Levi-strauss about primitive culture. A. b. Ostrovsky ethnological structuralism of Claude Levi-Strauss - primitive thinking

A. B. Ostrovsky

ETHNOLOGICAL STRUCTURALISM OF CLAUD LEVI-STRAUS

The Russian reader has already had the opportunity to get acquainted with the work of Claude Levi-Strauss - a French academician, the founder of the school of ethnological structuralism, one of the most original cultural thinkers of the 20th century. Experts in the field of folklore have mastered the works of the scientist to the greatest extent, concerning his method of analyzing myths.

Quite a few philosophical dissertations have also been written, where - in accordance with the dogmatic exaltation of philosophy over the "private" sciences of man that prevailed in our country until recently - the work of Levi-Strauss as an ethnologist and as a philosopher of culture and methodologist was mechanistically separated and contrasted.

The general reader is aware of important works Levi-Strauss, as "Structural Anthropology" (published in 1958, Russian translation made in 1983), "Sad Tropics" (published in 1955, an abridged Russian translation published in 1984) and articles by various years of analysis of myths, included in the collection "Foreign research on the semiotics of folklore" (1985).

Unfortunately, the work of Levi-Strauss of the 1960s and 1970s remains almost unclaimed in Russian science. - the period of greatest prosperity, when such large pearls appear as "Untamed Thought" ("Lapensee sauvage", P., 1962) and a four-volume study of myths and thinking based on the culture of the Indians of North and South America - "Mythologiques" ("Mythologiques", t. 1–4, P., 1964–1971). The same can be said about subsequent works related to the material and subject of study with the mentioned four-volume cycle: "The Way of Masks" ("La voie des masques, vol. 1-2. Geneve, 1975), "The Jealous Potter" ("La potierejalouse ". P., 1985) and "History of the lynx" ("L" histoire de lynx ". P., 1991). Levi-Strauss, a culturologist, author of Structural Anthropology Two (Anthropol gie structurale deux. P., 1973) and A View from afar (Le regard eloigne. P., 1983), is practically unknown to the Russian audience.

This situation is all the more distressing because the translations of Levi-Strauss's works into Western European languages ​​(primarily into English) were carried out two or three years after their publication. The research response to his work in Europe and the USA turned out to be extensive: in a special bibliographic index, published in 1976, which takes into account both the analysis of the methodology and the understanding of the scientist's achievements in certain aspects (covering the literature in six European languages ​​- French, English, German , Italian, Spanish and Portuguese), 1384 titles are presented, including 43 monographic studies and collections of articles.

The peak of enthusiasm for ethnological structuralism falls on the 60-70s. At present, this hobby has passed, and the stage of crystallization of the interest of serious humanities scholars in Levi-Strauss, a thinker and methodologist, has come, those of his concepts that are of lasting value for the development of cultural studies and the philosophy of culture have been singled out. His fundamental principles on the dialogue of cultures, embodied in the article "Race and History" ("Race et Histoire", P., 1952), have been part of the learning programs French lyceums.

The professional career of a scientist, which was crowned with such wide and widespread recognition, was, however, not smooth and cloudless. Formation and professional development of Levi-Strauss is largely due to the historical destinies of Europe.

Claude Levi-Strauss was born in 1908 in Brussels in the family of a French artist of Jewish origin. During the First World War, he lived in Versailles, in the family of his maternal grandfather, a rabbi. The situation in the grandfather's family was not unambiguous: although the norms of Jewish religious life were scrupulously observed, the grandmother of the future ethnologist, as he himself recalls in an interview, was free-thinking and raised her children in the same spirit. Levi-Strauss's parents combined a respectful attitude towards national religious traditions with broad secular interests, a passion for art and music.

The first ideological interest of the future academician was socialism, both in theoretical and practical terms, contrary to the lifestyle of the family and grandfather, and parents, where it was customary to refrain from participating in politics. Reading at the age of 16 the works of K. Marx, Levi-Strauss discovered the German classical philosophy - Kant and Hegel. The first research was his dissertation work (after studying philosophy at the Sorbonne) on the analysis of the philosophical premises of the concept of historical materialism. If the scientist spoke about the courses of ancient Greek philosophy, the history of science, etc. in an interview on the occasion of his eightieth birthday: "I went through all this more like a zombie, with the feeling that I was outside everything," then the interest in political thought was deep and combined in student years with active work in the French Socialist Party.

In the cantonal elections of 1932, he was nominated by this party. Only an accident - a car accident - prevented then to take place political career Levi-Strauss. In the future, he moved away from political activity, although interest in politics, and even more so in the works of Marx as a heuristic source of sociological thought, remained for quite a long time.

The turn, at the beginning of his professional path, to anthropology, the study of the traditions of non-literate societies, turned out to be not trivial either. After graduation, and then candidate's examinations at the Sorbonne - service in the army, later - teaching for several years at the Lyceum. Both he and his wife had to teach not in Paris, but in other cities, and he in some, and she in others, so the newlyweds were only together a couple of days a week, meeting with Claude's parents in Paris. The trip in 1935 of a young family to Brazil (comprehended in "The Sad Tropics" as the awakening of an ethnographic vocation) was not yet a professional expedition of an anthropologist; it was more like the voluntary exile of a Sorbonne graduate. Levi-Strauss was soon invited to teach sociology at the newly founded university in São Paulo, which was in need of personnel with European training.

After the end of the first school year, the Levi-Strauss, instead of spending a vacation in France, went to the Cadioweu and Bororo Indian tribes: this was the first field impressions. The ethnographic collection - hunting tools, utensils, decorative pottery, feather jewelry and more - was shown by a young collector in Paris at an exhibition organized by him. Due to the interest generated by the exhibition, Lévi-Strauss received financial support from the Museum of Man and from the National Center for Scientific Research to carry out an ethnographic expedition. He returned to Brazil not as a teacher of sociology, but as a field anthropologist. The expedition to the Nambikwara tribes, organized with the money received, took more than a year. The mere compilation of the scientific attribution of the exhibits collected during this expedition, transferred by him in 1939 to the Museum of Man, required a year of work in Paris.

Impressions, reflections of a European researcher, knowing both from the outside and from the inside the customs, customs and peculiar worldview of the natives of the river basin. The Amazons are described in the "Sad Tropics", written on the basis of expedition diaries, but after almost 20 years. The book impresses not only with the richest exotic material presented in it, but also with the elegance of its comprehension: the author tries to recreate the system of symbolic thinking inherent in a particular non-literate culture. This scientific and artistic work, highly appreciated by the French humanitarian community (despite the fact that the reaction of a narrowly professional environment was rather restrained), was an example of free philosophizing in a situation of psychological experience of the facts of a foreign culture. Interestingly, in asking about the intellectual premises of such an experience, Lévi-Strauss distances himself not only from Descartes' rationalism, but also from Bergson's ideas about the irreversibility of the flow of mental phenomena. He connects the formation of a structuralist approach to understanding a living "primitive" culture primarily with a rethinking of the principles developed earlier by Freud for modeling the sphere of the unconscious, but not in relation to an individual, but to the facts of culture.

Beginning of the Strange War. and the Nazi invasion of France meant for Levi-Strauss to serve in the army as an agent for the expected British corps. After his discharge from the army, he searched for a position as a teacher for several months. In Paris, there was no such place for the future academician: as was stated by a ministerial official of the Vichy government, it was impossible to send a teacher with such a surname to Paris. The adoption of the so-called "racial laws" was already expected, and with Levi-Strauss, who had begun work at the Perpignan Lyceum, none of his colleagues, except for the teacher of physical education, did not want to communicate. When he finally got a position as professor of philosophy at the École Polytechnique de Montpellier, he was soon dismissed on the basis of the "racial laws" that had already entered into force.

