2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

F ROM LANGUAGE TO MYTH
ulating an exchange and not as constraints limiting an initial freedom, play a most active
role in the social process, because they allow the formation of a social bond by moving
around, at each generation, the individual actors from one sub-group to another one. The
marriage rules are both creative—they create the social ties between groups—and dynam-
ic—they allow the social group to perpetuate in time from one generation to the next. In
Lévi-Strauss’ own words
kinship is not a static phenomenon; it exists only in self-perpetuation.
Here we are not thinking of the desire to perpetuate the race, but rather of
the fact that in most kinship systems the initial disequilibrium produced in
one generation between the group that gives the woman and the group that
receives her can be stabilized only by counterprestations in following gen-
erations. 10
This dynamic aspect is extremely important, and especially for our purposes, because it
makes clear that for Lévi-Strauss the “game of marriage” is really a game—and not only in
the loose metaphorical sense of being a structure endowed with “formal” rules. Rather, it
is a game in the more technical sense explored above: it is a dynamic process that possesses
the resources to propel itself forward, to “self-perpetuate” itself from one generation to the
next. The steps taken by one generation when deciding which wife to choose, therefore, are
analogous to the chess-player move, although, instead of Black and White playing their
game, we may have more players involved, each one of them corresponding to one of the
sub-group of the given society. Lévi-Strauss’s identification of the game of marriage with
a chess game is justified, in the first instance, at least, by his truly game-theoretic interpre-
tation of the concept of rule (of marriage) as the active and creative component that turns a
collection of actors into a structured dynamic interaction of players exploiting the strategies
that the rules make possible. 11
10. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Anthropologie Structurale…, 57; Engl. tr. 47.
11. Further evidence in favor of a game-theoretic interpretation of rules in Lévi-Strauss is provided by another
contemporary essay, “Race et Histoire,” published in 1952, where the analysis is broadened to
consider the interactions among different cultures as a complex game in which the players may employ
contrasting strategies in order to maximize their (and, ultimately, humanity’s, this being a non-zero
sum game) advantage. See Anthropologie Structurale Deux…, 412-422; Engl tr. 354-362.
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