Mauss, Corin, and Freud Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Mauss, Corin, and Freud - Essay Examplet Ellen Corin tends to view Mausss conceit of individual in evolution or transition as one that is influenced by the legacy of European hegemonic attitude to the cultures of the non-European country. According to her, Mausss historical evaluation of soulfulness is engrossed with the concept of the other that proscribe the European scholars to perceive the someone of the non European societies as something self-interested and self indulgent, and which is determined by outsides references to clans and divinities (Corin 85). In Mausss conception of person it is evident that the person which he is concerned with- is different from the concept of person as something natural. Though he does not completely defy the natural definition of person, he clearly asserts this definition of person as unfocused, vague and simplistic. For Mauss, the definition that tend s to describe person as something natural, clearly determined in the depth of human consc iousness is, as he says at the first gear of the article, still imprecise, delicate and fragile, one requiring further elaboration (Mauss 5). The major steps in evaluation of person lies in the following speech of Mauss,From a simple masquerade to the mask, from a role to a person, to a name, to an individual from the latter to a being metaphysical and object lesson value from a moral consciousness to a sacred being from the latter to a fundamental form of thought and action- the category is accomplished (Mauss 22)Whereas Corin tends to view the concept of person from the anthropological desire to have access to the Others alterity and to transcend to the contingencies and boundaries of ..cultural condition (Corin 81), Mausss attempt to view person from a socio-historical point is, as Corin criticizes, biased, indeed not absolute, by the cultural hegemony of the author. According to him the