A new turn in the fate of Levi-Strauss, which gave him the opportunity not only to escape from Nazism, but also to take another decisive step in professional development, was an unexpected invitation to the United States. He was invited there in accordance with the program of the Rockefeller Foundation to save European intellectuals. The invitation was due to the attention shown to the articles of Levi-Strauss published at that time - according to social organization South American Indians - from A. Metro and other US ethnologists.

In New York, Lévi-Strauss began by teaching a course in the sociology of Latin American countries at the evening university for adults, and then taught ethnology for French-speaking immigrants at the New School for Higher Studies. Here Levi-Strauss met R. Jacobson, a native of Russia, one of the founders of structural linguistics, the influence of whose ideas is largely due to the formation in the 40-50s. Levi-Strausian ethnological structuralism. The enrichment of theoretical and practical knowledge was also facilitated by close communication for several years with American scientists who had considerable field experience.

The most important factor in the creation of a new method for the study of non-literate cultures was Levi-Strauss's acquaintance with the excellent collection of the National Library, which kept him in the United States almost until the end of 1947 (after the war, for several years he served as cultural adviser in the French embassy). Basic material for the preparation of his first major work, "Elementary structures of kinship" ("Les structures elementaires de la parente"), which was completed in New York in 1947, and later submitted as a doctoral dissertation (published in France in 1949 .), was obtained from the American National Library. At the same time, the scientist, who entered the period of his maturity, realized himself "as a person of a library, that is, an" armchair scientist ", and not as a field researcher."

Behind this was not a belittling of the importance of direct ethnographic experience (although Levi-Strauss no longer took part in expeditions), but a recognition of the high value of intellectual inspiration that arises in the process of rethinking the huge, previously collected material, the discovery of its inherent system.

Despite the fact that Levi-Strauss was offered prestigious and lucrative contracts in the United States, he decides to return to France. Now, finally, his professional career was developing quite favorably in his homeland. First, he was offered the leadership of one of the directions at the National Center for Scientific Research, then he received the position of deputy director for ethnology at the Museum of Man, and later, until the end of 1959, he headed the department of religions of non-literate peoples at the School of Higher Studies (Ecole des Hautes Etudes ). In parallel with this, since 1953, for seven years, he served as the Secretary General of the International Council for the Social Sciences (one of the organizations under the auspices of UNESCO). In the same period, his culturological study Race and History was published, as well as a number of articles later included in Structural Anthropology, including The Structure of Myths (1955), where the method for studying their internal logic was first outlined.

In these post-war years, not only the research, but also the organizational potential of the scientist was revealed, although both of these aspects were realized in full force later, already during the period of his work in 1960–1982. at the College de France. Levi-Strauss managed to get there only on the third attempt, since the conservative administration of this educational institution treated with great care. The attractiveness of the College de France for Levi-Strauss was explained primarily by the fact that this one of the oldest and most prestigious institutions in France had great scientific and organizational capabilities.

In January 1960, Levi-Strauss began to head the recreated department of social anthropology (at the beginning of the century at the College de France, the department of sociology, where the study of non-literate societies was conducted, was headed by M. Moss, a student of E. Durktheim). The new name of the department marked the recognition that "Structural Anthropology" could form the basis for a new scientific and educational cultural specialty. The first part of the name - "social" meant continuity, methodological connection with the traditions of the French sociological school.

In the same year, the Laboratory of Social Anthropology was established at the Collège de France, under the direction of Lévi-Strauss, in order to provide young professionals with the opportunity to research work, and the academic journal on anthropology "L" Homme" ("Man") was organized similarly to the English "Man" and "American Antropoligist".

Among the first employees of the Laboratory were scientists with significant experience in field and theoretical research: I. Shiva, J. Pouillon, and then - P. Clastres, the spouses F. and M. Izard, L. Sebag, etc. On the basis of the Laboratory, probation was constantly carried out , organized expeditions to non-literate peoples in various regions of the world and prepared dissertations. Among the young researchers were not only the French, but also scientists from other countries of Europe and America. Never in the history of ethnology has the study of non-literate cultures been presented as widely as in the school of structuralism that formed around the Laboratory: the study of kinship relations and the regulation of marriages (A. Deluze, V. Valery, F. Heritier), potestar relations and potestar-political organization ( M. Izard, P. Clastres, J. Pouyon), mythology and beliefs (N. Belmont, P. Bidou, L. Sebag), shamanism (P. Bidu, J. Duvernay, L. Sebag), ritual (J. Lemoyen , S. Cherkezof). Mythology, in unity with the mechanisms of thinking of the bearers of traditional culture, was the main object of the research work of Levi-Strauss himself.

Admission to the French Academy in 1973 was an expression of recognition of the fundamental contribution of Levi-Strauss to national and world science. But this did not give the scientist a feeling of triumph; after all, before that, several national academies - Denmark, Norway, the USA, as well as the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain recognized him as their member.

Whatever the vicissitudes of Levi-Strauss's professional career, his intellectual activity was determined to the greatest extent by intrinsic motivation, and the latter was constantly developing. Levi-Strauss often referred to his previous works, but never - either orally or in writing - did not repeat what was previously said. When he finished the book, he felt, in his own words, how it "turns into an alien body." "I am that place where for a few months or years things are developed or acquired, and then they are separated by some kind of eruption."

One of the most original aspects of Levi's methodology is the peculiar role that he assigned to the historical factor in the study of cultural phenomena. It is not characteristic of him to oppose historical heterochrony - synchrony, abstracting from the process of formation, and not to deny the role of evolution as such, which the French scientist was usually accused of, already starting with the publication of his "Structural Anthropology", but an attempt to see the crystallization of the changes that have occurred in multi-layeredness, in the logic of internal organization inherent in the phenomena of culture. The psychological and personal prerequisites for such a heuristic orientation of the researcher are not a mystery: a passion for geology in childhood, an interest in youth in models of the unconscious as causality - in relation to society and to the individual psyche. However, only anthropological studies - personal experience intercultural contacts and theoretical research - led to the creation of a holistic humanistic picture of the past and present of mankind.

Trying to outline the contours of the culturological concept of Levi-Strauss, we note first of all the role that he assigns to ethnology in shaping the worldview of a person of the 20th century. Ethnology is the third stage of humanism after the Renaissance and the beginning of the development of the cultural values ​​of India and China. Unlike the previous stages of humanistic self-knowledge, thanks to the study of non-literate forms of civilization, and all without exception, it opens up the possibility of creating the most comprehensive picture of the connection between man and nature. In order to understand a non-literate culture, "so that inner insight (by a native, or at least by an observer having a native experience) is translated into terms of outer insight", the ethnologist needs to pay special attention to the nuances of the mental life of the natives.

Comprehension through experiencing the meaning of another culture inevitably leads the ethnologist both to self-knowledge and to the knowledge of one's own culture in the historical-temporal perspective of the developing ties between man and nature.

Levi-Strauss's approach to culture is not neo-Russoism, much less evolutionism, although the influence of the humanistic ideas of J.J. Rousseau is undeniably present. In the formation of his philosophical position, he relies on the achievements of French thinkers, assigning Rousseau the place of the founder of the anthropological approach to culture. The cultivation of compassion for another person and living beings in general, selfless comprehension of other people by identifying oneself with them - these principles of genuine human communication, described for the first time by Rousseau, are proclaimed by Levi-Strauss to be absolutely necessary for true ethnological knowledge. You can say this general principles intersubject communication, where no one acts as an object of manipulation and partners are equal in their significance.

