigned to
racehorses are words from discourse which rarely, if ever, describe
them. The former type of name perhaps resembles a nickname and

these latter perhaps merit the title of sub-names* as it is in this

second domain that the most extreme arbitrariness reigns.
To sum up : birds and dogs are relevant in connection with human
society either because they suggest it by their own social life (which
men look on as an imitation of theirs), or alternatively because
'
having no social life of their own, they form part of ours.
Cattle, like dogs, form part of human society but as it were
'
asocially, since they verge on objects. Finally racehorses, like birds
form a series disjoined from human society, but like cattle, lackin
in intrinsic sociability.
!f, therefore, irds are metaphorical human beings and dogs, metony
mtal human bezngs, cattle may be thought of as metonymical inhuman
bezns and racehorses as metaphorical inhuman beings. Cattle are
contlguous oly for want of similarity, racehorses similar only for
.
want of contigmty. Each of these two categories offers the converse
image of one of the two other categories, which themselves stand
in the relation of inverted symmetry.
The lingistic equivalent of this system of psycho-sociological
.
differences IS to be found on the plane of appellations. Bird and dog
names are derived from language. But, although they have the same
paradigmatic character, they differ in that the former are real, while
the latter are conventional christian names. The names of birds are
taken from the preserve of ordinary human christian names of
which they constitute a part ; while the names of dogs in effect
reproduce in its entiretya portion of names formally similar to human
christian names although rarely borne by ordinary human beings.
The nmes of cattle and horses derive rather from speech, since
they are m both cases taken from the syntagmatic chain. But the
names of cattle remain closest to it for, as descriptive terms, they
are scarcely proper names. A cow habitually said to be gentle
('douce') is calJed 'Douce'. The names given to cattle thus survive
as testimony of a bygone discourse, and they can at any moment
resume their function of epithets in discourse : even when one talks
to cattle, teir character as objects never allows them to be anything
but what ts spoken about. The names of racehorses are 'within dis
course' in a different fashion : not 'still in discourse' but 'made of
discorse' . To find horses' names it is necessary to take the syntag
.
.
myattc cham to pteces and to transform its discrete units into proper

206

207

* The opposition here comes out more clearly in the French where nickname
'sumom' is apposed to sub-name 'sous-nom' [trans. note].

T H E INDIVIDUAL A S A S P ECIES

THE SAVAGE MIND

disequilibrium should act as a compensating factor. The system

must therefore have other procedures at its disposal.
The chief of these, and there are in fact several, stems from
extending to common nouns the prohibition on proper names
when it is noticed that the two are phonetically similar. Thes
common nouns, which are withdrawn from circulation in daily life,
are not however entirely destroyed : they pass into the sacred langu
age, reserved for ritual, where they progressively lose their meaning,
the sacred language being by definition incomprehensible to the
uninitiated and partly freed of any meaningful function so far as the
initiated themselves are concerned. Now, sacred words, which have
lost . t_heir sense, can be used to construct proper names by the
add1t10n of a suffix. Thus the word matirandijingli from sacred
language, the meaning of which is obscure, turns into the proper
name Materandjingimirli. This procedure is systematically em
ployed and it has been possible to say that the sacred language is
mamly composed of words which have become taboo Pukimani' on
a_ccount of he contamination of ordinary language by the prohibitlon attachmg to the names of the dead. Sacred language is itself
exempt from this contamination (Hart).
These facts are important from two points of view. In the first
place, it is clear that this complicated system is perfectly coherent :
proper names contaminate common nouns ; common nouns, ban
ished from ordinary language, pass into sacred language, which in
turn allows the formation of proper names. This cyclical movement
is, as it were, sustained by a double pulsation : proper names origin
ally lacking in meaning acquire one by being attached to common
nouns and the latter relinquish their meaning on passing into the
sacred language, which allows them to become proper names again.
The system thus functions by pumping semantic charge alternately
from common nouns to proper names and from the profane language
to the sacred language . In the last analysis, the energy consumed
derives from ordinary language, which coins new words for the
needs of communication in proportion as the old words are taken
from it. This example is an admirable demonstration of the subsi
dary nature of the interpretations proposed, whether by ethnolo
gtsts or by the native, to explain the prohibition on the names of the
dead. For a system as well adjusted as this could not have been born
of a fear of ghosts. Rather, the latter has come to be grafted on
to it.
'

210

That this is so seems even more certain when one notices that the
Tiwi system has striking analogies, on the human plane, with the
system _ in our own society, to which I drew attention in analysing
the vanous
ways of naming animals, where, it is hardly necessary to
say, fear of the dead plays no part. Among the Tiwi also, the system
rests on a sort of arbitrage, exercised by means of proper names,
b twee a syntagmatic chain (that of ordinary language) and a para
Igmatic set (the sacred language, which is essentially of this nature
smce te wor?s there become prgressively unfitted to form a syn
tagmatlc cham as they lose their meaning). In addition, proper
name_s _are metaporically connected with common nouns through
a positlve phonetic resemblance, while sacred words are metonym
ically _connected with proper names (as means or ends) through a
negative resemblance, based on the absence or poverty of semantic
content.
Even if one defines it, on the most general level, as consisting in
an exchange of wrds between the profane and the sacred language,
through the medmm of proper names, the Tiwi system clarifies
phenomena which minor aspects of our culture allowed us only to
do so much as broach. We are better able to understand how terms
like Brassica rapa which belong to a language 'sacred' in two respects
(being Latin a?d scientific) can have the character of proper names,
not, as Gardmer suggests and Hart seems prepared to admit,
because they are devoid of meaning but because, in spite of appear
ances, they are part of a whole system in which meaning is never
entirely lost. Were this not so, the sacred language of the Tiwi
would not be a language but a conglomeration of oral gestures.
Therecn, howevr beno _doubtthat even an obscure sacred langu
age retams potentlal meamng. I shall come back to this aspect of the
question later.
For the moment we must distinguish another type of 'sacred'
language which we employ, in the manner of the Tiwi, to introduce
proper names into ordinary language, even transforming the
common nouns from the domain in question into proper names.
Thu, as we have already seen, we use flower names as proper names
for gtrls, but we do not stop at this, since the inventiveness of horti
culturalists provides newly introduced flowers with proper names
taken over from human beings. This chasse-croise has some notable
peculiarities. The names we take from flowers and give (mainly to
persons of the female sex) are common nouns belonging to ordinary
2II

THE SAVAGE MIND

language (a girl may perhaps be called Rosa but definitely not Rosa
centifolia) ; those we give them in return, however, come from a
'sacred' language : a title is added to the patronym or christian name
and lends it a mysterious dignity. A new flower is not usually called
'Elizabeth', 'Doumer', or 'Brigitte' but ' Queen-Elizabeth', 'Presi
dent-Paul-Doumer', 'Madame-Brigitte-Bardot'.* Moreover, no
account is taken of the bearer's sex (in this case the grammatical
gender of the name of the flower) in naming it : a rose or a gladiolus
(feri:J.inine and masculine respectively in French) can be given either
a man's or a woman's name indifferently. This recalls one of the
rules for the attribution of 'umbilical' names among the Wik
Munkan.t
Now, these usages, whether also taken from our own culture or
from that of Australian islanders, clearly derive from the same group
as all those we have been considering ; we observe the same equiva
lence between metonymical and metaphorical relations which has
seemed to play the part of common denominator between them
from the start. The names we take over from flowers to make into
proper names have the force of metaphors : fair as a rose, modest
as a violet, etc. But the names drawn from 'sacred' language which
flowers receive in exchange have the force of metonymy, in two
ways : Brassica rapa removes the self-sufficiency of cabbage-turnip
to make it a species of a genus, part of a whole. The name 'Impera
trice-Eugenie', given to a new variety of flower, performs a converse
transformation, since it takes place at the level of the signifying
instead of at that of the signified : this time the flower is designated
by means of part of a whole ; not any Eugenie but a particular
Eugenie ; Eugenie de Montijo not before her marriage but after it ;
not a biological individual but a person in a determined social role,
etc.:j: One type of'sacred' name is thus 'metonymizing' and the other
* This tendency is already apparent in popular tradition which, when it
attributes human christian names to certain flowers, generally inserts them in a
phrase: 'Beau Nicolas' for the rose campion, 'Marie Cancale' for the comflower,
'Joseph Foireux' for the cowslip, etc. (Rolland, Flore, vol. II). Similarly in
English, the flower names : 'Jack in the Pulpit', 'Jack behind the Garden Gate',
etc.
t Cf. above, p. r 84.
t Note the inversion of the cycle as compared to the Tiwi system. Among
ourselves, the cycle goes from ordinary language to proper name, from proper
name to the 'sacred' language, to return finally to ordinary language. Ordinary

212

T H E IND IVIDUAL AS A SPECIES

'metonymized', and this opposition holds in the case examined

above. It will be remembered that, as well as taking names from
flowers, human beings give certain of their names to birds. These
names are also 'metonymizing' for they most commonly consist of
diminutives drawn from the popular language and treat the com
munity of birds (inversely to that of flowers) as equivalent, as a
whole, to a humble and well-behaved sub-group of human society.
Similarly, it will readily be agreed that the metaphorical names given
to dogs and cattle place the role of the figure of speech at the level
of the signifying and the signified respectively.
Systematic as the set of naming procedures we have reviewed
may seem, they nevertheless raise a problem. These equivalent pro
cedures, connected with each other by relations of transformation,
operate at different levels of generality. The human christian names
given to birds apply to any member of a determinate species : any
magpie is called ' Margot'. But the names given to flowers : Queen
Elizabeth, Imperatrice-Eugenie, etc., cover no more than the
variety or sub-variety. The field of application of the names given
to dogs and cattle is even more restricted. The animal's owner
intends them to refer to a single individual, even though in
fact each can be borne by several : there is not just one dog called
'Medor'. Only the names of racehorses and other pedigree animals
are absolutely individualied. No other trotting horse than the one
already so christened can be called Orvietan III in the twenty-six
years of the alphabetical cycle.*
This is, however, in my view, the clearest proof one could wish for
that proper names and species names form part of the same group
so that there is no fundamental difference between the two types of
name. Or rather the reason for the difference lies not in their lingu
istic nature but in the way in which each culture divides up reality
and in the variable limits it assigns to the enterprise of classification,
depending on the problems it raises (which can differ for each
particular group within the total society). It is thus by virtue of an
language furnishes the common name rose which first becomes Rose, a woman's
christian name and then returns to ordinary language through the intermediary
of the sacred language in the form : Princess Margaret-Rose, naming a variety
of rose of which (if the flower is a success) it will rapidly become the common
name.
* The alphabetical cycle refers to the system whereby the initial letter of a
pedigree animal should correspond to the year of its birth, and that the letters
succeed one another in alphabetical order [trans. note].

21 3

THE SAVAGE MIND

between the zoologist or the botanist who allots a recently discoered

plant the position Elephantopus spicatus Aubl:, arrnge for 1t by
the system (if it has not indeed already been wntten mto 1t), and the
Omah priest who defines the social paradigms of a new member of
the group by conferring the available name Old-bison's-used-hoof on
him. They know what they are doing in both cases.

CHAPTER E I GH T

II

T IME RE GAINED

Taking an overall view of the devices and procedures which I have

so far been primarily concerned to list, one is first of all struck by
the systematic nature of the relations between them. Two aspects of
this system are also immediately apparent : its internal coherence
and its practically unlimited capacity for extension.
As the examples given show, the structure is in all cases supported
by an axis (which it is convenient to picture as vertical). This con
nects the general with the particular, the abstract with the concrete ;
but the classificatory intention can always reach its limits whichever
direction is in question. These are defined in terms of an implicit
axiomatic according to which all classification proceeds by pairs of
contrasts : classification only ceases when it is no longer possible to
establish oppositions. Strictly speaking, therefore, the system knows
no checks. Its internal dynamism is progressively weakened as it
proceeds along its axis in either direction. And when the system
comes to a halt, this is not because of any unforeseen obstacles pre
sented by empirical properties of beings or things nor through any
jamming of its mechanism but because it has completed its course
and wholly fulfilled its function.
When the classificatory intention ascends, as it were, towards
the greatest generality and most extreme abstraction, no diversity
prevents it from applying a scheme through the operation of
which reality undergoes a series of progressive purifications, whose
final term will be provided, as intended, in the form of a simple
binary opposition (high and low, right and left, peace and war,
etc.), and beyond which it is, for intrinsic reasons, useless as well
as impossible to go. The same operation can be repeated on other
217

21 6

THE SAVAGE MIND

synthetical aspect. Contemporary savages were slaves f _' the ifi

nite variety of phenomena' and were, as he thought d1scernmg
exploration' of them confirmed, unacquainted with any 'nebulous
symbolization' (p. 63). Now, 'the discerning exploration of on
temporary savages', which is precisely what ethnography pract1ses,
invalidates the positivist preconception on both these points. If
savage thought is definable both by a consuming symbolic ambition
such as humanity has never again seen rivalled, and by scrupulous
attention directed entirely towards the concrete, and finally by
the implicit conviction that these two attitudes are but one, it is
surely precisely because it rests, from a theoretical as well as a
practical point of view, on this 'sustained interest' o which Come
denies it to be capable. When man observes, expenments, classi
fies, and theorizes, he is not impelled by arbitrary superstitions
any more than by the vagaries of chance, to whic it would, s
we saw at the beginning of this book, be nai've to attnbute a part m
the discovery of the arts of civilization.*
Given only these two explanations to choose from, one would
prefer Comte's, provided it were first rid of the paralogism on
which it rests. For Comte, all intellectual evolution really proceeds
from 'the inevitable primitive dominance of theological philo
sophy', that is to say, from the fact that originally man fon it
_
impossible to interpret natural phenomena without ss1mllatmg
them 'to his own actions, the only ones whose essential mode of
production he could ever believe himself to understand' (id., 51e
le<;on, IV, p. 347). But how could he have done this without
simultaneously making the opposite move of attributing a power
and efficacy comparable to that of natural phenomena to his own
actions ? This man, externalized by man, can serve to shape a god
only if the forces of nature have already been internalized in him.
The mistake made by Comte and the majority of his successors
was to believe that man could at all plausibly have peopled nature
with wills comparable to his own without ascribing some of the
attributes of this nature, in which he detected himself, to his
desires ; for the mere sense of his own impotence, had he started
with this alone, would never have furnished him with a principle
of explanation.
Indeed, the difference between practical action, which pro uces
returns, and magical or ritual action, which lacks efficiency, 1s not

Cf. pp. 1 3-If.

