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Without ever completing his project, the bricoleur puts into it always something of himself.
Claude Lévi-Strauss
La Pensée Sauvage, p. 32
THE TRAFFICKING OF SIGNS
The notion of "bricoleur"1 introduced by Lévi-Strauss in his discussion of "the science of the concrete" (1962: 3-47[1966a: 1-33])2, to refer to those who indulge in some form or other of "savage thought," has had a varied fortune in anthropology. It is a word, however, which has caught the attention of Anglo-Saxon anthropologists and which has even caught on. Part of its appeal may have derived from its gallic exoticism, an irresistible charm innocently enhanced by the translator's renunciation of finding-discovering or in venting-an adequate equivalent in the English language. If "jack-of-all-trades" was too burdensome an expression and lacked concision, if "jerry rigger" did not appear in any dictionary, clearly neither the "workmen,', nor the "craftsmen," not even, despite their implied and imputed skills, the "home handymen" could pretend to render, even less to rival, the "bricoleur's" anapaestic elegance in name and clever astuteness in deed. So the French word stayed, and its meaning remains quite clear.
Anyone who has ever turned an empty Chianti bottle into a lamp, "liberated" milk-crates to transform them into book-shelf supports, or ruined a table knife in trying to loosen the screws of a door-knob can appreciate the quintessence of "bricolage." In its contemporary and common meaning the "bricoleur" is one who is handy, but makes do with whatever is at hand, in opposition to the professional who can afford to stick to the function and use for which specialized parts and tools were designed. The former may gain in versatility what the latter may gain in efficiency. In his improvisation, the "bricoleur" is perforce a creative recycler who uses or rather re-uses bits and pieces, odds and ends, discarded elements, all of which have been disengaged from their actual function. The "bricoleur's" rearrangement instills in them a new life. To that extent, no need of fancy projects: jotting, at lunch, a phone number on a paper napkin or using, on one's desk, a yogurt pot as a pencil holder are already akin to bricolage. In fact, knowingly or not, by taste or perforce, with more or less success, willy-nilly, we are all "bricoleurs"...