What structural mythology owes to Henri Hubert |
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Authors: | Ivan Strenski |
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Abstract: | In pointing to Durkheimian precedents for structuralism, Claude Lévi-Strauss typically indicates Marcel Mauss. Yet, although Mauss wrote much on myth, Lévi-Strauss never cites Mauss as setting precedents for structural mythology. This seems so for at least two reasons. First, Henri Hubert, not Mauss, turns out to be the real myth specialist of Emile Durkheim's original équipe, thus making the équipe's theory primarily Hubert's. Second, Hubert's theory of myth is only problematically structural. More consistent with theories at odds with structuralism, especially Maurice Leenhardt's religious phenomenology, Durkheimian mythology must be displaced if structural mythology is to distinguish itself. |
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