20

TIME REGAINED

that which one thinks one perceives in defining them in terms of

their objective or subjective orientation respectively. This might
seem true when one considers things from the outside, but the
relation is the opposite from the point of view of the agent : he
conceives practical actions as subjective in their principle and
centrifugal in their orientation, since they result from his inter
ference in the physical world. Magical operations, on the other
hand, appear to him as additions to the objective order of the
universe : they present the same necessity to those performing them
as the sequence of natural causes, in which the agent believes
himself simply to be inserting supplementary links through his
rites. He therefore supposes that he observes them from outside
and as if they did not emanate from himself.
This rectification of traditional perspectives enables us to dispose
of the spurious problem which some see in the 'normal' recourse
to fraud and trickery during magical operations. For, if the systm
of magic rests entirely on the belief that man can intervene in
natural determinism to complete or modify its course, then it
hardly matters whether he does so a little more or a little less :
fraud is consubstantial with magic and, strictly speaking, the
sorcerer never 'cheats'. The difference between his theory and his
practice is one of degree, not of kind.
Secondly, light is thrown on the question of the relations between
magic and religion which is so controversial. For, although it can,
in a sense, be said that religion consists in a humanization of
natural laws and magic in a naturalization of human actions - the
treatment of certain human actions as if they were an integral part
of:physical determinism - these are not alternatives or stages in an
evolution. The anthropomorphism of nature (of which religion
consists) and the physiomorphism of man (by which we have
defined magic) constitute two components which are always given,
and vary only in proportion. As we noticed earlier, each implies
the other. There is no religion without magic any more than there
is magic without at least a trace of religion. The notion of a super
nature exists only for a humanity which attributes supernatural
powers to itself and in return ascribes the powers of its super
humanity to nature.
There is therefore no need to invoke the exercise of vanished
faculties or the employmen of some supernumerary sensibility to
221

TIME REGAINED

THE SAVAGE MIND

This enables us to understand how it is that attentive, meticulous

observation turned entirely on the concrete finds both its principle

and its result in symbolism. Savage thought does not distinguish

the moment of observation and that of interpretation any more
than, on ob erving them, one first registers an interlocutor's signs
and then tnes to .understand them : when he speaks, the signs
expressed cary With them their meaning. Articulated language
decomposes mto elements, each of which is not a sign but rather
. of a sign : a distinctive unit which could not be
the medmm
replaced by another without a change of meaning, which it
expresses by being joined or opposed to other units.
concepion of lassificatory systems as systems of meaning
. This
will
be thro':n mt relief even more clearly if two traditional prob
lems are bnefly discussed ; the problem of the relation between
so-called totemism and sacrifice, and the problem raised by the
similarities exhibited throughout the world by the myths used to
explain the origin of clan appellations.
That it should have been possible to regard totemism as the
origin of sacrifice in the history of religion remains, after so long, a
matter of astonishment. Even if, for convenience, one were to
a?ree to grant totemism a semblance of reality, the two institu
tiOns would only look the more contrasting and incompatible, as
Mauss, not without hesitation and afterthought, was often led to
affirm.
I am not claiming that segmentary societies in which clans are
called by animal or plant names could not have practised some
forms of sacrifice. The example of the sacrifice of dogs among the
Iroquois is sufcient to prove the contrary. But the dog does not
serv as ny clan: s eponym among the Iroquois, and the system of
sacnfie thus mdependent of that of clan affinities. Above all,
-there IS another reason for which the two systems are mutually
excl:rsive. Gra?ing that in both cases there is an implicit or
explicit. reogmtwn of an affinity between a man or group of men,
and an amal or plant (in the capacity of an eponym of the group
of men or m that of a sacrified object replacing a man, or, again, in
that of a medium to the human sacrificer), it is clear that in the case
of totemism no other species or natural phenomenon is substitut
able for the eponym : one beast can never be taken for another. If
I am a. member of the bear clan, then I cannot belong to the eagle
clan, smce, as we have seen, the system's sole reality consists in a
network of differentiation between terms posited as discontinuous.
The opposite i true in the case of sacrifice. Although distinct

222

223

understand the penetration which so-called primitives show in

their observation and interpretation of natural phenomena. The
procedure of the American Indian who follows a trail by means of
imperceptible clues or the Australian who unhesitatingly identifies
the footprints left by any member of his group (Meggitt) is no
different from our procedure when we drive a car and assess the
moment to pass or avoid a vehicle at a glance, by a slight turn of
the wheels, a fluctuation in the normal speed of the engine or even
the supposed intention of a look. This comparison is highly instruc
tive, however incongruous it may seem, for, what sharpens our
faculties, stimulates our perception, gives assurance to our judg
ments is, on the one hand, that the means we command and the
risks we run are immeasurably increased by the mechanical power
of the engine and, on the other, that the tension resulting from the
feeling of this incorporated force exercises itself in a series of
dialogues with other drivers whose intentions, similar to our own,
are translated into signs which we set about deciphering precisely
because they are signs, and call for intellection.
This reciprocity of perspectives, in which man and the world
mirror each other and which seems to us the only possible explana
tion of the properties and capacities of the savage mind, we thus
find transposed to the plane of mechanized civilization. An exotic
observer would certainly declare the traffic in the centre of a large
town or on a motorway to be beyond the scope of human faculties ;
and so in effect it is, in as much as it is neither men nor natural
laws which are brought exactly face to face but systems of natural
forces humanized by drivers' intentions and men transformed into
natural forces by the physical energy of which they make them
selves the mediators. It is no longer a case of the operation of an
agent on an inert object, nor of the return action of an object, pro
moted to the role of an agent, on a subject dispossessing itself in its
favour without demanding anything of it in return; in other words,
it is no longer situations involving a certain amount of passiveness
on one side or the other which are in question. The beings con
front each other face to face as subjects and objects at the same
time ; and, in the code they employ, a simple variation in the
distance separating them has the force of a silent adjuration.

IS

THE SAVAGE MIND

TIME REGAINED

language so well expresses it, its object is to brin,? to pass . the

prayers by a distant dety. It claims to aceve
this by first bringing together the two domams through a sacrahzed
victim (an ambiguous object, in effect attacing to both), and then
eliminating this connecting term. The sacnfice thus crete a lack
of contiguity, and by the purposive nature of the _pryer, it iduces
(or is supposed to induce) a compensating_ contmmty to ans_e on
the plane where the initial deficienc exenenced by the scnficer
traced the path which leads to the deity, m advance and, as it were,
by a dotted line.
. species,
. sometimes
. o c rnng
.
It follows that the eating of totemic

in the Australian rites of increase known by the name of lnt1chmma,

cannot be treated as a primitive, or even an aberrant, form of
sacrifice. The resemblance is as superficial as that wich wold lead
one to identify whales and fish. Moreover, these. ntes o! mcease
are not regularly connected with so-called totemic classificat10ns;
they do not always accompany them, even n Ausralia, and. there
are numerous and widespread examples of ntes of mcrease Without
'totemism' and of 'totemism' without rites of increase.
Above all, the structure of rites of the Intichiuma type and the
implicit ideas on which they rest are very far rem?vd from tose
we have discerned in sacrifice. In such societies (magical)
production and (real) consumption of natural species are normally
separate as a result of an identity postulaed between ea:h grop
of men and a totemic species, and a proclaimed or ascertamed dis
tinction between different social groups on the one ha_nd . and
diferent natural species on the other. The role of the Inti:hmma
is therefore periodically and momentarily_ to re-estabhsh the
contiguity between production and conumpt10, as though human
groups and natural species had from time to time to cout the
selves two by two and in pairs of allies, before each takmg their
own place in the game : species n?urishing th men :Who do not
'produce' them, and men producmg the species which are fr
bidden to eat. In the Intichiuma, consequently, men momentany
confirm their substantial identity with their respective totemi_c
species, by the two-fold rule that each group is to prouce what it
consumes and consume what it produces, and these things are the
same for each and different for all. Thanks to this, there will no
longer be a risk of the normal play of reciprocity creating confu
sions between fundamental definitions which must be repeated

periodically. If the natural series is presented by capitals and the

social series by small letters,

* The Indians of eastern Canada do not eat deer-m

eat while they are hunting
the deer, nor trout during the trout-fishing season
(Jenness, I, p. 6o). So they
eat only whel} they are not killing and kill only
when they are not eating. The
reciprocity between man and animal species is
of the same type as that between
two groups of men in some Australian tribes,
the occasion for which is provided
by a natural species. On the other hand, what
is in question in Canada is dia
chronic, and not as in Australia synchronic, recipro
city. The same difference can
also be seen among the Keresan group of the Pueblo
: 'Each year the . . . toraikatsi
chief of the wilderness would selett a few wild
plant foods and game animals
upon which they would concentrate their efforts
to bring forth an abundance.
They would alter the list of plants and anima
ls somewhat from year to year'
(L.A. White, p. 306). This is thus an Intich
iuma, but situated on the axis of
successiveness instead of the axis of simultaneity
.

226

227

fulfilment of human

..........N
a
b
d
.........
then the Intichiuma recalls the affinity between A and B and b,
C and N and n, attesting that when, in the norm
e of events,
group b incorporates, by eating, species A, C, D,alEcours
.
.
.
N,
group
species B, C, D, E . . . N, and so on, what is in question
is an
exchange between social groups and an arbitrage between resem
lance and contiguity, not the replacement of one resemblance b
another resemblance nor one contiguity by another contiguityby
Sacrifice turns to comparison as a means of effacing differences.*
and in order to establish contiguity; the so-called
ic meals
institute contiguity, but only with a view to makitotem
ng
possi
ble a
comparison, the anticipated result of which is to confi
rm
differences.
The two systems are therefore opposed by
orientation,
metonymical in one case and metaphorical in thetheir
other
. But this
anti-symmetry leaves them still on the same plane, when
fact
they are on different levels from the epistemological point ofinview.
Totemic classifications have a doubly objective bash. There
really are natural species, and they do indeed form a disco
ntinuous
series ; and social segments for their part also exist. Totem
ism, or
so-called totemism, confines itself to conceiving a homology
structure between the two series, a perfectly legitimate hypothesisof
for social segments are instituted, and it is in the power of each,
society to render the hypothesis plausible by shapi its rules and
representations accordingly. The system of sacrificng
e, on the other
A

a,

c,

THE SAVAGE MIND

TIME REGAINED

hand, makes a non-existent term, divinity, intervene ; and it

adopts a conception of the natural series which is false from the
objective point of view, for, as we have seen, it represents it as
continuous. To express this difference in level between totemism
and sacrifice it is not, then, enough to say that the former is a
system of reference and the latter a system of operations, that one
works out a schema of interpretation while the other sets up (or
claims to set up) a technique for obtaining certain results : that
one is true, and the other is false. Rather, to put it precisely,
classificatory systems belong to the levels of language : they are
codes which, however well or badly made, aim always to make
sense. The system of sacrifice, on the other hand, represents a
private discourse wanting in good sense for all that it may
frequently be pronounced.

which mark him out as the originator of geographical features

which can still be seen, finally that he stopped or disappeared in a
particular spot. Properly speaking, therefore, the myth amounts to
the description of an itinerary and adds little or nothing to the
remarkable facts which it claims to establish : that a particular
course, and the water-points, thickets, or rocks which mark it are
of sacred value for a human group and that this group proclaim's its
affinity with this or that natural species : caterpillar, ostrich, or
kangaroo.
No doubt, as T. G. H. Strehlow has pointed out, the exclusive
use ofpidgin for a long time forced enquirers to content themselves
with sketchy and ridiculous versions. But, in the first place, we
no;v have plenty of texts with interlinear translations and of adap
tatiOns whtch are the work of competent specialists; and, secondly,
myths of exactly the same type are found in other regions of the
world where the linguistic difficulties were more quickly overcome.
I shall restrict myself to three examples, all from America. The
first two come from the Northern and Southern United States
respectively, and the third from Central Brazil.
The Menomini explain their clan names by saying that when the
bear was endowed with human form, he settled down with his wife
not far from the mouth of the Menomini river. Here they fished
the sturgeons which constituted their only food (the bear and
sturgeon clans belong to the same phratry). One day, three thunder
birds perched on the great ledge of rock which projects into Lake
Winnebago, near the place called Fond du Lac. After changing
into men, they visited the bears and came to an agreement with
them to convoke several animals whose place of birth or residence
is spcified by the myth. They all set off. When they arrived at
Green Bay on Lake Michigan an obliging wave carried the wolf,
who could not swim, to the other bank. In token of his gratitude,
he adopted the wave as one of his clan totems. An analogous inci
dent, placed near Mackinaw, also on Lake Michigan, resulted in
the association of the black. bear and the bald eagle. The relations
between the other clans (elk, crane, dog, deer, beaver, etc.) were
likewise established through fortuitous meetings and services
rendered (Hoffman, pp. 39-42 ; Skinner I, p. 8, ff.).
The reason why the Hopi wild mustard clan bears this name as
well as those of oak, chaparral-cock, and warrior is that, during a
legendary migration, they tried to stop a child crying by offering it
229

In another work I briefly mentioned the myths of origin of so

called totemic institutions, and showed that even in regions distant
from each other and despite the difference in their stories, these
myths all teach the same lesson, namely : ( I ) that so-called totemic
institutions are based on a global correspondence between t,wo
series, not on particular correspondences between their terms;
(2) that the correspondence in question is metaphorical, and not
metonymical ; and (3) that it becomes evident only after each
series has first been impoverished by a suppression of elements so
that their internal discontinuity emerges clearly (Levi-Strauss 6,
pp. 19-20 and 26-7).
There is a singular contrast between the precision and wealth of
this lesson (the more striking as the myths analysed are known to
us only in abridged or mutilated versions)* and the insignificance
of myths accounting for the appellations of each clan. The latter
are all very much alike throughout the world, but notably in their
poverty. Certainly Australia possesses complex myths which lend
themselves to a semantic analysis inspired by that which we have
applied to myths of other regions (Stanner 2). Nevertheless,
specialists on this continent are used to collecting myths in which
the attribution of a half-human, half-animal ancestor to a totemic
group rests on a mere statement : the myth establishes that the
ancestor appeared at such and such a place, followed such and
such a course, performed certain actions in this or that place,
* Firth (2) has just published more complete versions of Tikopia myth.

