Reflections on references to Lévi-Strauss
Barbara Santich
A friend of mine has 'gone vegetarian', not from any deep-seated religious or ethical convictions
nor after rationally analysed dietary comparisons but because vegetarianism is 'good to think'
(he didn't actually use these words but agreed that they were appropriate).
The idea of certain foods being 'good to think' and therefore 'good to eat' is inevitably ascribed
to Claude Lévi-Strauss, and is assumed to be such a commonplace that no justificatory citation is required.
According to Marvin Harris (Cultural Materialism, 1979: p. 188) Lévi-Strauss believed that
'our meals consist of certain foods not so much because they are good to eat but because they are good to think',
and that 'people select foods for the messages they contain rather than for the calories and proteins they contain'.
While I have no difficulty with these concepts, I'm not sure this is what Lévi-Strauss intended
when he introduced the concept of 'good to think'.
To my knowledge, Lévi-Strauss first used the phrases 'bon à manger' and 'bon à penser' (good to
eat and good to think) in his book Le Totémisme aujourd'hui (1962), translated as Totemism (1963).
In chapter 4, he wrote: 'On comprend enfin que les espèces naturelles ne sont pas choisies parce que
"bonnes à manger" mais parce que "bonnes à penser".' (p.128)
(We can understand, too, that natural species are chosen not because they are 'good to eat' but because they are 'good to think'.)
This statement follows on Lévi-Strauss' interpretation of totemism, and why certain animals are chosen.
The preceding sentence, which provides the context for this statement, reads:
'The animals in totemism cease to be solely or principally creatures which are feared, admired or envied:
their perceptible reality permits the embodiment of ideas and relations conceived by speculative thought
on the basis of empirical observations.'
Thus Lévi-Strauss' initial use of the phrase 'bon à penser' related simply to the choice of animals as totems.
Food choice was not directly implicated. And so far as I can discover,
Lévi-Strauss did not return to the 'bon à penser, bon à manger' concept in his later,
better known works (such as The Raw and the Cooked).
Barbara Santich is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of History, the University of Adelaide.
The second edition of her Apples to Zampone will appear in October.
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