losophy. Lévi-Strauss makes no claim to the ethical higher
ground that Lévinas occupies, so Derrida rejects his empiri-
cism. Derrida goes too far when he implies that anthropology
could, or should, be nonempirical (as he has implied already
in the Grammatology’s comments on Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes Tro-
piques). But Derrida does point effectively to a central ambi-
guity in Lévi-Strauss’s work: its combination of empiricism
with a reliance on mythic structures.
Lévi-Strauss trusts in myth. His books are themselves ex-
amples of mythic thinking. Rather than stepping outside myth
to provide a logos, a reasoned explanation for mythic nar-
ratives, he plays the mythmaker. Since both Lévi-Strauss and
the tribes he studies engage in myth, he is forced to resort to
his advanced capacity for observation, the advantage of the
empirical scientist, in order to assert a difference between him-
self and these tribes. Like Freud, Lévi-Strauss defers to the
primal, mythic power of certain stories. At the same time,
both these thinkers base their arguments on close, empirical
analyses of particular cases (Lévi-Strauss’s primitive societies,
Freud’s neurotic patients). Pace Derrida, this approach may
imply less a contradiction than an enabling feature of moder-
nity, which harbors vestiges from the mythic past even in the
midst of its cutting-edge science. Committed to the nuances
of empirical analysis, we at the same time remain awed by
the mysterious powers that stand behind all our behavior.
W. H. Auden called them the Lords of Limit: remote, illiterate
villagers know these deities as well as we.
The most powerful aspect of “Structure, Sign and Play”
is its invocation of Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger, a triumvi-
rate that Derrida enlists on his side against Lévi-Strauss’s
structuralism. (The absence of Marx is significant, and should
be understood as a blow directed against Derrida’s precur-
Writing and DifferenceandOf Grammatology 97