Foregrounding the Subjective in Leiris, Lévi-Strauss, and Malinowski

This essay is concerned with the ways in which aspects of anthropology’s historical struggle with subjectivity and language, as explored by Clifford Geertz in Works and Lives, is mirrored in revealing ways in Michel Leiris’ approach to his singular autobiographical project, The Rules of the Game. While conventional wisdom suggests that anthropology and autobiography have little in common, I aim to make clear how the role of author-subjectivity in Leiris is foregrounded in much the same way Lévi- Strauss does in Tristes Tropiques. The essay’s second part studies how Bronisław Malinowski’s corpus reveals a similar dynamic. I aim to show how such a foregrounding of subjectivity, rather than obscuring the objects or subjects of study, is a means of getting closer to them.