writing, which scatters the self, is modified by a Heideggerian
description of selfhood as “the subject’s relationship with its
own death.” Even this early, he is unable to remain a pure skep-
tic, a total denier of human identity.
Derrida begins the central section ofGrammatology
with a brief discussion of the pioneering French anthropolo-
gist Claude Lévi-Strauss, specifically Lévi-Strauss’s brilliant
bookTristes Tropiques(The Sad Tropics, 1955 ). Lévi-Strauss in
Tristes Tropiqueselegantly delivers a combination of autobiog-
raphy, travel book, and reflection on anthropology as a disci-
pline. For a large part of the book, he focuses on the time he
spent among the Nambikwara, an Amazon Indian tribe. It
is this section of Lévi-Strauss’s account that provokes Derrida’s
ire. Lévi-Strauss, Derrida charges, is a follower of Rousseau’s
idealistic primitivism. He displays all the faults of the “Age of
Rousseau”: “The critique of ethnocentrism, a theme so dear
to the author ofTristes Tropiques,has most often the sole
function of constituting the other as a model of original and
natural goodness, of accusing and humiliating oneself....
Rousseau would have taught the modern anthropologist this
humility of one who knows he is ‘unacceptable,’ this remorse
that produces anthropology” ( 114 ). As in the case of Foucault,
with his esteem for a madness that he describes as the stark op-
posite of oppressive Enlightenment reason, Lévi-Strauss (so
Derrida charges) sees in his Amazonian tribe a perfect, primi-
tive alternative to all that is corrupt in Western civilization.
Lévi-Strauss, Derrida points out, idolizes the Nambik-
wara because they are peaceful and because they do not pos-
sess writing. Lévi-Strauss, much to Derrida’s distaste, sees a
fatal connection between these two things: violence and the
ability to write. Evil first appears among the Nambikwara,
Lévi-Strauss believes, “with the intrusion of writing come
Writing and DifferenceandOf Grammatology 87