El sustrato cientificista de la antropología estructural: una crítica desde la hermenéutica (primera parte). Las raíces positivistas y cartesianas de la antropología estructural

• Amador Bech, Julio Alberto ^[1]
  1. [1] FCPYS-UNAM
• Localización: Interpretatio: Revista de hermenéutica, ISSN-e 2448-864X, Vol. 2, Nº. 1, 2017 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Hermenéutica de las artes), págs. 155-194
• Idioma: español
• Títulos paralelos:
  • The Scientificist Substrate of Structural Anthropology: A Hermeneutic Criticism (First part): Positivist and Cartesian Roots of Structural Anthropology
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• Resumen
  • español

    El presente artículo se propone llevar a cabo una crítica sistemática de los presupuestos teóricos que subyacen a la antropología estructural de Claude Lévi-Strauss. Para tal fin se parte de una reconstrucción hermenéutica de sus principales planteamientos, a partir de su obra Antropología estructural, en particular, su proposición de tomar a la lingüística estructural y, dentro de ésta, a la fonología de Trubetzkoy, como modelo de cientificidad para la antropología. Se cuestiona, también, la manera en la cual tal orientación se extrapola al estudio de las formas culturales que asumen el parentesco y el intercambio entre los grupos sociales. 

  • English

    The present article intends to accomplish a systematic critique of the theoretical basis that underlie Claude Lévi-Strauss’s structural anthropology. With that in mind, we begin with an hermeneutic reconstruction of its main propositions, starting from the basic ideas presented in his work Structural Anthropology, in particular, his suggestion concerning the idea of using structural linguistics, and especially Trubetzkoy’s phonology, as a scientific model for anthropology. The way in which this orientation is extrapolated to the study of the modes in which the cultural forms of kinship and exchange occur, within the social groups, is also questioned. That procedure has serious consequences because the human being existing and embedded in real social life and in particular cultural traditions, disappears from anthropological thought to give way to pure logic and mathematical abstractions. I try to demonstrate that, even though that model seems to come from social sciences, actually, the concept of scientific rigor that rules Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism comes from the natural sciences, and, in that sense, his thought is akin to positivism and cartesianism. Those are the theoretical principles that guide the full and detailed study of myth that is elaborated in the four volumes of Mythologiques. In consequence, I propose that the hermeneutic perspective from which, in particular, the study of myth should be dealt with and, in general, the question of ethnography, is not that of Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism. The process of comprehension should occur in another way, so that the specific cultural traits of the human groups that are studied and the living human being will return to the center of anthropological thought.