Structuralism's centenary

Claude Lévi-Strauss turns 100 this month and is still working at things. In particular, he personally selected what to include in the just-released Pléiade edition of his works (virtually all French authors are dead by the time they get their Pléiade edition.) Amazingly, the 2,000 page book, which costs about 100 bucks, has already sold 13,000 copies in its first 3 months. Imagine that happening in our market. (Here's an interesting review of his career.)

I remember slogging through a book or two of his, and I even once inflicted a structural analysis of the Cupid and Psyche myth on my academic advisor that made his eyes roll. Times have changed, especially for French Theorists. Yet even though structuralism has dated fast, the review makes a valid case for its continued influence.

Here's the great man's own assessment of his message:

Reality, wrote Lévi-Strauss, was like a club sandwich. It was composed of three similarly structured strata: nature, the brain and myth. Each of these elements cascaded from the other – the brain being merely one aspect of nature, and mythic thought a subset of mental function. These strata were separated by “two layers of chaos: sensory perception and social discourse”.

So -- no Lévi-Straussians out there, I guess.