228

9-TSM

THE SAVAGE MIND

mustard leaves and a branch of oak, gathered and cut on the way.
After this, they met the cock and then the warrior. The badger and
butterfly clan is so-called because its ancestors took with them a
man-badger whose acquaintance they had made a shrt time ?efore
they caught a butterfly to amuse a child ; but the child was ill and
it was Badger who cured him with simples. The ancestors of the
rabbit and tobacco clan found the plant and met the animal. Those
of the Patki clan took the names of lake, cloud, rain, snow, and fog
as a result of various incidents on their journey. Somewhere
between the actual site of Phoenix (Arizona) and the Little Colora
do the ancestors of the bear clan came upon a dead bear, whence
thir name but another band found the skin, from which small
rodents had taken the hair to line their holes. They made hide
straps out of the skin, and since then the hide strap and bear clans
have been associated. A third band took the name of the rodents
and was allied to the former clans (Voth 4, Parsons, pp. 26-30).
Let us now turn to South America. The Bororo say that the sun
and moon belong to the Badedgeba clan of the Cera moiety on
account of a dispute between a father and son, who both wanted to
appropriate the names of these heavenly bodies. A compromse
gave the father the names of Sun and Bah-of-the- un. T?bacco
belongs to the Paiwe clan because an Indian belongmg to It hap
pened by chance to discover its leaves in the innards of a fish he was
gutting in order to cook. The chief of the 'black' B_adedgeb clan
at one time possessed some black and some red birds
(Phzmosus
infuscatus and Ibis rubra respectively), but his colleagu : rd'
Babedgeba stole them from him and he had to agree to a divisiOn
according to colour (Colbacchini).
All these myths of origin of clan appellations are so similar that
it is unnecessary to cite examples from other parts of the world,
such as Africa where they also abound. What, then, are their com
mon characteristics ? In the first place, they all have in common a
brevity leaving room for none of those apparent digressions whih
often have a wealth of concealed meaning. A story reduced to Its
essential outlines has no surprises in store for the analyst. Secondly,
these myths are falsely aetiological (supposing that myth cold e
genuinely so) in as much as the kind of explanator;t _they gv_e IS
reducible to a scarcely modified statement of the Imtlal positwn;
from this point of view they appear redundant. Their role seems
to be demarcative, rather than aetiological; they do not really
230

TIME REGAINED

explain an origin or indicate a cause ; what they do is to invoke an

origin or cause (insignificant in itself), to make the most of some
detail or to 'stress' a species. This detail or that species acquires a
differential value not because of the particular origin attributed to
it but just because it is endowed with an origin when other details
or species are not. History is surreptitiously introduced into the
structure in a modest, almost negative way : it does not account for
the present, but it makes a selection between its elements, accord
ing only some of them the privilege of having a past. The poverty
of totemic myths is therefore due to the fact that the function of
each is only to establish a difference as a difference : they are the
constitutive units of a system. The question of significance does
not arise at the level of each myth taken in isolation but at that of
the system of which they form the elements.
Now, here we again encounter a paradox discussed earlier :*
the systems with which we are concerned are not easily 'mytholo
gizable' as systems because their virtually synchronic nature is
engaged in a never-ending struggle with diachrony. Ex hypothesi
the elements of the system are on this side of myth, but, in terms of
its destination, the set lies always beyond ; myth, as it were, runs
after it to catch up with it. It only exceptionally succeeds because
the system is constantly being drawn in by history; and when one
thinks it has succeeded a new doubt makes itself felt : do mythical
representations correspond to an actual structure which models
social and religious practices or do they translate only the congealed
image by means of which native philosophers give themselves the
illusion of fixing a reality which escapes them ? Important as
Marcel Griaule's discoveries in Mrica are, one often wonders to
which of these interpretations they relate.
The earliest theories on totemism are, as it were, contaminated
by this paradox, which they were unable to formulate clearly. The
reason why McLennan, and later Robertson Smith and Frazer (IV,
pp. 73-6, 264-5) were so convinced that totemism was anterior to
exogamy (a proposition which I find meaningless) was that the
former appeared to them simply denotative, whereas they divined
the systematic nature of the latter. Now, systems can be established
only between elements which are already denoted. But to perceive
totemism too as a system it would have been necessary to place it
in the linguistic, taxonomic, mythical, and ritual context from
* Cf. above, pp. 66-71 .

23 1

THE SAVAGE MIND

which, in their concern to trace the contours of an arbitrary

institution, they began by isolating it.
.
In fact, as I have tried to show, matters are not so Simple.
The
ambiguity of totemism is real, even if the institution we have
imagined in the hope of getting rid of it is not. Indeed,. s-cal1ed
totemism may either present or preclude the charactenstlCs of a
system, depending on the point of view adopted : it is a grammr
fated to degenerate into a lexicon. Unlike other systems of clasI
fication, which are primarily conceived (like myths) or acted (hke
rites), totemism is always lived, that is to say, it attaches to concrete
. system
groups and concrete individuals because it is an heredztary
of classification.*

This enables us to understand the appearance of a permanent

conflict between the structural nature of the classification and the
statistical nature of its demographic basis. The classification tends to
be dismantled like a palace swept away upon the flood, whose parts,
through the effect of currents and stagnant waters, ob.stacles and
straits, come to be combined in a manner other than that mtended by
the architect. In totemism, therefore, function inevitably triumphs
over structure. The problem it has never ceased presenting to
theorists is that of the relation between structure and event. And
the great lesson of totemism is that the form of the structure can
sometimes survive when the structure itself succumbs to events.
There is thus a sort of fundamental antipathy between history
and systems of classification. This perhaps explains what one is
tempted to call the 'totemic void', for in the bounds of the great
civilizations of Europe and Asia there is a remarkable absence of
anything which might have reference to totemism, even in the form
of remains. The reason is surely that the latter have elected to
explain themselves by history and that this. undertaking is inco:n
patible with that of classifying things and bemgs
(natural and scal)
by means of finite groups. Totemic classifications no doubt dlV!de
their groups into an original and a derivative series : the former
contains zoological and botanical species in their supernatural
aspect, the latter human groups in their cultural aspe.ct, nd the
former is asserted to have existed before the latter, havmg
m some
sort engendered it. The original series, however, lives on in diah
rony through animal and plant species, alongside the human senes.
* No doubt some forms of totemism are not, properly speaking, hereditary ;
but even in this case, the system is sustained by concrete men.

TIME REGAINED

The two series exist in time but under an atemporal regime, since,
being both real, they sail through time together, remaining such as
they were at the moment of separation. The original series is
always there, ready to serve as a system of reference for the inter
pretation and rectification of the changes taking place in the
derivative series. In theory, if not in practice, history is subordi
nated to system.
When, however, a society sides with history, classification into
finite groups becomes impossible because the derivative series,
instead of reproducing the original series, merges with it to form
a single series in which each term is derivative in relation to the
one preceding it and original in relation to the one coming after it.
Instead of a once-for-all homology between two series each finite
and discontinuous in its own right, a continuous evolution is postu
lated within a single series that accepts an unlimited number of
terms.
Some Polynesian mythologies are at the critical point where
diachrony irrevocably prevails over synchrony, making it impos
sible to interpret the human order as a fixed projection of the
natural order by which it is engendered ; it is prolongation, rather
than a reflection, of the natural order :
Fire and water married, and from them sprung the earth, rocks, trees,
and everything. The cuttle-fish fought with the fire and was beaten. The
fire fought with the rocks, and the rocks conquered. The large stones
fought with the small ones ; the small ones conquered. The small stones
fought with the grass, and the grass conquered. The trees fought with the
creepers, the trees were beaten and the creepers conquered. The creepers
rotted, swarmed with maggots, and from maggots they grew to be men
(G. Turner, pp. 6-7).

This evolutionism precludes any synthesis of a totemic type, for

things and natural beings do not afford the static model of a like
wise static diversity between human groups : they are ordered as
the genesis of a humanity whose advent they prepare. But this
incompatibility in turn ra_ises a problem, namely : how, if it exists,
do classificatory systems succeed in eliminating history or, when
that is impossible, integrating it ?
I have suggested elsewhere that the clumsy distinction between
'peoples without history' and others could with advantage be
replaced by a distinction between what for convenience I called
'cold' and 'hot' societies : the former seeking, by the institutions
233

THE SAVAGE MIND

TIME REGAINED

they give themselves, to annul the possible effects of historical

factors on their equilibrium and continuity in a quasi-automatic
fashion ; the latter resolutely internalizing the historical process
and making it the moving power of their development (Charbon
nier, pp. 3 5-47 ; Levi-Strauss 4, pp. 41-3). Several types of his
torical sequences will still need to be distinguished. Some, while
existing in duration, are of a recurrent nature ; the annual cycle of
the seasons, for instance, or that of individual life or that of
exchanges of goods and services within the social group. These
sequences raise no problem because they are periodically repeated
in duration without their structure necessarily undergoing any
change; the object of 'cold' societies is to make it the case that the
order of temporal succession should have as little influence as
possible on their content. No doubt they do not succeed perfectly ;
but this is the norm they set themselves. Apart from the fact that
the procedures they employ are more efficacious than some con
temporary ethnologists (Vogt) are willing to admit, the real
question is not what genuine results they obtain but rather by what
lasting purpose they are guided, for their image of themselves is an
'
essential part of their reality.
amass
to
It is tedious as well as useless, in this connection,
arguments to prove that all societies are in history and change :
that this is so is patent. But in getting embroiled in a superfluous
demonstration, there is a risk of overlooking the fact that human
societies react to this common condition in very different fashions.
Some accept it, with good or ill grace, and its consequences (to
themselves and other societies) assume immense proportions
through their attention to it. Others (which we call primitive
for this reason) want to deny it and try, with a dexterity we under
estimate, to make the states of their development which they
consider 'prior' as permanent as possible. It is not sufficient, in
order that they should succeed, that their institutions should
exercise a regulating action on the recurrent sequences by limiting
the incidence of demographic factors, smoothing down antago
nisms which manifest themselves within the group or between
groups and perpetuating the framework in which individual and
collective activities take place.* It is also necessary that these

non-recurrent chains of events whose effects accumulate to

produce economic and social upheavals, should be broken as soon
as they form, or that the society should have an effective procedure
to prevent their formation. We are acquainted with this procedure,
which consists not in denying the historical process but in
admitting it as a form without content. There is indeed a before
and an after, but their sole significance lies in reflecting each
other. It is thus that all the activities of the Northern Aranda
reproduce those that their totemic ancestors are still believed to
perform :

The gurra ancestor hunts, kills, and eats bandicoots ; and his sons are
always engaged upon the same quest. The witchetty grub men of Lukara
spend every day of their lives in digging up grubs from the roots of
acacia trees . . . . The ragia (wild plum tree) ancestor lives on the ragia
berries which he is continually collecting into a large wooden vessel. The
crayfish ancestor is always building fresh weirs across the course of the
moving flood of water which he is pursuing ; and he is for'ever engaged in
spearing fish . . . if the myths gathered in the Northern Aranda area are
treated collectively, a full and very detailed account will be found of all
the occupations which are still practised in Central Australia. In his
myths we see the native at his daily task of hunting, fishing, gathering
vegetable food, cooking, and fashioning his implements. All occupations
originated with the totemic ancestors ; and here, too, the native follows
tradition blindly : he clings to the primitive weapons used by his fore
fathers, and no thought of improving them ever enter his mind (T. G. H.
Strehlow, pp. 34-5).

I select this in preference to all the other evidence to the same pur
pose available from other parts of the world because it emanates
from an ethnologist born and brought up among the natives,
speaking their language fluently and remaining deeply attached to

* At the beginning of a recent study, G. Balandier announced with much

ceremony that it is high time that the social sciences 'grasped society in its actual

life and development'. After which he describes, in very pertinent fashion more
over, institutions whose object is, to use his own terms, to 'regroup' lineages
threatened with dispersion ; to 'allay' their crumbling ; to 'recall' their solidarity,
'establish' communication with the ancestors, 'prevent separated members of the
clan from becoming strangers to each other', furnish 'an instrument of protection
against conflicts', 'control' and 'master' antagonisms and subversions by means
of a 'minutely regulated' ritual which is 'a factor reinforcing social and political
structures'. One is easily in agreement with him (while, however, questioning
whether he is so with his own premises), that the institutions he began by deny
ing to have been founded on 'logical relations' and 'fixed structures' (p. 23)
demonstrate in fact the 'prevalence of traditional social logic' (p. 33), and that
'the classical system thus reveals, over a long period, a surprising capacity for
"assimilating" . . . ' (p. 34). The only surprising thing in all this is the author's
own surprise.

234

23 5

THE SAVAGE MIND

the totemic ancestors not, in the manner of the Arabanna and

Warramunga (Spencer and Gillen, pp. 161-2), as individualized
heroes from whom the members of the totemic group are supposed
to be directly descended, but as an indistinct multitude and this
ought to exclude, in principle, the very notion of genealogical con
tinuity. In fact, as we saw earlier,* among the Aranda, from one
point of view it is as if every individual had before his birth drawn
an anonymous ancestor by lot, of whom he then became the rein
carnation. No doubt because of the refinements of their social
organization which lavishes on synchrony the benefits of clear-cut
distinctions and precise definitions, even the relation between past
and present appeared to them in terms of synchrony. The role of
the churinga would therefore be to offset the correlative impover
ishment of the diachronic dimension. They are the past materially
present and they provide the means of reconciling empirical
individuation and mythical confusion.
It is known that the churinga are stone or wooden objects,
roughly oval in shape with pointed or rounded ends, often engraved
with symbolic signs, sometimes just pieces of wood or unworked
pebbles. Whatever its appearance, each churinga represents the
physical body of a definite ancestor and generation after generation,
it is formally conferred on the living person believed to be this
ancestor's reincarnation. The churinga are hidden in piles in
natural caves, far from frequented ways. Periodically they are taken
out to be inspected and handled, and on these occasions they are
always polished, greased and coloured, and prayers and incanta
tions are addressed to them. Their role and the treatment accorded
to them thus have striking analogies with the documentary archives
which we secrete in strongboxes or entrust to the safe-keeping of
solicitors and which we inspect from time to time with the care
due to sacred things, to repair them if necessary or to commit them
to smarter dossiers. On these occasions we too are prone to recite
great myths recalled to us by the contemplation of the torn and
yellowed pages : the deeds and achievements of our ancestors, the
history of our homes from the time they were built or first acquired.
It is not therefore profitable to look as far afield as Durkheim did
to discover the reason for the sacred character of the churinga.
When an exotic custom fascinates us in spite of (or on account of)
its apparent singularity, it is generally because it presents us with a
* Cf. above, p. 88.

T I M E REGA I N E D

dstorted reflecion of a familiar image, vvhich we confusedly recog

mze as such w1thout yet managing to identify it. Durkheim (pp.
1 20-3) would ave it that the churinga were sacred because they
bore the totemic mark, drawn or engraved on them. But, in the
first place, it is now known that this is not always so. T. G. H
Strehlow draws attention, among the Northern Aranda to stone
churinga, valued above the rest which he describes as 'in;ignificant
and rude objects, roughly polished by being rubbed together
during increase ceremonies' (p. 5 4) ; and among the Southern
Aranda he sa': churinga which are 'plain pieces . . . of wood,
_ of markmgs and heavily coated vvith a thick lumpy mixture
dev01d
of red ochre and grease' (p. 73). The churinga can even be a smooth
pebble, a atural rock or a tre (p. 95 ). Secondly, according to
_ s own argument, hts accoun.t of the churinga had to
Durkhetm
confirm one of his fundamental theses, that of the emblematic
nature of totemism. The sacredness o the churinga, the most
_
known to the Aranda, h.ad to be explained by an
sacred objects
embleatic figuration of the totem to show that the represented
totem 1s more sacre? than the real one. But, as I have already said,
_ no such thmg as the real totem ;* the individual animal
there 1s
plays the part of the signifying, and the sacredness attaches neither
to it nor to its icon but to the signified, vvhich either can stand for.
After all, a document d es not become sacred by virtue of bearing
_
a stamp whtch has prestige, such as that of the Archives Nationales :
it bears the stamp because it has first been acknowledged to be
sacred, and it would remain so without it.
Nor can it be said, following another explanation which Durk
heim moreover relates to the preceding one, that the churinga is
the ancestor's body. This Aranda formula, quoted by C. Strehlow,
must be taken in its metaphorical sense. The ancestor does not lose
his body because at the moment of conception he surrenders his
* Cf. above, p. 148.
Ther i no single chief uling an entire Indian tribe, but a chief in every
_ no smgle boss for every species of animal or plant, but a
band ? stmtlarly tere ts
boss m each locahty. The bosses are always larger than other plants and animals
of their kind, and in the case of birds, fish, and animals, always white. Now and
thn the Indians se and kill them, but generally they keep out of sight of human
bengs. They are hke the government in Ottawa, an old Indian remarked. An
_
can never see the ' government> . He is sent from one office to
ordmary Indtan
another, is introduced to this man and to that, each of whom sometimes claims
t be the 'boss', but he never sees the real government, who keeps himself
htdden (Jenness, I, p. 6 1).

