Claude Lévi-Strauss
Myths, kinship rules and customs across cultures follow the same deep patterns, because the human mind everywhere thinks in pairs of opposites.
Placement
Structural anthropology: myths and kinship follow universal structures of the mind.
Key ideas
- Structuralism
- Wild Thought (La Pensée sauvage)
- Binary oppositions
Students: Philippe Descola
Influence
Influenced by 8
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
influenced by
In a lecture of 1962 Lévi-Strauss called Rousseau founder of the human sciences, making his identification with the other and all living beings anthropology’s principle. C. Lévi-Strauss, “Jean-Jacques Rousseau, fondateur des sciences de l’homme” (1962), in Anthropologie structurale deux (1973); Tristes tropiques (1955); SEP “Jean Jacques Rousseau”
Evidence: AI draft
Jean-Jacques Rousseau › 1712–1778
Karl Marx
influenced by
Lévi-Strauss counted Marxism among his ‘three mistresses’ (1955) and called his work a contribution to the theory of superstructures, barely sketched by Marx (La pensée sauvage, 1962). C. Lévi-Strauss, Tristes tropiques (1955); La pensée sauvage (1962)
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Karl Marx › 1818–1883
Sigmund Freud
influenced by
Lévi-Strauss compared the shaman’s cure with psychoanalysis: both make a disorder thinkable through a symbolic structure the patient lives through (‘L’efficacité symbolique’, 1949). C. Lévi-Strauss, “L’efficacité symbolique”, Revue de l’histoire des religions (1949), in Anthropologie structurale (1958); Tristes tropiques (1955)
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Sigmund Freud › 1856–1939
Ferdinand de Saussure
influenced by ✓
After meeting Jakobson in New York, Lévi-Strauss took structural linguistics after Saussure as the model for anthropology, analysing kinship as a system of differences (Word, 1945). C. Lévi-Strauss, “L’analyse structurale en linguistique et en anthropologie”, Word 1 (1945), in Anthropologie structurale (1958); Les structures élémentaires de la parenté (1949)
Ferdinand de Saussure › 1857–1913
Émile Durkheim
influenced by ✓
Lévi-Strauss continued Durkheim and Mauss’s study of primitive classification (1903) but explained classifications by the structure of the human mind rather than of society (La pensée sauvage, 1962). C. Lévi-Strauss, “French Sociology”, in G. Gurvitch and W. E. Moore (eds.), Twentieth Century Sociology (1945); La pensée sauvage (1962); É. Durkheim and M. Mauss, “De quelques formes primitives de classification”, Année sociologique 6 (1903)
Émile Durkheim › 1858–1917
E. E. Evans-Pritchard
influenced by
Lévi-Strauss read Evans-Pritchard’s Nuer Religion (1956), with its ‘twins are birds’, as a step toward a structural interpretation of totemism (Le totémisme aujourd’hui, 1962). C. Lévi-Strauss, Le totémisme aujourd’hui (1962); E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Nuer Religion (1956)
Evidence: AI draft
E. E. Evans-Pritchard › 1902–1973
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Franz Boas
influenced by
Lévi-Strauss, in New York from 1941, credited Boas with seeing that cultural phenomena, like language, are structured unconsciously (‘Histoire et ethnologie’, 1949; Anthropologie structurale, 1958). C. Lévi-Strauss, “Histoire et ethnologie”, Revue de métaphysique et de morale (1949), in Anthropologie structurale (1958); F. Boas, “The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology” (1896)
Evidence: AI draft
Franz Boas › 1858–1942
Marcel Mauss
influenced by
In his ‘Introduction à l’œuvre de Marcel Mauss’ (1950) Lévi-Strauss read The Gift as a forerunner of the structural analysis of exchange and mana as a ‘floating signifier’. C. Lévi-Strauss, “Introduction à l’œuvre de Marcel Mauss”, in M. Mauss, Sociologie et anthropologie (1950); Les structures élémentaires de la parenté (1949)
Evidence: AI draft
Marcel Mauss › 1872–1950
Influenced 6
Jacques Lacan
influenced
