Levi-Strauss, Anthropology, and Aesthetics

ISBN-13: 9780521875295 / Angielski / Twarda / 2007 / 264 str.

Opis

In a wide-ranging 2007 study of Claude Levi-Strauss's aesthetic thought, Boris Wiseman demonstrates not only its centrality within his oeuvre but also the importance of Levi-Strauss for contemporary aesthetic enquiry. Reconstructing the internal logic of Levi-Strauss's thinking on aesthetics, and showing how anthropological and aesthetic ideas intertwine at the most elemental levels in the elaboration of his system of thought, Wiseman demonstrates that Levi-Strauss's aesthetic theory forms an integral part of his approach to Amerindian masks, body decoration and mythology. He reveals the significance of Levi-Strauss's anthropological analysis of an 'untamed' mode of thinking (pensee sauvage) at work in totemism, classification and myth-making for his conception of art and aesthetic experience. In this way, structural anthropology is shown to lead to ethnoaesthetics. Levi-Strauss, Anthropology and Aesthetics adopts a broad-ranging approach that combines the different perspectives of anthropology, philosophy, aesthetic theory and literary criticism into an unusual and imaginative whole."

Recenzje

'Wiseman brings aesthetics back into anthropology as a philosophical dimension that returns to the romantic project of reconciling the intellect and the senses. This allows him to read together texts that Lévi-Strauss dedicated to art with proper production of anthropological science.' Frédéric Keck, Journal of the Royal Astronomical Institute

Spis treści

Introduction: Ethnoaesthetics; 1. The reconciliation; 2. Art and the logic of sensible qualities; 3. The work of art as a system of signs; 4. Structuralism, symbolist poetics and abstract art; 5. The anthropologist as art critic; 6. Nature, culture, chance; 7. From myth to music; 8. Lévi-Strauss' mytho-poem; Conclusion: between concept and metaphor.