Historical note today with the passing of Claude Lévi-Strauss (1909-2009). A detailed obit in the NYT helps summarize his impact on Western culture as an academic. Le Fig has a better review en francais with some video interviews. The SLOG is more succint.
I can’t claim to have ever read any Levi-Strauss, but he was certainly the unseen hand influencing many of the works I had to study (e.g. how folktales and myths were explained in Classics), and a direct target for many of the French philosophers of the late 20th century. He also was the driver for people like Joseph Campbell, who I’m still ambivalent about for his ludicrous interpretation of The Wake.
A great deal of Levi-Strauss’ importance was then the impact he had on others, who are maybe more well known or popular at the moment. We may not study Structuralism, but it’s still all around us if only in its echo. For Levi-Strauss it appears to have been just a tool (?) I don’t know enough about him to be sure. But having done grad work in Europe, and knowing the star-system of the French academic world, I found this little segment interesting.
“French society, and especially Parisian, is gluttonous,” Mr. Lévi-Strauss responded. “Every five years or so, it needs to stuff something new in its mouth. And so five years ago it was structuralism, and now it is something else. I practically don’t dare use the word ‘structuralist’ anymore, since it has been so badly deformed. I am certainly not the father of structuralism. (NYT)
Claude Lévi-Strauss
References:
- NYT’s archive on Levi-Strauss
- Wikipedia entry
- photo of Levi-Strauss provenance unknown (taken from next article)
- interview with Eduardo Viveiros de Castro on Levi-Strauss (in Portugese)
- overview of Levi-Strauss and his impact (in Portugese)
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