cont. of Levi-Strauss

Personal illustration work to help aid understanding in Binary opposition

“Levi-Strauss’ anthropology leads us towards a philosophy of the priori. But this priori is not grounded in the genetic and biological constitution of the individual. It is imposed upon the individual by the society, so, although the individual interprets personal sensory experience through classifications, categories and concepts, these are not universally given and fixed from birth.” (Harland, 31)

Understanding Levi-Strauss’ structuralist concepts, it is understood that he believed in society to be the guiding force to the building of an individual. Levi-Strauss thus took myths (he writes, ‘folktales in one society are known to be myths in another, and vice versa. This is the first reason to beware of arbitrary classifications.”[176]), thus when the term mythology is applied here, he regards it as a form of folklore) into critical evaluation. He has been quoted to say,

“All myths have a similar socio-cultural function within society. That is, the purpose of myth is to make the world explicable, to magically resolve its problems and contradictions. As he contends, ‘mythical thought always progresses from the awareness of oppositions toward their resolution…the purpose of myth is to provide a logical capable of overcoming a contradiction’ (Storey, 61-62).

Levi-Strauss’ thought was that with using myths, or other folk stories, humans as a societal group banish contradictions in order to create a more understandable and habitable world. His furthering on this subject lead to his idea of binary oppositions, an important struggle between two polar forces, such as lightness and darkness, evil versus good, and so on. This methodology makes a much more visible divide in folktales, and an easier choice in following what’s right. In this method of understanding two opposites, we learn to understand the strength of one. In understanding ‘good’, for instance, we need to know and acknowledge the ‘bad’ to appreciate how defined and contrasted good is.