Beyond Nature and Culture

Philippe Descola

（日本語解説版：一部の欧文文字が文字化けしています）

Radcliffe-Brown Lecture in Social Anthropology, 2005 (Proceedings of the British Academy 139, pp.137-155, 2006)

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Unfortunately, I was quite wrong on both counts. Friendly critics first made me aware of what I should have seen by myself, namely that this too neat inversion in fact ratified the distinction between nature and society inherent in both the L?vi-Straussian and the Radcliffe- Brownian interpretations of totemism, thus not rendering justice to Amazonian cosmologies where such a distinction is irrelevant4. I also came to realise that this duality is equally meaningless in the case of totemism, at least Australian totemism, as I will try to show later. Paradoxically, this is a point of view which L?vi-Strauss endorses too, not in Le Tot?misme aujourd’hui, of course, but in La Pens?e sauvage, where he writes, by reference to the totemic system of the Menominee and the Chippewa of the Great Lakes, that, in this case, each totemic group has to be taken in itself, as ‘it tends to form a system, not any more with the other totemic groups, but with certain differential properties conceived as hereditary’; ‘thus, instead of two images, one social one natural, (…) what will obtain is a unique but fragmented socio-natural image’5.

残念なことに、私はこの2つの点で大きな間違いを犯していた。友好的な批評家たちはまず、私が自分で気 づくべきであったことを気づかせてくれた。つまり、このあまりに端正な逆転は、トーテミズムのレヴィ＝ストロース的解釈とラドクリフ＝ブラウン的解釈の両 方に内在する自然と社会の区別を批准するものであり、そのような区別が無関係なアマゾンの宇宙論を正当に評価するものではなかったということだ4。また、 この二元性はトーテミズム、少なくともオーストラリアのトーテミズムの場合にも同様に無意味であることに気づいた。逆説的ではあるが、レヴィ＝ストロース もこの視点を支持している。 そこで彼は、五大湖のメノミニー族とチッペワ族のトーテム・システムを引き合いに出しながら、この場合、それぞれのトーテム・グループはそれ自体でとらえ なければならない、と書いている。

1 A. Barnard, History and Theory in Anthropology (Cambridge, CUP, 2000), p.73.

2 A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society; essays and addresses (London, Cohen & West, 1952), p. 130.

3 Ph. Descola, ‘Societies of nature and the nature of society’, in A. Kuper (ed.) Conceptualizing Society (London, Routledge, 1992), pp. 107-126, and ‘Constructing natures: Symbolic ecology and social practice’, in Ph. Descola and G. P?lsson (eds.), Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives (London, Routledge, 1996), pp. 82-102.

4 For instance, T. Ingold, The Perception of the Environment. Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (London, Routledge, 2000) and E. Viveiros de Castro, ‘Os pronomes cosmol?gicos e o perspectivismo amer?ndio’, Mana 2 (2) (1996), pp. 115-144.

5 C. L?vi-Strauss, La pens?e sauvage (Paris, Plon, 1962), pp. 154-155, my translation.

6 True, some non-human species also ascribe properties (at least relational and behavioural features) to humans and other non-humans; but before they can be included in a general theory of ontologies, a lot of ground remains to be covered.

7 I am very grateful to Tim Ingold and Peter Marshall for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of the lecture and for their suggestions of stylistic amendments.

8 E. Husserl, Erste Philosophie (1923-1924) II, Theorie der ph?nomenologischen Reduktion (Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1959), pp. 61-64.

9 P. Bloom, Descartes’ Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human (New York, Basic Books, 2004).

10 E. Viveiros de Castro, ‘Os pronomes cosmol?gicos’, p. 117.

11 J. von Uexku?ll, Streifzu?ge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen ? Bedeutungslehre (Hamburg, Rowohlt Verlag, 1956).

12 E. Viveiros de Castro, 'Os pronomes cosmol?gicos', p. 117 (my translation).

13 Ibid., p. 122.

14 W. B. Spencer et F. J. Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia (London, Macmillan & Co, 1899), p. 202.

15 C. G. von Brandenstein, Names and Substance of the Australian Subsection System (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 54.

16 C. G. von Brandenstein, ‘Aboriginal Ecological Order in the South-West of Australia - Meanings and Examples’, Oceania XLVII (3) (1977), pp. 170-186.

17 M. Granet, La pens?e chinoise (Paris, Albin Michel, 1968 (1934)), p. 297.

18 A point which Viveiros de Castro was the first to make, ‘Os pronomes cosmol?gicos’, p. 129.

19 B. Latour, Nous n’avons jamais ?t? modernes. Essai d’anthropologie sym?trique (Paris, La D?couverte, 1991).

20 K. Århem, ‘The Cosmic Food Web: human-nature relatedness in the Northwest Amazon’, in Ph. Descola and G. P?lsson (eds.), Nature and Society, pp. 185-204.

21 A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, ‘On social structure’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 70 (1940), pp. 1-12, republished in Structure and Function, p. 190.

22 M. Merleau-Ponty, L’Oeil et l’Esprit (Paris, Gallimard, 1964), p. 13.