ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: ANTHROPOLOGY OF RELIGION Volume 6 WHEN THE GOLDEN BOUGH BREAKS
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WHEN THE GOLDEN BOUGH BREAKS Structuralism or Typology? PETER MUNZ
First published in 1973 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd This edition first published in 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business 1973 Peter Munz All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-138-19426-7 (Set) ISBN: 978-1-138-19461-8 (Volume 6) (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-63025-0 (Volume 6) (ebk) Publisher s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.
WHEN THE GOLDEN BOUGH BREAKS Structuralism or Typology? PETER MUNZ ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL LONDON and BOSTON
First published in 1973 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd Broadway House, 68-74 Carter Lane, London EC4V sel and 9 Park Street Boston, Mass. 02 108, U.S.A. Printed in Great Britain by Willmer Brothers Limited, Birkenhead Peter Munz 1973 No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism ISBN o 7100 765o 9
To F. L. W. Wood, in friendship and gratitude
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CONTENTS Preface page ix One Introduction 1 Two A Critique of Structuralism 5 Three The Ambivalence of the Distinction between Structuralism and Functionalism 18 Four The Phenomenon of Typology 22 Five The Opportunism of Structuralism 32 Six Typological Interpretation 38 Seven Myths and Metaphysics 50 Eight Metaphysics and Symbols 55 Nine Symbols and Signs ]2 Ten Symbols and Psychology 8o Eleven The Truth Value of Symbols 92 Twelve The Equivalence of Symbols 102 Thirteen Metaphors and Societies u8 Notes 123 Bibliographical Appendix 131 Index 139
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PREFACE The impulses which have prompted the writing of this essay on the interpretation of mythology form a set of layers. Peeling them away one by one, there was first a purely intellectual interest in Levi Strauss whose system of ideas is the most stimulating challenge of the last two decades. Next came the historian's knowledge that everything has a temporal dimension and that that dimension is of the essence of mythology. The historian need not be concerned much by Levi-Strauss's comparative lack of interest in the specific historical setting of myths, and indeed might be grateful for his refusal to draw a hard and fast distinction between 'cold' and 'hot' societies. Cold societies are those that seek to annul by special institutions the effects of historical factors on their equilibrium and continuity and hot societies are those that internalise the historical process and make it the moving power of their development. In both cases there is an awareness of history. The distinction between historyconscious and history-unconscious societies is therefore at best a distinction in degree. Myth is produced by primitive peoples and nonprimitive peoples alike. The historian can therefore have no ex otjicio quarrel with Levi-Strauss's comparative lack of interest in historicity as such. But he must be puzzled by his failure to observe the historical seriality of myths and his failure to observe that that seriality is one of their most characteristic properties. There are many things one can consider usefully without paying much attention to their historical dimension. But myth is not one of them. Every myth we know (and the number of myths, though large, is by no means infinite) has both a past and a future. It also occurs both in a more general form and in a more specific form and the historian must equate the more general with the earlier and the more specific with the later form and thus identify the whole phenomenon as a time ix
PREFACE series. Admittedly, in any one society a myth may occur only in any one form. But since the same or a similar myth also occurs in other societies in more general as well as in more specific forms, the historian is bound to consider this temporal seriality as a phenomenon sui generis and take it that any one particular version is a stage in the life-history of the myth. Since he considers these series divorced from the social setting in which they occur, originate and are cultivated, this approach does not commit him to a theory of evolution. Beyond the historian's concern, there came the philosopher's interest and the attempt to find out the philosophical and, more particularly, the epistemological implications and consequences of the historian's contention that myths present themselves in historical series. It would be idle to pretend that the impulse to work out the philosophical implications of historical seriality was no more than an exercise in logic. It was, in practice, guided by a philosophical theory about the nature of substitution. My main criticism of Levi Strauss's structuralism in its application to our understanding of mythology is not that it is wrong, but that it is deficient. There is nothing wrong in a structuralist interpretation of myth and in some cases it may even have a limited use. My real reservation is due to the fact that the structuralist method is insufficient and tells us considerably less than we can know. Structuralism is aware of and makes great play with the fact that myths come in series, and contends, as the idealistic coherence theory of truth used to do, that the meaning of the series depends on the relationship of the signs to each other rather than on the relationship of each single sign to a fact. But since it neglects the historical nature of this seriality, it sees every member of the series as a mere repetition of a message. If people had sharper ears, the structuralist seems to be saying, they would not have to tell each other the same story quite so often. In other words, each variation of the theme is a mere repetition and can be substituted without loss or gain for every other variation. In this respect, though in this respect only, structuralism does not differ from countless other methods of interpreting myths. Each repetition, whether it is more general or more specific, is treated as a mere substitution the order of which is of no importance. Nothing can be learnt from the order in which a general substitution stands to a less general substitution, or a specific substitution, to a less specific one. Or rather, what can be learnt from a consideration of the X
