Claude Levi-Strauss – The Structural Study of Myth – summary, review and analysis - part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4
Claude Levi-Strauss was heavily influenced by de-Saussure thoughts onthe nature of the linguistic sign. But while de-Saussure separated the synchronic from the diachronic and focused his attention only on the former, Levi-Strauss hold that a myth is not static, and the different times see different versions of the same myth.
Claude Levi-Strauss was heavily influenced by de-Saussure thoughts onthe nature of the linguistic sign. But while de-Saussure separated the synchronic from the diachronic and focused his attention only on the former, Levi-Strauss hold that a myth is not static, and the different times see different versions of the same myth.
When faces with multiple versions of the same myth anthropology until Levi-Strauss was concerned with figuring out which is the "true" version.
Levi-Strauss holds that there is no "correct" of "original"
version of a myth and that all versions are valid for study especially if studied
together. This is because that all versions of a myth, however different in
their detail, represent the same "deep structure" of the myth. The extraction
of this deep structure of myth can be facilitated by the co-examining of different
version of the same myth. The structural study of myth according to
Levi-Strauss is able to make order out of chaos by analyzing variations on the structure
of the myth. This, for example, can serve to study the way a myth develops over
time.
For Levi-Strauss, a myth is the product of contradicting values which
exist in every culture. Contradiction such as life and death are irreconcilable
and humans are therefore pushed to resolve the contradiction through its
symbolic processing in the myth. The myth
works to symbolically resolve cultural contradictions through mediating symbol
chains. For example: the contradiction of life/death is translated into the
contradiction between agriculture and hunting, which is in turn translated in
the myth into the binary pair of herbivores and carnivores and the eventual
mediating "in between" symbol of the scavenger (a coyote or raven).
Tracing the route of such symbolic transfigurations in the myth is the
manner in which Levi-Strauss believes that anthropology should proceed in the
study of myth.
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