Identity, difference and repetition in the metaphors of primitive culture

Structural, historical-poetic, comparativetypological and other studies, first of all, demonstrate cultural differences. The universal principles of thinking are not always obvious,especially when we study, for example, primitive culture. Attempts to reconstruct primitive mind do not always lead to an objectivepicture, as it inevitably upgrades or does not have a sufficient reasoning. Based on the idea of O. Freidenberg and analysis of totemismof C. Levi-Strauss, the author offers her own reconstruction of the primitive method of thinking. The essence of the method contains theanalysis of operation of the ontological categories of identity, difference, and repetition in primitive metaphors. The language(linguistic) metaphor is a relatively late phenomenon, so in the paper the concept of metaphor is used in relation to the situation ofconverting the "biological aspects" of food, birth and death, marked by O. Freidenberg. Relative "transferability" of these moments isdue to the gap between the natural and social. At the heart of the practical and ritual actions is repetition of the strategy, which is aimedto establish the identity of the natural and the social. However, as a result, human activity increases the gap between them. As C. Levi-Strauss showed, the identity of the human community and the totem animal is imaginary, similarities imposed in totemism are signs ofdifferences. The internal form of metaphor enables to simultaneously draw together disparate objects or events and keep the distancebetween them. Combining of the dissimilar is realized on the basis of the detection of features significant for culture. Work on thedifferentiation is the basis for further construction of typologies and classifications of objects/events. So, understanding the inner formof the metaphor is inseparably linked with the strategies of repetition and difference in human activity - economic, artistic, ritual,thinking in general. Neurolinguistics, linking metaphorical ability of humans with the work of the right hemisphere of the brain, as themore "ancient" one, gives grounds to refer its formation to the primitive culture. The cybernetic model of the brain strengthens theperception ("deenapravlennost") that the extent of social and cultural development of humankind is inferior to the establishment ofrelations between the "outside world" and its "internal model". Thus, the intellectual activity of a primitive human originally containsthe correlation of the external and the internal, which we can find in the structure of metaphor. The dialectic of repetition and differencein the intellectual and practical activity, evident in the primitive metaphor allows us to interpret the appearance of the plot of thenarrative, and even writing.

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