Understanding, or participating, in the ecological reflection of humans such as the Amerindians is not only what he considered most important to study for himself as an anthropologist: it also coloured his values. These, from time to time, particularly towards the end of his life, he allowed himself to make public. He repeatedly expressed his distaste for the narrowness and sterility of much post-neolithic thought, and its obsession with the exploitation of other living things rather than simply reflecting on the latter's complexity and mutual relationships. As a result, he became something of a hero to certain modern ecological ideologues. For Lévi-Strauss, writing and formal education are just as likely to lead to philosophical impoverishment as to anything else.
There is also another, even more fundamental, way in which his thought seeks to rejoin that of the mythology of the Amerindians as he understands it to be. Myths have no authors. Their creation occurs imperceptibly in the process of transmission or transformation over hundreds of years and across hundreds of miles. The individual subject, the self-obsessed innovator or artist so dear to much western philosophy, had, therefore, no place for Lévi-Strauss, and indeed repelled him. He saw the glorification of individual creativity as an illusion. As he wrote in Tristes Tropiques: "the I is hateful". This perspective is particularly evident in his study of Amerindian art. This art did not involve the great individualistic self-displays of western art that he abhorred. The Amerindian artist, by contrast, tried to reproduce what others had done and, if he was innovating, he was unaware of the fact. Throughout Lévi-Strauss's work there is a clear aesthetic preference for a creativity that is distributed throughout a population and that does not wear its emotions on its sleeve.
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Obituary by Maurice Bloch guardian.co.uk
Tuesday 3 November 2009 >>>
1 comment:
Hi Ian, saw the obit in The Age. Hadnt realized he was still with us! Of course, his name & his work, but thought he's died ages ago.A conundrum really, 'western mind' meets 'savage mind' even as cliche : individualism vs anonymity. "I" is a vehicle though,as various as one is (even to oneself) --"I" transports and will be transported (not talking about convict history, involuntary migration etc)--"I" wakes up to find itself in circumstances & worlds -- What i'm burbling on about is that it's wonderfully & properly not at all clear-cut as the cliched binary wd have it... And didnt we all read our Savage Mind with such enthusiasm back then? Everyone who could read found his bricolleur & bricollage (i still cant spell for nuts, so forgive me) infinitely rewarding. And still getting teeth into the status of 'myth'... Share with you upraised glass at his passing!
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