NARRATIVE

 NARRATIVE

Levi-Strauss - Key points

• Conflict
• Binary opposition 
• Discipline - Social Anthropologist
• Studies storytelling in primitive societies, exploring how visuals on caves told stories
• Creates meaning 
• Two contrasting characters/things - struggle through opposites 

OPPOSITIONS:

Hortense and Roxanne (Class and race)

Cynthia (children but no money) and Monica (Money but no children)

Maurice and the absence of another male figure (absence of conflict) - heightens the importance of female figures and how he can exist in the world without other male characters. He is not conventionally aggressive, he demonstrates it as an outpour of emotions. 

Possible ideas

- Conflict creates meaning, the actual dialogue of "secrets and lies", sudden epiphany 

- Opposite binary's - Cynthia and Monica 

- Race, gender and class do not emerge within the construct of binaries - so Strauss's ideas are limited 

- To engage and apply binary opposition we have to being with the assumptions that masculinity and femininity still apply - in a culture where some ideas have shifted

Usefulness

- Unpacks ideas of class and gender 

Limitations of these ideas

- Maurice is male and is rational/comfortable, also has feminine qualities (sensitivity) 

- A more complex lexicon for these ideas