ABSTRACT
In Tristes Tropiques Claude Lévi-Strauss's (1997) claimed that the Nambikwara of Brazil did not understand writing when it was first introduced to them, but during a discussion of “the violence of the letter” in Of Grammatobgy Jacques Derrida (1976) challenged this claim. The anthropologist described in his thesis that they had quickly used the example of this new medium to make their own diagrams “describing, explaining, writing, a genealogy and a social structure.” According to the philosopher, this merely confirmed “unquestionable and abundant information” that “the birth of writing (in the colloquial sense) was nearly everywhere and most often linked to genealogical anxiety.” For Derrida, writing “in the colloquial sense” allows for the “supplementary objectification” of existing “genealogical classification” at another level, that is, beyond the order of “arche-writing,” and so still “within writing in general.” The Nambikwara that the anthropologist gave paper and pencils to merely accede to writing, according to the philosopher, because they had already acceded to genealogical thinking (pp. 122–125).