23 9

THE SAVAGE MIND

that not of a Burckhardt or Spengler but of a Lenotre and a La

Force. Considered in this light, the style of the Aranda water
colourists will perhaps appear less unexpected. And nothing in our
civilization more closely resembles the periodic pilgrimages made by
the initiated Australians, escorted by their sages, than o r con
ducted tours to Goethe's or Victor Hugo's house, the furmture of
which inspires emotions as strong as they are arbitrary. As in the
.
case of the churinga, the main thing is not that the bed 1 the self
.
same one on which it is proved Van Gogh slept : all the vtsttor asks
is to be shown it.

CHAPTER NINE

H I S T O RY AND D IALECT I C

I n the course of this work I have allowed myself, not without

ulterior motive, to borrow a certain amount of Sartre's vocabulary.
I wanted to lead the reader to face a problem, the discussion of
which will serve to introduce my conclusion. The problem is to
what extent thought that can and will be both anecdotal and geo
metrical may yet be called dialectical. The savage mind totalizes.
It claims indeed to go very much further in this direction than
Sartre allows dialectical reason, for, on the one hand, the latter lets
pure seriality escape (and we have just seen how classificatory sys
tems succeed in incorporating it) and, on the other, it excludes
schematization, in which these same systems reach their consum
mation. In my view, it is in this intransigent refusal on the part of
the savage mind to allow anything human (or even living) to remain
alien to it, that the real principle of dialectical reason is to be found.
But my idea of the latter is very different from Sartre's.
In reading the Critique it is difficult to avoid feeling that Sartre
vacillates between two conceptions of dialectical reason. Sometimes
he opposes dialectical and analytical reason as truth and error, if not
as God and the devil, while at other times these two kinds of reason
are apparently complementary, different routes to the same truths.
The first conception not only discredits scientific knowledge and
finally even leads to suggesting the impossibility of a science of
biology, it also involves a curious paradox ; for the work entitled
Critique de la raison dialectique is the result of the author's exercise
of his own analytical reason : he defines, distinguishes, classifies and
opposes. This philosophical treatise is no different in kind from the
works it examines and with which it engages in discussion, if only to
245

THE SAVAGE MIND

condemn them. It is difficult to see how analytical reason could be

applied to dialectical reason and claim to establish it, if the two are
defined by mutually exclusive characteristics. The second c?n
ception is open to a different objection : if dialectical ad analytial
.
reason ultimately arrive at the same results, and If their respective
truths merge into a single truth, then, one may ask in what way they
are opposed and, in particular, on what grounds the former should
be pronounced superior to the latter. Sartr's endeavour seems
contradictory in the one case and superfluous m the other.
.
How is the paradox to be explained, and avoided ? Sartre attnbutes
a reality sui generis to dialectical reason in both the hypothses
between which he hesitates. It exists independently of analytical
reason, as its antagonist or alternatively its complement. Althoug
in both our cases Marx is the point of departure of our thought, It
seems to me that the Marxist orientation leads to a different view,
namely, that the opposition between the two sorts of reason is rela
tive not absolute. It corresponds to a tension within human thought
whih may persist indefinitely de facto, but which ha no ? ais de
.
jure. In my view dialectical reason is always onst1tutrve : It IS the
.
.
bridge, forever extended and Improved, which analytical reaso
throws out over an abyss ; it is unabl to see the further shre but It
knows that it is there even should It be constantly recedmg. The
term dialectical reaso thus covers the perpetual efforts analytical
reason must make to reform itself if it aspires to account for langu
age, society and thought ; and the distinction between the two forms
.
of reason in my view rests only on the temporary gap separatmg
analytical reason from the understanding of life. Sarre calls analy
.
tical reason reason in repose ; I call the same reason dmlectiCal when
it is roused to action, tensed by its efforts to transcend itself.
In Sartre's terminology I am therefore to be defined as a tas
cendental materialist and aesthete. I am a transcendental matenahst
(p. 124) because I do not regard dialectical reason as smethig other
.
than analytical reason, upon which the absolute ongmahty of a
human order would be based, but as something additional in analy
tical reason : the necessary condition for it to venture to undertake
the resolution of the human into the non-human. And I count as an
aesthete since Sartre applies this term to anyone purporting to stuy
men as if they were ants (p. 183). But apart from the fact that tIS
seems to me just the attitude o ny scientit who is an gnosti,
there is nothing very compromismg about It, for ants With their
246

H ISTORY AND D IALECTIC

artificial tunnels, their social life and their chemical messages,

already present a sufficiently tough resistance to the enterprises of
analytical reason . . . So I accept the characterization of aesthete in
so far as I believe the ultimate goal of the human sciences to be not
to constitute, but to dissolve man. The pre-eminent value of anthro
pology is that it represents the first step in a procedure which in
volves others. Ethnographic analysis tries to arrive at invariants
beyond the empirical diversity of human societies ; and, as the present
work shows, these are sometimes to be found at the most unforeseen
points. Rousseau (2, ch. VIII) foresaw this with his usual acumen :
'One needs to look near at hand if one wants to study men ; but to
study man one must learn to look from afar ; one must first observe
differences in order to discover attributes'. However, it would not
be enough to reabsorb particular humanities into a general one. This
first enterprise opens the way for others which Rousseau would not
have been so ready to accept and which are incumbent on the exact
natural sciences : the reintegration of culture in nature and finally of
life within the whole of its physico-chemical conditions.*
However, in spite of the intentionally brutal turn given to my
thesis, I am not blind to the fact that the verb 'dissolve' does not in
any way imply (but even excludes) the destruction of the constitu
ents of the body subjected to the action of another body. The solu
tion of a solid into a liquid alters the disposition of its molecules. It
also often provides an efficacious method of putting them by so that
they can be recovered in case of need and their properties be better
studied. The reductions I am envisaging are thus legitimate, or
indeed possible, only if two conditions are satisfied. First, the
phenomena subjected to reduction must not be impoverished ; one
must be certain that everything contributing to their distinctive
richness and originality has been collected around them. For it is
pointless to pick up a hammer unless to hit the nail on the head.
Secondly, one must be ready to accept, as a consequence of each
reduction, the total overturning of any preconceived idea concern
ing the level, whichever it may be, one is striving to attain. The idea
of some general humanity to which ethnographic reduction leads,
will bear no relation to any one may have formed in advance. And
when we do finally succeed in understanding life as a function of
* The opposition between nature and culture to which I attached much
importance at one time (I, ch. I and 2) now seems to be of primarily methodo
logical importance.

247

THE SAVAGE MIND

inert matter it will be to discover that the latter has properties very
different fro those previously attributed to it. Levels of reduction
cannot therefore be classed as superior and inferior, for the level
taken as superior must, through the reduction, be expected to com
municate retro;1ctively some of its richness to the inferior level to
which it will have been assimilated. Scientific explanation consists
not in moving from the complex to the simple but in the replacement
of a less intelligible complexity by one which is more so.
Seen in this light, therefore, my self is no more opposed to others
than man is opposed to the world : the truths learnt through rna
are 'of the world', and they are important for this reason.* Thts
explains why I regard anthropology as the principle of all resarch,
while for Sartre it raises a problem in the shape of a constramt to
overcome or a resistance to reduce. And indeed what can one make
of peoples 'without history' when one has defined man in terms of
dialectic and dialectic in terms of history? Sometimes Sartre seems
tempted to distinguish two dialectics : the 'true' one which is sup
posed to be that of historical societies, and a repetitive, short-term
dialectic, which he grants so-called primitive societies whilst at the
same time placing it very near biology. This imperils his whole
system, for the bridge between man and nature wih he has taken
such pains to destroy would turn out to be surreptttwusly re-etab
lished through ethnography, which is indisputably a human sc1ence
and devotes itself to the study of these societies. Alternatively Sartre
resigns himself to putting a 'stunted and deformed' humanity n
man's side (p. 203), but not without implying that its lace m
humanity does not belong to it in its own right and is a functwn only
of its adoption by historical humanity : either because it has
begun to internalize the latter's history in the colonial cntext,
.
.
or because thanks to anthropology itself, htstoncal humamty has
given the blessing of meaning to an original humanity which was
*This even holds for mathematical truths of which a contemporary logician,
however, says that 'The characteristic of mathematical thought is that it does ot
convey truth about the external world' (Heyting, pp. 8-9). But mathema1al
_ the act1v1ty
thought at any rate reflects the free functioning of the mind, that 1s,
of the cells of the cerebral cortex, relatively emancipated from any external
.
constraint and obeying only its own laws. As the mind too is a thmg, the func
_ s : even pure
tioning of this thing teaches us something about the nature of thm
?
reflection is in the last analysis an internalization of the cosmos. It Illustrates the
structure of what lies outside in a symbolic form : 'Logic and logistics are
empirical sciences belonging to ethnography rather than psychology' (Beth,
p. 1 5 1 ).

HISTORY AND D IALECTIC

without it. Either way the prodigious wealth and diversity of habits,
beliefs and customs is allowed to escape ; and it is forgotten that
each of the tens or hundreds of thousands of societies which have
existed side by side in the world or succeeded one another since
man's first appearance, has claimed that it contains the essence of
all the meaning and dignity of which human society is capable and,
reduced though it may have been to a small nomad band or a hamlet
lost in the depths of the forest, its claim has in its own eyes rested on
a moral certainty comparable to that which we can invoke in our
own case. But whether in their case or our own, a good deal of ego
centricity and naivety is necessary to believe that man has taken
refuge in a single one of the historical or geographical modes of his
existence, when the truth about man resides in the system of their
differences and common properties.
He who begins by steeping himself in the allegedly self-evident
truths of introspection never emerges from them. Knowledge of
men sometimes seems easier to those who allow themselves to be
caught up in the snare of personal identity. But they thus shut the
door on knowledge of man : written or unavowed 'confessions' form
the basis of all ethnographic research. Sartre in fact becomes the
prisoner of his Cogito : Descartes made it possible to attain univers
ality, but conditionally on remaining psychological and individual ;
by sociologizing the Cogito, Sartre merely exchanges one prison for
another. Each subject's group and period now take the place of time
less consciousness. Moreover, Sartre's view of the world and man
has the narrowness which has been traditionally credited to closed
societies. His insistence on tracing a distinction between the primi
tive and the civilized with the aid of gratuitous contrasts reflects, in
a scarcely more subtle form, the fundamental opposition he postu
lates between myself and others. Yet there is little difference
between the way in which this opposition is formulated in Sartre's
work and the way it would have been formulated by a Melanesian
savage, while the analysis of the practico-inert quite simply revives
the language of animism.*
Descartes, who wanted to found a physics, separated Man from
*It is precisely because all these aspects of the savage mind can be discovered
in Sartre's philosophy, that the latter is in my view unqualified to pass judgment
on it: he is prevented from doing so by the very fact of furnishing its equivalent.
To the anthropologist, on the contrary, this philosophy (like all the others) affords
a first-class ethnographic document, the study of which is essential to an under
standing of the mythology of our own time.

249

THE SAVAGE MIND

Society. Sartre, who claims to found an anthropology, separates his

own society from others. A Cogito - which strives to be ingenuous
and raw - retreats into individualism and empiricism and is lost in
the blind alleys of social psychology. For it is striking that the situa
tions which Sartre uses as a starting point for extracting the formal
conditions of social reality - strikes, boxing matches, football
matches, bus-stop queues - are all secondary incidentals of life in
society ; and they cannot therefore serve to disclose its foundations.
This axiomatic, so far removed from the anthropologist's,
is all the more disappointing when he feels himself very close
to Sartre whenever the latter applies himself, with incomparable
artistry, to grasping, in its dialectical movement, a present or past
social experience within our own culture. Sartre then does what
every anthropologist tries to do in the case of different cultures : to
put himself in the place of the men living there, to understand the
principle and pattern of their intentions, and to perceive a period
or a culture as a significant set. In this respect we can often learn
from him, but these are lessons of a practical, not a theoretical,
nature. It is possible that the requirement of 'totalization' is a great
novelty to some historians, sociologists and psychologists. It has
been taken for granted by anthropologists ever since they learned it
from Malinowski. But Malinowski's deficiencies have also taught us
that this is not where explanation ends. It only begins when we have
succeeded in constituting our object. The role of dialectical reason
is to put the human sciences in possession of a reality with which it
alone can furnish them, but the properly scientific work consists i n
decomposing and then recomposing o n a different plane. With all
due respect to Sartrian phenomenology, we can hope to fnd in it
only a point of departure, not one of arrival.
Furthermore, dialectical reason must not let itself be carried away
by its own elan, nor must the procedure leading to the comprehen
sion of an other reality attribute to it, in addition to its own dialectical
features, those appertaining to the procedure rather than to the
object : it does not follow from the fact that all knowledge of others
is dialectical, that others are wholly dialectical in every respect. By
making analytical reason an anti-comprehension, Sartre often comes
to refuse it any reality as an integral part of the object of compre
hension. This paralogism is already apparent in his manner of invok
ing history, for one is hard put to it to see whether it is meant to be
the history men make unconsciously, history of men consciously

zso

H I STORY AND D IALECTIC

made by historians, the philosopher's interpretation of the history

of men or his interpretation of the history of historians. The diffi
culty becomes even greater, however, when Sartre endeavours to
explain the life and thought of the present or past members not of
his own society but of exotic societies.
He thinks, rightly, that this attempted comprehension stands no
chance of succeeding unless it is dialectical ; and he concludes,
wrongly, that the relationship between native thought and his know
ledge of it, is that of a constitutive to a constituted dialectic, and
thus, by an unforeseen detour, he repeats all the illusions of theorists
of primitive mentality on his own account. It seems even less toler
able to him than to Levy-Bruhl that the savage should possess 'com
plex understanding' and should be capable of analysis and demons
tration. Of the Ambrym native, made famous by Deacon's work,
who was able to show the field-worker the functioning of his
marriage rules and kinship system by a diagram in the sand (an
aptitude in no way exceptional as plenty of similar cases are recorded
in ethnographic literature) Sartre says : 'It goes without saying that
this construction is not a thought : it is a piece of manual work
governed by unexpressed synthetical knowledge' (p. 505). Granted :
but then the same must be said of a professor at the EcolePolytech
nique demonstrating a proof on the blackboard, for every ethno
grapher capable of dialectical comprehension is intimately per
suaded that the situation is exactly the same in both cases. So it
would follow that all reason is dialectical, which for my part I am
prepared to concede, since dialectical reason seems to me like analy
tical reason in action ; but then the distinction between the two forms
of reason which is the basis of Sartre's enterprise would become
pointless.
I must now confess to having myself unintentionally and unwit
tingly lent support to these erroneous ideas, by having seemed all
too often in Les structures elementaires de la parente as if I were seek
ing out an unconscious genesis of matrimonial exchange. I should '
have made more distinction between exchange as it is expressed
spontaneously and forcefully in the praxis of groups and the con
scious and deliberate rules by which these same groups - or their
philosophers - spend their time in codifying and controlling it. If
there is anything to be learnt from the ethnographic enquiries of
the last twenty years, it is that this latter aspect is much more
important than has generally been realized by observers, who
25 1

