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Lévi-Strauss: incest prohibition as answer

example · Lévi-Strauss, kinship analysis · retold in 4 talks

Lévi-Strauss's analysis of kinship treats the incest prohibition not as a puzzle but as an answer to a question we do not know, the structural model for Žižek's question/answer reversal in politics.

2011: 1 talk 2012: 1 talk 2017: 1 talk 2023: 1 talk
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026

As told 4

“The prohibition of incest is not a question, an enigma. It is an answer to a question, but we do not know which question.”
“the prohibition of incest is not an enigma which requires an answer but it's an answer we just don't know to which question it is an answer”
“Western Christianity, Judaism, whatever, and Eastern spirituality would be an ideal couple... But then this fucking Arabs enter with their Islam”

What it carries

one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)

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Every retelling 4

Lévi-Strauss's analysis of kinship treats the incest prohibition not as a puzzle but as an answer to a question we do not know, the structural model for Žižek's question/answer reversal in politics., illustrating prohibition of incest,they are the answer, but they don't know to what question they are the answer
Žižek adapts Lévi-Strauss's point that the incest taboo is not a puzzle seeking a solution but an answer for which we have not yet found the question, and applies it to protest movements: they are opaque answers; intellectuals must find the right questions., illustrating role of intellectuals,protest movements as answer
Lévi-Strauss writes that Western Christianity and Eastern spirituality form an ideal complementary couple, but Arabs/Islam ruin this by serving as mere intermediaries; Žižek calls this the most racist notion of Arabs possible., illustrating Arabs as more than intermediaries,orientalism / racist reduction
A North American tribe held that all dreams have sexual meaning, except sexual dreams, which require a non-sexual fantasy scenario. Žižek uses this to support Freud's point: even in sex, a fantasmatic non-sexual scenario is necessary., illustrating perversion is constitutive,fantasy supplement to sexuality,Freudian psychoanalysis