Claude Levi-Strauss: The Bearer of Ashes

ISBN-13: 9781138928558 / Angielski / Twarda / 2015 / 272 str.

David Pace

Opis

Levi-Strauss is one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century yet he is a very private and isolated figure, who has been reticent about himself. This book, first published in 1983, provides a fascinating insight into his character through a careful reading of the more speculative passages of his books and interviews. His personal existential and psychological orientation is explored through a structural analysis of "Tristes Tropiques," his most personal book, and his writings on art, nature and civilization and through a consideration of his debt to Rousseau. Dr Pace examines in depth Levi-Strauss s critique of cultural evolutionism and his attack on the notion of world history. He assesses the political implications of Levi-Strauss s own interpretation of human progress through an examination of his debates with Sartre and other Marxists in the 1950s and 1960s and his subsequent movement to the right. The author s concern throughout is to place the world-view of this great French anthropologist in the context of twentieth-century intellectuals struggle to come to grips with cultural relativism and the problem of the primitive."

Spis treści

1. The Artisan of Knowledge  2. The Confessions of Lévi-Strauss  3. Nature, Art and Authenticity  4. Echoes of Rousseau  5. The Critique of Cultural Evolution  6. Out of History  7. The Semantics of Ethnocentrism  8. A Universe of Rules  9. The Anthropology of Ressentiment

O autorze

Pace, David