[lit-ideas] Geary's Re-Write of Levi-Strauss, Structures de la Parente
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 5 Nov 2009 22:44:31 EST
In Geary's scheme of things, Spanish (as he overhears in kitchens) is
somewhat perfect:
"They don't distinguish between "daughter" and "son" -- the spicks don't --
it's all "hijo" for them. Ditto, the distinction between 'brother' and
'sister' is similarly immaterial, it's all "hermano". I'm surprised they
distinguish between 'father' and 'mother'".
The idea is indeed to keep kinship terms to their easiest. A mother is a
she-father. A daughter is a she-son, and a sister is a she-brother.
Note that Russell's theory does not hold in Spanish:
"Peter is Mary's brother" --
In Spanish, this yields, "Mary is Peter's brother", which she ain't. But in
Geary's rewrite, she is Peter's she-brother.
Spanish has 'tio' and 'tia', whereas Geary's kinshipese has 'she-uncle' for
the latter.
she-grandfather is of course grandmother. The idea is to undermine any
suggestion that Levi-Strauss is being sexist.
Cheers,
J. L. Speranza
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Geary takes analyses of exchange abstraction and abstract masculinity into
account to critique Levi-Strauss' writings on kinship and the family. Her
central thesis is that Levi-Strauss' theory of exchange of women must be set
within a larger theoretical context, and that it leads to a phallocratic
mystification of women's material lives and a location of women's oppression
within the sphere of ideology rather than material relations.
Levi-Strauss' paradigm, when critically analyzed from material standpoint, can
be seen
as articulating a series of artificial and ahistorical dualisms.
In Hartsock's reading of Levi-Strauss, valuable activity takes place at the
level of the symbol; that which is abstract and unattainable is valued
over concrete, and the production of symbols is privileged over material life
activity. Women are completely external to the making of symbols and the
exchange, exist only as commodities to be exchanged among men, and can be
constituted only as "same" or "other". Based as this system is on
asymmetrically weighted dualisms, women are read as "not fully human" in their
relation
to nature. However, as Hartsock writes, "[w]omen are the literal and
material producers of men, who in turn like to imagine that the situation is
otherwise."(p.183)
Hartsock thus challenges Levi-Strauss' claim to contribute to Marxist
theorizing on a number of points: that his definition of social organization is
Eurocentric and assigns only a symbolic capacity (rather than a production
exchange relation) to so-called "primitive" societies; Levi-Strauss'
privileging of intellect over practice; Levi-Strauss' ahistoricity;
Levi-Strauss'
contention that human beings are not intrinsically social but rather
construct a society (against "natural" instincts); and finally Levi-Strauss'
method, which has more in common with traditional positivism.
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