On the Totems of Science and Capitalism

or, Why We Are All “Religious"

Abstract

In Totemism, Claude Levi-Strauss alleges that the modern scientific world is just as marked by “totemism” as were so-called primitive societies. Despite the fact that the modern distinction between “science” and “religion” (or even between “civilized religions” and “primitive religions”) is premised on the idea that “they” have totems while “we” are rational and scientific, this distinction is itself totemic, so to speak. In a sense, Levi-Strauss is claiming that we are all (perhaps implicitly) religious, even we secular moderns. In making this claim, Levi-Strauss seems to want to close the gap between modern western culture and its “others”—“we” are not, upon reflection, so different from “them.”1 Although coming from a radically different theoretical position, Marshall Sahlins picks up the thesis of Totemism and extends it to argue that the modern western world is totemic, although our totems are imbricated with the means of production in late capitalism rather than kinship systems. In this paper I will reflect on Levi-Strauss’ and Sahlins’ theses by considering the extent to which it is useful to think of late capitalism as totemic or religious. This bears on the concept of “implicit religion,” insofar as it contributes to the argument that fundamental distinctions between “secularism” and “religion” fall apart upon close scrutiny, as many “implicit religion” theorists (and others within the Durkheimian tradition) have been claiming for years.