Claude Levi-Strauss and the Making of Structural Anthropology (review)

Hénaff, Marcel. Claude Lévi-Strauss and the Making of Structural Anthropology. Translated by Mary Baker. [Claude Lévi-Strauss, Paris: Editions Belfond, 1991.] Minnesota:University of Minnesota Press, 1998.

It is significant that the word “today” appears in the first sentence of Marcel Hénaff’s impressive study of Lévi-Strauss, originally published in 1991. Indeed, what does it mean to synthesize an oeuvre whose bibliography indicates that between 1970 and 1980 it had garnered over 46 entire works, 22 special issues of reviews, and, by 1990, some 230 articles! Conversely, the equally significant developments in “post structuralist” circles over the last 20 years could lead one to believe that the structuralist enterprise per se has been superseded, especially among those who take their references from it.