Repeatedly addressing these questions, Lévi-Strauss answers them most consistently in Race and History, commissioned by UNESCO. In fact, here we are not talking about races, but about the diversity of human cultures, since the scientist categorically rejects the possibility of considering the intellectual and social traits inherent in representatives different cultures, as derivatives of their racial differences. Free from racial prejudice in any form, Levi-Strauss shows that a worldview based on a one-sidedly interpreted idea of ​​progress or one-directional historical evolution can in itself even become a prerequisite for racism, which tries to justify the various civilizational successes of different cultures.

The diversity of cultures has both objective roots (specific environmental conditions, geographical position relative to other peoples) and subjective ones - the desire to be different from their neighbors, developing an original lifestyle. Ethnocentrism also acts as a guardian of diversity - the rejection, in one form or another, of a foreign culture, identifying oneself with people, and others with "barbarians" and "savages". Summarizing the prerequisites for such a xenophobic worldview, Levi-Strauss gives a formula that is paradoxical at first glance: "A barbarian is, first of all, a person who believes in barbarism."

According to his culturological ideas, Levi-Strauss is not an evolutionist. He considers the most dangerous delusion to be the formula of false evolutionism, when various simultaneously existing states of human societies are interpreted as different stages, or steps, of a single development process moving towards the same goal. A typical example of such a false premise in science is when the unliterate native tribes of the 20th century. are directly compared with the archaic forms of European cultures, although the so-called "primitive societies" have come a long way of development, due to which they are neither a primitive nor a "childish" state of mankind. Their fundamental difference from technically advanced civilizations is not that they did not develop, but that the history of their development was not accompanied by a cumulation of inventions, but was focused on preserving the original ways of establishing a connection with nature.

In the strategy of intercultural relations, following the false premise of one-pointedness of progress leads, according to Levi-Strauss, to the imposition, sometimes violent, of the so-called Western way of life, which results in the destruction of the age-old traditions existing among the “primitives”. The progress of mankind cannot be likened to a one-way climb of a ladder: it takes place in different directions, incommensurable with the mere growth of technological achievements. So, in the field of knowledge human body, the connection of its physical and mental aspects The East is several millennia ahead of Western civilizations. The priority of India in the creation of religious and philosophical systems is known.

Recognizing the existence of a significant similarity of human values ​​in different civilizations, Levi-Strauss emphasizes that identity is determined by the presence in a particular culture of a special approach to their implementation. None of the specific civilizations can claim to be the one that most embodies, expresses a certain world civilization: "world civilization cannot be on a global scale anything other than a coalition of cultures, each of which retains its own identity."

In the work cited above, as well as in the article "Paths for the Development of Ethnography" (see this edition), Levi-Strauss poses the problem of maintaining the "optimum of differences", which should be a criterion for the progressive nature of contacts and cooperation between civilizations and cultures. The exchange of cultural achievements, contacts contribute to multifaceted development, but the unavoidable tendency towards unification should not have absolute superiority over the opposite trend, namely the desire of a particular culture to preserve its differences, its identity. The preservation of cultural diversity was for the first time comprehended as a value by the civilization of the 20th century ... which, on the way to the unity of mankind, to a large extent overcame geographical, linguistic and racial barriers. The culturological views of Levi-Strauss, which are undoubtedly related to his experience of internal comprehension of other cultures, including native cultures, at the same time, are not derived from his theoretical and ethnological studies. They can be interpreted as a philosophical aspect of a scientist's understanding of his professional vocation. Rather, even ethnological research, including such super-complicated for an inexperienced reader as "Untamed Thought" and "Mythologies", was inspired by the search for ways to understand native culture, its inherent symbolism, logical coherence. The construction of structural-semiotic models of the functioning of various phenomena of non-literate culture is not a self-sufficient academic task. Ethnological research, according to Levi-Strauss, seeks to "discover and formulate the laws of order in all registers of human thought."

Not only Levi-Strauss himself, but also all his like-minded people and followers, whose works constitute the school of ethnological structuralism, it is common, albeit to a different extent, to conduct theoretical research up to the discovery of this cherished level of understanding of another culture, namely, the laws inherent in its carriers. thinking, thought patterns.

Structural anthropology as a methodological direction in the study of socio-cultural phenomena of the so-called "primitive", that is, traditional, societies is based on the following principles, which together make up the method: 1) the phenomenon of culture is considered in a synchronous section of society, in the unity of its internal and external relations; 2) the phenomenon of culture is analyzed as a multi-level integral formation, and the connections between its levels are interpreted in a semiotic way; 3) the study of the phenomenon is carried out without fail, taking into account its variability - within the framework of a particular culture or a wider area where its transformation took place.

The final result of the study is the modeling of the "structure", that is, the proposed algorithm that determines the hidden logic inherent in both individual variants of the phenomenon (invariant connections of elements and relations between them) and virtual transitions from one variant to another.

The structural-semiotic method did not take shape all at once, of course, and at first seemed very vulnerable to criticism. The anthropology of Levi-Strauss was attempted to be reduced to the absolutization of synchrony or to the direct borrowing of the category "structure" from Jacobson's structural linguistics. However, the method of ethnological structuralism, fully developed by the beginning of the 60s, was not only a heuristic rethinking of the ideas of the French sociologists of primitiveness E. Durkheim and M. Mauss, a combination of these ideas with concepts drawn from the description of linguistic patterns. Structural-semiotic modeling actually offers a kind of journey to the mental structures of the natives, objectified in the facts of traditional culture, which, in turn, are constantly recreated in it.

The most productive was the study of the properties of thinking of the bearers of traditional culture in relation to totemic classifications (see "Totemism Today" in this publication, etc.), to myths and masks. Behind the variety of phenomena that make up the totemic complex (the identification by members of a social group of themselves with an animal or plant species, beliefs, rituals, food prohibitions corresponding to this mental connection), Levi-Strauss saw specific codes through which there is an "exchange of similarities and differences between nature and culture" and the distinction of social groups among themselves.

Totemic codes are logical forms suitable for identifying similarities and differences. Two other of the main operations of modern thinking, namely generalization - concretization and dismemberment - connection, are also carried out, since the use of a natural species (totem) as an operator makes transitions possible: individual - social group (gender and age group, clan, lineage) - tribe. If a tribe uses body parts of a natural being to name clans, then with such mental detotalization in the signified, there is a movement from the general to the particular, and if retotalization also takes place, there is a movement from the particular to the general. Similar mental operations can be performed with the help of "morphological classifiers" (Levi-Strauss) - the paws of the beast, its tail, teeth, etc., according to which individuals of different clans occupying a similar social position are correlated with each other. The totality of such operations, taking into account all the totems through which people think in a given tribe, the researcher calls the "totemic operator". This is a model that recreates the real logical form used by the natives to capture socially significant content, its abstraction and concretization.

For the first time in the history of ethnological thought, on the material of the mysterious, discouraging travelers, missionaries of the 19th century. totemism, the logical rationality of the thinking of the natives was demonstrated, its ability to perform all those basic operations that a person of a technically advanced civilization performs. At the same time, the specificity of the so-called primitive thinking is also clearly outlined: the logical axis general - particular has not yet been singled out as independent form(concept) and is reproduced inseparably from the semiotic axis nature - culture.

