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Tuesday, November 25, International symposium - Claude Lévi-Strauss, a journey through the century

symposium and conference program

9:30 a.m. Introduction

Opening by Pierre Corvol, Administrator of the Collège de France
Danièle Hervieu-Léger, President of EHESS
Jean-Claude Waquet, President of EPHE

Presentation of the symposium
by Philippe Descola, Professor at the Collège de France

Fields and themes
Session chaired by Alfred Adler, EPHE

10:00 A structural operator : The Northwest Coast of North America
Marie Mauzé, CNRS, Paris

10:30 Art and wild thought
Carlo Séveri, CNRS and EHESS, Paris

11:00 a.m. discussion

11:15 a.m. break

11:30 Lévi-Strauss and the interface
Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, Universities of Chicago (USA) and São
Paulo (Brazil)

12:00 America in structuralism
Anne-Christine Taylor, CNRS and Musée du quai Branly

12:30 pm discussion

Fields and problems
Chairman: Philippe Descola, Collège de France

2:30 pm The Eagle and the Raven also structure the Siberian forest
Roberte Hamayon, EPHE

3:00 pm How about a return to kinship and alliance?
Françoise Héritier, Collège de France

15:30 Can we "give a purer meaning to the words of the tribe" (Stéphane Mallarmé): Lévi-Strauss and the dynamics of myths
Pierre Maranda, Université Laval (Québec)

4:00 pm discussion

4:15pm break

4:30 pm Perspectives on kinship and sacred African royalty
Luc de Heusch, Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium)

17h00 Infrastructuralism, and a few other things I learned from Lévi-Strauss
Marshall Sahlins, University of Chicago

17h30 Un moment épistémologique: "la contemplation de quelques fleurs sauvages, quelque part du côté de la frontière luxembourgeoise au début de mai 1940"
Claude Imbert, École normale supérieure, Paris

6:00 pm final discussion

Conferences on November 26 and 27

What about human nature?
Dan Sperber

november 26 2008, 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm
at Collège de France
Marguerite de Navarre Amphitheatre
11 place Marcelin-Berthelot - 75005 Paris

From Isaac Strauss to Claude Lévi-Strauss: Judaism as culture
Daniel Fabre
november 27 2008, 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm
at EHESS
Amphithéâtre
105 boulevard Raspail - 75006 Paris

download program

Organized by
le Collège de France, l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, l'École Pratique des Hautes Études
Marguerite de Navarre Amphitheatre
11 place Marcelin-Berthelot - 75005 Paris
Free admission, no registration
subject to availability

From Claude Lévi-Strauss's first publication in 1926 to his most recent in 2008, his work has spanned the long 20th century, leaving a profound mark on it. Traces of this influence can of course be found in anthropology, a discipline that Lévi-Strauss refounded in France after the war and whose course he set in new directions everywhere else, but also in a much wider field ranging from aesthetics to the philosophy of knowledge, and including reflections on racism, language and the responsibility of humans towards non-humans. These are just some of the areas the colloquium aims to explore, thanks to some of those on whom Lévi-Strauss's influence has been exerted at various times over the last five decades. It is also an opportunity, on the 100th anniversary of his birth, to take stock of what the great anthropologist has contributed to the emergence of new thinking.