Kwakiutl Animal Symbolism: Food for Thought

Abstract

Abstract It is no coincidence that the problem of totemism engaged so many important thinkers for so many years. Nor is it surprising that noted psychologists and philosophers joined anthropologists in trying to understand what totemistic classifications were all about. As we saw in the previous chapter, the interpretation of totemism depends inevitably on a stated or unstated theory of human classification and symbolization. And to theorize about symbols and classification is to propose a theory of mind. Important matters were at stake in how totemism was accounted for. For generations of theorists, totemism was the battleground on which theories about the relation between culture and mind were waged. Totemism provided ample food for the most diverse thoughts about the mind. To some, the mystical totemic identifications between species suggested the workings of “prelogical” mental processes. To others, they represented repressed memories of a primal scene at the dawn of humanity. More recently, rationalists like Levi-Strauss found comfort in the universal taxonomic sensibility to which such classifications seemed to point.

Cite this

Jerome S. Bruner (1996). Kwakiutl Animal Symbolism: Food for Thought. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195095975.003.0009

@article{s1996kwakiutl,
  title  = {Kwakiutl Animal Symbolism: Food for Thought},
  author = {Bruner, Jerome S.},
  year   = {1996},
  doi    = {10.1093/oso/9780195095975.003.0009}
}