Claude Lévi-Strauss

Abstract This article, originally delivered as a lecture to Mexican colleagues, argues that the time has come to reassess the intellectual legacy of anthropological structuralism as theorized and, above all, practiced by its founder, Claude Lévi-Strauss. One of the central questions to be addressed is whether Lévi-Strauss's oeuvre—to invoke a typical structuralist dichotomy—is internally continuous or discontinuous. While aligning with those interpreters who perceive a unity of inspiration and method throughout his work, we propose that the theoretical persona of Lévi-Strauss is split between two eternally unequal twins: a cultural hero and a trickster—the great mediator (who is also the institutor of ‘diatonic’ order) and his counterpart, the master of separation (who likewise embodies ‘chromatic’ fluidity). We argue that there are two structuralisms—but, as Lévi-Strauss himself demonstrated, two already constitute a multiplicity.