Lacan took from Lévi-Strauss’s Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949) that a symbolic law of exchange orders human relations, the core of his symbolic order (‘Fonction et champ’, 1953). J. Lacan, “Fonction et champ de la parole et du langage en psychanalyse” (1953), in Écrits (1966); C. Lévi-Strauss, Les structures élémentaires de la parenté (1949); SEP “Jacques Lacan”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Jacques Lacan › 1901–1981
Roland Barthes
influenced
Barthes took Lévi-Strauss’s structural analysis of myth as a model for analysing narratives as combinations of units and functions (‘Introduction à l’analyse structurale des récits’, 1966). R. Barthes, “Introduction à l’analyse structurale des récits”, Communications 8 (1966); “L’activité structuraliste” (1963), in Essais critiques (1964)
Evidence: AI draft
Roland Barthes › 1915–1980
Algirdas Julien Greimas
influenced
Greimas drew on Lévi-Strauss’s analysis of myth for his actantial model (Sémantique structurale, 1966) and reworked his Bororo reference myth in an essay on mythic narrative (1966). A. J. Greimas, Sémantique structurale (1966); “Éléments pour une théorie de l’interprétation du récit mythique”, Communications 8 (1966); C. Lévi-Strauss, Le cru et le cuit (1964)
Evidence: AI draft
Algirdas Julien Greimas › 1917–1992
V. Y. Mudimbe
influenced
Mudimbe credited Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism with breaking evolutionist anthropology and opening a new reading of African systems of thought (The Invention of Africa, 1988). V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa (1988); L’Odeur du père (1982)
Evidence: AI draft
V. Y. Mudimbe › 1941–2025
Philippe Descola taught
taught
Descola wrote his doctoral thesis on the Achuar of Amazonian Ecuador under Lévi-Strauss’s supervision (EHESS, 1983); it was printed as La nature domestique (1986). P. Descola, La nature domestique (1986); Collège de France, biography of P. Descola
Evidence: AI draft
Philippe Descola › b. 1949
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro
influenced
Viveiros de Castro reread Lévi-Strauss’s Mythologiques as an Amerindian theory of transformation and continued it in his perspectivism (‘Cosmological Deixis’, 1998; Métaphysiques cannibales, 2009). E. Viveiros de Castro, “Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism”, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4 (1998); Métaphysiques cannibales (2009)
Evidence: AI draft
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro › b. 1951
Criticism
Criticized by 6
Paul Ricœur
criticised by
Ricœur called Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism ‘a Kantianism without a transcendental subject’ and argued that it suits totemic myth but not traditions that reinterpret themselves historically (‘Structure et herméneutique’, 1963). P. Ricœur, “Structure et herméneutique”, Esprit (Nov. 1963), repr. in Le conflit des interprétations (1969); Lévi-Strauss’s reply in the same issue
Evidence: AI draft
Paul Ricœur › 1913–2005
Clifford Geertz
criticised by
In ‘The Cerebral Savage’ (1967) Geertz objected that Lévi-Strauss dissolves particular cultures into the universal operations of an abstract mind, losing their local meaning. C. Geertz, “The Cerebral Savage: On the Work of Claude Lévi-Strauss”, Encounter 28 (1967); in The Interpretation of Cultures (1973)
Evidence: AI draft
Clifford Geertz › 1926–2006
Pierre Bourdieu
criticised by
Bourdieu objected that Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism reduces practice to executing rules, ignoring the timing and strategies of gift exchange (Outline of a Theory of Practice, 1972). P. Bourdieu, Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique (1972); Le sens pratique (1980), Book I, ch. 1
Evidence: AI draft
Pierre Bourdieu › 1930–2002
Jacques Derrida
criticised by
In Of Grammatology (1967) Derrida read Lévi-Strauss’s ‘Writing Lesson’ as Rousseauist nostalgia for an innocent community of speech, untouched by the violence of writing. J. Derrida, De la grammatologie (1967), part II, ch. 1 “La violence de la lettre: de Lévi-Strauss à Rousseau”; “La structure, le signe et le jeu” (1966)
Evidence: AI draft
Jacques Derrida › 1930–2004
