Claude Lévi-Strauss died two years ago, on October 30, 2009, at nearly 101 years old. While he is most generally known for A World on the Wane (”Tristes Tropiques”) and perhaps his work on the Nambikwara, in Brazilian Amazonia, these are only the tip of the iceberg. For decades on, Lévi-Strauss has left his print on anthropological research worldwide, yielding deep and powerful thought. His entire life appears devoted to seeking answers to essential questions on human beings, what they are essentially, and what brings them together in spite of their differences.

We asked another great figure in anthropology, Françoise Héritier, who succeeded Claude Lévi-Strauss at the Collège de France, to answer a few questions on a man she has known well.

Claude Lévi-Strauss in Brazil, 1936 (Apic/Getty Images)

How would you briefly describe Claude Lévi-Strauss to the young generations who aren’t familiar with this great thinker?

He was an impressive person. His stern appearance (he didn’t smile much), his reserve, some form of shyness, and his reputation made people uncomfortable. He didn’t enjoy one-to-one conversation but would light up in public talks and debates. He would wait for his counterparts to speak, which is quite intimidating. Very few people called him by his first name, and even less addressed him casually. I think he was burdened with his aura and reputation, and that he could actually feel the embarrassment and bewilderment of the people he came across.

His name is associated with structuralism. Could you give a simple explanation of this concept in anthropology?

First and foremost, structuralism is a working method for the exploration of laws. The point is to consider, beyond the actual facts, the objective relationships these facts share amongst themselves, and beyond the apparent meaning of a text, the mental structure it reveals, which according to Lévi-Strauss, reflects the own architecture of the human mind, presumably operating on a binary basis like a computer does. One of the first texts he published on North American mythology, La Geste d’Asdiwal, is less the story of a hunter than the highlighting of oppositions such as upstream/downstream, sky/earth, types of animals, food, migration, stars, etc. – opposed one to one and reaching a global sense, beyond the sheer narrative, to help understand the relation between man and the universe, man and the living, between genders…

He spent a long time studying so-called indigenous populations and lived among them. Can one assume that he had empathy for these populations or that he considered them as mere subjects of research?

Reading only the chapter devoted to the Nambikwara in A World on the Wane is enough to sense the painful tenderness he felt for this very exposed, totally helpless population. Lévi-Strauss was nothing of a cold and calculating mind. However, he was aware that his work as an intellectual could not be confused with that of a member of today’s NGOs. Each culture appeared to him as one particular form of humanity, to whom it is important to return what it has lost by considering it in the light of all the others.

On the other hand, the sympathetic and kind-hearted approach he had towards some did not imply a benevolent and altruistic approach towards the entire humanity. He blamed restless and proliferating humanity for leaving behind a devastated nature, and having no interest in regards to the other living creatures it shares the planet with. He also believed it was impossible for one to love everyone else. And Lévi-Strauss himself, precisely because he admitted being fond of the “empty” tropics, preferred South America to Africa or the Far East of Asian peninsulas (although he did have a weakness for Japan).

Having diversity preserved was essential to him and he regretted its gradual decline. This position drew some people to see him as a promoter of cultural conservatism. How did he respond to that?

I think it is quite unfair to see him as a bard of cultural relativism, which was the case among some intellectuals following the publication of Race et Culture, which appeared to oppose Race et Histoire.

Because the structuralist aim of Lévi-Strauss is indeed universalizing. All human beings in society have mental representation systems that work the same way, although not necessarily based on the same material, and providing, as mentioned above, different and sometimes opposite responses to identical questionings.

Yet, and that’s the important part, one does not come without the other. Operating universal laws cannot emerge without the cultural diversity. If there were only one possible answer to each of these questions, then universalism and relativism would not be an issue. There would be nothing but uniformity. These two terms must be handled as the two sides of one coin.

In one of the latest interviews he gave, he declared: ‘I think of the present, and the world in which my existence is coming to an end – it is not a world I am fond of’. Was he really pessimistic on the future of his fellow human beings?

This has become a famous quotation. Yes, Lévi-Strauss was pessimistic on the future of his fellow human beings, obsessed as he was with the devastation inflicted by human pressure on the ecosystems, as we call them today. In his view, uncontrolled demographic expansion generates a trail of disasters: the collapse of nature, the spirit of money and profit, disinterest in others and the things of the spirit. In En Substances appears a rather unknown text entitled “Apologue des Amibes”, where he shows how the accumulation of individuals (amoeba, here, though standing as a human metaphor) unrelentingly leads to violence and death.

What has affected you the most in this unusual figure, and in what way do you miss him today?

It’s a bit simplistic to mention his bright intelligence and this feeling he gave people, when he trusted them, of being worthy of interest. Still, it’s something I refer to.

His reserve also, which never lacked warmth or humor, but in fact made you feel that while it created a gap, this gap wasn’t impassable to everyone, and that above all, thanks to the absence of familiarity, it was a way to keep human relation at a level that was never vulgar, ordinary, or conspicuous.

Discretion, reserve, intelligence, and modesty are qualities that tend to disappear, actually, in this world where mental vulgarity often mirrors the financial excessiveness of ambition and the widening gap (not only in standards of living) between individuals.