"Our system is the height of absurdity, since we treat the culprit both as a child, so as to have the right to punish him, and as an adult, in order to deny him consolation"
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Levi-Strauss lands the blade with a single paradox: modern justice infantilizes and hardens the offender at the same time. The “height of absurdity” isn’t just rhetorical heat; it’s a structural critique of how institutions manufacture moral coherence. Call the culprit a child and you get paternal authority: the state becomes the stern parent, punishment becomes “for your own good,” and coercion is recast as care. Call the culprit an adult and you get the opposite convenience: full responsibility, minimal empathy, no obligation to repair the person you’re breaking. The system toggles between these roles not because human beings are so inconsistent, but because power is.
The subtext is anthropological: categories like “child” and “adult” aren’t merely biological stages, they’re social positions that grant or withhold rights. Levi-Strauss, steeped in structuralism, is pointing to the hidden grammar of punishment: we classify people in whatever way lets the machine keep running. The culprit becomes a figure onto which society projects its need for order, purification, and distance.
Context matters. Writing in a century shaped by bureaucratic states, mass incarceration, and the expanding sciences of “the criminal,” Levi-Strauss had reason to distrust humanitarian language that travels alongside domination. “Consolation” is the key sting: it names what punishment claims to protect (the social bond) while revealing what it refuses to offer (recognition, repair, reintegration). The line works because it exposes a double standard as a logic, not a hypocrisy: a system designed to punish efficiently will always find a story that makes compassion optional.
The subtext is anthropological: categories like “child” and “adult” aren’t merely biological stages, they’re social positions that grant or withhold rights. Levi-Strauss, steeped in structuralism, is pointing to the hidden grammar of punishment: we classify people in whatever way lets the machine keep running. The culprit becomes a figure onto which society projects its need for order, purification, and distance.
Context matters. Writing in a century shaped by bureaucratic states, mass incarceration, and the expanding sciences of “the criminal,” Levi-Strauss had reason to distrust humanitarian language that travels alongside domination. “Consolation” is the key sting: it names what punishment claims to protect (the social bond) while revealing what it refuses to offer (recognition, repair, reintegration). The line works because it exposes a double standard as a logic, not a hypocrisy: a system designed to punish efficiently will always find a story that makes compassion optional.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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