p.17 The 'bricoleur' is adept at performing a large number of diverse tasks; but, unlike
the engineer, he does not subordinate each of them to the availability of raw materials and tools conceived and procured for
the purpose of the project... the rules of his game are always to make do with 'whatever is at hand'
p.17-18 The set of the 'bricoleur's' means cannot therefore be defined in terms of a project... It is to
be defined only by its potential use or... because the elements are collected or retained on the principle that 'they may
always come in handy'... They each represent a set of actual and possible relations; they are 'operators' but they can be
used for any operations of the same type.
p.19 The elements which the 'bricoleur' collects and uses are 'pre-constrained'... the possible
combinations of which are restricted by the fact that... they already possess a sense which sets a limit
on their freedom of manoeuvre (Levi-Strauss, 5, p. 35). And the decision as to what to put in each place also depends
on the possibility of putting a different element there instead, so that each choice which is made will involve a complete
reorganization of the structure, which will never be the same as one vaguely imagined nor as some other which might have been
preferred to it.
p.19 the 'bricoleur' addresses himself to a collection of oddments left over from human endeavours
p.19-20 the engineer is always trying to make his way out of and go beyond the constraints imposed by a
particular state of civilization while the 'bricoleur' by inclination or necessity always remains within them. This is another
way of saying that the engineer works by means of concepts and the 'bricoleur' by means of signs.
p.20 Both the scientist and the 'bricoleur' might therefore be said to be constantly on the look out for
'messages'.
p.20-21 [the creations of the bricoleur] always really consist of a new arrangement of elements, the nature
of which is unaffected by whether they figure in the instrumental set or in the final arrangement
p.21 in the continual reconstruction from the same materials, it is always earlier ends which are
called upon to play the part of means... This formula... could serve as the definition of 'bricolage'
p.21-22 the characteristic feature of... 'bricolage'... is that it builds up structured sets, not
directly with other structured sets but by using the remains and debris of events: in French 'des bribes et des morceaux',
or odds and ends in English... Mythical thought, that 'bricoleur', builds up structures by fitting together events, or rather
the remains of events
p.22 It is common knowledge that the artist is both something of a scientist and of a 'bricoleur'.
p.22 We have already distinguished the scientist and the 'bricoleur' by the inverse functions which
they assign to events and structures as ends and means, the scientist creating events (changing the world) by means of structures
and the 'bricoleur' creating structures by means of events.
p.35 the materials of the bricoleur, are elements which can be defined by two criteria: they have
had a use... and they can be used again either for the same purpose or for a different one if they
are at all diverted from their previous function.
