The predicament of heroic anthropology

Abstract

Paradoxically at first sight, Derrida's grammatological project joined the same idea of thought-decentring that was already morally and epistemologically central to Levi-Strauss. But recognizing that Levi-Strauss's anthropology anticipated thinking on deconstruction and on decentration would contribute to grant it with the benefit of a gesture that Derrida would like to be restricted to his own approach. In this paper I argue that if we are to understand the modern condition at all we need to return to Levi-Strauss's critique of history and colonialism, for his writings helped to make possible such modernist ideas of the predicament of culture and identity.