In "Untamed Thought" (literal translation: "Wild Thought" or "Thought in a state of wildness"), other models are described - they cannot be considered structuralist in the literal sense of the word - recreating specific logical forms used in the mentality of people in traditional societies: "science concrete" - ways of ordering in native classifications, "bricolage" and "totalizing thinking". The first of these models shows that the special attention of the natives to the concrete is combined with their simultaneous desire for symbolization. In turn, symbols play the role of specific units of thinking, they have an intermediate logical status between concrete sensory images and abstract concepts.

The model, called by the researcher “bricolage” (for an explanation of the metaphor of this untranslatable concept, derived from the French word bricoler, see p. 126), takes into account the specifics of the process of mental activity, free, in contrast to the design process, from the strict subordination of means to an end. Rather the opposite happens; the intention of thought is determined by the recombination, in the manner of a kaleidoscope, of images-symbols formed as a result of past activity.

Finally, the model of "totalizing thinking" is an attempt to demonstrate that in the mentality of the natives, using classifications various types, there are certain forms of their mutual logical conditionality: transitions of one into another; complementarity. In other words, the plurality of logics - a feature inherent in traditional societies - is unified to a certain extent.

"Untamed Thought" is a book-reflection that, on a more solid scientific basis, continues the concrete humanistic approach to the peculiar culture of "primitive societies", which is characteristic of Levi-Strauss in "The Sad Tropics". At the same time, the research intention, as shown by scientists, can be directed not only from modernity to traditional society (search for the logical axis general - particular there), but also from the latter to relics of "untamed thought" in our civilization (for example, the book analyzes the ways of naming birds, various domestic animals). The concept of "untamed thought" means a set of characteristics of mental activity, originally (more precisely, since the Neolithic) inherent in it, which has been preserved more clearly in the mentality of traditional societies and is also present in the fabric of our thinking, coexisting with forms of scientific thought.

The studies of Levi-Strauss overturn the theory formulated in 1910–1920. L. Levy-Bruhl's concept, according to which the people of traditional societies are supposedly inherent in prelogical ("prelogique") thinking, incapable of seeing the inconsistency of phenomena and processes and controlled by mystical experiences. This theory was not approved by ethnologists with experience in field observation, but it filled a conceptual void in the problem of the formation of mental operations. Levi-Strauss' proof of the potential equality of the logical power of the so-called primitive thinking and the thinking of a person of modern European civilization is all the more significant because it was carried out not through an experimental psychological study of individuals, but within the framework of traditional culture itself.

In "Mythologics" (the study of the logics of myths), Levi-Strauss set the task of overcoming the gap characteristic of Western philosophical thought between the spheres of the sensuous and the intelligible.

In the first volume of this extensive study, which included an analysis of 813 myths, oppositions made up of polar sensory qualities are named as starting tools for reconstructing the procedural properties of thought: raw / boiled, wet / dry, etc. In fact, both in the first and other volumes This study reveals the active role of another type of binary oppositions, composed not only of sensory features: communication / non-communication, moderate / immoderate, etc. researchers of the texts of myths, but also the study of botany, the zoology of the habitat of specific South and North American Indian tribes) confirmed the effectiveness of the binary opposition, as a rule, but not necessarily formed by sensory features, as an organic unit of the mentality of the natives.

Tracing how the operation of binary oppositions connects various etiological themes or various mythologemes and groups of myths, reflecting different aspects of the life of the natives, constituted the main methodological guideline of the researcher. If a separate opposition plays the role of a sign expressed by a bipolar axis, then the combination of such signs characterizes a kind of coordinate system - the canvas of mythological thinking. In this system, the most general coordinates do not necessarily turn out to be more abstract: for example, in "Raw and Boiled" (vol. 1), the most general coordinate of thinking is precisely expressed by the qualities put in the title of the volume, and in the second volume, "From Honey to Ashes ", this role is played by the feature containing/content. The coordinate system, embracing the entire hierarchy of such signs-oppositions, as it were, represents a specifically organized fund of the collective mind.

In the reconstructed process of "primitive" thinking, making virtual transitions from one myth (or group of myths) to another, it is possible to single out, based solely on the text of the "Mythologist", three operations carried out with the help of binary oppositions as units of thinking: 1) the combination of binary oppositions ; 2) the transfer of binarity or the establishment of correspondences between more general and more specific oppositions; 3) the introduction of mediators.

The implementation of the totality of these specific operations, as can be seen from the Levi- Straussian analysis of myths, provides all the requirements that (according to the famous psychologist J. Piaget) conceptual thinking must meet. In other words, not at the level of an individual, but at the level of a collective subject (concrete culture, historical and cultural area), responsible for the circulation, transformation of the semantics of myths, a type of rationality is achieved that is inherent in its logical quality of conceptual thought.

If in "Totemism Today" and "Untamed Thought" the fullness of the logical possibilities of the so-called primitive thinking is shown, then in "Mythology" its procedural characteristics are discovered and the outline of the collective subject's thinking is recreated.

Levi-Strauss' study of "untamed thought" (both its logical possibilities, reaching the possibilities of conceptual thinking, and its specificity) also plays an invaluable role for his culturological views. If the diversity of cultural traditions is the real fund of world culture, then "untamed thought", which is the only universal of human mental activity in all civilizations, is a prerequisite for mutual understanding in intercultural dialogue, real compassion and love for another culture.

In modern cultural studies, a special place is occupied by structuralism. This is determined by the need to develop new research methods based solely on scientific concepts. Mathematics, cybernetics, and semiotics had a significant influence on the formation of the discipline. Consider .

Key principles

Structuralism is methodological direction in the study of social and cultural phenomena. It is based on the following principles:

1. The process is considered as a holistic, multi-level education.
2. The study of the phenomenon is carried out taking into account the variability - within a particular culture or a larger space in which it changes.

The final result is the modeling of the "structure", the establishment of the hidden logic of the formation of cultural integrity.

Peculiarities

Structuralism is a method used in the study of the forms in which the cultural activity of people is expressed. They are universal universals, accepted schemes of intellectual work. These forms are denoted by the concept of structure. It, in turn, is interpreted as a set of relations that maintain their stability over a long historical period or in different parts of the world. These fundamental structures function as unconscious mechanisms that regulate all spiritual and creative activity of a person.

Formation of discipline

Researchers identify several stages that passed in its development structuralism. This:

1. 20-50s 20th century. At this stage, a lot of research was carried out, attempts were made to prove that the whole phenomenon is stable and exists regardless of chance.
2. 50-60s 20th century Key concepts at this stage are explored and comprehended by the French liberal arts school. Techniques for objective cognition of unconscious models of relations in various spheres of social and cultural reality are beginning to be consistently developed. It was at this stage that the key task of the discipline was formulated. It consisted in the study of culture as an all-encompassing semiotic structure functioning to ensure communication between people. The study was focused on abstracting from the specifics of ethnic and historical forms, to reveal the common, defining the essence of the culture of all peoples at all times.
3. At the third stage, the worldview and methodological problems faced by researchers in the past stages were overcome. The consistent solution of the tasks set leads to the almost complete displacement of man from the sphere of study by impersonal systems.

The main representatives of structuralism- J. Lacan, R. Barthes, M. Foucault, J. Deleuze, J. Bodillard, etc.

