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Quote :Structural Anthropology
A careful analysis of the text of this myth, which in one version alone takes up thirteen pages of Dorsey's work, discloses that it is built on a long series of oppositions: (1) initiated shaman versus non-initiated shaman, that is, the opposition between acquired power and innate power; (2) child versus old man, since the myth insists on the youth of one protagonist and the old age of the other; (3) confusion of sexes versus differentiation of sexes; all of Pawnee metaphysical thought is actually based on the idea that at the time of the creation of the world antagonistic elements were intermingled and that the first work of the gods consisted in sorting them out. […] (7) magic which proceeds by introduction versus magic which proceeds by extraction.
Lévi-Strauss is talking about a work by G. A. Dorsey exploring the mythology of the Pawnee Indians of the North American Plains. Dorsey's study discusses a series of myths that give an account of how shamanistic powers came about. Most relevant here, though, are Lévi-Strauss's comments on binary oppositions.
Analyzing Dorsey's study, Lévi-Strauss zones in on its discovery of lots of either/or contrasts within shaman lore. Lévi-Strauss thinks that these either/or contrasts, which he calls binary oppositions, are at the heart of all narrative, most obviously in myth. For him, narrative analysis is about going through a text to find and demonstrate the oppositions that run through it—oppositions that can vary from one text to the next but, by their very presence, show just how common binary thinking is.