CLAUDE LEVI STRAUSS 100 old has died. doc A PROPOS DE TRISTES TROPIQUES
“I view myself: a traveler, an archeologist of space, trying in vain to restore the exotic with the use of particles and fragments. I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men’s minds without their being aware of the fact,” he said. He dedicated more than three decades examining the behavior of Amazonian and American Indian tribes applied the structural approach employed in linguistics to discover a common form in myth. Levi-Strauss drew comparisons between American Indian myths and the story of Cinderella; demonstrated how some Amazonian tribes divided their villages into rival halves that synthesize through marriage; and tracked diverse folk tales through Latin America to show how they were related in form. French intellectuals Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida cited Levi-Strauss’s methods in their social analyses and French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre engaged him in debate over the issue of personal freedom, while his wife a feminist Simone de Beauvoir agreed with his human-kinship theories, which focused on the social exchange of females in non-Western societies.
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