2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

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A NACLASTIC SUPPLEMENTS
consists in a choice between “a rationality without a subject or a a subject without a ratio-
nality”, or when he states that structuralism’s goal is to reintegrate man in nature while, at
the same time, it makes “possible to disregard the subject—that unbearably spoilt child
who has occupied the philosophical scene for too long now, [and] “foresees the twilight of
man.” 55
However, the success of Structuralism as non-philosophy depends rather on the over-
coming of a form of rationality that is consubstantial with metaphysics in it constant refer-
ral to an absolute, “natural” origin, an overcoming that is made possible by accepting a
purely functional interpretation of the structurality of the structure as what is produced, at
a determined moment in space and time, as a result of an economy of forces. The structur-
ality of the structure, its center, is always a temporary point of equilibrium, which, by being
intrinsically temporary is always, to a certain extent, “different” from itself, insofar as it
cannot be stably anchored to any illusionary outside. The semi-transparent medium whose
refractive/reflective properties an anaclastic science will study—to use Lévi-Strauss own
image—is itself always in flux, in a perennially magmatic but nonetheless semi-crystalline
state which allows it to produce its transformations without ever coming to a definite re-
pose.
However, it is evident that the acceptance of an enlarged reading of anaclastic science
pulls Structuralism further and further away from the game-based model with which I start-
ed my discussion. In fact, the most salient characteristic of games, as we have seen, is to be
found in the existence of a fixed set of rules that allow the manipulation of the elements
they are defined upon. A game, in the definition of von Neumann and Morgenstern that
Lévi-Strauss has embedded in his own work, is “nothing but the totality of it rules.” This
definition is bound to fall apart once the status of the rules is recognized as subject to a con-
stant evolution and renegotiation, as the temporary point of equilibrium of an ever changing
flux. This does not mean, however, that game collapses into the void of a contradictory or,
worse, vacuous definition. It simply means that the game-based model needs to be enlarged
55. “le sujet—unsupportable enfant gaté”: Claude Lévi-Strauss, L’Homme nu…, 614; Engl. tr. 687.