Structuralism
Looking for meaning not in what people mean to say, but in the systems of differences that speak through them.
c. 1949 – c. 1971
A method born of 's linguistics, in which a sign is defined only by its differences from the others, then developed by the phonology of Prague and of Roman Jakobson; in France in the 1950s and 1960s it became the shared model for much of the human sciences. , who discovered phonology in New York through Jakobson, applied it to kinship (, 1949) and then to myths. reread in its light, reread , and the signs of culture. These authors never formed a unified school around a programme shared by all; , often counted among them, rejected the label. It asserted itself against philosophies of the subject, above all , while remaining in dialogue with (Merleau-Ponty read Saussure). The dates used here (1949-1971, from the to the last volume of the Mythologiques) are landmarks: structuralist approaches continued in the work of Lacan and Althusser, while the currents called "post-structuralist", starting with 's, were developing from the mid-1960s by debating it.
It is not the terms that make the system but the system that makes the terms: an individual, a rule, a word only takes on meaning through its place in a structure.
The subject is not the first source of meaning: language, kinship and the unconscious precede it and set limits, without its knowing, on what it can think and will.
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Justification
Structuralism does not deny human action; it disputes that consciousness is its key. The ultimate goal of the human sciences is not to constitute man but to dissolve him, writes . defends a : history is a : no constituting subject (Man, Spirit, the class as consciousness) directs it, which does not deprive actors of their capacity for political action; and turns individuals into subjects. What is at stake is the subject's determination by structures, which Althusser conceives as structural causality: the structure exists only in its effects, which it produces by organizing the relations between elements, rather than a thesis about free will: hence the moderate value.
Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (1962), ch. IX · Althusser, For Marx (1965), "Marxism and Humanism" · Althusser et al., Reading Capital (1965) · Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" (1970)
Justification
had shown that the value of a term in language is purely differential, even though the sign taken as a whole is a positive fact. turned this into a method: the , present everywhere in varied forms, is explained as a rule of exchange between groups, not by the intentions of individuals. holds that the is structured like a language. The object of science is no longer the actor but the system of relations: a methodological priority given to relations, which places the movement on the side of .
Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (1916), Part II, ch. IV · Lévi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949) · Lacan, Écrits (1966), "Position of the Unconscious"; Seminar XI (1964)
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Justification
In the last chapter of The Savage Mind, answers 's Critique of Dialectical Reason: history is not the privileged place where humanity finds its meaning, but one order of knowledge among others. , by contrast, keeps a structural explanation of history, driven by class struggle, but denies it any goal set in advance. Three things must be distinguished here: the absence of an end, which the movement asserts; the causal explanation of history, which it does not deny; and complete contingency, which it does not profess. Hence a weak value towards contingency: the movement rejects a meaning of history, not every historical regularity.
Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (1962), ch. IX · Althusser, Reply to John Lewis (1973)
Lineages
See on the friezeAll lineages↑ Influences received
- Reacts againstExistentialismStructuralism rose in France against existentialism and its philosophy of the subject's freedom.Read
- ContinuesSaussureStructuralism generalizes the principle of Saussure's Course in General Linguistics: an element has no value in itself, only through its differences from the other elements of the system.Read
↓ Influence exerted
- reinterpreted byFoucaultFoucault shares with structuralism the decentring of the subject: The Order of Things (1966) announces the end of man as a figure of knowledge.Read
- challenged byDerridaIn "Structure, Sign and Play" (1966), Derrida reads Lévi-Strauss closely to show that every structure presupposes a centre it cannot ground.Read