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Lévi-Strauss: Modern, Ultramodern, Antimodern

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Ugo EM Fabietti
Ugo EM Fabietti*
Affiliation:
University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy
*
Ugo E. M. Fabietti, University of Milano-Bicocca, Piazza dell’Ateneo Nuovo, 1, 20126 Milano, Italy. Email: ugo.fabietti@unimib.it
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Abstract

This article develops the idea that Lévi-Strauss’ thought was shaped all at once in the encounter with structural linguistics. Nevertheless, Lévi-Strauss's readers know that his writings show blunt passages from a level of discourse that refers to the project of scientific modernity (accretion of knowledge and pursuit of generality) to one announcing the dissolution of culture into physicochemical phenomena (here defined as ultramodern level), and from these two to a language usually defined as “literary”. The latter corresponds to a language which articulates the themes of loss, memory, yearning for the primitive, the concerns about the demographic and environmental transformations of the planet, and an “exaggerated” contact of cultures: themes which all persist in Lévi-Strauss’ thought since its shaping as a “structuralist” one, which have been highly controversial and that could be defined as “antimodern”. Accordingly, this article tries to produce a reading of Lévi-Strauss’ work as articulated on three levels, which persist in Lévi-Strauss's thought since its early structuralist formation: three “musical staffs” on which his modernity, ultra-modernity and anti-modernity seem all to flow at the same time.

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Articles
Information
Diogenes , Volume 60 , Issue 2: Homage to Claude Lévi-Strauss , May 2013, pp. 24 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2015

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