The present article is focusing on Lévi-Straussian concept of „la torsion“ (the twist), which was for a long time fairly neglected by the structuralist criticism. The article consists in three parts. The first one is dedicated to the „torsion“ in the context of Claude Lévi-Strauss' works; the second part is trying to take into account different interpretations of the „twist" within the frame of Canonic Formula, and the third one raises the question about the meaning of the Lévi-Straussian twist, which emerges - in view of the present autor - as an exponent of cross-cultural horizon.
According to the traditional interpretation, Lévi-Strauss’ structural anthropology deposes the concept of man and the notion of human nature from its central place in human and social sciences. While it’s necessary to acknowledge Lévi-Strauss’ distance vis-à-vis all philosophy based on intentionality, experience and consciousness of subject, we argue that the most interesting purpose of the structural anthropology lies elsewhere. Not only Lévi-Strauss never declared himself being part of anti-humanism movement, but most of all, his famous polemics with Sartre at the end of La Pensée sauvage should be interpreted as part of his fight against ethnocentrism. The project of “dissolving the man” can be thus read as deconstructing the idea that western man makes of himself in the light of ethnological findings about universal structures orchestrating all human societies. We further show that the notion of subject survived its very death announced by the most radical structuralist thinkers and that structural method could be effectively employed in order to study different techniques and modes of subjectivation, revealing that “becoming subject” is a process structured by our language, symbolic universe and ethical teleology. and Ondřej Švec.