Claude Lévi-Strauss
Mity, reguły pokrewieństwa i obyczaje różnych kultur podlegają tym samym głębokim wzorcom, bo ludzki umysł wszędzie myśli parami przeciwieństw.
Umiejscowienie
Antropologia strukturalna: mity i pokrewieństwo podlegają uniwersalnym strukturom umysłu.
Kluczowe idee
- Strukturalizm
- Myśl nieoswojona (La Pensée sauvage)
- Opozycje binarne
Uczniowie: Philippe Descola
Wpływ
Pod wpływem 8
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
pod wpływem
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”
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau › 1712–1778
Karol Marks
pod wpływem
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)
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Karol Marks › 1818–1883
Sigmund Freud
pod wpływem
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)
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Sigmund Freud › 1856–1939
Ferdinand de Saussure
pod wpływem ✓
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
pod wpływem ✓
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
pod wpływem
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)
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E. E. Evans-Pritchard › 1902–1973
Pokaż wszystko (8)Pokaż mniej
Franz Boas
pod wpływem
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)
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Franz Boas › 1858–1942
Marcel Mauss
pod wpływem
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)
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Marcel Mauss › 1872–1950
Wpływ na 6
Jacques Lacan
wpływ na
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”
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Jacques Lacan › 1901–1981
Roland Barthes
wpływ na
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)
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Roland Barthes › 1915–1980
Algirdas Julien Greimas
wpływ na
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)
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Algirdas Julien Greimas › 1917–1992
V. Y. Mudimbe
wpływ na
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)
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V. Y. Mudimbe › 1941–2025
Philippe Descola uczeń/uczennica
uczeń/uczennica
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
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Philippe Descola › ur. 1949
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro
wpływ na
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)
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Eduardo Viveiros de Castro › ur. 1951
Krytyka
Krytyka ze strony 6
Paul Ricoeur
krytyka ze strony
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
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Paul Ricoeur › 1913–2005
Clifford Geertz
krytyka ze strony
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)
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Clifford Geertz › 1926–2006
Pierre Bourdieu
krytyka ze strony
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
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Pierre Bourdieu › 1930–2002
Jacques Derrida
krytyka ze strony
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)
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Jacques Derrida › 1930–2004
Umberto Eco
krytyka ze strony
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)
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Umberto Eco › 1932–2016
Tzvetan Todorov
krytyka ze strony
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”
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Tzvetan Todorov › 1939–2017
Krytykuje 5
Arthur de Gobineau
krytykuje
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
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Arthur de Gobineau › 1816–1882
Edvard Westermarck
krytykuje
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)
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Edvard Westermarck › 1862–1939
C. G. Jung
krytykuje
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
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C. G. Jung › 1875–1961
Bronisław Malinowski
krytykuje
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
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Bronisław Malinowski › 1884–1942
Jean-Paul Sartre
krytykuje
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”
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Jean-Paul Sartre › 1905–1980
Dzieła
- 1955Smutek tropików
Dziennik podróży, etnologia, filozofia – z „Lekcją pisania” u Nambikwara.
- 1962Myśl nieoswojona
Bricolage i klasyfikacja – z rozdziałem końcowym przeciw Sartre’owi.
Stanowisko
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.
Życie i kontekst
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.
Dalsze główne dzieła
- The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949)
- Tristes Tropiques (1955)
- Structural Anthropology (1958)
- The Savage Mind / Wild Thought (1962)
- Mythologiques (1964–71)
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