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BOOK: Claude Levi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory
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35
See Louis-Jean Calvet,
Roland Barthes: A Biography
, Sarah Wykes, trans. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), pp. 129-30.
 
36
The letter was later printed at the end of
Claude Lévi-Strauss
, ed. Raymond Bellour and Catherine Clément, pp. 495-97. Lévi-Strauss’s account is in Eribon,
Conversations
, p. 73; Barthes’s “stunningly convincing” is cited in Dosse,
History of Structuralism
, vol. 2,
The Sign Sets, 1967-present
, Deborah Glassman, trans. (Minneapolis, Minn.; and London: University of Minnesota Press), 1997, p. 115.
 
37
Scott Atran, “A Memory of Lévi-Strauss,” International Cognition and Culture Institute, November 4, 2009,
http://www.cognitionandculture.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=67
:scott-atrans-blog&layout=blog&Itemid=34.
 
38
Lévi-Strauss in Eribon,
Conversations
, p. 34.
 
39
Pierre Dumayet with Claude Lévi-Strauss, “Claude Lévi-Strauss à propos de
Soleil Hopi
.”
 
40
The interviews were later published as Georges Charbonnier,
Entretiens avec Claude Lévi-Strauss
(Paris: Plon, 1969); English version: Georges Charbonnier,
Conversations with Claude Lévi-Strauss
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1969).
 
41
Charbonnier,
Conversations with Claude Lévi-Strauss
, pp. 69-70.
 
42
Robert Hughes, “The Artist Pablo Picasso,”
Time
, June 8, 1998.
 
43
These comments were mild in comparison to what was to come. Later Lévi-Strauss accused modern artists of polluting their sources of inspiration. In an interview for the review
Arts
about a new exhibition of Picasso at the Grand Palais, Paris, in 1966, he described the movement as something akin to “what the Americans call ‘interior decoration,’ a sort of accessory to the furnishings”; see Lévi-Strauss,
Structural Anthropology
, vol. 2, pp. 277, 283.
 
44
Lévi-Strauss, interview for
L’ Express
, in
Diacritics
, p. 50.
 
45
Lévi-Strauss,
Structural Anthropology
, vol. 2, p. 278.
 
46
Charbonnier,
Conversations with Claude Lévi-Strauss
, pp. 32-42.
 
47
Claude Lévi-Strauss,
The Savage Mind
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966), p. 234.
 
48
See Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, “Entrevista: Lévi-Strauss nos 90, a antropologia de cabeça para baixo,”
Mana
, vol. 4, no. 2, 1998, p. 119.
 
49
Vincent Debaene in Lévi-Strauss,
Oeuvres
, p. xxxiv.
 
9: “MIND IN THE WILD”
 
1
Honoré de Balzac in Claude Lévi-Strauss,
The Savage Mind
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966), p. 130.
 
2
Claude Lévi-Strauss,
Totemism
, Rodney Needham, trans. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), p. 76.
 
3
Ibid., p. 97. The dolphin is, however, taboo for one specific lineage of the Tafua clan, the Korokoro.
 
4
Lévi-Strauss,
Oeuvres
, p. 1775.
 
5
Lévi-Strauss,
The Raw and the Cooked
, p. 9.
 
6

dans un état de hâte, de précipitation, presque de remords
,” Lévi-Strauss,
Oeuvres
, p. 1777.
 
7
Lévi-Strauss,
Totemism
, p. 83.
 
8
Bertholet,
Claude Lévi-Strauss
, p. 262.
 
9
Lévi-Strauss,
Totemism
, p. 72.
 
10
Ibid., p. 134.
 
11
Ibid., p. 146. Fortes, for instance, had drawn parallels between the Tallensi’s highly complex totemic system and their ancestor cult. The Tallensi viewed their ancestors as “restless, elusive, ubiquitous, unpredictable, aggressive,” just like the crocodiles, snakes or leopard that featured in their totemic system.
 
12
Ibid., pp. 155-61.
 
13
Ibid., p. 163.
 
14
Ibid., p. 162;
Le Totémisme aujourd’hui
in Lévi-Strauss,
Oeuvres
, p. 533.
 
15
Lévi-Strauss,
Totemism
, p. 84.
 
16
Lévi-Strauss,
Oeuvres
, pp. 1792-93.
 
17
Ibid., p. 1777.
 
18
Lévi-Strauss,
The Savage Mind
, pp. 3-9.
 
19
Lévi-Strauss in Boutang and Chevallay,
Claude Lévi-Strauss in His Own Words
, 34:23.
 
20
Lévi-Strauss,
The Savage Mind
, p. 149.
 
21
Ibid., p. 153.
 
22
Lévi-Strauss in Eribon,
Conversations
, p. 113.
 
23
Speaking of the Australian Aborigines, Lévi-Strauss said that in some respects they were “real snobs . . . as soon as they were taught the accomplishments of leisure, they prided themselves on painting the dull and studied watercolours one might expect of an old maid,” in Lévi-Strauss,
The Savage Mind
, p. 89.
 
24
Lévi-Strauss in Boutang and Chevallay,
Claude Lévi-Strauss in His Own Words
, 1:10:00.
 
25
Lévi-Strauss,
The Raw and the Cooked
, pp. 147-63.
 
26
Lévi-Strauss,
The Savage Mind
, p. 269.
 
27
See exchange in Claude Lévi-Strauss and Sybil Wolfram, “The Savage Mind,”
Man
, vol. 2, no. 3, New Series, September 1967, p. 464; M. Estellie Smith, “Sybil Wolfram Obituary,”
Anthropology Today
, vol. 9, no. 6, December 1993, p. 22.
 