THE SAVAGE MIND

HI STORY AND D IALECTIC

labour under the same delusion as Sartre. Thus we must, as Sartre

advocates, apply dialectical reason to the knowledge of our own and
other societies. But we must not lose sight of the fact that analytical
reason occupies a considerable place in all of them and that, as it is
present, the approach we adopt must also allow us to rediscover it
there.
But even were it not present, Sartre's position would not be
improved. For in this case exotic societies would merely confront
us, in a more general manner than others, with an unconscious
teleology, which, although historical, completely eludes human
history : that of which certain aspects are revealed by linguistics and
psycho-analysis and which rests on the interplay of biological mech
anisms (structure of the brain, lesions, internal secretions) and psy
chological ones. There, it seems to me, is 'the bone' (to borrow a
phrase from Sartre) which his critique does not manage to break,
and moreover cares nothing about, which is the most serious charge
one could level at it. For language does not consist in the analy
tical reason of the old-style grammarians nor in the dialectic consti
tuted by structural linguistics nor in the constitutive dialectic of
individualpraxis facing the practico-inert, since all three presuppose
it. Linguistics thus presents us with a dialectical and totalizing
entity but one outside (or beneath) consciousness and will. Langu
age, an unreflecting totalization, is human reason which has its
reasons and of which man knows nothing. And if it is objected that
it is so only for a subject who internalizes it on the basis of linguistic
theory, my reply is that this way out must be refused, for this subject
is one who speaks : for the same light which reveals the nature of
language to him also reveals to him that it was so when he did not
know it, for he already made himself understood, and that it will
remain so tomorrow without his being aware of it, since his discourse
never was and never will be the result of a conscious totalization of
linguistic laws. But if, as speaking subject, man can find his apodictic
experience in an other totalization, there seems no longer any reason
why, as living subject, he should not have access to the same experi
ence in other, not necessarily human, but living beings.
This method could also lay claim to the name 'progressive
regressive' ; in fact, what Sartre describes as such is the very method
anthropologists have been practising for many years. But Sa1i:re
restricts it to its preliminary step. For our method is progressive
regressive not once but twice over. In the first stage, we observe the

datum of experience, analyse it in the present, try to grasp its

historical antecedents as far as we can delve into the past, and bring
all these facts back to the light of day to incorporate them into a
meaningful totality. The second stage, which repeats the first on a
different plane and at a different level, then begins. This internalized
human thing which we have sought to provide with all its wealth and
originality, only fixes the distance analytical reason must cover, the
leap it must make, to close the gap between the ever unforeseen
complexity of this new object and the intellectual means at its
disposal. It must therefore transform itself as dialetical reason, in
the hope that once flexible, widened and strengthened, by its agency
this unforeseen object will be assimilated to others, this novel
totality will be merged into other totalities and that thus little by
little clambering on to the mass of its conquests, dialectical reason
will descry other horizons and other objects. No doubt the pro
cedure would go astray if it were not, at every stage and, above all,
when it seemed to have run its course, ready to retrace its steps and
to double back on itself to preserve the contact with that experi
enced totality which serves both as its end and means. This return
on itself is in my view a verification, rather than, as Sartre regards
it, a demonstration, for, as I see it, a conscious being aware of itself
as such poses a problem to which it provides no solution. The dis
covery of the dialectic subjects analytical reason to an imperative
requirement : to account also for dialectical reason. This standing
requirement relentlessly forces analytical reason to extend its pro
gramme and transform its axiomatic. But dialectical reason can
account neither for itself nor for analytical reason.
It will be objected that this expansion is illusory since it is always
accompanied by a contraction in meaning, and we should abandon
the substance for the shadow, clarity for obscurity, the manifest for
the conjectural, truth for science fiction (Sartre, p. 129). Again,
Sartre would have to show that he himself avoids this dilemma, in
herent in every attempt at explanation. The real question is not
whether our endeavour to understand involves a gain or a loss of
meaning, but whether the meaning we preserve is of more value
than that we have been judicious enough to relinquish. In this
respect Sartre seems to have remembered only half of Marx's and
Freud's combined lesson. They have taught us that man has mean
ing only on the condition that he view himself as meaningful. So far
I agree with Sartre. But it must be added that this meaning is never

252

253

THE SAVAGE MIND

the right one : superstructures are faulty acts which have 'made it'
socially. Hence it is vain to go to historical consciousness for the
truest meaning. What Sartre calls dialectical reason is only a recon
struction, by what he calls analytical reason, of hypothetical moves
about which it is impossible to know - unless one should perform
them without thinking them - whether they bear any relation at all to
what he tells us about them and which, if so, would be definable in
terms of analytical reason alone. And so we end up in the paradox
of a system which invokes the criterion of historical consciousness to
distinguish the 'primitive' from the 'civilized' but - contrary to its
claim - is itself ahistorical. It offers not a concrete image of history
but an abstract schema of men making history of such a kind that
it can manifest itself in the trend of their lives as a synchronic
totality. Its position in relation to history is therefore the same as that
of primitives to the eternal past : in Sartre's system, history plays
exactly the part of a myth.
Indeed, the problem raised by the Critique de la raison dialectique
is reducible to the question : under what conditions is the myth of
the French Revolution possible? And I am prepared to grant that
the contemporary Frenchman must believe in this myth in order
fully to play the part of an historical agent and also that Sartre's
analysis admirably extracts the set of formal conditions necessary
if this result is to be secured. But it does not follow that his meaning,
just because it is the richest (and so most suited to inspire practical
action), should be the truest. Here the dialectic turns against itself.
This truth is a matter of context, and if we place ourselves outside
it - as the man of science is bound to do -what appeared as an experi
enced truth first becomes confused and finally disappears altogether.
The so-called men of the Left still cling to a period of contemporary
history which bestowed the blessing of a congruence between prac
tical imperatives and schemes of interpretation. Perhaps this golden
age of historical consciousness has already passed ; and that this
eventuality can at any rate be envisaged proves that what we have
here is only a contingent context like the fortuitous 'focusing' of an
optical instrument when its object-glass and eye-piece move in
relation to each other. We are still 'in focus' so far as the French
Revolution is concerned, but so we should have been in relation to
the Fronde had we lived earlier. The former will rapidly cease to
afford a coherent image on which our action can be modelled, just
as the latter has already done. What we learn from reading Retz is

2 54

H ISTORY AND D IALECTIC

that thought is powerless to extract a scheme of interpretation from

events long past.
At first sight, there seems no doubt : on one side the privileged, on
the other the humble and exploited ; how could we hesitate? We are
Frondeurs. However, the people of Paris were being manoeuvred
by noble houses, whose sole aim was to arrange their own affairs
with the existing powers, and by one half of the royal family which
wanted to oust the other. And now we are already only half Fron
deurs. As for the Court, which took refuge at Saint-Germain, it
appears at first to have been a faction of good for nothings vegetating
on their privileges and growing fat on exactions and usury at the
expense of the collectivity. But no, it had a function all the same since
it retained military power ; it conducted the struggle against
foreigners, the Spaniards, whom the Frondeurs invited without
hesitation to invade the country and impose their wills on this same
Court whichwas defending the fatherland. The scales, however, tilt
the other way again : the Frondeurs and Spaniards together formed
the party of peace. The Prince de Conde and the Court only sought
warlike adventures. We are pacifists and once again become Fron
deurs. But nevertheless did not the military exploits of Mazarin and
the Court extend France to its present frontiers, thus founding the
state and the nation ? Without them we should not be what we are
today. So here we are on the other side again.
It suffices therefore for history to move away from us in time or
for us to move away from it in thought, for it to cease to be internal
izable and to lose its intelligibility, a spurious intelligibility attaching
to a temporary internality. I am not however suggesting that man
can or should sever himself from this internality. It is not in his
power to do so and wisdom consists for him in seeing himself live
it, while at the same time knowing (but in a different register) that
what he lives so completely and intensely is a myth - which will
appear as such to men of a future century, and perhaps to himself a
few years hence, and will no longer appear at all to men of a future
millenium. All meaning is answerable to a lesser meaning, which
gives it its highest meaning, and if this regression finally ends in
recognizing 'a contingent law of which one can say only : it is thus,
and not otherwise' (Sartre, p. 128), this prospect is not alarming to
those whose thought is not tormented by transcendence even in a
latent form. For man will have gained all he can reasonably hope
for if, on the sole condition of bowing to this contingent law, he
2 55

THE SAVAGE MIND

succeeds in determining his form of conduct and in placing all else

in the realm of the intelligible.
Sartre is certainly not the only contemporary philosopher to have
valued history above the other human sciences and formed an
almost mystical conception of it. The anthropologist respects his
tory, but he does not accord it a special value. He conceives it as a
study complementary to his own : one of them unfurls the range of
human societies in time, the other in space. And the difference is
even less great than it might seem, since the historian strives to
reconstruct the picture of vanished societies as they were at the
points which for them corresponded to the present, while the ethno
grapher does his best to reconstruct the historical stages which
temporally preceded their existing form.
This symmetry between history and anthropology seems to be
rejected by philosophers who implicitly or explicitly deny that dis
tribution in space and succession in time afford equivalent perspec
tives. In their eyes some special prestige seems to attach to the tem
poral dimension, as if diachrony were to establish a kind of intelligi
bility not merely superior to that provided by synchrony, but above
all more specifically human.
It is easy to explain, if not to justify, this preference. The diversity
of social forms, which the anthropologist grasps as deployed in
space, present the appearance of a discontinuous system. Now,
thanks to the temporal dimension, history seems to restore to us, not
separate states, but the passage from one state to another in a con
tinuous form. And as we believe that we apprehend the trend of our
personal history as a continuous change, historical knowledge
appears to confirm the evidence of inner sense. History seems to do
more than describe beings to us from the outside, or at best give us
intermittent flashes of insight into internalities, each of which are
so on their own account while remaining external to each other : it
appears to re-establish our connection, outside ourselves, with the
very essence of change.
There would be plenty to say about this supposed totalizing con
tinuity of the self which seems to me to be an illusion sustained by
fl
the demands of social life - and consequently a re ection of the
external on the internal - rather than the object of an apodictic
experience. But there is no need to resolve this philosophical prob
lem in order to perceive that the proposed conception of history
25 6

H I STORY AND D I ALECTIC

corresponds to no kind of reality. As historical knowledge is claimed

to be privile?ed, I feel enitled (as I would not otherwise feel) to
make te P?mt that there IS a twofold antinomy in the very notion
of an histoncal fact. For, ex hypo:hesi, a historical fact is what really
.
took place, but where did anythmg take place ? Each episode in a
revolution or a war resolves itself into a multitude of individual
psychic movements. Each of these movements is the translation of
unconscious development, and these resolve themselves into cere
bral, hormonal or nervous phenomena, which themselves have
reference to the physical or chemical order. Consequently, historical
facts are no more given than any other. It is the historian , or the
agent of history, who constitutes them by abstraction and as though
under the threat of an infinite regress.
What is true of the constitution of historical facts is no less so of
thei selection. From this point of view, the historian and the agent
of htstory choose, sever and carve them up, for a truly total history
would confront them with chaos. Every corner of space conceals a
multitude of individuals each of whom totalizes the trend of history
in a man?er hich cannot be compared to the others ; for any one
.
of thse mdlVlduals: eac oment of time is inexhaustibly rich in
.
phystcal and psychical mctdents whtch all play their part in his
otalizati_o Even history which claims to be universal is still only a
JUXapositwn of a few local histories within which (and between
whtch) very much more is left out than is put in. And it would be vain
to hope that by increasing the number of collaborators and making
research more intensive one would obtain a better result. In so far
as history aspires to meaning, it is doomed to select regions, periods
groups of men and individuals in these groups and to make the
stand out, as discontinuous figures, against a continuity barely good
nough to be .used as a backdrop. A truly total history would cancel
Itsel ou - 1ts product would be nought. What makes history
posstble IS that a sub-set of events is found, for a given period, to
have approximately the same significance for a contingent of indivi
dual who have not ecessarily experienced the events and may even
consider them at an mterval of several centuries. History is therefore
never history, but history-for.* It is partial in the sense of being
* Quite so, will be the comment of the supporters of Sartre . But the latter's
whole endeavour shows that, though the subjectivity of history-for me can make
way for the objectivity of history-for-us, the ' I ' can still only be converted into
'we' y condemni?-g this 'we' to being no more than an ' I ' raised to the power of
two, Itself hermetically sealed off from the other 'we's. The price so paid for the

257

THE SAVAGE MIND

biased even when it claims not to be, for it inevitably remains partial
- that is, incomplete - and this is itself a form of partiality. When one
proposes to write a history of the French Revolution one knows (or
ought to know) that it cannot, simultaneously and under the same
heading, be that of the Jacobin and that of the aristocrat. Ex hypo
thesi, their respective totalizations (each of which is anti-symmetric
to the other) are equally true. One must therefore choose between
two alternatives. One must select as the principal either one or a
third (for there are an infinite number of them) and give up the
attempt to find in history a totalization of the set of partial totaliza
tions ; or alternatively one must recognize them all as equally real :
but only to discover that the French Revolution as commonly con
ceived never took place.
History does not therefore escape the common obligation of all
knowledge, to employ a code to analyse its object, even (and especi
ally) if a continuous reality is attributed to that object.* The distinc
tive features of historical knowledge are due not to the absence of a
code, which is illusory, but to its particular nature : the code consists
in a chronology. There is no history without dates. To be convinced
of this it is sufficient to consider how a pupil succeeds in learning
history : he reduces it to an emaciated body, the skeleton of which is
formed by dates. Not without reason, there has been a reaction
against this dry method, but one which often runs to the opposite
extreme. Dates may not be the whole of history, nor what is most
interesting about it, but they are its sine qua non, for history's entire
originality and distinctive nature lie in apprehending the relation
between before and after, which would perforce dissolve if its terms
could not, at least in principle, be dated.
Now, this chronological coding conceals a very much more com
plex nature than one supposes when one thinks of historical dates
illusion of having overcome the insoluble antinomy (in such a system) between
my self and others, consists of the assignation, by historical consciousness, of
the metaphysical function of Other to the Papuans. By reducing the latter to the
state of means, barely sufficient for its philosophical appetite, historical reason
abandons itself to a sort of intellectual cannibalism much more revolting to the
anthropologist than real cannibalism.
* In this sense too, one can speak of an antinomy of historical knowledge : if it
claims to reach the continuous it is impossible, being condemned to an infinite
regress ; but to render it possible, events must be quantified and thereafter
temporality ceases to be the privileged dimension of historical knowledge because
as soon as it is quantified each event can, for all useful purposes, be treated as
if it were the result of a choice between possible pre-existents.

