Structure and History and X

Abstract

In working to understand myths, rituals, and the human beings who craft and use them, Jonathan Z. Smith involved himself in a debate located primarily in anthropology. What is one to make of cultural and linguistic differences? How do differences come to matter? Are there barriers to understanding between one culture-group-tribe and another that surpass the power of translation? Smith’s stance in this debate was partly negative. It cannot be the case that there are differences between cultures that entail ranking some higher than others. More constructively, Smith posed the question of the relationship of two approaches that shape the debate: on one side, the approach of structuralism, which seeks to identify what all cultures share, and on the other, the approach of history, which looks for anomalies and outliers, specificities and accidents. One must commit to both, he claimed. The question is, how?