It is fitting that Totemism begins like this:
Totemism is like hysteria, in that once we are persuaded to doubt that it is possible arbitrarily to isolate certain phenomena and to group them together as diagnostic signs of an illness, or of an objective institution, the symptoms themselves vanish or appear refractory to any unifying interpretation. (pg 1)
I say it is fitting for 2 reasons. First, serving as an umbrella for sub-reasons: that sentence is characteristic of the remainder of the text. That is, (i) it is not an easy read; (ii) it is academic; (iii) it is a translation-which may (or may not?) account for some of the difficult sentence structures. For those reasons, despite its short length, Totemism was a difficult read.
Next reason the first quotation is a fitting introduction to Totemism is, while the sentence is difficult to unpack (see first reason), it perfectly encapsulates the thesis of Totemism. That is, when Levi-Strauss tried to define totemism empirically, he found there is no one sufficiently precise (or useful) definition. He says,
The supposed totemism eludes all effort at absolute definition. It consists, at most, in a contingent arrangement of nonspecific elements. It is a combination of particulars which may be empirically observable in a number of cases without resulting any special properties; it is not an organic synthesis, an object in social nature (pg 5).
If the word “totemism” is completely unfamiliar to you, I’ll mention some related terms. A “totem” is a sacred object (animate, inanimate, spirit) around which a culture variously organizes itself. A “totem pole” (simply put) is an edifice which depicts a culture’s important stories-often including visual representations of totems, and serves various ceremonial purposes.
Levi-Strauss’ beef is not with the word “totem,” which derives from Ojibwe; his beef is with the word “totemism.”
The word “totemism” implies likeness between the implementation of totems. There is some likeness, but as the aforementioned quotation conveyed, “It consists, at most, in a contingent arrangement of nonspecific elements.” (My emphasis on nonspecific.) Totemism systematically assesses (i) the prevalence and (ii) contingence of these “nonspecific elements” across “primitive” cultures around the globe-including such heterogeneous phenomena as:
lists of names or emblems, the belief in a supernatural relationship with non-human beings, prohibitions which may be alimentary but are not always such (e.g., to walk on grass and eat out of a bowl, in Santa Cruz; to touch a bison horn or foetus, charcoal or verdigris, insects and vermin, among the Omaha), and certain rules of exogamy <intermarriage among variously arranged groups> (pg 6).
The previous quotation comes from Boas’s 1938 textbook General Anthropology (Levi-Strauss paraphrasing), which also includes this passage:
Too much has been written of Totemism in its different aspects…to permit leaving it entirely out of the discussion… Since the manifestations are so varied in different parts of the world, since their resemblances are only apparent, and since they are phenomena which may occur in many settings not related to real or supposed consanguinity, they can by no means be fitted into a single category (pg 6).
Similar to a previous quotation from Levi-Strauss, no?
Indeed. So, why, about 25 years later, does Levi-Strauss write a treatise on something so similar? Well, first I should mention: of Boas’s 718 page text from 1938, only 4 pages address totemism-which is to say it did not really aspire to prove the point.
Twenty years earlier, ven Gennep said something similar in his 1919 text:
Totemism has already taxed the wisdom and the ingenuity of many scholars, and there are reasons to believe that it will continue to do so for many years (pg 6).
In short, the idea (that totemism isn’t really ‘a’ thing) had been had, but the treatise had not been written. On the contrary, thousands of pages to the contrary had been written-for example, Frazer’s 1910 text sought to (i) systematize totemism and (ii) classify tribes based on three criteria. (It ran 2200-pages in 4 volumes!)
(Frazer’s effort, after reading Totemism, strikes me as analogous to packing many many fragile treasures away into a single small box-by smashing them.)
In sum, between 1910 (Frazer’s text) and 1960 (Levi-Strauss’s text), anthropologists tended toward outright dismissal of totemism as ‘a thing,’ but stopped short of trying to “prove it.” Levi-Strauss sought to prove it.
