Lucie (and others),
Lucie DuFresne wrote:
> - he was the first to say and be heard, that all humans have the same
> brain structure and think essentially the same. They may think about
> different things and use their thoughts to different purposes, but they
> THOUGHT the same. So, no such thing as 'primitive' versus 'modern'
> thought. People living in cultures with simpler technologies, oral
>
As Stocking argues well in his _Victorian Anthropology_, this notion of
a psychic unity is much older. It exists prior to 19th century racial
theories, and is revitalized by Tylor and his associates (and seems very
caught up with Tylor's own Quaker faith, and its component affirmation
of the spiritual unity of humanity). The evolutionary theories of
culture actually serve to restore an idea of that psychic unity by
explaining the relationship between the category of the primitive and
the modern as along a developmental axis, instead of fundamentally
different in nature (as racial theories did). Further, Malinowski
strongly argues for the psychic unity of humanity throughout his work,
and specifically negates the idea that "savages" and "moderns" think in
different ways. I know, in some ways, this is a quibble, but I just
don't think it is defensible to make this argument with regard to
Levi-Strauss.
That said, I really appreciated the rest of your post and think you make
good points there. I had forgotten about how important Levi-Strauss was
on analyzing formal tropes in art, and I think it gives good insight
into how his structuralism can provide us with usable tools to this day.
Regards,
Grant
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