Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908 – 2009) Tristes Tropiques Criterion Books, New York; first American Edition (1961)
Frantz Fanon (1925 – 1961) The Wretched of the Earth (Les Damnés de la Terre), First English edition (1961) Grove Press, 1968
Two Books, Two Positions: Claude Lévi Strauss and Frantz Fanon
In 1935, Claude Lévi-Strauss, founder of structural anthropology, accepted professorship in Sociology at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. Over that year and the next, he carried out several ethnographic expeditions in the Amazon Basin. Lévi-Strauss’ Tristes Tropiques is a memoir and travelogue, first published in French in 1955. It is elaborate account of the author’s views on anthropological study, and living amidst tribal communities including the Caduveo, Bororo, and Nambikwara.
Dedicated to the Algerian liberation struggle from France (mid 1950s - early 60s), The Wretched of the Earth (Les Damnés de la Terre) is Frantz Fanon’s manifesto on decolonization and a “diagnosis” of modern Europe.