H ISTORY AND D IALECTIC

as a simple linear series. In the first place, a date denotes a moment

in a succession : d 2 is after d I and before d 3 . From this point of
view dates only perform the function of ordinal numbers. But each
date is also a cardinal number and, as such, expresses a distance in re
lation to the dates nearest to it. We use a large number of dates to
code some periods of history ; and fewer for others. This variable
quantity of dates applied to periods of equal duration are a gauge
of what might be called the pressure of history : there are 'hot'
chronologies which are those of periods where in the eyes of the
historian numerous events appear as differential elements ; others,
on the contrary, where for him (although not of course for the men
who lived through them) very little or nothing took place. Thirdly
and most important, a date is a member of a class. These classes of
dates are defnable by the meaningful character each date has within
the class in relation to other dates which also belong to it, and by
the absence of this meaningful character with respect to dates
appertaining to a different class. Thus the date I 68 5 belongs to a
class of which I6Io, 1 648 and 1715 are likewise members ; but it
means nothing in relation to the class composed of the dates : 1st,
2nd, 3rd, 4th millenium, nor does it mean anything in relation to
the class of dates : 23 January, I7 August, 30 September, etc.
On this basis, in what would the historian's code consist? Cer
tainly not in dates, since these are not recurrent. Changes of temp
erature can be coded with the help of figures, because the reading of
a figure on the thermometer evokes the return of an earlier situation :
whenever I read o C, I know that it is freezing and put on my
warmest coat. But a historical date, taken in itself, would have no
meaning1 for it has no reference outside itself: if I know nothing
about modern history, the date 1 643 makes me none the wiser. The
code can therefore consist only of classes of dates, where each date
has meaning in as much as it stands in complex relations of correla
tion and opposition with other dates. Each class is defined by a
frequency, and derives from what might be called a corpus or a
domain of history. Historical knowledge thus proceeds in the same
way as a wireless with frequency modulation : like a nerve, it codes a
continuous quantity - and as such an asymbolic one - by frequencies
of impulses proportional to its variations. As for history itself, it
cannot be represented as an aperiodic series with only a fragment of
which we are acquainted. History is a discontinuous set composed
2 59

THE SAVAGE MIND

H I STORY AND D IALECTIC

to remind us of its logical nature by modelling a confused outline of

Godel's theorem in the clay of 'becoming'. The historian's relative
choice, with respect to each domain of history he gives up, is always
confined to the choice between history which teaches us more and
explains less, and history which explains more and teaches less. The
only way he can avoid the dilemma is by getting outside history :
either by the bottom, if the pursuit of information leads him from
the consideration of groups to that of individuals and then to their
motivations which depend on their personal history and tempera
ment, that is to say to an infra-historical domain in the realms of
psychology and physiology ; or by the top, if the need to understand
incites him to put history back into prehistory and the latter into
the general evolution of organized beings, which is itself explicable
only in terms of biology, geology and finally cosmology.
There is, however, another way of avoiding the dilemma without
thereby doing away with history. We need only recognize that his
tory is a method with no distinct object corresponding to it to
reject the equivalence between the notion of history and the notion
of humanity which some have tried to foist on us with the unavowed
aim of making historicity the last refuge of a transcendental human
ism : as if men could regain the illusion of liberty on the plane of the
'we' merely by giving up the 'I's that are too obviously wanting in
consistency.
In fact history is tied neither to man nor to any particular object.
It consists wholly in its method, which experience proves to be
indispensable for cataloguing the elements of any structure what
ever, human or non-human, in their entirety. It is therefore far from
being the case that the search for intelligibility comes to an end in
history as though this were its terminus. Rather, it is history that
serves as the point of departure in any quest for intelligibility. As
we say of certain careers, history may lead to anything, provided
you get out of it.

indisputable) historical knowledge has no claim to be opposed to other

forms of knowledge as a supremely privileged one. We noted above
that it is already found rooted in the savage mind , and wo cnn now
see why it does not come to fruition there. The characteristic feature
of the savage mind is its timelessness ; its object is to grnep tho wol'ld
as both a synchronic and a diachronic totality and tho knowledge
which it draws therefrom is like that afforded of a room by mirror
fixed on opposite walls, which reflect each other (as well as object&
in the intervening space) although without being strictly parallel. A
multitude of images forms simultaneously, none exactly like any
other, so that no single one furnishes more than a partial knowledge
of the decoration and furniture but the group is characterized by
invariant properties expressing a truth. The savage mind deepens
its knowledge with the help of imagines mundi. It builds mental
structures which facilitate an understanding of the world in as much
as they resemble it. In this sense savage thought can be defined as
analogical thought.
But in this sense too it differs from domesticated thought, of
which historical knowledge constitutes one aspect. The concern for
continuity which inspires the latter is indeed a manifestation, in the
temporal order, of knowledge which is interstitial and unifying
rather than discontinuous and analogical : instead of multiplying
objects by schemes promoted to the role of additional objects, it
seems to transcend an original discontinuity by relating objects to
one another. But it is this reason, wholly concerned with closing
gaps and dissolving differences, which can properly be called 'analy
tical'. By a paradox on which much stress has recently been laid, for
modern thought ' continuity, variability, relativity, determinism go
together' (Auger, p. 475).
This analytic, abstract continuity will doubtless be opposed to
that of the praxis as concrete individuals live it. But this latter con
tinuity seems no less derivative than the former, for it is only the
conscious mode of apprehending psychological and physiological
processes which are themselves discontinuous. I am not disputing
that reason develops and transforms itself in the practical field :
man's mode of thought reflects his relations to the world and to
men. But in order for praxis to be living thought, it is necessary first
(in a logical and not a historical sense) for thought to exist : that is to
say, its initial conditions must be given in the form of an objective

This further thing to which history leads for want of a sphere of

reference of its own shows that whatever its value (which is
(which does not mean that it is true) if one puts oneself on a new plane, which
incidentally Gobineau chose clumsily ; that is to say : if one passes from a
history of 'annual' or 'secular' grade (which is also political, social and
ideological) to a history of 'millenia!' or 'multi-millenial' grade (which is also
cultural and anthropological), a procedure not invented by Gobineau which
might be called : Boulainvilliers' 'transformation'.

Pp. 242-3.

THE SAVAGE MIND

' i
' !

structure of the psyche and brain without which there would be

neither praxis nor thought.
When therefore I describe savage thought as a system of concepts
embedded in images, I do not come anywhere near the robinson
nades* (Sartre, pp. 642-3) of a constitutive constituent dialectic :
all constitutive reason presupposes a constituted reason. But even
if one allowed Sartre the circularity which he invokes to dispel the
'suspect character' attaching to the first stages of his synthesis, what
he proposes really are 'robinsonnades', this time in the guise of
descriptions of phenomena, when he claims to restore the sense of
marriage exchange, the potlatch or the demonstration of his tribe's
marriage rules by a Melanesian savage. Sartre then refers to a com
prehension which has its being in the praxis of their organizers, a
bizarre expression to which no reality corresponds, except perhaps
the capacity which any foreign society presents to anyone looking
at it from the outside, and which leads him to project the lacunae in
his own observation on to it in the form of positive attributes. Two
examples will show what I mean.
No anthropologist can fail to be struck by the common manner of
conceptualizing initiation rites employed by the most diverse
societies throughout the world. Whether in Africa, America, Aus
tralia or Melanesia, the rites follow the same pattern : first, the
novices, taken from their parents, are symbolically 'killed' and kept
hidden in the forest or bush where they are put to the test by the
Beyond ; after this they are 'reborn' as members of the society. When
they are returned to their natural parents, the latter therefore
simulate all the phases of a new delivery, and begin a re-education
even in the elementary actions of feeding or dressing. It would be
tempting to interpret this set of phenomena as a proof that at this
stage thought is wholly embedded in praxis. But this would be
seeing things back to front, for it is on the contrary scientific praxis
which, among ourselves, has emptied the notions of death and birth
of everything not corresponding to mere physiological processes
and rendered them unsuitable to convey other meanings. In societies
with initiation rites, birth and death provide the material for a rich
and varied conceptualization, provided that these notions (like so
many others) have not been stripped by any form of scientific
* This term alludes to Robinson Crusoe and the Swiss family Robinson
whose 'creation' of civilization was not a genuine invention but merely an
application of their pre-existing knowledge. [Trans. note.]

H ISTORY AND D IALECTIC

knowledge oriented towards practical returns-which they lack -ofthe

major part of a meaning which transcends the distinction between
the real and the imaginary : a complete meaning of which we can
now hardly do more than evoke the ghost in the reduced setting of
figurative language. What looks to us like being embedded in praxis
is the mark of thought which quite genuinely takes the words it uses
seriously, whereas in comparable circumstances we only 'play' on
words.
The taboos on parents-in-law furnish the matter for a cautionary
tale leading to the same conclusion by a different route. Anthro
pologists have found the frequent prohibition of any physical or
verbal contact between close affines so strange that they have exer
cised their ingenuity in multiplying explanatory hypotheses, with
out always making sure that the hypotheses are not rendered re
dundant by one another. Elkin for instance explains the rarity of
marriage with the patrilateral cousin inAustralia by the rule that as a
man has to avoid any contact with his mother-in-law, he will b e
wise to choose the latter among women entirely outside his own
local group (to which his father's sisters belong). The aim of the
rule itself is supposed to be to prevent a mother and daughter from
being rivals for the affections of the same man ; finally, the taboo is
supposed to be extended by contamination to the wife's maternal
grandmother and her husband. There are thus four concurrent
interpretations of a single phenomenon : as a function of a type of
marriage, as the result of a psychological calculation, as protection
against instinctive tendencies and as the product of association by
contiguity. This, however, still does not satisfy Elkin, for in his view
the taboo on the father-in-law rests on a fifth explanation : the father
in-law is the creditor of the man to whom he has given his daughter,
and the son-in-law feels himself to be in a position of inferiority in
relation to him (Elkin 4, pp. 66-7, 1 17-20) .
I shall content myself with the last explanation which perfectly
covers all the cases considered and renders the others worthless by
bringing out their naivety. But why is it so difficult to put these
usages into their proper place? The reason is, I think, that the usages
of our own society which could be compared with them and might
furnish a landmark to i entify them by, are in a dissociated form
among ourselves, while in these exotic societies they appear in an
associated one which makes them unrecognizable to us.
265

THE SAVAGE MIND

H I STORY AND D IALECTIC

We are acquainted with the taboo on parents-in-law or at least

with its approximate equivalent. By the same token we are forbidden
to address the great of this world and obliged to keep out of their
way. All protocol asserts it : one does not speak first to the Queen of
England or the President of the French Republic ; and we adopt the
same reserve when unforeseen circumstances create conditions of
closer proximity between a superior and ourselves than the social
distance between us warrants. Now, in most societies the position
of wife-giver is accompanied by social (and sometimes also eco
nomic) superiority, that of wife-taker by inferiority and dependence.
This inequality between affine& may be expressed objectively in
institutions as a fluid or stable hierarchy, or it may be expressed sub
jectively in the system of interpersonal relations by means of
privileges and prohibitions.
There is therefore nothing mysterious about these usages which
our own experience enables us to see from the inside. We are discon
certed only by their constitutive conditions, different in each case.
Among ourselves, they are sharply separated from other usages and
tied to an unambiguous context. In exotic societies, the same usages
and the same context are as it were embedded in other usages and a
different context : that of family ties, with which they seem to us
incompatible. We find it hard to imagine that, in private, the son-in
law of the President of the French Republic should regard him as
the head of the state rather than as his father-in-law. And although
the Queen of England's husband may behave as the first of her
subjects in public, there are good reasons for supposin,g that he is
just a husband when they are alone together. It is either one or the
other. The superficial strangeness of the taboo on parents-in-law
arises from its being both at the same time.
Consequently, and as we have already found in the case of opera
tions of understanding, the system of ideas and attitudes is here
presented only as embodied. Considered in itself, this system has
nothing about it to baffie the anthropologist. My relation to the
President of the Republic is made up entirely of negative obser
vances, since, in the absence of other ties, any relations we may have
are wholly defined by the rule that I should not speak unless he
invites me to do so and that I should remain a respectful distance
from him. But this abstract relation need only be clothed in a
concrete relation and the attitudes appropriate to each to accumu
late, for me to find myself as embarrassed by my family as an

Australian aborigine. What appears to us as greater social ease and

greater intellectual mobility is thus due to the fact that we prefer to
operate with detached pieces, if not indeed with 'small chango',
while the native is a logical hoarder: he is forever tying the threads,
unceasingly turning over all the aspects of reality, whether physical,
social or mental. We traffic in our ideas; he hoards them up. The 1
savage mind puts a philosophy of the finite into practice.
This is also the source of the renewed interest in it. This language
with its limited vocabulary able to express any message by combina
tions of oppositions between its constitutive units, this logic of com
prehension for which contents are indissociable from form, this
systematic of finite classes, this universe made up of meanings, no
longer appears to us as retrospective witnesses of a time when : ' . . . le
ciel sur la terre Marchait et respirait dans un peuple de dieux', * and
which the poet only evokes for the purpose of asking whether or not
it is to be regretted. This time is now restored to us, thanks to the
discovery of a universe of information where the laws of savage
thought reign once more : 'heaven' too, 'walking on earth' among a
population of transmitters and receivers whose messages, while in
transmission, constitute objects of the physical world and can be
grasped both from without and from within.
The idea that the universe of primitives (or supposedly such) con
sists principally in messages is not new. But until recently a negative
value was attributed to what was wrongly taken to be a distinctive
characteristic, as though this difference between the universe of the
primitives and our own contained the explanation of their mental
and technological inferiority, when what it does is rather to put
them on a par with modern theorists of documentation.t Physical
science had to discover that a semantic universe possesses all the
characteristics of an object in its own right for it to be recognized
that the manner in which primitive peoples conceptualize their

266

* i.e. 'when heaven walked and breathed on earth among a population of

Gods'. From A. de Musset 'Rolla' 1 833 reprinted in Poesies Nouvelles. [Trans.
note.]

t The documentalist neither disallows nor disputes the substance of the

works e analyses in ?rer to derive the constitutive units of his code or to adapt
them, either by corr:bmmg them among themselves or, if necessary, decomposing
.
finer umts. He thus treats the authors as gods whose revelations are
them mto
written down, instead of being inscribed into beings and things, but which hnvo
the same sacred value, which attaches to the supremely meaningful chmncter
that, for methodological or ontological reasons, it is ex hypothesi necessary to
recognize in them in both cases.

