The Origins of Levi-Strauss's Structuralism

Abstract

The paper is concerned with the intellectual origins of Lévi-Strauss's structuralism. In the first section I define this structuralism, arguing that it consists of far more than a simple method, being underpinned by an epistemology and a theory of man in society. I argue further that this structuralism cannot be seen as the application of a method pioneered in linguistics, indicating that the `structural' aspects of Levi-Strauss's first major theoretical work, The Elementary Structures of Kinship derive rather from Gestalt psychology than from linguistics.

In the bulk of the paper I seek to demonstrate that Lévi-Strauss's structuralism in fact has its origins in the attempt to adapt Durkheimian sociology in the light of the newly found individualism characteristic of French radical liberalism of the inter-war years. This adaptation is achieved by submitting Marcel Mauss's theory of exchange to an individualist, rationalist and anti-historicist critique, by means initially of psycho-analysis and subsequently of Gestalt psychology. The Elementary Structures of Kinship combines this theory with a formalistic interpretation of the theory of kinship developed by the Durkheimian sociologist Marcel Granet. In conclusion I note that the significance of the discovery of linguistics for Lévi-Strauss was not the discovery of the concept of structure, but its provision of a radically intellectualist theory of the unconscious as a formal structuring capacity.