Lessons from Witchetty Grubs and Eskimos

• Published in: French Cultural Studies
• Main Author: Baldwin, Jon
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publications 2008
• Subjects: History; Cultural Studies; eskimo*
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957155808094944; http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0957155808094944

This paper investigates the French anthropological context of the work of Jean Baudrillard. The religious anthropological though of Émile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss and Georges Bataille is considered. This context is vital to the understanding of Baudrillard's oeuvre. Analysis is given to Mauss's work on the seasonal variations of the Eskimo and the prayers of the Witchetty Grub clan. Two core ideas emerge: the decline of the religious and thereby the social, and the decline of alternation in social life. Durkheim and Bataille clarify these ideas with the notion that the social bond is in decline and that there is a loss of intimacy. Baudrillard's reading and response to this anthropology is to be discovered in his key notions of symbolic exchange, reversibility, and antagonism.