28
Lévi-Strauss,
Oeuvres
, pp. 1799-1801.
 
29
Ibid., p. 1800, note 2.
 
30
“Claude Lévi-Strauss: A Confrontation,”
New Left Review
, p. 72. The penultimate chapter, for instance, entitled “Le Temps retrouvé,” concludes with a diagram representing Australian Aboriginal ritual—a triangle whose apexes represent VIE (±), RÊVE (+) and MORT (−), a kind of
structuralisme à la Proust
.
 
31
A. A. Akoun, F. Morin and J. Mousseau, “A Conversation with Claude Lévi-Strauss,” p. 79.
 
32
“ ‘Les Chats’ de Charles Baudelaire,”
L’Homme
, vol. 2, no. 1, 1962, pp. 5-22.
 
33
“Claude Lévi-Strauss: A Confrontation,”
New Left Review
, p. 74.
 
34
Bertholet,
Claude Lévi-Strauss
, p. 279.
 
35
Lévi-Strauss,
The Raw and the Cooked
, p. 11.
 
36
“Claude Lévi-Strauss: A Confrontation,”
New Left Review
, p. 74.
 
37
For critic Jean Lacroix writing in
Le Monde
,
La Pensée sauvage
represented “the most rigorously atheistic philosophy of our time,” while over two issues of
Les Temps modernes
in 1963 he subjected Lévi-Strauss’s ideas to a Marxist critique; Dosse,
History of Structuralism
, vol. 1, p. 234.
 
38
Claude Lévi-Strauss interview with Philippe Simonnot, “Claude Lévi-Strauss: un anarchiste de droite,”
L’Express
.
http://www.lexpress.fr/informations/archive-claudelevi-strauss-un-anarchiste-de-droite_714140.html
.
 
39
Letter from Sartre to de Beauvoir, February 1946, in Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir,
Lettres au Castor et à quelques autres
, vol. 2, (Paris: Gallimard, 1983), p. 335.
 
40
Lévi-Strauss,
Oeuvres
, p. 1778.
 
41
Lévi-Strauss,
The Savage Mind
, p. xxi.
 
42
Ibid., pp. 257-58, 249.
 
43
Lévi-Strauss in Paul Hendrickson, “Behemoth from the Ivory Tower.”
 
44
Pierre Bourdieu, in
Réflexions faites
, Arte France, March 31, 1991.
 
45
Pierre Bourdieu,
Homo Academicus
, Peter Collier, trans. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. xxi.
 
46
Alain Badiou, “The Adventure of French Philosophy,”
New Left Review
, vol. I/35, September-October 2005, p. 68.
 
47
This idea is taken from J. G. Merquior,
From Prague to Paris: A Critique of Structuralist and Post-Structuralist Thought
(London: Verso, 1988), p. 89.
 
48
Lévi-Strauss,
Tristes Tropiques
, Picador, p. 64.
 
49
Lévi-Strauss, “Le Coucher de soleil,” p. 4.
 
50
Michel Foucault,
Les Mots et les choses: une archéologie des sciences humaines
(Paris: Gallimard, 1966), p. 398.
 
10: THE NEBULA OF MYTH
 
1
Lévi-Strauss in Eribon,
Conversations
, p. 35.
 
2
Lévi-Strauss,
Structural Anthropology
, vol. 1, pp. 228-29.
 
3
Claude Lévi-Strauss in Boutang and Chevallay,
Claude Lévi-Strauss in His Own Words
, 1:15:00.
 
4
Claude Lévi-Strauss,
The Origin of Table Manners: Introduction to a Science of Mythology 3
, John and Doreen Weightman, trans. (London: Jonathan Cape, 1978), p. 102.
 
5
Lévi-Strauss, “Entretien par Raymond Bellour,” in
Oeuvres
, p. 1657.
 
6
Lévi-Strauss in Eribon,
Conversations
, p. 132.
 
7
Ibid., p. 36.
 
8
Sebag had been undergoing psychoanalysis with Lacan when he fell in love with Lacan’s daughter Judith. After Lacan ended the sessions, Sebag shot himself in the face.
 
9
Lévi-Strauss,
The Raw and the Cooked
, p. 1.
 
10
Sanche de Gramont (aka Ted Morgan), “There Are No Superior Societies,” in
The Anthropologist as Hero
, ed. Hayes and Hayes, p. 16; originally published in the
New York Times Magazine
, January 28, 1968.
 
11
Claude Lévi-Strauss,
The Naked Man: Introduction to a Science of Mythology 4
, John and Doreen Weightman, trans. (London: Jonathan Cape, 1981), p. 25; De Gramont, “There Are No Superior Societies,” p. 17.
 
12
Lévi-Strauss,
The Raw and the Cooked
, p. 31.
 
13
Lévi-Strauss, “Entretien par Raymond Bellour,” in
Oeuvres
, p. 1664.
 
14
“Claude Lévi-Strauss in Conversation with George Steiner,”
BBC Third Programme
. In this interview with the BBC in 1965, Lévi-Strauss made this link explicit, telling Steiner that while mythic structures recurred, there might be “several species” of myths.
 
15
Lévi-Strauss,
The Raw and the Cooked
, pp. 3-6.
 
16
“Claude Lévi-Strauss in Conversation with George Steiner,”
BBC Third Programme
.
 
17
Lévi-Strauss,
The Raw and the Cooked
, p. 15.
 
18
Lévi-Strauss,
The View from Afar
, p. 219.
 
19
Lévi-Strauss,
The Raw and the Cooked
, p. 27.

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