The Classic of Changes in Cultural Context: A Textual Ar ...

In Mythologiques, volume 1, Lévi-Strauss demonstrated the feasibility of tracing a topography of concrete, immanent structural features—raw/cooked, dried/rotten, fire/water—in a body of myths; in volume 2, he showed its relation to container/content logics, including breaching operations. The import of volume 2’s analysis was to demonstrate these secondary qualities’ operation, articulating mythic fields bearing upon large structures such as alternation of dry and wet seasons in this region of the Americas. One illustration in From Honey to Ashes (457) summarizes ways container/content relations were used in myths of tobacco and honey Lévi-Strauss extensively analyzed: rattles (containers of air), gourds under water (containers of air contained in watery media), a container of water upon which one taps out percussive sounds to the surrounding air, a gurgling gourd from influx of water, gourds half full of water (and air), and finally a split, bowl-shaped gourd spun on a water surface. Each of these devices articulates different relations to alternation of wet and dry seasons throughout these myths.

Container/content topoi are applicable as structural expressions of rich ranges of semantic fields folded into any given mythological tradition. Splitting apart belongs to a range of operations including cutting and dismemberment, not particularly humorous but whose import for sacrifice, quantification, and conceptual thought guarantees their prominent position in networks of religious images. For instance, consider the split jade pendant’s position in Zhuangzi’s tale of Ru (“Confucian”) attire: “Ru are capped with round headpieces, knowing celestial temporalities; wear square footwear, knowing earth’s shape; tie their girdles with jade pendants with singular openings ( jue ) showing decisiveness” (Huang Mianhong, Xinyi Zhuangzi Duben, 244). The jade ring’s singularity is a breakthrough, showing decisiveness, in the “human position” at the girdle, between “sky” and “earth.”

Although many occasions of splitting occur, isomorphism of splitting open of enclosed contents with humorous phenomenology grounds the manifestation of such symbolism in contexts where practices combine elements of what modern readers call “religion” and “humor.”⁶ These situations give us our sense of their humor, or their sense of ours.