Lévi-Strauss

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.