2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

F ROM LANGUAGE TO MYTH
blood relations” and previously assigned to the second column. Once the procedure has
been repeated for all the basic relations, the whole structure of the myth analyzed can be
represented by a matrix of the following form:
.....
Lévi-Strauss comments the matrix by saying:
If our conception is adopted, the order of chronological succession is reabsorbed
into an atemporal matrix structure, the form of which is indeed
constant. The shifting of functions is then no more than one of their modes
of permutations (by vertical columns or fractions of columns. 18
The matrix above represents only a partial view of the structure, though, as we might have
guessed from the analogy with the chess-game: the matrix corresponds to a specific, par-
ticular version of the myth, i.e. to a specific chess-game. In fact, the transition from one col-
umn to the next represents a specific, single application of the basic rules (e.g. the laws of
the myth), more or less like the transition from the initial chessboard position to the position
produced by the application of the pawn-moving rule to the king pawn. The matrix as a
whole, then, should not be mistaken for the analogous device used in game-theory to rep-
resent the game, e.g. the space of all possible strategic interactions made possible by a set
of rules. Rather, Lévi-Strauss’s matrix represents a partie, or a play, in strict game-theoretic
terminology. In other words, it bears more resemblance to a single vertical path within the
search-space than to the space itself.
w -x 1/y 1-z
-w 1/x 1-y z
1/w 1-x y -z
1-w x -y 1/z
........ ......... ......... .........
......
Thus, we might ask: what would properly describe the entire space of all possible Oe-
dipus/chess myths/games? A stack of matrices, of course: as Lévi-Strauss says, “we shall
......
......
18. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Anthropologie Structurale Deux…, 165; Engl tr. 138.
229