Problems and tasks

"The man dies, the structure remains" - an idea that has generated a lot of controversy. In 1968, a wave of unrest swept through France. Students, young intellectuals, proclaimed the slogan: "It's not structures that take to the streets, but living people!" The answer to it was given. In an effort to realize the goals not achieved by the classical concept, he highlights the task of studying the "man of desire." So Foucault showed that structuralism in philosophy flexible method, able to adapt to conditions. At the same time, several new problems were put forward. They were in:

1. Understanding everything non-structural within the framework of the structure.
2. Identification of contradictions that arise when trying to study a person only through language systems.

In addition, the following tasks were formulated:

1. Overcome the linguistic reductionism and non-historicism of classical structuralism.
2. Build new models of meaning formation.
3. Explain the practice of open reading of cultural texts, overcoming analytical and hermeneutical models of interpretation.

Claude Levi-Strauss

He was a French ethnographer, culturologist, social scientist. This man is considered the founder of structuralism. The scientist recognized the essential similarity of human values ​​in different civilizations. In his works, he emphasized that identity should be determined by the presence in a particular culture of a specific method of their implementation. Levi-Strauss said that no civilization can claim the leading role, that it expresses to the maximum degree, embodies the world civilization.

Influence on the development of thought

In the process of ethnographic expeditions, Levi-Strauss collects a huge amount of material and tries to interpret it in a new way. The scientist relies on the concepts of Radcliffe-Brown and Malinovsky's functionalism. They base their thoughts on the fact that nothing happens by chance in culture. Everything that seems to be so should and can subsequently be understood as an expression of its deep laws and functions. It was this idea that became the foundation on which structuralism began to build.

Psychology and many other disciplines also began to change. One of the leading thinkers was F. de Saussure. Meetings with him seriously influenced Lévi-Strauss. All these prerequisites provided a new perspective on the question of so-called "primitive" cultures. Levi-Strauss set the most important task. He sought to prove that culture as a subjective reality, which was extolled but not interpreted by existentialists, can and must be studied objectively, scientifically.

false promises

If we talk about culturological ideas, then Levi-Strauss cannot be called an evolutionist. Various misconceptions are criticized in his works. He considers the so-called "false evolutionism" to be one of them. Within the framework of this method, different, simultaneously existing states of societies are considered as different stages of a single development process striving for a common goal. As a typical example of such a message, the scientist considers a direct comparison of the non-literate tribes of the natives of the 20th century. and archaic forms of European civilizations, although "primitive communities" go a long way, and therefore cannot be regarded either as a primitive or as a "childish" state of mankind. The fundamental difference between them and technologically advanced civilizations is not that they have no development, but that their evolution is oriented towards preserving the original methods of establishing a relationship with nature.

conclusions

As Levi-Strauss notes, within the framework of the strategy of intercultural interactions, following false messages leads to the imposition, often violent, of the "Western model" of life. As a result, the centuries-old traditions existing among the "primitive" peoples are being destroyed. Progress cannot be likened to a one-way upswing. It goes in different directions, which are incommensurable only with technical achievements. An example of this is the East. In the field of research on the human body, he is ahead of the West by several millennia.

If we consider culture as a colossal semiotic system formed in order to ensure the effectiveness of human communication, the entire existing world appears as a huge number of texts. They can be a variety of sequences of actions, rules, relationships, forms, customs, and so on. Structuralism in philosophy is a way to penetrate into the realm of objective regularities located at a level that is not realized by a person who creates culture and exists in it and at the expense of it.

The concept of the unconscious

It occupies a special place in teaching. Levi-Strauss considers the unconscious as a hidden mechanism of sign systems. He explains it as follows. On a conscious level, the individual uses signs. He builds phrases and texts from them. However, a person does this according to special rules. They are worked out spontaneously and collectively; Many people don't even know about them. These rules are elements

Similarly, the components form all areas of the spiritual life of the community. Structuralism in sociology is thus based on the concept of the collective unconscious. Jung names archetypes as primary foundations. Structuralism in psychology development of society considers sign systems. All cultural realms - mythology, religion, language, literature, customs, art, traditions, and so on - can be considered as such models.

"wild" thinking

Analyzing it, Lévi-Strauss answers the question posed by Lévy-Bruhl. Exploring totemic classifications, the most rationalized cataloging of natural phenomena by the thinking of a native, the scientist shows that there is no less logic in him than in the minds of a modern European.

The key task in the study is to find a mechanism for the formation of meaning. Levi-Strauss suggests that it is created through binary oppositions: animal-vegetable, boiled-raw, woman-man, culture-nature, and so on. As a result of mutual substitution, permutations, exclusions, etc., they form the sphere of present meaning. This is the "rules by which rules are applied" level. A person usually does not realize them, despite the fact that he puts them into practice. They are not on the surface, but form the basis of the mental cultural "background".

binary oppositions

They were first introduced by Roman Jacobson. This scientist had a huge impact on the development of the humanities with his innovative thoughts and active organizational work.

He owns fundamental works on general language theory, morphology, phonology, Slavic studies, semiotics, grammar, Russian literature and other areas. As part of his research, Roman Yakobson deduced 12 binary features that form phonological oppositions. According to the scientist, they act as linguistic universals on which any language is based. That's how it was born. The scientist's method was actively used in the analysis of myths.

Superrationalism

Levi-Strauss sought to find a common foundation for all cultures of all times. In the course of research, he formulates the idea of ​​super-rationalism. The scientist sees its implementation in the harmony of rational and sensual principles, which is lost by modern European civilization. But it can be found at the level of mythological primitive thinking.

To explain this condition, the scientist introduces the term "bricolage". This concept describes a situation in which, when coding a logical-conceptual meaning within the framework of primitive thinking, sensory images are used that are not specially adapted for this. This happens in the same way as House master when creating his crafts, he uses improvised materials that happened to be with him by chance. The coding of abstract concepts occurs with the help of different sets of sensory qualities, forming systems of interchangeable codes.

Yuri Lotman expressed similar thoughts in his works. He was one of the creators of the study of culture and literature in Soviet time. Yuri Lotman is the founder of the Tartu-Moscow school. The scientist considers questions of art and culture as "secondary systems". Language is the primary model. Lotman sees the function of art and culture in the fight against entropy and the storage of information, communication between people. At the same time, art acts as a part of culture together with science.

Human

Levi-Strauss considers the individual as a complex of internal and external. The latter is formed from the symbols that a person uses. The internal is the unconscious system of the mind. It remains unchanged, unlike the external one. As a result, their structural connection is broken. Proceeding from this, the dramas of modern cultural life are the problems of man himself. The modern individual is in need of "repair". In order to conduct it, it is necessary to return to the primitive experience, to restore the unity and integrity of the "savage". Anthropology plays an important role in solving this problem.

A set of holistic approaches

It is used in many concepts. Holism can be ontological. In this case, the supremacy of integrity over individual components is affirmed. Holistic approaches can be methodological in nature. In this case, individual phenomena are explained in relation to wholes. In a general sense, holism is an attitude to take into account all aspects of the phenomenon under study. It presupposes a critical attitude towards any one-sided method. Actually, this was proclaimed by the followers of structuralism.

Conclusion

The results that were obtained by Levi-Strauss received wide recognition in the world. At the same time, they also generated a lot of discussions. The main thing in the research is that these results showed with scientific accuracy that culture is a superstructure on top of nature. It has a multi-level, "multi-story" character. Culture is a complex mechanism of many semiotic systems used in the regulation of human relationships, which can be predicted and calculated with mathematical precision. These verbal models are the base. Based on them, people's communication is regulated as a continuous chain of messages that make up cultural texts.

