Research Report: The Structural Law of a Mythic Pig

By Tassie Gniady, The Visual Pig

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. “The Structural Study of Myth.” Structural Anthropology, trans. by Monique Layton. New York: Basic Books, 1963. 206-231.

Abstract: Building on the work of linguists, Claude Lévi-Strauss takes the ideas of diachronic and synchronic time to divide the ways in which a myth may be "read." However, to create the "gross constituent units" of a given myth, Lévi-Strauss is already at work tearing down the actual language a given mythical telling uses. He claims that the analyzer may construct "the shortest possible sentences" making up a myth, precisely because myths are not poetry, and therefore not dependent on translation. Instead these sentences are written on cards and arranged along two axes, one horizontal that represents chronological time, the other vertical, representing a gross constituent unit or "bundle of relations." By identifying and examining the gross constituent units of different versions of a give myth against each other, a structural law for that myth should emerge.

    Lévi-Strauss begins by approaching the idea that myths can be bent to serve any purpose:

If a given mythology confers prominence on a certain figure, let us say an evil grandmother, it will be claimed that in such a society grandmothers are actually evil and that mythology reflects the social structure and social relations; but should the actual data be conflicting, it would be readily claimed that the purpose of mythology is to provide an outlet for repressed feelings (207-208).

Instead he turns to linguistics and the difference between langue and parole, the first “belonging to a reversible time” and the second “being nonreversible” (209). Myth is made up of both langue and parole, but Lévi-Strauss believe the most important “properties [of myth] are only to be found above the ordinary linguistic level, that is, they exhibit more complex features than those which are to be found in any other kind of linguistic expression” (210). Instead he posits the idea of “gross constituent units” or mythemes that occur at the level of the sentence. The myth to be examined is broken down into the shortest possible sentences, and each sentence is written on an index card that has a number reflecting the chronology of the story. The cards are then used to group the sentences to create what Lévi-Strauss calls a “harmony” which may be read “diachronically along one axis—that is, page after page, and from left to right—and synchronically along the other axis, all the notes written vertically making up one gross constituent unit, that is, one bundle of relations” (212). Finally, Lévi-Strauss explains the importances of taking into account all the different iterations of a given tale. He writes:

If a myth is made up of all its variants, structural analysis should take all of them into account….We shall then have have several two-dimensional charts, each dealing with a variant, to be organized in a three-dimensional order…so that three readings become possible: left to right, top to bottom, front to back (or vice versa). (217) 

It is the reading of all of these variants and the correlation of differences that leads to “the structural law of the myth.”  Lévi-Strauss goes on to caution “that it cannot be too strongly emphasized that all available variants should be taken into account” (218). Remember that he includes Freud’s reading of the Oedipus myth by way of example, and this emphasis on versions is reveals the work of this project: to create a chart or “harmony” for each extant seventeenth century version of the hog-faced woman tale and do for them what Lévi-Strauss does for the Zuni origin myth. I will also use his equation to consider the entire myth:

Fx(a):Fy(b)≈Fx(b):Fa-1(y) 

Here, with two terms, a and b, being given as two functions, x and y, of these terms, it is assumed that a relation of equivalence exists between two situations defined respectively by an inversion of terms and relations, under two conditions: (1) that one term be replaced by its opposite (in the above formula, a and a-1); (2) that an inversion be made between the function value and the term value of two elements (above, y and a). (228)

Lévi-Strauss used this method to look at myths because he believed that:

Poetry is a kind of speech which cannot be translated except at the cost of serious distortions; whereas the mythical value of the myth is preserved even through the worst translation (210).

The problems that Lévi-Strauss envisions when correlating all the variants of a myth are obviated by new technology as creation of a digital workspace makes it possible to shift the order and placement of cards with ease; the three-dimensional demands of correlation among variants are also much simplified by use of a virtual space. This project's digital embodiment will take the form of a site in which I build and manipulate cards and then showcase the work—allowing visitors to view the process of compilation and analysis. Thus, the “‘slated’ structure” [of the myth], which comes to surface, so to speak, through the process of repetition” of the tale will be available, and the persistence of a much less famous tale than that of Oedipus will be tested against this structuralist theory.

Commentary

    The differences in tellings of the hog-faced woman story across the seventeenth century do not present the problem of translation envisioned by Lévi-Strauss when contemplating the poetry, but an issue of changing societal values that may call into question the “timeless” value of all myths that Lévi-Strauss posits. Even though he believes that structural analysis should take into account all known variants and chart them (including even Freud’s treatment of the Oedipus myth as a version), Lévi-Strauss is confident that “a logical treatment of the whole will allow simplifications, the final outcome being the structural law of the myth” (217). However, literary critics have long been skeptical of the universal applicability of structuralist methods. T.S. Eliot famously claimed that this type of analysis is of the “lemon-squeezer school of criticism.”  Yet, in direct contradiction of his earlier statement about poetry and distortion, Lévi-Strauss and Roman Jakobsen applied the method to a poem of Baudlaire’s with great success. In her essay “The Meaning of Myth” Mary Douglas claims:

When the lemon-squeezer is applied to poetry it has a high rate of extraction and the meaning flows out in rich cupfuls. Furthermore, what is extracted is not a surprise—we can see that it was there all the time. Unfortunately, something goes wrong when the technique is applied to myth: the machine seems to spring a leak. (201) 

She goes on to critique the unambiguity that Lévi-Strauss claims for mythemes, in which he takes the analogy between Saussure’s analysis of language too literally. Instead, she argues, “The best words are ambiguous” and “When dealing with poetry, Lévi-Strauss gives full value to the rich ambiguity of the words. When dealing with myth, he suggests their meaning is clear cut…” (201-2).

    What, then is the best method to approach a story that has links to both literature and myth? None of the tellings of the hog-faced woman uses “high” literary style, so the benefits of the “lemon-sqeezer technique” may leave some meanings unexplored. This is where Jaques Derrida’s “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” comes in. First, I will examine the seventeenth-century variants of the hog-faced woman’s story according to Lévi-Strauss’s method, to see if  a common structural law does emerge or if the diachronic nature of tellings reveals something more context dependent than Lévi-Strauss would like. Then, I will use Derrida’s concept of freeplay to re-examine some of the discrepancies that have arisen and to re-interrogate my theory about absent centers as highlighted by the Zizekian anecdote concerning the Romanian flag with no center. Thus, the purpose of this project is twofold: it examines not only the most elemental units of the story of the hog-faced woman, it also questions the way in which oft told stories do reflect their surrounding cultures, despite the wish of structuralists to separate them from historical tradition. Finally, I will examine other iterations of the hog-faced woman which often lack narrative substance (such as fairground appearances in the nineteenth century) and look at the rise and fall in frequency of reports and popularity of hog-faced women. Taken together, a picture of what makes this strange story so enduring will emerge.

Resources for Further Study: 

Derrida, Jaques. "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences."Writing and Difference, trans. by Alan Bass. London: Routledge, 1966. 278-294.

Douglas, Mary. "The Meaning of Myth." Teaching Lévi-Strauss. ed. by Hans H. Penner. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998. 189-206.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Structural Anthropology, trans. by Monique Layton. New York: Basic Books, 1963. 206-231.

Zizek, Slavoj. Tarrying With the Negative. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993.