As it turns out, Levi-Strauss’s work to impoverish the word “totemism” simultaneously enriched so many of its “nonspecific elements.” Taken out of the context of “primitive” cultures, certain elements, like Omens, feel more relevant, even urgent.
For example, consider a fascinating anecdote about the US Army’s 42nd Division in WW1: it came to be known as “Rainbow Division” because it “was composed of units from so many states their regimental colors were as varied as those of the rainbow” (pg 7). Soldiers started identifying as “rainbows.” They considered rainbows to be happy omens. Soldiers would claim they saw rainbow whenever they went into battle.
To some extent, rainbows were a totem for the 42nd Division.
One function of Totemism is elucidation of such nuances of “The Component Parts Formerly Known as Totemism.” To Illustrate a one nuance, consider rainbows in the context of LGBTQ imagery. There, the image of a rainbow is a symbol of solidarity, but rainbows are not. Have you ever heard of an LGBTQ activist/ally who considers the appearance of a rainbow as positive omen?
This is a difficult read. I should reiterate, this is an academic text, not pop science. For most readers (myself included), the first 20 pages will suffice. However, if you care to trek through the remainder, you’ll find encounter interesting passages here and there. I found certain functional theories totemism, or specific totems, especially interesting. For example, a passage on page 68 frames ritual attitude and interest/anxiety in a chicken or the egg scenario. That is, did certain interests or anxieties derive from rituals, or did certain rituals derive from interests or anxieties? The question is impossible to answer in a general way, nevertheless an interesting topic.
While Totemism is only 104 pages, it is packed, densely, with anecdotes and empirical data. Nearly any page (after the first 20 pages) refers to examples of such-and-such* from 5 or more tribes.
* Where “such-and-such” is: personal v. collective relationship between men and totems; ritual relationships between them (e.g. taboos and prohibitions); notion of totem as emblem v. ancestor v. spirit; distinction between “higher” and “lower spirits”; positive/good or negative/bad associations with totems; animate v. inanimate totems (e.g. animal/plants/nature symbolism v. conceptual symbolism, like “vomiting” and “laughter”); practice of endogamy v. exogamy, and functions and rules of marriage and descent; and so on..
If you can metabolize all of this information, I congratulate you. I could not. Or maybe I could, didn’t desire. I find themes in anthropology more interesting than its practice. In order to understand totemism, and demystify it, Levi-Strauss studied it around the world, from every perspective- formalist, functionalist, structuralist*. Along the way, he considers such interesting ideas as whether the origin of metaphor is myth (pg 27), whether or not it’s of value to consider instances of totemism amount to “sociological species” (pg 54).
Lofty stuff. Good stuff.
* More about this when I write about The View From Afar.
But ultimately we get to the point I spoiled very early in this essay: totemism isn’t really ‘a’ thing. Better put,
totemism does not constitute a phenomenon sui generis but a specific instance in the general field of relationships between man and the objects of his natural environment (pg 29).
Or,
the notion of totemism is inconsistent and that a careful re-examination of the fact leads to its dissolution. He [A.P. Elkin] confines himself to denying their unity, as if he thought it possible to preserve the reality of totemism on the condition that it be reduced to multiplicity of heterogeneous forms. For him, there is no longer a totemism but totemisms, each of which exits as an irreducible entity (pg 45).
While reading, and since then, I asked myself: Do we need the word “totemism” to discuss the concept represented by it? (Sorry, I’m going to ignore the contingent question, Who is “we”?)
I think the answer is: We don’t need it, but it has its uses. If we’re going to use it, we need to understand its limited meaning. It must be very vague, something like “systems related to totems,” because “totem” does not even have a very consistent meaning.
I’m not going to debate whether “we” need the word totem (remember, it’s an Ojibwe word), but one could; again, used in a general sense, its meaning must be very vague- something like “symbol with cultural relevance.”
Well, it having crossed my mind that I’ve reduced totems to “memes”- “symbol with cultural relevance”- I’m inclined to end this essay.
Cheers.
Totemism 5/10