By analytically reconstructing the dialogue between Claude Lévi-Strauss and Émile Durkheim on totemism and forms of thought in primitive cultures, this article discusses the elaboration of a non-hermeneutic Anthropology of the symbolic by the so called French school, until this day very influent in the field of religious studies. The central aim is to demonstrate the importance of a certain cognitivist notion of "representation" in this theory and to examine, from the perspective of current developments, its limits as a tool for approaching contemporary religious phenomena.
Émile Durkheim; Claude Lévi-Strauss; Simbólico; Estudo das religiões