ABSTRACT
The opposition between nature and culture was popularizedby Lévi-Strauss. In his Structures élémentaires de la parenté1he created the myth-which he did not however analyzeof the institution by men of a social rule, a social norm which made him leave the realm of animality or nature, to found a new realm, that of culture, which he identified as a social law, a manmade norm, the prototype of which is the prohibition of incest. In Lévi-Strauss’ thought, the very concepts of nature and of culture are problematic; even more problematic is the opposition between them. Can this opposition be an operative tool? This may be doubted in the Western context where it appears-in its use by Claude Lévi-Strauss himself-as idiosyncratic, or at best brilliantly rhetorical.2
