Religion Dispatches (Free subscription) | 17 hours ago
The latest generation of religion scholars has studied Lévi-Strauss only to distance itself from his theories, and to challenge the myth of structuralism. Perhaps in doing so we have created a fable of our own.
Religion Dispatches (Free subscription) | 17 hours ago
Claude Lévi-Strauss, visionary anthropologist, once said: "The world began without man and will end without him."Was he post-humanist? Post-monotheist? Such binaries can't capture a thinker of his subtlety.
Mr. Verb (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009
We haven't noted the passing of Claude Lévi Strauss here yet (nor that of Dell Hymes). For a piece that talks about Lévi Strauss in connection to linguistics, check out this obituary, including these quotes: he came into contact with structural linguistics, a behaviouristic amalgam of European and American theories, and particularly the more imaginative work of Roman Jacobson, the Russian...
even*cleveland (Free subscription) | 11/16/2009
Her wall hangings have the living warmth and the thickness of fleece; their complex structure and their shadows seem to chisel out perspectives attributable only to dream palaces; they offer the mellow depth, radiance and mystery of the starry sky. Nothing better than this art could provide altogether the adornment and the antidote for the functional, utilitarian architecture in which we are sentenced...
The Valve (Free subscription) | 11/14/2009
Just what does Lévi-Strauss mean by transformation? While one might think that he’s making a genetic argument, that some myth X is derived from some other myth W by applying some transformation to W to yield Y, that is not at all what he means. It’s not at all clear that these transformations are anything but analytic tools, or fictions, if you will. The idea is that myths are expressions...
Chocolate in Context (Free subscription) | 11/12/2009
It's that time of year again. Halloween, Day of the Dead, All Saints Day, All Souls Day, Veterans Day, Midterms, Thanksgiving. Claude Levi-Strauss isn't around to codify the structures anymore, but we humans, in my opinion, like to commemorate things. Here's something I'd like to commemorate: It's about a year since a bunch of guys walked into my apartment and forcibly demolished a written-by-committee...
The Economist (Free subscription) | 11/12/2009
Claude Levi-Strauss, anthropologist, died on October 30th, aged 100 BEFORE Claude Levi-Strauss revolutionised the discipline, anthropology in France, and generally elsewhere, was a matter of ill-attended lectures in small, cold halls, and the collection of feathers and fish-hooks as evidence of the quaint divergences of the “primitive” tribes of mankind. He made it as fashionable as philosophy...
The Necromancer (Free subscription) | 11/12/2009
Claude Lévi-Strauss was a giant of the French intellectual scene for a better part of the 20th century. Making him one of the most important Western thinkers of the era. His passing has been noted variously — in particular this obituary in the New York Times. There’s also an exhaustive obituary in the Telegraph with [...]
Anthropology.net (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
Here’s a link to a post at Neuroanthropology which should really have been included in the recent and 79th edition of Four Stone Hearth, which was somehow overlooked by me at the time. The linked essay was constructed by Greg Downey, in which he considers amongst much else, traditional structuralism, its origins and cycle of [...]
The Irish Times (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
Smock Alley, Dublin: What’s in a name? That profoundly simple question occupied Adam, blithely identifying the animals of Eden; Shakespeare’s Juliet, teasing out the absurdity of learned hatred; not to mention Ferdinand de Saussure and Claude Lévi-Strauss, building entire schools of thought from the enquiry.
Art History Newsletter (Free subscription) | 11/10/2009
Wayne Dynes writes on Levi-Strauss’ death: When I was teaching at Columbia University in the early seventies I fastened on the idea of trying to adapt structuralism to the field of art history. Lévi-Strauss had himself pointed the way with his studies of the masks of the Northwest Coast Indians. I formed a little group of [...]
Sunday Beer Club (Free subscription) | 11/09/2009
Jim and Roni came to beer club and brought 2 very large cork bottled beers from Kansas City, Missouri's Boulevard Brewing Company. Jim and Roni tried this beer at the Bayou and liked it so much they ordered a very expensive case of Doube Wide IPA and were gracious enough to share with us for Beer Club. In a wide-mouth glass goblet as was recommended I barely got any head, but in the smaller mouthed...
Somatosphere (Free subscription) | 11/09/2009
There are few subject areas in anthropology untouched by the seminal thought of the late Professor Claude Lévi-Strauss. Though he published only two or three essays concerned expressly with medical subject matter, his theorization in those places of the role of myth and shamanistic authority in symbolic/magical healing opened up questions with lasting significance. I would like to briefly review...
The Millions (A Blog About Books) (Free subscription) | 11/09/2009
Levi-Strauss' most important ideas would become so ubiquitous that you probably already know them, even if you don't know you know.
TallSkinnyKiwi (Free subscription) | 11/09/2009
“I hate traveling and explorers.” Claude Lévi-Strauss in "Tristes Tropiques", NYTimes French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss passed away on October 30 at the age of 100. He was one of the greatest thinkers of last century in regards to mythology, anthropology...
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