Umberto Eco
criticised by
In La struttura assente (1968) Eco objected that Lévi-Strauss turns structure from a methodological model into an ontological reality, the structure of the human mind. U. Eco, La struttura assente (1968)
Evidence: AI draft
Umberto Eco › 1932–2016
Tzvetan Todorov
criticised by
In Nous et les autres (1989) Todorov criticised Lévi-Strauss’s cultural relativism, arguing that taken consistently it leaves no ground for judging any regime, even a totalitarian one. T. Todorov, Nous et les autres. La réflexion française sur la diversité humaine (1989), part I, chapter “Lévi-Strauss”
Evidence: AI draft
Tzvetan Todorov › 1939–2017
Criticizes 5
Arthur de Gobineau
criticised
Against Gobineau’s doctrine of unequal races Lévi-Strauss set the diversity of cultures, whose progress arises from exchange and collaboration between them (Race et histoire, UNESCO, 1952). C. Lévi-Strauss, Race et histoire (UNESCO, 1952), ch. 1 and conclusion
Evidence: AI draft
Arthur de Gobineau › 1816–1882
Edvard Westermarck
criticised
Lévi-Strauss rejected Westermarck’s derivation of the incest taboo from an innate aversion among those raised together: what instinct secured would need no prohibition (Elementary Structures, 1949). C. Lévi-Strauss, Les structures élémentaires de la parenté (1949), ch. 2; E. Westermarck, The History of Human Marriage (1891)
Evidence: AI draft
Edvard Westermarck › 1862–1939
C. G. Jung
criticised
Lévi-Strauss rejected Jung’s view that archetypes carry fixed meanings, likening it to the old error that sounds have inherent meanings (‘The Structural Study of Myth’, 1955). C. Lévi-Strauss, “The Structural Study of Myth”, Journal of American Folklore 68 (1955); Anthropologie structurale (1958), ch. 11
Evidence: AI draft
C. G. Jung › 1875–1961
Bronisław Malinowski
criticised
Lévi-Strauss objected that Malinowski’s functionalism forbids itself history and comparison yet claims general truths from the intensive study of a single society (‘Histoire et ethnologie’, 1949). C. Lévi-Strauss, “Histoire et ethnologie”, Revue de métaphysique et de morale 54 (1949); Anthropologie structurale (1958), ch. 1
Evidence: AI draft
Bronisław Malinowski › 1884–1942
Jean-Paul Sartre
criticised
In the last chapter of The Savage Mind (1962) Lévi-Strauss objected that Sartre’s dialectical reason privileges history and the modern subject, treating other societies as less dialectical. C. Lévi-Strauss, La pensée sauvage (1962), ch. 9 “Histoire et dialectique”
Evidence: AI draft
Jean-Paul Sartre › 1905–1980
Works
Travelogue, ethnology, philosophy – with the “Writing Lesson” among the Nambikwara.
Bricolage and classification – with a final chapter against Sartre.
Position
Lévi-Strauss transferred the structural method of linguistics to anthropology. Kinship systems, myths and classifications, he argued, are like languages: their meaning lies not in individual elements but in the relations between them, often binary oppositions such as raw and cooked, nature and culture. The incest taboo and marriage rules create society through the exchange of women between groups. In The Savage Mind he showed that so-called “primitive” thought is not prelogical but a rigorous “science of the concrete,” working like a bricoleur with what is at hand. In four volumes of Mythologiques he analysed hundreds of American myths as transformations of one another. He made structuralism the leading intellectual movement of 1960s France.
Life & context
Lévi-Strauss was born in Brussels in 1908 to French parents and studied law and philosophy in Paris. As a young professor in São Paulo he undertook expeditions to the Bororo and Nambikwara in Brazil. During the Second World War he lived in exile in New York, where he met the linguist Roman Jakobson. From 1959 he taught at the Collège de France; he died in 2009, aged 100.
Further main works
- The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949)
- Structural Anthropology (1958)
- The Savage Mind / Wild Thought (1962)
- Mythologiques (1964–71)
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