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Lévi-Strauss
LÉVI-STRAUSS (see also ADORNO)
The key example Žižek takes from Lévi-Strauss is his famous analysis
in Structural Anthropology concerning two different groups from the
same tribe, each conceiving of their village in a different way. Zižek's
point is that the "truth of the village is to be found neither in some
reconciliation of the two competing versions nor in some neutral,
"objective' overhead view, but in this very split itself: "Returning to
Lévi-Strauss's example of the two drawings of the village, let us note
that it is here that we can see in what precise sense the Real intervenes
through anamorphosis' (p.338). This will be related by Zižek to that
fundamental 'split' of sexual difference, where again the "truth' is not
to be found in some reconciliation or putting together of a whole, but
in the antagonism itself. As he asks: 'How ... are we to understand
the "ahistorical" status of sexual difference? Perhaps an analogy to
Claude Lévi-Strauss's notion of the "zero-institution" might be of
some help here' (p. 335-6). Žižek will use Adorno's analysis of the
social in exactly the same sense as that of Lévi-Strauss here.
[[Category:People]]
