You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In our age we exist without the Devil or demons; with little witchcraft and no magic. After the Nazi-German holocaust bit the frosted snows of Stalingrad, and the atomic mushroom of American parentage obliterated Hiroshima, the age of heroic wars and universal catastrophes ended, along with myth-making. We live with instant dread, the news, mass-media engendered collective-synthetic consciousness. Whilst antibiotics and psychotherapeutics bolster our daily functioning, our nostalgia is laced with derisions and our empirical cynicism has ousted the tragic vision. In this acrid cultural stasis the Blues and the Beatles have popped, and the Flower People have turned Punk.
The prurient decadence of European cultures, with its awesome technological expertise, has become well-nigh universal. A few savants since the Second World War, led by Professor Lévi-Strauss and his so-called Structural Anthropology have tried to mobilize thinking about ourselves, our ways of looking at, and talking about, ourselves. A new epistemological concept has emerged: OEUVRE. Its nature, contents and tactics are discussed by diverse scholars, from different fields of humanistic research.