THE SAVAGE M I N D

I I I STOHY A N D D I ALECTI C

world is not merely coherent but the very one demanded in the
case of an object whose elementary structure presents the picture of
a discontinuous complexity.
The false antinomy between logical and prelogical mentality was
surmounted at the same time. The savage mind is logical in the
same sense and the same fashion as ours, though as our own is only
when it is applied to knowledge of a universe in which it recognizes
physical and semantic properties simultaneously. This misunder
standing once dispelled, it remains no less true that, contrary to
Levy-Bruhl's opinion, its thought proceeds through understanding,
not affectivity, with the aid of distinctions and oppositions, not by
confusion and participation. Although the term had not yet come
into use, numerous texts of Durkheim and Mauss show that they
understood that so-called primitive thought is a quantified form of
thought.
It will be objected that there remains a major difference between
the thought of primitives and our own : Information Theory is con
cerned with genuine messages whereas primitives mistake mere
manifestations of physical determinism for messages. Two con
siderations, however, deprive this argument of any weight. In the
first place, Information Theory has been generalized, and it extends
to phenomena not intrinsically possessing the character of messages,
notably to those of biology ; the illusions of totemism have had at
least the merit of illuminating the fundamental place belonging to
phenomena of this order, in the internal economy of systems of
classification. In treating the sensible properties of the animal and
plant kingdoms as if they were the elements of a message, and in
discovering 'signatures' - and so signs - in them, men have made
mistakes of identification : the meaningful element was not always
the one they supposed. But, without perfected instruments which
would have permitted them to place it where it most often is namely, at the microscopic level - they already discerned ' as through
a glass darkly' principles of interpretation whose heuristic value and
accordance with reality have been revealed to us only through very
recent inventions : telecommunications, computers and electron
microscopes.
Above all, during the period of their transmission, when they
have an objective existence outside the consciousness of transmitters
and receivers, messages display properties which they have in
common with the physical world. Hence, despite their mistakes

with regard to physical phenomena (which were not absolute but

relative to the level where they grasped them) and even though they
interpreted them as if they were messages, men were nevertheless
able to arrive at some of their properties. For a theory of information
to be able to be evolved it was undoubtedly essential to have dis
covered that the universe of information is part of an aspect of the
natural world. But the validity of the passage from the laws of nature
to those of information once demonstrated, implies the validity of
the reverse passage - that which for millenia has allowed men to
approach the laws of nature by way of information.
Certainly the properties to which the savage mind has access are
not the same as those which have commanded the attention of
scientists. The physical world is approached from opposite ends in
the two cases : one is supremely concrete, the other supremely
abstract ; one proceeds from the angle of sensible qualities and the
other from that of formal properties. But if, theoretically at least .
and on condition no abrupt changes in perspective occurred, these
two courses might have been destined to meet, this explains that
they should have both, independently of each other in time and
space, led to two distinct though equally positive sciences : one
which flowered in the neolithic period, whose theory of the sensible
or?er provided the basis of the arts of civilization (agriculture,
ammal husbandry, pottery, weaving, conservation and preparation
of food, etc.) and which continues to provide for our basic needs by
these means ; and the other, which places itself from the start at the
level of intelligibility, and of which contemporary science is the fruit.
We have had to wait until the middle of this century for the
crossing of long separated paths : that which arrives at the physical
world by the detour of communication, and that which as we have
recently come to know, arrives at the world of communication by
the detour of the physical. The entire process of human knowledge
thus assumes the character of a closed system. And we therefore
remain faithful to the inspiration of the savage mind when we
recognize that the scientific spirit in its most modern form will, by
an encounter it alone could have foreseen, have contributed to
legitimize the principles of savage thought and to re-establish it in
its rightful place.
12 June-16 October 1961

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RoBBINS, W. W., HARRINGTON, J. P., and FREIRE-MARRECO, B. : 'Ethno
botany of the Tewa Indians', Bulletin no. 55, Bureau ofAmerican Ethno
logy, Washington, D.C., 1916.
RocAL, G. : Le Vieux Perigord, 3rd ed., Paris, 1928.
RoLLAND, E. : ( I ) Faune populaire de Ia France, Tome II, 'Les Oiseaux
sauvages', Paris, I879
(2) Flore populaire de Ia France, Tome II, Paris, I899
RoscoE, J. : The Baganda : An Account of their Native Customs and
Beliefs, London, I 9 I I .
RoussEAU, J. J. : (I) Discours sur l'origine e t les fondements de l'inegalite
parmiles hommes, ffiuvres melees, Tome II, Nouvelle ed., London, 1776.
(2) Essai sur l'origine des langues, ffiuvres posthumes, Tome II,
London, I783.
RussELL, B. : 'The Philosophy of Logical Atomism', The Monist, 19I8.
RussELL, F. : 'The Pima Indians', 26th Annual Report, Bureau of
American Ethnology (I 904-5), Washington, D.C., I908.
SARTRE, J. P. : Critique de Ia raison dialectique, Paris, 1960.
SAUSSURE, F. DE : Course in General Linguistics, (translated from the
French by W. Baskin), London, I96o.

278

279

Memorial Lecture for I95 I. Journal of the Royal Anthropological

Institute, vol. 8 I , parts I and II, I95I (Published I952). Republished
in : Method in Social Anthropology, Chicago, I958, ch. v.
(3) 'Introduction' in : A. R. Radcliffe-Brown and Daryll Forde, eds.
African Systems of Kinship and Marriage, Oxford, I950.

THE SAVAGE MIND

(5) 'Brief Miscellaneous Hopi Papers', Field Museum of Natural

History, Publication ISJ, Anthropological Series, vol. XI, no. 2,
Chicago, 1912.
WALKER, A. Raponda, and SILLANS, R. : Les Plantes utiles du Gabon,
Paris, 1961.
WALLIS, W. D. : 'The Canadian Dakota', Anthropological Papers of the
American Museum ofNatural History, vol. 41, part 1, New York, 1947.
WARNER, W. Lloyd : A Black Civilization, revised edition, New York,
1958.
WATERMAN, T. T. : 'Yurok Geography', University of California Publica
tions in American Archaeology and Ethnology, vol. 16, no. 5, Berkeley,
1920.
WHITE, C.M. N. : (x) 'Elements in Luvale Beliefs and Rituals', The
Rhodes-Livingstone Papers, no. 32, Manchester, 1961.
(2) (J. CHINJAVATA and L. E . MuKWATO . ) 'Comparative Aspects of
Luvale Puberty Ritual', African Studies, Johannesburg, 1958.
WHITE, L.A. : 'New Material from Acoma', in : Bulletin IJ6, Bureau of
American Ethnology, Washington, D.C., 1943.
WHITING, A. F. : 'Ethnobotany of the Hopi', Bulletin no. I4, Museum of
Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, 1950.
WILLIAMS, M. L. W. : Schoolcraft's Indian Legends, Michigan U.P., 1956.
WILSON, G. L. : 'Hidatsa Eagle Trapping', Anthropological Papers of the
American Museum of Natural History, vol. 30, part IV, New York,
1928.
WIRz, P. : Die Marind-Anim von Holliindisch-Siid-Neu-Guinea, I Band,
Teil II, 1922.
WITKOWSKI, G. J. : Histoire des accouchements chez tous les peuples, Paris,
1887.
WoENSDREGT, J. : 'Mythen en Sagen der Berg-Toradja's van Midden
Celebes', Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten
en Wetenschappen, vol. 65, no. 3, Batavia, 1925.
WoRSLEY, P. : 'Totemism in a Changing Society', American Anthro
pologist, vol. 57, no. 4, 1955
WYMAN, L. C. and HARRIS, S. K. : 'Navaho Ethnobotany', University of
New Mexico, Bulletin no. 366, Anthropological Series, vol. 3 , no. 4,
Albuquerque, 1941.
ZAHAN, D. : Societes d'initiation Bambara, Paris-La Haye, 1960.
ZEGWAARD, G. A. : 'Headhunting Practices of the Asmat of Netherlands
New Guinea', American Anthropologist, vol. 61, no. 6, 1959.
ZELENINE, D. : Le culte des idoles en Siberie, French translation, Paris,
1952.

I N D EX

I-S, I07, IJS-6o, I64,

I66, I75, I82, 2I7-20, 257, 266,
269
Affectiveness, 37--9
Agriculture, 52, 73-4, I Io-J
ALBERTUS MAGNUS, 42
ALBISETTI, P.C. See COLBACCHINI
Algonkin, J I-2, so, 57, 70, 99, I I7,
I42, I66-7, I73, I87, I89, I96
Allergy, 98
Aluridja, I65, I67
ALVIANO, F. DE, I06
Ambo, 62
Analytical reason, 245-69
ANDERSON, A.J. O., 46 n.
ANDERSON, E., 73
Animals, names given to, 204-8,
2IJ
Animism, 249
ANTHONY, H. G., 53 n.
Arabanna, Arabana, 8I-2, 84-7,
238
Aranda, 8I-8, I02-3, I09, II2-J,
n8, ISo, I6S, I67-8, I7o, I74,
2I8, 235, 237-41, 243-4
Abstraction,

Arbitrary. See Motivation

Archetypes, 65
Archives, 239-44
ARON, R., 70
Art, 22-36, IS6, I82
Artemisia,

46-8

Arunta. See Aranda

Ashanti, 133 n.
Asmat, 6o
Astrology, 42
Athapaskan, so
AUGER, P., 263
Aurora, 76-So
Aymara, 43
Azande, I I
BACH, J. S., 242
Baganda, I I2-3, I78
Bahima, ISO
BALANDIER, G., 234-5 n.
Balovale, 6
BALZAC, H. DE, I30
Bambara, I63
Banyoro, ISO, I79-8o
Bard, 6s, I84
BARROWS, D.P., s
Bateso, ISI
BATESON, G . , 174. I77
BEATTIE, J.H. M., 179-80
BECKWITH, M. w., so
BEIDELMAN, T. 0., I44
Bemba, 62
BENEDICT, P. K., I89
BERGSON, H., 137
BETH, E.W., 248 n.
Bhil, I20-I
Birds, S4-6I, 96, I47, I49, 1 89
Birds, names given to, 2031 ::u 3

THE SAVAGE MIND

Birth,

46-8, 6 r , 76-8 r , 1 3 1 , r 68,

1 37,

1 53,

173,

BURCKHARDT, }., 244

1 03-4

CALAME-GRIAULE, G., I 6 3
Canela, 4 0 n.
Cannibalism, 78, r os, 257-8 n.
CAPELL, A., 57
Carcajou (Gulo luscus), so-3
CARPENTER, E., 64
Caste, I I 3-33, r 62
Chance, 14, r 84-5, r 87, 220
CHARBONNIER, G., 234
Cherburg, r 8o-r n.
CHEVAL (the postman), 17
Chickasaw, I I7, I I g, 1 26, r 64, 204
Chinese, 65 n., ro6, r 65 n.
Chinook, r
Chippewa, 1 02, I I 6, r 67
Churinga, 87-8, 237-44
Classification, 3g-74, 1 35-22 1 ,
22g-44, 2Sg-62, 267-8
22, 24, 26-7
ro6, I I I , I I g, 1 37-40,

14g-5o, 172, 222, 228, 25 8-62

CoDRINGTON, R.H., 76, 78

H. H., 1 4 n.
Cogito, 250
Coifs, go
CoLBACCHINI, P. A., 3g n., 1 14,
Colla, 43
Colours, 40, 55, 64-5

COGHLAN,

230

r 8-2 r ,

Diseases, 1 39, I 64-5

Dobu, I IO-I, I 77
Dogon, 3g, 104 n., r 63 , I 8g
Dogs, names given to, r 67, I 8 I-2,
204-8, 2 1 3

6 2 , ! 3 8-g, 1 4 1 , 1 53

DORSEY, G.A., 1 28
DoRSEY, J. O., 69, I48-g
Drysdale river, r 68, I74,
DUPIRE, M., 145

1 3 7-9,

DuRKHEIM, E., 3g, 40, 57, 76, g r ,

I02, I 62, 2 14, 238-9, 241 , 268

go,

BouLAINVILLIERS (Boulainviller),
Comte H. DE, 261-2 n.
Bouriate, 8-g
BOWERS, A. w., so
Brassica rapa, 201-3, 2 1 1-2
Bricolage, r 6-36, r s o n.
BRi:iNDAL, V., r 8s n., 201 n.
BROUILLETTE, B., 50

CLOUET, F.,
Coahuila, 5
Code, go-8,

20,

Computer, 8g, 1 5 1
CoMTE, A., 1 63-4, 2 1 8-20
Concept, conceptual, 1-5,

178, 230

Bushmen,

Comprehension,
264-5

177, 1 84, r 8g-g8, 264

Blackfoot, r o
BoAs, F . , r , 2 1 , 1 3 5-6, r 8g
BocHET, G., 1 54
Bororo (Africa), 145
Bororo (Brazil), 3g n., gg, I I4,

INDEX

107,

r r7,

r r g,

1 3 5-6o, 223-4, 264-5

CoNKLIN H. C.,
Continuous

and passim
n., 5 5 ,

3 , 7-8, 3g

and

172,

1 29-3 1 ,

discontinuous,

r g5-200,

2 15-6,
224-8, 232-4, 25 6-64, 268

CooKE, CH . A., 178 n.

Couvade, 195-6, 201
Creek, sg-6o, I r8
Crow, I I 2
CRUZ, M., I73
CuNNISON, I. G., 62
CusHING, F.H., 42

Eagle hunting, 46-s i ,

EGGAN, F., 7 I
Elema, I o6-7
ELKIN, A. P. , 65, 8 I-2,

84, I44,

r s s,

1 87, 209-10, 232, 234, 260

DENNETT, R. E., I 3 3
DENNLER, J. G., 44 n.
DENSMORE, F., 50, r 65 n.
DESCARTES, R., 24g
DETAILLE, E., 28
Determinism, geographical, 94-6
Devanga, 120
Diachrony, 52-3, 63, 66-74, 87-8,
I48-g, I S S , r 66, r g7, 227 n.,
2 3 I -44, 256, 263
Dialectical reason, 245-6g

Dinka,

I 2 I , 1 28-9

n.

I I,

s6,

n., I 04, r6I n., I 8g, 224

Exogamy, 77-1 33, 2 3 1
Experimenting, I 3-I5, 73-4, 22o-3
Extension, 20, 1 36, 1 5 3
6o

I I-2,

DIAMOND, S., I45 n.

DIBBLE, CH. E., 46 n.
DICKENS, CH., 17, I SO
DIETERLEN, G., 39, 43,

r g6-7 n.

so, 64

EvANs-PRITCHARD, E. E.,

2 I O, 23 6-44, 264

I66, I 8g

Gi:iDEL,
84, r oo, I02,

Endogamy, I I I-33

I S 8, 177, I 84-S, r 8g, 1 9 I-200,

Fang, 3 , 6 I , 98-g, 1 03-4

FIRTH, R., 228 n.
FISCHER, A., g8
FISCHER, J. L., g8
FLETCHER, A. C., ro, 56, I I 2
Flowers, names given to, 2 I I-6
Forrest river, 65
FoRTUNE, R. F., 43, 6 I , I I I
FouRrE, L., ro3
Fox, C. E., 78 n.
Fox, R. B., 5 , 8, 14
Fox tribe, 3 I , 65, gg, r gg n.
FRAKE, CH . O. , s, 1 3 g
France, 70, go, I O S , I I I , I g3-4,
254-5, 258, 26I-z n.
FRAZER, J. G., 57-8, 74, 76, 78-<),
8 r , I02, Io6, I I 6, 140, I42, 23 I

FREEMAN, J. D.,
1 04, I 63,

Gahuku-Gama, 30
GALEN, 42
Games, 3o-2, I 26
GARDINER, A.H., I72, r 8 s , 201-3,
2 I I , 2I5 n.
GEDDES, W. R. , 205
GILGES, W., 6
GILLEN, F. J,, 8 I-2, 84, 86, 88, r r 4,
GOBINEAu, Comte J,A. DE, 26r-2 n.

