2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

T HE ANACLASTIC ILLUSION OF A TRANSCENDENTAL UNITY
Cooked/Rotten that Lévi-Strauss attempts in the volume bearing the same name may not
correspond to an ultimate “scientific” reality and may exist only in the eyes of the anthro-
pologist. More prosaically, it may be revised by further ethnographic and historical data
that may suggest a different source. However, it is only, or perhaps most importantly, the
mode of operation of the structure itself that escapes such a possibility of revision, insofar,
at least, as it can be found at work in the given data (où nous retrouvons sa présence).
We need to be careful, therefore, in interpreting Lévi-Strauss’s declaration that his
“book on mythology is itself a kind of myth […] whose unity will become a reality only in
the mind of the reader.” The unity at stake here, e.g. the “content” of the book, is exactly
homologous the content of the myths the book studies: as such its relevance is only mar-
ginal, since it depends on a common source that is only hypothetical. To the reader who
“believes” in the content of Mythologiques, the book will have acquired a meaning analo-
gous to the meaning of the eagle-hunters myth for the “primitive” Bororo Indian who be-
lieves in it: the book, as well as the myth, will have explained situations, interpreted real-
life conundrums, etc. As a matter of fact, the “meaning” of the book as such can change at
any moment, accordingly with the evolution of the society, our Western society, within
which it is being read. This, however, does not mean at all that the character of the structure
the book describes is illusionary and “mythological” as well. On the contrary, the modes of
transformation of the contents of a book that is itself mythological in character will neces-
sarily be homologous to the structure of the myths it studies and will, therefore, confirm the
objective results of the analysis. In short, the mythological character of Mythologiques,
then, far from consisting in a diminished scientific status, is, as it were, the mark of its “ob-
jectivity.”
We can see here the magnitude of the theoretical shift entailed by this move and, at the
same time, the truly “end-like” features of Structuralism when applied to philosophy: phi-
losophy itself, e.g. the search for truth, is recomprehended as a particular myth, or as a par-
ticular group of myths which is generated by a certain pattern of permutations/
transformations of sequences and themes within our own culture. Structuralism, therefore,
can really represent the “terminator” of philosophy insofar as it sees the latter—that is, phi-
291