Introduction to Semiotics of Cultures, 2010
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Critics
Vesa Matteo Piludu
University of Helsinki
Problem: from divinization to absolute criticims
 From glory (Structuralism age)
 To denigration (Post-structuralism, Post-modern theories): ‘80, ‘90
 Today structuralism is not a dominating theory, so it’s possible to
discuss more quietly about its heritage, without any necessity to
“destroy the oppressive structures” … as they are out of fashion.
Positive critics
 Lévi-Strauss is the most famous and referred anthropologist of the
XX century
 He is know in several academic fields
 His books are popular and read also by non-specialist (common
people)
A revolutionary works
Even if the structuralism failed to propose itself as a triumphant
general theory …
The work of Lévi-Strauss was revolutionary in many fields:
- Totemism
- Parental systems
- Symbolic analysis
- South American studies
- General Cultural theory
- Les structures élémentaires de la parenté (1949) was a fundamental
text for anthropology
- The work of Lévi-Strauss was strongly connected with French
cultural background
Style
 Impressive erudition, good critics to previous cultural theories
 Capacity to dominate different fields
 Impressive writing style
 Strong personality and personal thought, evident idealism, even if
there are some deviation to megalomania and evident narcissism
 Atypical anthropologist
Positive critics
 No one consider the native people inferior or more simple
 The discourse about the native culture passed from nature
(functions) to culture and symbolism
 Today no one consider marriage or parental systems “natural”
Positive critics
 Problems of central importance:
 Reciprocity, alliance, gift
 Positive vision of social life: human sociability is unthinkable
without alliances and gifts
 VS: homo hominis lupus, theories of absloute competitions and
survival
Other logics
 Genres that were considered irrational (myths, art) are considered
now to have their own narrative and symbolic logic
Study of variations
 The study of variation of several versions of the same myths is now
extremely popular folklore studies
 The binaries oppositions (raw and cooked, naked and clothed) are
still useful in many fields
Comparition
 The analysis of Lévi-Strauss give space to comparison of both
similar and different cultures: give a solution to the impasse of the
total cultural relativism
 The theories of Lévi-Strauss offer a great help to the fight against
racist deviations in science
Negative critics: Homans and Shneider
Marriage, Authority, and Final Causes
 Polemic vs. the parental system
 Marriage is based on emotional factors and individual preferences,
not only on abstract symbolic systems
New boom of anymal symbolism
 In recent times, the animal symbolism is again a subject of interest,
not only in anthropology, but also in cinema and literature studies
(cartoons, Zabor’s The Bear Comes Home)
Negative Crititics:
Needham. Structure and Sentiment
 Vs. general theory on reciprocity, incest …
 Relativist
Two poles
 General critics:
 Only Complex Parental Systems (more free) and Simple ones
(prescriptive): nothing in the middle
 Lévi-Strauss hasn’t analyzed the Complex Systems
Marxist and feminist Anthropology
 Problems of colonialism forgotten by Lévi-Strauss
 The authority of the ethnologist seems to forgot the native’s own
voice
 The power relation between genders are also weak in L-S research:
not all in the gender relation can be reduced to an exchange
Geertz: The interpretation of Cultures 1973
 The structures are an ”infernal cultural machine” that destroy history
and human feelings and substitutes the individual native minds with a
Savage Mind present in every human being
 The cultural meanings can’t be introduced from another culture (the
Western one)
 It’s necessary to analyze how the social actors interpret their own
and other actions in their systems of norms and values (the native
voice)
 Doing ethnography, is necessary to take in consideration the values
and interpretations of the so-called informants
Narratology
 The narrator of myths has its importance: it can introduce relevant
variations in oral culture
 The listener (native or anthropologist) also is an active interpreter
 Theory of actors and of cultural translation
Margaret Mead
 It is absurd consider myths as completely independent from the
society or the deformed and opposite representation of social facts
Intuitive
 The methods of Lévi-Strauss changed often, and sometimes seems
that is using more his own intuition that a clear method
Crystallized societies
 Lévi-Strauss talk about history all the time but often he is antihistorical
 His models are a bit too crystallized in an ancestral ideals
 The societies studied by Lévi-Strauss were subjected to enormous
cultural changes in the XX century
Unconscious culture
 The idea of an unconscious collective culture, human spirit …
governing individuals and their choices (the myths are thinking us) …
seems a nightmare more suitable to fantastic literature (Borges) than
science
 The culture seems to be a very oppressive system, as in Barthes’
Mythologies: there is no space for freedom
Structures today
 Today, if someone is using the word structure in science, it
consider it only a scientific theory, not an ontological reality
governing human minds
 The systems are “open”, not universal laws
Interesting applications
 Cinema studies has used the binaries oppositions to criticize
Hollywood films
 Eero Tarasti has used Lévi-Strauss to analyze classical music
 (Myths and Music)