However, it must be emphasized that this literary-sounding conception of the anthropologist’s calling—the twice-born spiritual adventure, pledged to a systematic déracinement—is complemented in most of Lévi-Strauss’ writings by an insistence on the most unliterary techniques of analysis and research. His important essay on myth in Structural Anthropology outlines a technique for analyzing and recording the elements of myths so that these can be processed by a computer. European contributions to what in America are called the “social sciences” are in exceedingly low repute in this country, for
...more
