2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

220
S TRUCTURES (AND SPACES)
Two more points need to be stressed in this first, preliminary account of structures, the
first concerning the formal and symbolic character of the described systems, and the second
pertaining to their ontological status. The structures Lévi-Strauss tries to uncover are for-
mally describable, at least in principle. That is, they can be expressed, in the usual fashion,
as axiomatized formal theories, using some kind of mathematical logic. Second, the anal-
ysis of kinship or of mythological thought deals with systems that are supposed to be ab-
stract structures mediating our relationship with the world. In other words, they are
unconscious, in the strict technical sense of enjoying a logical and epistemological prece-
dence on conscious, observable behavior. The basic act of differentiation, of taxonomic
classification, is what Lévi-Strauss sees at work in the “Savage mind,” and it is precisely
what constitutes culture as such: a system of abstract (i.e. non-perceptually founded) clas-
sifications that mediates every exchange between man and nature and/or man and man and
actually constitutes a system of conceptual understanding. Man’s relation to the world is
never naive and immediate, but always mediated by the taxonomic system. In the words of
Lévi-Strauss: “Savage thought does not distinguish the moment of observation and that of
interpretation any more than, on observing them, one first registers an interlocutor’s signs
and then tries to understand them: when he speaks, the signs expressed carry with them
their meanings.” 12
The structural method, therefore, needs to find a closed structure regulated by a formal
law ruling the unconscious relations in order to explain the observable (“conscious”) phe-
nomena. Let us see how this requirement translates into a theory when applied to the study
of myths.
For starters, it must remarked that the decision to apply the structural method to my-
thology is dictated by strong epistemological reasons: what we, twentieth century observ-
12. Claude Lévi-Strauss, La pensée sauvage …;Engl. tr. 223. Although to be commended for the effort, the
English title cannot but conveys the impression that the work is a revived XVII century overambitious
travel-book on the “alien” minds of the primitive. Notice, instead, that pensée, in French, is actually
both “thinking” and “thought” and, furthermore, that pensée sauvage can be read both in the subjective
and objective genitive, being both the pensée of the savages and the savage in/of the pensée The book
wants to show, in fact, that the two are essentially the same and that they are not so savage. “Thinking
in the wild,” may be a closer, although perhaps less elegant rendition.