PREFACE order in which the substitutions stand to one another has nothing to do with the growing specification of content apparent in the temporal order of substitutions, but is concerned solely with the formal order in which one substitution stands to another. Structuralism simply discovers in the various substitutions that order which it has imposed upon the substitutions in the process of sorting them into an order. It comes up with the finding that the order is the order that was used in ordering the substitutions. The observation that myths form historical series leads, however, to a very different theory of the significance of substitution. In this theory every substitution is both necessary and irreversible because it presents the old theme in a more specialised shape. As time passes, substitutions take place. They do not necessarily occur in the same society or in the same place. This much is admitted by structuralism. But the substituted version stands to the version it is substituted for as a symbol, not as a sign. A sign merely duplicates of the thing it signifies and were it not for the fact that the sign is often briefer and more easily communicable than the thing it signifies, one might take it that the substitution of a sign for the thing it signifies is redundant. In any case, it can be dispensed with without loss of meaning and be replaced by the thing it signifies. A symbol is an altogether different kind of substitute. A symbol is more specific and precise in its meaning than the thing it symbolises. Whereas the sign means the thing it signifies and the thing signified is the meaning of the sign, the symbol does not stand in such a simple relationship to the thing it symbolises. Since the symbol has a more specific meaning than the thing it symbolises, the thing symbolised benefits from a feedback and receives a new and more specific meaning from its symbol than it originally possessed. Thing and sign are freely interchangeable. But thing and symbol are not. A thing is the meaning of its sign; but a symbol is the meaning of its thing. The sign derives its meaning from the thing it stands for; the symbol bestows meaning on the thing it symbolises. The substitution of the symbol for a thing is therefore irreversible and since the feedback bestows a more specific meaning on the thing symbolised, the substitution is necessary for establishing the more special meaning of the thing symbolised. As a result one cannot say that the thing symbolised is the meaning of the symbol but only that the symbol is the meaning of the thing symbolised. The word 'sheep' is a sign for the X1
PREFACE animal and means the animal : but the symbol 'spire' is not a sign for a phallus nor is it meant by the phallus. On the contrary: the phallus receives a special meaning when it is symbolised by the spire and the spire is therefore the meaning of the phallus because its meaning is more specific than the meaning of the phallus taken by itself. Since the thing symbolised is not the meaning of the symbol, it is impossible to detect the meaning of the thing symbolised without the symbol. Without the feedback we are in the dark. But this darkness has a chain effect. Since the symbol does not receive its meaning (unlike the sign) from the thing it symbolises, the symbol itself is lacking in meaning unless there is a further symbol for it, i.e. another substitution. Each symbol is part of a series in which the more specific symbol feeds a meaning back to the less specific one and receives a meaning from another still more specific. How then are we to gauge the meaning of a symbol and, for that matter, the meaning of the thing symbolised? The answer is provided by the phenomenon of historical seriality. Every symbol has a further substitute. That further substitute is more specific than its predecessor, and so forth. One can therefore best gauge the meaning of the symbols in the series by reading the series backwards, that is, by starting with the most specific symbol at the end or top of the series, interpreting the next symbol down as something that is meant by the more specific symbol above it and so forth, until one reaches the bottom or beginning of the series. The symbol at the top will carry its meaning more patently on its face than the symbols at the bottom. The most fruitful method of interpretation, therefore, is neither to seek to replace all substitutions by the thing substituted, as naturalistic methods are wont to do; nor to consider all substitutions as mere repetitions, as structuralism does; but to consider the substitutions as necessary and irreversible and to interpret the meaning of the whole series of substitutions backwards by reading it in the light of the most specified of the series of substitutions. The philosophical consequences of the historical seriality of myths for psychology and ontology are, therefore, worked out consistently in terms of this theory of the special nature of substitution. Thus we come to another layer. The book owes its existence to the desire to 'defend ancient springs'. Mythology leads us back not only to the most ancient but also to the deepest springs of the human xii
PREFACE mind. The wish for a correct interpretation of mythology is therefore not just an academic or intellectual exercise. It stems from the concern to keep our lines of communication with the centre clear and untarnished. This concern is shared by Levi-Strauss, but structuralism's application is not sufficient to keep access to the depths open. Structuralism makes great capital of its implication that the modem mind's logic is identical with the logic of the primitive mind. But the identity is in method and structure of operation and tells nothing of the content, and blithely disregards the mind's urges towards reaching greater precision of self-definition. It overlooks the fact that the phases of the mind's history are not just an accumulation of substitutions. After functionalism, structuralism is today enjoying a great vogue. An examination of its deficiencies and the discovery of an alternative is all the more urgent because the material pressures of modern urban life all conspire to bar that access. The temptation to settle for a logically plausible, if inefficient, method is doubly great because that method, through its very deficiency, is so readily compatible with the barriers created by the materialistic and utilitarian preoccupations which dominate our life and with the cybernetics we have come to use in their pursuit. Inevitably, the book thus becomes also a contribution both to the Philosophy of Religion and to Metaphysics. The book owes its immediate existence to an invitation by my colleague, Professor J. Pouwer, to communicate my thoughts and doubts on Levi-Strauss to his Seminar in Anthropology. I also wish to thank Eric Schwimmer for much helpful criticism of the sections on structuralism. I am grateful to the Research Fund and the Publications Fund of the Victoria University of Wellington whose generous support made possible the writing and publication of the book. I also wish to thank Janet Paul for thinking up the title and the University's Reference Librarians, Miss Clark and Mrs Freed, for their patience and ingenuity.