Manifesto

In 1962, French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss published The Savage Mind, a book destined to make history in the field of cultural and social anthropology. In this work, Lévi-Strauss outlines several concepts aimed at reflecting on the possibilities of thinking about the Other and otherness as true systems of thought.

The Savage Mind is that place of the mind we all turn to when we are faced with a problem—when we need to exercise ingenuity, apply a method to classify, construct, rethink, produce, engage in dialogue, and communicate. It is human action within predefined contexts. According to Lévi-Strauss, the savage mind is a feature shared by all human beings: a logical system based on the reuse and repurposing of pre-existing systems of signs, to which we give new life and new meaning.

We believe that anthropology can find an applied dimension by using this concept to rethink contemporary phenomena. Through close relationships with design and communication, Pensiero Selvaggio aims at developing new methodologies for analyzing and understanding contemporaneity, digitalization processes, communication phenomena, ecological and ethical practices, and much more.

The Savage Mind is creative thought—incalculable, non-algorithmic, non-mechanical, and unpredictable. It is a model of thinking that infiltrates the space of the Other and mediates between structured systems and lateral thought. The ethnographic model expands and opens itself to multiple applications, giving new vitality to anthropology as a form of knowledge production, theory, and artifact creation.

It is precisely through this method that design and anthropology can find a shared direction. The designer is increasingly “savage”: they challenge the very logic of production and position as actors capable of rethinking society, models of consumption, materials, and their uses.

Communication is a privileged arena in which all of us, every day, put the savage mind into practice. The digital realm—an apparatus that has expanded and enhanced our communicative potential—is a forest of signs through which we, as “savages,” navigate to create new forms of identity and community. Through new communicative tools and digital artifacts, we experiment with previously unimaginable logics of thought.

Digital communication has paved the way for a return of the savage mind—more and more vibrant, ever more unpredictable and unstructured. Pensiero Selvaggio is a methodological experimentation that probes anthropology and design in the pluriverse of contemporary communication without neglecting the many themes close to anthropological inquiry.

Our mission at Pensiero Selvaggio is to work by following the flow of this vitality—analyzing, studying, and developing experimental paths capable of uniting the perspectives of anthropology, design, and communication in order to study our world. A world that is ever more dynamic—and ever more savage!