The main reason for the decline in interest in psychologism in ethnology was the fascination with structuralism, the founder of which is Claude Lévi-Strauss (b. 1908), an outstanding representative of French structuralism in ethnological science. His scientific views were formed under the influence of E. Durkheim on society and the theory of structural linguistics by F. de Saussure. He created a theory of primitive thinking, in many respects opposed to the theory of L. Levy-Bruhl. Prominence in science Levi-Strauss brought publications on the culture and life of the Indians in Brazil, as well as his analysis of the kinship systems of primitive peoples. This question is devoted
his main works "Structural Anthropology" (1958) And "Sad Tropics" (1955). In the book "Totemism Today" (1962) He gives comparative analysis morphology of backward ethnic groups, as well as totemic and other beliefs.

The object of study of concrete scientific structuralism is culture as a set of sign systems, the most important of which is language, but which also includes science, art, religion, mythology, customs, etc. It is on these objects that structural-semiotic analysis makes it possible to discover hidden patterns to which a person unconsciously submits.

These patterns correspond to the deep layers of culture, defined differently in different concepts.

The concept of "culture" Levi-Strauss considered as "fundamental in ethnology". At the same time, culture was presented as a system of meanings embodied in a symbolic form, including actions, words, any meaningful objects - everything through which individuals enter into communication with each other.

Using the methodological approaches used in the theory of structural linguistics, in ethnology Levi-Strauss began to look for the meaning of some cultural phenomena not in empirically established factors, but in their relations. For example, he considered the system of kinship and marriage ties as a special language, namely, as a system of actions designed to provide a certain type of communication between individuals and groups. However, the application of this method in ethnology has come down to the conclusion that similar structural principles underlie all social and cultural achievements.

It should be noted that the desire of Levi-Strauss to reduce ethnology to structural anthropology became widespread in related sciences: this scientific direction became the leading intellectual trend in France in the 60s. 20th century However, in English social anthropology, the ideas of Levi-Strauss were not widely used. In the cultural anthropology of the United States, representatives of the school of cognitive anthropology developed a methodological approach similar to structuralism, but they studied only the totality of geographical names of a particular territory. Therefore, the influence of structuralism here turned out to be very limited.

On this day:

• Birthdays
• 1950 Was born Vladimir Alexandrovich Ivanov- Russian / Bashkir historian-archaeologist, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, specialist in medieval archeology of Bashkiria.
• Days of death
• 1898 Died - Polish-Russian geologist, archaeologist, paleontologist, famous explorer of Volhynia, Galicia, Podolia and Siberia.
• 2017 Died Mikhail Fedorovich Kosarev, the largest specialist in the archeology of the Bronze Age of Western Siberia, issues of worldview ancient man, theory and methodology of historical and archaeological research, author of more than 220 scientific publications, including 9 monographs.

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STRUCTURALISM is a set of trends in the social sciences and humanities of the twentieth century, based on the concept of structure as a whole, formed by interdependent and interdependent elements in such a way that each of them can be what it is only due to relations with other elements.

In linguistics, S. arose as a reaction against the atomism, historicism, and inductivism of the neogrammar school. The ancestor of S. in linguistics, F. de Saussure (Course of General Linguistics, 1916), put forward the following principles: 1) the primacy of relations between elements, identified with the help of a system of correlations and oppositions, over their material substrate (“There is nothing in language but differences” ); 2) the primacy of “language” over “speech”, which is built as an individual execution of the rules of the language code; 3) the primacy of synchronic relations in the language, where elements are linked into a system, over their diachronic relations, which systems do not form; 4) the primacy of “internal linguistics”, which considers language as an autonomous entity, over “external linguistics”, which studies extralinguistic factors that affect the state of the language, but do not affect its systems. For the further development of S., two provisions of Saussurean linguistics are especially important: language structures, firstly, are not recognized by specific native speakers, and secondly, they perform a coercive function in relation to them (speaking individuals may or may not obey language rules, but they unable to create or modify them).

30s Saussure's main points were accepted by the Prague Linguistic Circle, which entered the history of S. primarily due to the doctrine of the phoneme as a bundle of semantic features (N.S. Trubetskoy, R.O. Yakobson). In the 40-50s. The Copenhagen school of glossematics (L. Hjelmslev, H. Uldall) created a universal theory that makes it possible to describe any languages ​​(from natural to languages ​​of logical calculus) as pure “sets of relations”, i.e. as semiotic systems taken in abstraction from their material realization (structure, according to Hjelmslev, is “an autonomous entity with internal dependencies”).

In the 1940s and 1950s, having experienced the influence of R. Jacobson's phonology, Kl. Levi-Strauss (tried to give S. the status of a universal methodology of the humanities. In the work “Elementary Structures of Kinship” (1949), trying to explain the prohibition of incest in primitive societies by the functioning of implicit structures (and not natural-biological or moral factors), Levi-Strauss considers women, by analogy with phonemes, as special signs (“bundles of differential relations”) that are the subject of exchange between families and clans, such an exchange, carried out according to strict rules, governs marriage relations and underlies the communicative system of tribal societies; ., the kinship system is considered by Levi-Strauss as a “language”, according to the rules of which any individual “utterances” (specific marriages in a primitive society) are carried out.

The idea of ​​a comprehensive structural determinism, extending to any facts of culture (from myth and ritual to the construction of villages), is deepened by Levi-Strauss in such program works of the 50-70s. as "The Structure of Myths" (1955), "Structural Anthropology" (1958), "Structure and Form" (1960), "Primitive Thinking" (1963), "Mythology" (1964-1971). So, arguing with V.Ya. Propp (“Morphology of a fairy tale”, 1928), according to which only the level of plot functions has morphological organization in archaic texts, while at the level of specific characters, their attributes, motivations, etc. the principle of individual creative freedom of the narrator operates, which is not amenable to structural analysis, Levi-Strauss argued that myth and fairy tale are structured through and through - at all levels without exception; “freedom” within the framework of the “mythical vision of the world” consists “only in finding ordered combinations, possible between pieces of the mosaic, the number, meaning and configuration of which are predetermined”. The structural unconscious “is always empty, or rather, it is as alien to images as the stomach is alien to the food passing through it. Being an organ of a specific function, it is limited to imposing structural laws<…>on the listed elements coming from other places - drives, emotions, ideas, memories.

In Levi-Strauss, the object is not constituted by the subject, but, on the contrary, the subject arises as a product of the internalization of collective norms. If Saussure's "language" as a social institution set a set of elements and rules for their combination, while "speech", being an "individual act of will and mind", was "individual combinations depending on the will of the speakers", then the Levi-Strossian structure is only "realized" individuals, regardless of their will and consciousness: "Rather, it is she who owns them, and not they own her." The mythical narrations of this or that collective just form its “speech” - speech that does not have an individual author; in this respect, the mythologist is like a linguist who describes the grammar of the language being studied, regardless of who exactly is the subject of this statement and what its content is.

Hence the fundamental boundary between empirical facts and their theoretical model, between “social relations” perceived by individuals and latent – ​​transindividual – “social structures”: “visible social relations in no way form a structure; structure is found only in the theoretical model developed by the scientist, making it possible to understand the functioning of these relations.

Emphasizing Saussure's opposition of synchrony/diachrony (“The opposition of two points of view – synchronic and diachronic,” wrote Saussure, “is completely absolute and does not tolerate compromise”), Lévi-Strauss extended it not only to historical research, which is inaccessible to scientific objectivity due to the fact that that any historian inevitably selects and interprets certain facts depending on his interests, predilections, etc., but also on any narratives where the chronological sequence of events turns out to be an empirical illusion, because ultimately amenable to dissolution in the "achronous matrix structure".

