In a flash. The whole and the parts in Levi-Strauss

The relationship between society and individuals is one of the thorniest problems for the human sciences, divided on the question between an atomistic perspective (the whole is the sum of the parts) and an organicistic one (the parts as functions of a whole that transcends them). Levi-Strauss offers a very original approach on this point. There are two metaphors that the anthropologist uses to think about the relationship between everything ("structure") and parts: play and music. Constant references to all his work, play and music are essential to understand the structuralist approach that drives his analysis and, more generally, the way he thinks. Through them it is therefore possible to clarify the originality of his approach as a "logic of inclusive disjunction". To illustrate this perspective, the article follows a path in three stages: simultaneity, chess and music.