Claude Lévi-Strauss, known as the father of modern anthropology, has died. He was 100 years old.
Cultural anthropology was my field of study at university, and Strauss always loomed large as a revolutionary figure to be both admired and challenged. I was deeply affected by his work, including and perhaps especially the parts of his work with which I disagreed. Every time I stumbled across one of his plethoric dichotomous juxtapositions, my intellect would instantly rebel with an expansive notion of spectrum.
It is nonetheless probably not hyperbole to say there would be no Shakesville if there had not been a Strauss.
The New York Times has a great obituary here, although my favorite thing I've read comes from Maurice Bloch's obit for the Guardian here:
Of course, his theories have been much criticised, and few would now subscribe to them in the way that they were originally formulated, but nonetheless many anthropologists, including myself, are continually amazed and awed by the fact that, through the use of a theory that many consider flawed, or at least rather vague, Lévi-Strauss gained the most illuminating and unexpected insights in almost all fields of social and cultural anthropology.Indeed so.
[H/T to Space Cowboy.]
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