Recognized as the "father of French structuralism", Lévi-Strauss had a significant impact on the humanities related to anthropology.

In the field of narratology, where structuralism has achieved the most convincing results, the universal model of narrative texts, proposed by the French semiotician A.-J. Greimas (“Structural semantics”, 1966; “On the meaning”, 1970, etc.). Summarizing the conclusions of V.Ya. Propp and K. Levi-Strauss, Greimas singled out three main levels in narrative discourse - 1) the surface level of “objective manifestation”; 2) the level of “anthropomorphic actions”; 3) the deep level of “conceptual operations”, or “fundamental grammar”.

At the first - pictorial - level, the reader deals with the characters and their actions in their subject-semantic concreteness (for example, in the plot of a fairy tale, the hero can act as a certain person, endowed with internal and external signs, leading a half-starved existence of a poor man and striving to get rid of this state , having acquired wealth, this goal-desire just sets the plot action in motion. If we free the characters and their actions from objective details, then we will move to the level of “anthropomorphic actions”, because a kind of narrative backbone of a narrative work is exposed, formed by the functions of six actants (Subject - Object, Addresser - Addressee, Helper - Opponent), where the first pair is connected by the "desire" modality, the second - by the "know" modality, and the third - by the "can" modality. Transition from the level of "anthropomorphic actions" to the level of “conceptual operations” is carried out by reducing narrative syntagmatics to purely paradigmatic relations between the terms of an abstract “semiotic square”, for example: “poor” (A) / “rich” (non-A) / non-poor (non- Ā / non- rich (Ā), A and Ā are connected by the logical relation of inconsistency, A and not-A by the relation of opposition, A and not-A by the relation of implication.

Other narratological models were proposed by J. Genette (“Figures”, 1966-1972), Kl. Bremont (“Logic of Narrative”, 1973) and Ts. Todorov (“Grammar of the Decameron”, 1969; “Poetics of Prose”, 1971). An analytical summary of the structuralist concepts of plot formation (“Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative Texts”, 1966) was given by R. Barth, who laid the foundation in the 50s and 60s. serious hopes for structural-semiotic research methods, which seemed to him an objective scientific tool capable of demystifying the transformed forms of ordinary consciousness, undermining its power, turning the ideological myths of modernity inside out (Mythologies, 1957; “The Rhetoric of the Image” (1964), “Fundamentals of Semiology” ( 1965), “Fashion System”, 1967).

The decisive role of unconscious structures in the mental life of the individual was insisted on by J. Lacan, who put forward the position according to which “the unconscious is structured like a language”. Directed against Cartesian-Sartrean rationalism, where the subject was seen as a substantial integrity, as a sovereign bearer of consciousness and self-consciousness, and as a valuable reference point in culture, Lacan's concept proceeds from the thesis that the subject is a function of culture, a point of intersection and application of forces rooted in in unconscious symbolic structures: not culture is an attribute of an individual, but an individual is an attribute of culture, “speaking” with the help of a subject; the “subject” itself is “nothing”, or “emptiness”, filled with the content of symbolic matrices. The pathos of the Cartesian Cogito lies in the reduction of the individual to his consciousness as the center of the true being of man: “I think, therefore I exist; where I think, there I exist” – such is Lacan’s interpretation of Cartesian thesis Cogito ergo sum. The pathos of Lacan, for whom the area of ​​self-consciousness is the focus of “false consciousness”, or self-deception (self-consciousness is the world of “imaginary”, where the individual creates an image of himself acceptable to him, performing the function of mental protection and obeying not the “principle of reality”, but “ logic of illusion”), lies in the fact that the true existence of the individual (the realm of the “real”) proceeds at the level of undifferentiated “needs” that need to be satisfied, but can never be fully satisfied. Hence the famous anti-Cartesian counterthesis of Lacan himself (“I think where I do not exist; therefore, I exist where I do not think”), which abolishes the autonomy of an amateur subject.

In the field of sociology, L. Althusser, who insisted that the first structuralist was K. Marx (“For Marx”, 1965; “Read Capital”, 1965), highlighted the role of socio-economic structures and unconscious collective praxis, transforming nature and society apart from and independently of the conscious will of individual individuals. Considering the subject as a derivative function of objective structures and pinning hopes on the growth of the social sciences and the humanities, Althusser put forward the thesis of the “theoretical anti-humanism” of humanitarian knowledge, suggesting the “end of man” as a sovereign subject (“Marxism and Humanism”, 1964).

In methodological terms, French S. is characterized by duality. On the one hand, having emerged as a reaction to the lag of the humanities behind the natural sciences, it contributed to their transition from the empirical-descriptive (and often essayistic and impressionistic) to the theoretical level. By pointing to the boundaries of such philosophical abstractions as the “transcendental subject” and “consciousness in general,” S. undermined the idea of ​​the unconditional nature of thinking, revealed its “archaeological ground” (M. Foucault). In this regard, S. - precisely insofar as he was guided by the models of the natural sciences - can be considered as modern variety scientistic positivism.

On the other hand, representing an effective tool that allows you to open and expose the most diverse forms of alienated consciousness, S. from the very beginning contained a humanistic dimension. As for Levi-Strauss, while subjecting to rigid objectification “primitive thinking” (the collective hysteria of totemism, etc.) and its bearers, he, however, does not distance himself from them, but, on the contrary, feels an existential closeness to those very “savages”, which he makes the subject of scientific dissection (see, in particular, his most humane book, Sad Tropics, 1955). Like his idol and inspiration J.-J. Rousseau, Levi-Strauss, of course, can be called a “misanthrope”, but at the same time a “friend of people”, hoping for the unification of Marxism, which frees a person from economic fetters, with Buddhism, freeing him from spiritual fetters. For Lacan, who analyzes the split individual and depersonalized chains of signifiers, the whole person as the subject of free and “full” speech remains the value starting point. Bart, blowing up the stereotypes of the mass consciousness, seeks to bring a person to a “new and perfect Adam's world”, where words, having learned to convey the meaning of “things themselves”, will acquire their original “freshness” and finally become “happy”.

Nevertheless, the internal logic of S. almost inevitably leads to the absorption of personality by structures. If the structure is defined as an invariant-static, self-contained and imperative in relation to its users whole, then this means that S. takes out of his competence:

• free acts of choice and innovation carried out in the course of an individual's activity;
• his goals and the intentional meaning he puts into his actions;
• the dynamic and eventful nature of any praxis;
• a communicative situation, the addressing of any social “text”, which requires taking into account not only its sender, but also the recipient of the message, as well as their common context.

Thus, the concept of structure is doomed to conflict with the eventful nature of human practice (cf. one of the slogans of the “May Revolution” of 1968 in Paris: “Structures do not take to the streets!”). On the one hand, there is no doubt that any “statement” (whether it be a vital act or a speech act) is subordinate to the corresponding “language”, however, on the other hand, it is equally certain that such a statement, being an act of individual freedom, those striving to escape from the power of the structure are threatened with “changes” and “damage” to its present state; therefore, the structure, for its part, "every minute interferes with the freedom of choice" (Saussure), which leads to a consistent abstraction of structuralism from "speech", "event" and "history".

Description of work

STRUCTURALISM is a set of trends in the social sciences and humanities of the twentieth century, based on the concept of structure as a whole, formed by interdependent and interdependent elements in such a way that each of them can be what it is only due to relations with other elements.

