CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS
AND THE SEARCH FOR
STRUCTURE
"Such is how I view myself," wrote Levi-Strauss in his autobiog- raphy, Tristes Tropiques (1964), "a traveller, an archaeologist of space, trying in vain to restore the exotic with the help of frag- ments and debris." Like Rousseau two centuries before him, Levi-Strauss insisted upon the virtue of primitive peoples. Yet he went beyond Rousseau. Dissecting the art, myths, and folkways of tradi- tional societies, he sought...