REVIEW ARTICLE: Maurice Godelier in the Company of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Emmanuelle Loyer: Claude Lévi-Strauss: A Critical Study of His Thought, by Maurice Godelier, translated by Nora Scott, London, Verso, 2018, 560 pp., preface, appendices, notes, bibliography, acknowledgements, indices, (paperback), ISBN: 978-1-7847-8707-3: Lévi-Strauss: A Biography, by Emmanuelle Loyer, translated by Ninon Vinsonneau and Jonathan Magidoff, Cambridge, Polity, 2018, xi+744 pp., illustrations, photographs, notes, list of works, archives, index, (hardback), ISBN: 978-1-5095-1198-3

This article takes the occasion of the publication of two lengthy volumes about the life and work of Claude Lévi-Strauss to assess certain elements of Maurice Godelier's Marxist encounter with structuralism. While providing an overall view of each book, and the way they speak to each other, I also explore particular dimensions of Godelier's engagement with Lévi-Strauss, including in relation to Godelier's attempt to introduce psychoanalysis into his Marxist-structuralist equations. Four broad themes are addressed: the horizontal and vertical dimensions of kinship as alliance and descent; domination and the so-called 'exchange of women'; Godelier's limited appeal to Freud, especially in relation to his near occlusion of Lacan; and Godelier's 'suspicious' humanist relationship to sacred belief as ideological illusion. This last matter leads to a concluding section which, drawing on Loyer's biography, contrasts Godelier's version of late Enlightenment humanism with what was arguably the more radically expanded humanism of the mature Lévi-Strauss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]