Levy-Bruhl Lucien (1857-1939) - French philosopher and psychologist, researcher of primitive culture. He put forward the theory of primitive "pre-logical" thinking. Levy-Bruhl believed that the man of primitive society thought in a fundamentally different way than modern man. "Pre-logical" thinking is based on specific, different from modern, logical laws. Primitive man comprehends the world, according to Levy-Bruhl, according to the law of participation. In accordance with this law, the object is in a magical relationship with a variety of phenomena. Exploring the law of participation, Levy-Bruhl shows the absence in primitive thinking of the category of a single, identical:

« The collective representations of primitive people are not, like our concepts, the product of intellectual processing in the proper sense of the word. They include as others constituent parts emotional and motor elements, and, what is especially important, instead of logical relations (inclusions and exclusions), they imply more or less clearly defined, usually vividly felt participations (participations).

Something one can be at the same time something else, for this it does not need a gradual, physical change. Metamorphosis is already embedded in the habit of thought. For example, a deer can be both named and perceived as wheat, since the well-being of the tribe depends both on the number of deer killed and on the amount of wheat harvested. The reduction of two things is possible not on the basis of visual assimilation, their reduction is based on specific events, actions that are similar at the level of calculation of efforts, i.e. on the basis of their plastic proportionality. Levy-Bruhl also reveals the special role of memory in primitive thinking. He's writing: « Memory performs in them those operations that in other societies depend on the logical mechanism ».

This also implies a special attitude towards language. As you know, a logical proposition is built on the principle of selection and selection of features. Here, the language does not distinguish between the single and the plural, the animate and the inanimate, and therefore an unlimited number of components are typed in the statement. Such propositional thinking is continuous, since participation is built on an unlimited number of combinations between two objects. A free relation to things, when one is already seen, if necessary, transformed into another, cannot but give rise to a free relation to language. It is known that the languages ​​of primitive tribes are polysynthetic. In addition, they do not have unifying words for species: “tree”, “animal”, etc. « The general tendency of these languages ​​is not to describe the impression received by the perceiving subject, but the form, shape, position, movement ... Languages ​​tend to exhaust the plastic and graphic details of what they want to express ».

Levy-Bruhl cites the notes of Caching, who lived among the Zuni:
"I brought my hands back to their original functions, making them do all the things that they did in prehistoric times, when the hands were so connected with the intellect that they really were part of it." The extreme specialization of verbs is the result of the role that hand movements play in the mental activity of primitive peoples, i.e. language recreates a pattern of gestures. Among the Zuni, the porcupine ideogram repeats the way of digging the earth.

And here are a couple of Chinese ideograms:
man = rice field + wrestling
ripples = boat + ship

From these examples, it is clear that words are not something fixed and established once and for all; on the contrary, a vocal gesture is described in the same way as a motor gesture. Despite all the commonness of the reasons according to which, according to the law of communion, a deer can be called wheat and vice versa, it remains unclear why, nevertheless, in the language one can so easily pass into another. Such a transition cannot be carried out only within the language. This means that, and the attitude to things is very unfixed and arbitrary. The sequence of ideas for primitive thinking is a sufficient basis for linking objects, that is, for the formation of history, myth. On the one hand, this connection is random, on the other hand, what we can call a random connection is the result of a certain experience provoked by a collision with an object. The result and purpose of two activities (harvesting wheat and hunting deer) is survival by obtaining two kinds of food. When wheat is called deer, it looks like the deer that is killed and the wheat that is harvested are already mentally brought together, turned into each other. However, this hardly means that they do not differ as singularities. Just a deer that is killed is already wheat that has been harvested or should be harvested. And the harvested wheat is a deer that is killed or not yet. It turns out a sequential chain: in order to have food, we collect wheat, kill a deer and collect again, etc. But if, after having been harvested, we still hunt, and all this is the extraction of food (if these two products are mainly consumed), then why not consider deer and wheat as different faces of the same experience of eating food, and processes gathering and hunting - various plastic methods to obtain what satisfies hunger. This does not mean at all that there is no difference between the taste of venison and wheat. A reasonable question is: if there are two words for two faces of the same experience, then why use one instead of the other? And in general, if there is only one experience, then why do we need two words? Perhaps, then, to imply the following: the subject of food is not only what lies (wheat), but also venison, which means that it is not enough to say about wheat “this is wheat”, since we eat both; one should say about wheat: “this is venison wheat”, and in order not to say two words, it is enough to insert one into the other, which is necessary for its semantic deployment. Memory does not get rid of its components, it drags them along into speech, trying not to lose them through constant iteration. Thus, the memory of the sequence is permanently preserved (that, in addition to harvesting wheat, we also hunt), as well as the operation of turning the present into the future or the past: now we have harvested wheat, then we will hunt for the same purpose, today's wheat is all the same that tomorrow's deer.

Now we will also briefly consider the positions associated with the work in the field of studying primitive tribes of another no less famous scientist K. Levi-Strauss.

Levi-Strauss(Levi-Strauss) Claude (b. 1908) - French ethnographer, anthropologist and sociologist, one of the main representatives of French structuralism, founder of structural anthropology. The artist's son, Levi-Strauss was receptive to aesthetic influences. Musical education also contributed to this, especially acquaintance with Wagner, whom Levi-Strauss later recognizes as the ancestor of structural study. myths, and with the Russian composer and conductor I. F. Stravinsky. Although the subject of Levi-Strauss's research is the thinking and culture of primitive peoples, his scientific research influenced the development art history, literary criticism and aesthetic theory in general. Studying the relationship between the biological and the social in human behavior, Levi-Strauss recognizes the main presence of formal institutions in relationships between people, the influence on human behavior of traditions, rules of marriage, kinship, myths as a special kind of language that models the structure of social institutions. In his structural anthropology, an important place is occupied by the interpretation of myth as the fundamental content of collective consciousness, the basis for the stability of social structures. Levi-Strauss understands rationality as a property of the world itself, of things themselves, and not as a property introduced by the subject.

Levi-Strauss owns the development of the structures of thinking of primitive peoples objectified in myths and the theory explaining them. A feature of mythological thinking, according to Levi-Strauss, is its relative autonomy from social infrastructures, its closed nature. The understanding of myths is ensured by the fact that each of them serves as a metaphor another, revealed as a result of internal recoding, the model of which is the all-understandable structure of music . It is no coincidence that Levi-Strauss builds his work "Mythological" by analogy with the principles of musical polyphony:"Aria of the Nest Destroyer", "Fugue of the Five Senses", "Possum Cantata". The studies of Levi-Strauss shed light on the unity of the aesthetic culture of mankind. The commonality of the social conditions of the primitive peoples of America, Southeast and East Asia, Oceania is reflected in the commonality of the structures of their myths and primitive fine art, in particular, in the symmetrical spread of the image on the masks and face (tattoo). As the myth loses its functional meaning, art is formed on its basis, which uses its content structures as formal supports, filling them with new content. Although a number of provisions of Levi-Strauss' structural anthropology remain debatable, the structural research methods developed by him are used along with information theory and semiotics in the analysis of literary texts. Many ideas and research programs of Levi-Strauss have something in common with the approaches developed in Soviet science in the 1920s and 1930s. G. G. Shpet, P. G. Bogatyrev. O. M. Freudenberg, as well as with aesthetic research Eisenstein and research Bakhtin. The main works of Levi-Strauss: Structural Anthropology (1958), Savage Mind (1962), Mythological (1964-71), Ways of Masks (1975).

Based on the foregoing, one should recognize the significant achievements of the mentioned scientists in the field of analysis of the features of mythological thinking, reflection of space and time in myths.