Claude Lévi-Strauss
(Brussels, 1908-Paris, 2009) French anthropologist.Philosophy attache, in 1934 he went to the University of São Paulo and studied the indigenous cultures of Mato Grosso and the Amazon.In 1941 he had to go into exile to the United States, where he met Roman Jakobson, whose linguistic structuralism influenced him decisively.He returned to France in 1948 and was a professor of comparative religions at the Sorbonne and of social anthropology at the College of France (whose courses from 1959-1982 he collected in Given Word , 1984).
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss applied structuralism to the study of kinship ( The elementary structures of kinship , 1949), to cultural anthropology ( Sociology and anthropology , 1950; Structural anthropology , 1958 and 1973) and to the study of classifications ( Wild thought , 1962; Totemism nowadays , 1962) and myths ( Tristes topics , 1955; series Mythological , 1964-1986: The raw and the cooked , From honey to ashes , The origin of table manners , The naked man and The jealous potter ).His latest publications also include The symbols and their doubles (1989) and Historia de Lynx (1991).
Later he published Raza and culture (1952), Structural anthropology (1958), anthology of theoretical essays on fundamental concepts of structuralism, Totemism today (1962), which develops the kinship discourse, and Wild Thought (1962), which, in a certain way, concludes a whole phase of reflection on the problems of art, myth, religion and, in general, of the symbolic function.In particular, by analyzing wild thought and studying its specific "logic" (linked to sensible qualities, concrete production and symbol), the author extracts a fundamental element of the human spirit of any age: on the one hand, it serves to recovering the concept of primitive and, on the other hand, indicates the need to rediscover the concrete logic that the developed culture has lost.
The last period was dedicated to the theme of symbol and myth, with the publication of The raw and cooked (1964), followed by From honey to the ashes (1967) and The origin of table manners (1967).These works constitute a series of studies ( Mythological , in 4 volumes) on the myths of the South American populations, and attempt to reconstruct primitive thought through the symbolic contrapositions between nature and culture, seen above all from starting from cooked and raw food, the relationship between honey (natural) and tobacco (linked to the supernatural world) and ways of eating, integrating into the global research on the human unconscious that the author set out to carry out.His later works included Structural Anthropology II (1973) and The Way of the Masks (1979).
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