Abstract

You would think, given the individual's sacrosanct place at the center of a political modernity imposed across the world, you would think, given your own sense of having a body and through it a life (habeas corpus), that there would be some sure measure, when persons die, wherever persons die, of how many persons have died. But no. There are countless ways to count persons, to decide where a person ends and another starts. Stick to sheep! Counting persons would only confound the mind, and if sleep came it would be a tangled, gnarled sort of sleep.Lévi-Strauss maintained that a traditional society was most ecologically viable when it did not exceed 250 (288). Students of such societies understand now this was not... Read More.