Short Abstract

This panel revisits Lévi-Strauss’ classic concept of bricolage to analyse the way that some current political forms draw upon elements of “left-over” or “waste” information to reassemble a sense of the real.

Long Abstract

In a world where all positions seem to have taken a binary form, we propose revisiting an older body of anthropological theory that offered tools for dismantling binary forms as often as it built them up. A frequently overlooked yet central element of Lévi-Strauss’ structuralist thought conceptualised bricolage as a process of knowledge production analogous and complementary to both science and art. We are inspired by the recent re-translation of La Pensée sauvage (Wild Thought, 2021) to ask: can the idea of bricolage as an epistemic craft inform analyses of contemporary political and media phenomena? For Lévi-Strauss, bricolage operates within an already-available system of references, using any of these available elements to assemble meaning. It is a creative technique of knowledge-making, drawing on the “odds and ends” or waste products left over from other knowledge processes to construct and organise an assertion of the real. Ethnographic examples of bricolage include the ways people engage with conspiracy theories, propaganda campaigns, or activist initiatives as strategies for exerting agency over a world awash with the flotsam and jetsam of information. Bricolage can also manifest in unexpected political alliances that challenge traditional assumptions about who can collaborate to achieve shared goals. Lévi-Strauss’ claim that the systematic organisation of information is a universal knowledge practice is especially relevant in today’s polarised political climate. We invite papers that speak to the theme of bricolage as a craft for making sense of the present in ways that can both transcend polarisation and produce more of it.

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