I 8S , 2 I 8, 242, 265

Eskimo, 40,

I45

238, 240-1

225

ELMENDORF, W. W., 1 77n.,

ELMORE, F. H., 40

Dakota, r 8g
Dates, 25 8-62
Dayak, 54, 56, 205 n.
DEACON, B., 2 5 !
Death, 3 1-2, 6 5 , 76-8 r ,
DELATTE, A., 42
Delaware, 142
Demography, 66-74,

176

FREUD, s., 253

Fronde, 254-5
Fulani, 39 n., 43,

55

B., 6
French Revolution, 254-5,
26I-2 n.
FREIRE-MARRECO,

258,

K.,

262

GOETHE, W., 244

GoGH, V. VAN, 244
'Golden Bough', 48
Golden Rod (Solidago), 46-8
GoLDENWEISER, A.A., 178, I 88,
Grammar. See Vocabulary
GREUZE, J, -B., 30
GRIAULE, M., s , 3g, I 63 , 2 3 1
Groote Eylandt, 1 5 5
GRZIMEK, B., 1 3 7 n.
Guarani, 44
GuiLBAUD, G. TH., 82 n.
HADDON, A. C., u s-6
HAILE, Fa. B., 40, 1 28, 203
HALLE, M. See JAKOBSON
HALLOWELL, A. I.' g6
HAMPAri: BA, A., 39 n., 43
HANDY, E . S. CRAIGHILL, 2,

1 96

3 , 37,

g6, 144

Hanun6o, 3-5, 7, 55, 62, 1 38,

HARNEY, W. E . , r 66
HARRINGTON, J. P. , 6, 7, 1 69
HARRIS, s. K., 40, 204
HART, C. W. M., 177, r go,
1 99-200, 2 I O-I
Hawaii, 3 , 37, 96, 144

HEDIGER, H., 38
HEIM, R., r 86
Helmene, 8
HENDERSON, J., 7
HENRY, J., r os n.
HERMES TRISMEGISTUS,

42

153

I95,

THE SAVAGE MIND

KRIGE, J . D . , I59 n.
KROEBER, A. L. , 7I, I28, 175-7,
196-7 n.
Kuruba, I2I
Kwakiutl, I 89

HERNANDEZ, TH., 155, 168, 174,

176
HEYTING, A., 248 n.
Hidasta, 46, 48, 52-3, 225
History, 66-74, 155-6o, 1 86-7,
23 1 -44, 248-g, 25o-1, 252-63
HoFFMAN, W. J., 57, 1 67, 229
HOLLIS, A. c., I I2
Hopi, s, 40, 48, 6o-1, 7I-2, I6S,
I76, 178, r 8o, 229
Horses, names given to, 206-8, 2 I 3
Hours, M . , 209 n .
HUBERT, R . , I I , I 8 n .
HuGo, V., 244

LA BARRE, w., 44
Lacandon, I 87 n.
LA FLEscHE, F., s6,

59, I I2, I42-3,

I44-8, 170-I, I73
LA FoRCE, Due DE, 244
LAGUNA, F. DE, 6o, I73
Laierdila, roo-I
Language, I-3, s6-7, 66-7, IOS-6,
I 29, 1 3 1 , ISS-60, 172-216, 228,
252, 264-5, 267
LAROCK, V., 209 n.
LAUGHLIN, W. S., 153
LEIGHTON, A.H., 62, 204
LEIGHTON, D. c., 62, 204
LENOTRE, G., 244
LEVY-BRUHL, L., 25 1, 268
LrENHARDT, G., I2I, 128-g n.
Lifu, 78-8o
Linguistics, 66-7, ro2, rss-6o,
172-222, 23 1, 252
LITTRE, E., 205
LoEB, E. M. , 9
Logic,
logical thought,
35-76,
I 02-3, lOS, 126, 129, I 3S-2I6,
261, 267 and passim
LONG, J K., 163

Iakoute, 8, 9
latmul, I74

lban, s4, s6
Information theory, I S4, 268-g
Infrastructures, 90-6, I3o-1, 2 I3-4
lntichiuma, 226-8
Ioway, I67
Iroquois, 57,

70, I I4, I77-8, I 88,

I 96-8, 223
IVENS, W. G., 78 n.
JAKOBSON, R., 149
JENNESS, D. , 37, 43, 6o, 227, 239 n.
JOUVENEL, B. DE, 70
K. (W.), I2
Kaguru, I45
Kaitish, 8I, 86-'], I I 3
Kalar, 9
Kaleidoscope, 36
Karadjera, 88
Karuba, I2I
Kauralaig, 88, I oo-I
Kavirondo, I S I
Kazak, 9

Loritja. See Aluridja

Lovedu, 1 59 n.
Luapula, 61-3
Luchozi, 6
Lugbara, I79-8o
Luvale, 64-5, 97

KELLY, C. TENNANT, I S8, 1 80-1 n.

Keres, 7 1 , 227 n.
KINIETZ, W. V., I 16, I67
Kiwai, I40
Koko Yao, IOc-r, r os
KOPPERS, W., 120
KRAUSE, A., I
KRIGE, E . J . , I59 n.

Mabuiag, I I S
McCLELLAN, C., 99
McCoNNEL, U., I74
McLENNAN, J. F., I I 8, 231
Magic and religion, 220-8
MAHONY, F. See FrscHER
Maithakudi, IOO-I
Maize, 6I, 73, I I2
Malaita, 78-8o

286

INDEX
Malecite,

8
MALINOWSKI, B., 3, 74, 9 1 , 250
Mandan, 52
MANNHARDT, W., 95
MANU, Laws of, ro6, 126
Manufactured
articles,
121-9,
143-4, 1 5 1 , 174-5
Marriage rules, 8I-4, 88, 103-6,
I09-33, I SS, 243, 264-6
MARSH, G.H., 153
MARX, K . , 130, 246, 253
Mashona, ros
Matabele, 105
Mathematics, 248 n.
MAuss, M., I I , r8 n., 39, 40, 57,
223, 268
Maya, 1 87 n., 1 89
MEGGITT, M. J., 222
MELIES, G., I 7
Menomini, 57, I r6, 1 67, r 88, 229
Menstruation, 46-8, 5 1-2, 9 1 , 144,
225
Mentality, primitive, 37-8, 25 1 ,
267-8
Metaphor, SI-2, ros-6, ISO n.,
204-8, 212-3, 224-8, 239
Meteorology, 9I-7
Metonymy, 52, ro6, 150 n., 204-8,
212-3, 224-8
MrcHELSON, T., 3 1-2, 65, roo,
199 n.
Micmac, 8
MIDDLETON, J., 179-80
MILL, J. S., 172
Mind, savage, 219-20, 222-3, 245,
249 n., 263, 267-g
Miwok, 175, 178, 181
Mixe, 189
Mocassin, 143
Models, small-scale, 23-5, r so n.
Mohawk, 178
Mohican, 142
Montagnais, 8
MoRGAN, L., u 8
Morphology, 7-9
Mota, 76, 79-80, I77
Motivation, 1 54-60

Motlav, 78-8o
120
Murngin, 9 1-3, 96, 174
Muskogi, I I7

Munda,

Myths, mythical thought,

1 6-22,
2S-6, 3o-3, S I-2, 68-']o, 9o-3,
127-8, 13 1-6, I48-so, r 6s-6,
I68-9, 2I8, 223, 228-44, 254-5
and passim

Naga, 73
Nandi, I I4
Names,

proper, 1 12-3, 149-50,

1 67-8, 172-216, 218
Naskapi, 8
Natchez, 120
Navaho, s, 39, 40, 45-6, 48, 55, 62,
I28, 169, 203
Ndembu, 97
NEEDHAM, R. , 144, 192-3, 1 95,
198 n.
Negrito, 4
NELSON, E. W., 53 n.
Neolithic, 1 3-15, 172, 269

Ngarinyin. See Ungarinyin

NsiMBI, N.B., 179
Nuer,

56, 6o n., 63, 104, 1 89, 224

142-7

Numerology,

Observation, 3-6, 219-23

Oirote, 9
Ojibwa, 37, 6o, 96, 142
Okerkila, 100-1
Omaha, 42, 59, 6r, 1 12, 140,

170-1,
178, 216
Omens, 54-6, 13 1-3
Oraon, 1 20
Ordinal names, 1 82, 187, 1 89-97
Organicism, 169
Organism, 103-4, 1 36, I48, 1 5 1-4,
169-'73, 175-6
Osage, s6, 59, 6r, 69-70, 140,
142-3, 145, 147, 149, 170-1, 173,
I78
Ossete, 8
Painting, 22-30
Papago, 165 n.
Papuans, 257-8 n.

INDEX

THE SAVAGE MIND

iI,

Paradigmatic. See Syntagmatic

Parents-in-law, taboo of, 265-6
PARSONS, E. C., 230
Particularization, I 68-z I 6
PAso Y TRoNcoso, F. DEL, 46 n.
Pawnee, I o, 52, 56, I 39
Peasant societies, 90, I I I
PEIRCE, CH. S., 20, 2 I 5
Penan, I 9 I , I 94-8
Penobscot, 8, I66
Personality, 2I4-5
Pima, I 65
Pinatubo, 4, 8
PINK, 0., I74
PLINY, 42
Poetry, I48
Ponapy, 98, I 05
Ponca, I42
Praxis, u 8, I 22, I 29-JO, 25 I-2,
263-5
PRIOURET, R., 70
Prohibited food, 6I-2, 76-8o, 88,
97-I 33, I77, 205, 226-8
I76-7,
Prohibitions, linguistic,
I 83-4, 194-200, 209-IO, 264-5
Psychoanalysis, 252-4
Pueblo, 40, 52-3, 7 I , I 69, 227 n.
PUKUI, M. KAWENA, 2, 3, 37, 96,
144
Pygmies, 4
55, I I z n.,
I I4, 1 67
RADIN, P., 57 n., 170, 1 89
RASMUSSEN, K., 40
READ, K. E., 3 I
REICHARD, G.A., 40, 45, 5 5
REKo, B. P., 46 n.
Religion. See Magic and religion
REMBRANDT, 28
RETZ, Cardinal DE, 254-5
Right and left, 144-5
RISLEY, H. H., I20
Rites, ritual, 30-3, 42-3, 45-53,
75-1 33, I43-7, I 5 I , I 54, 209- I I ,
zzo-8, 2 J I , 235-44, 264-5 and
passim
RITZENTHALER, R., I02

RADCLIFFE-BROWN, A. R.,

I ,

SMITH.

W. H. R., 76, 78, u 6

ROBBINS, W . W., 6
ROBERTSON SMITH, W., 23 I
RocAL, G., I I I
RoLLAND, E., zoi n., 2 I 2 n.
Roman de Renart, 205 n .
RoscoE, ]., I I J
RoussEAU, J. - J., 3 8, I 63, 247
RusSELL, B., 2 I 5
RussELL, F., I 65
Russians (Altai), 9
Russians (Siberia), 8
Russians (Sourgout), 8
Ryukyu islands, 5
RIVERS,

A. H., 5

E., 6
Solomon Islands, I40
Species, notions of, I 36-72, I75,
I77, I 85-7, zoo-I6, 224-8
SPECK, F. G., 8, I66
SPENCER, B., 8 1-2, 84, 86, 88, I I4,
238, 240-I
SPENGLER, 0., 244
STANNER, w. E. H., 94, 228
Statistics (distribution), 72, 8 I-2,
85-6, uz, I59-6o, I 86-7, 232
STEPHEN, A. M., 6o
STREHLOW, C., I 67-8, 239
STREHLOW, T. G . H., 89, 229, 235,
239, 24I , 243
STURTEVANT, W. C., 5, I 83
Subanum, 5, IJ9
Superstructures, I I7, I JO, 2 I J-4,
254
Surrealists, 2 I
SwANTON, J. R., 6o, I I 9, I 65
Synchrony, s2-3, 63, 66-74, I48-9,
I55, I 66, I 97, 2"27 n., 23 I-44,
254, 256, 263
Syntagmatic, paradigmatic, ISO n.,
203, 206-8, 2 I I , 2 I 5-6
SMITH BowEN,

Sacrifice, 223-8
Saibai, I I S
St John Chrysostom, I05
Samoa, I 05
SARTRE, J. - P., I Jo, 245-6, 248-56,
257-8 n., 264
Sauk, I70, I73, I88
SAUSSURE, F. DE, I 8, I49, I 56,
I 58-<)
SCHOOLCRAFT, R. H. See WILLIAMS,
M. L. W.

204 n.
SEDEIS (Societe d'etudes et de
documentation economiques, indus
trielles et sociales), 70
Seminole, 5, I 82
Sense, I72, 2 IO, 249, 253-4, 255
Senufo, I 54
SHARP, R. LAURISTON, 88, IOO--I,
I 5 I n., I 67, 236
Sherente, 53
SIEGFRIED, A., 70
Sign, Signification, I 8-zo, 36,
IJ0-3, I40, I 56-6o, I72-3,
I 8I-3, r8s-6, 2o3-I5, 2 I 9-23,
239, 250, 257, 259, z66-9
Silence, 65
SJLLANS, R., 5
SIMPSON, G. G., I 2, I J , 63, I 56
Sioux, 57 n., 59, I40, I 67, I 73, I76,
I 89
SKINNER, A., I 67, I73, i 88, 229
Smells, I 2-3
SEBILLOT, P.,

Tanoan, 7 I
Tastes, I 2-3
Taxonomy, 9-I 3, I S-6, 38-45,
IJ7-9, I 53-4, I 56, I 86-9, 203,
23I
Teleology, 252
TERTULLIAN, I05
TESSMANN, G.; 3, 6I n., 98-9, I04
Tewa, 5-'7
THOMAS, N. w., l l 3
THOMSON D . F., 45, I 67, I 83-4,
I88
Thunder Birds, 96, 229
THURNWALD, R., 200
THURSTON, E., 63 n., I 2 I
Tikopia, I 39, 228 n.
Tikuna, Io6-7
Tiwi, I77, I 9o, I95, I 99-2oo, 206,
209, 2 I I , 2I2-3 n.
Tjongandji, IOO-I

z88
,

Tlingit, 26, 6o, 99, I73

Toradja, I 69
Toreya, 63
Totalization, detotalization, I46-9,
I S I -4, I 69, I 75-6, I78, 250-62
Totem, totemism, passim
TozzER, A. M., I 87 n., I 89
Tree, I 5 8-9
TREvoux (dictionary), 20I n.
Trobriand islands, I40
Tupi Kawahib, I73
TURNER, G., 233
TURNER, v. w., 97
Tutu, I I5
Twins, I 8o, I 89-<JO
TYLOR, E . B., I SJ-4, I 64
Ulawa, 78-8o, I77
Unconscious, collective, 65
Ungarinyin, s6, I 84
Universalization, I 64-7
Unmatjera, 86-7, I I J
Vagina dentata, Io6
A., I09, I 62-3
VAN GULIK, R. H., Io6, I 65 n.
VANZOLINI, P. E., 40 n.
VENDRYES, }., 203
VESTAL, P. A., 40, 48
Vocabulary, I38-9, I43, I 54-6o,
2J I-2
VoGT, E. Z., 234
VoTH, H. R., 48, 6 I , I65, I76, 230
VAN GENNEP,

Wakelbura, I 02
A. RAPONDA, 5
WALLIS, W. D., I 90
Walpari, I I4
WARNER, W. LLOYD, 9I-3, 96, I 74
Warramunga, 8 I , 85-7, I I4, I 84,
238
Water-colours (Aranda), 89, 244
WATERMAN, T. T., I 68, I96-7 n.
Wawilak sisters, 9I-3
WEYDEN, R. VAN DER, 28
WHEELWRIGHT, M. C., I 28, 203
WHrTE, c. M. N., 6s, 98
WHITE, L . A., 227 n.
WALKER,

Wik Munkan, 45, 167 n . ,

THE SAVAGE MIND

174, 183,
1 86-8, Z I Z
WILLIAMS, M. L W., 56
WILSON, G. L., 48, so
Winnebago, 57, 140, 14Z, 167, 170
Wmz, P., 63 n.
WITKOWSKI, G. J., ZOI
WOENSDREGT, J., 169
Wolverine, so-3
Wormwood. See Artemisia
WoRSLEY, P., 1 5 6
Wotjobaluk, 5 7 , 105

WYMAN,

L . C . , 40, Z04

Yathaikeno, xoo-1
Yoruba, 105, 1 3 1-3
Yuma, 180
Yurlunggur (snake), 91-3
Yurok, 168, 177, 189, 196-7

ZAHAN, D., 39, 163

ZEGWAARD, G.A., 6I
ZELENINE, D., 9
Zuni, 40, 71-z