Structuralism

Origin

Structuralism is not the invention of a single thinker but a movement that crystallized across several disciplines in the twentieth century. Its deepest root is the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure, whose lectures at the University of Geneva between 1906 and 1911 were published posthumously by his students as the Course in General Linguistics (1916). Saussure proposed a radical reorientation of the study of language: instead of tracing the historical development of words (diachronic linguistics), the science of language should study the system of relations that makes speech possible at a given moment (synchronic linguistics). This seemingly technical move had consequences far beyond linguistics, because it suggested that the units of a system — words, phonemes, and eventually customs, myths, and kinship terms — have no positive content of their own but are defined entirely by their differences from one another.

The method migrated to anthropology in the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, whose Structural Anthropology (1958) and studies of myth applied the Saussurean model to kinship, totemism, and mythology. In the 1950s and 1960s, structuralism spread across the human sciences — to psychoanalysis (Jacques Lacan's return to Freud), to literary theory (Roland Barthes, Gérard Genette), to intellectual history (Michel Foucault's early work), and to Marxism (Louis Althusser). At its height, structuralism presented itself as nothing less than the scientific study of the human: the discovery of the unconscious structures that generate the visible variety of cultures.

History

The history of structuralism falls into three phases. The first is the linguistic revolution of Saussure, which provided the master model of the system. The second is the heroic period of the 1950s and 1960s, when Lévi-Strauss and others extended the model from language to the whole of culture. The third is the crisis of the late 1960s, when a generation of younger thinkers — many of them trained by the structuralists themselves — turned the method against its own presuppositions. The critique of the sign, of the subject, and of the very idea of a closed structure produced what came to be called post-structuralism, associated above all with Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze.

The transition was not a simple rejection. Post-structuralism inherited structuralism's suspicion of surface appearances and its conviction that meaning is a function of relations rather than of reference to a stable world. What it denied was the closure of the structure: where Saussure's system is complete and self-contained, post-structuralism insists that the system is open, that difference proliferates beyond any possible inventory, and that the "center" of the structure is always elsewhere. The movement thus stands to structuralism as a critique internal to the method rather than a return to pre-structuralist assumptions.

Core Principles

The core principles of structuralism can be stated with deceptive simplicity. First, the units of any system are defined by their relations, not by their intrinsic properties: in language, "cat" means what it does because it is not "cap," "cot," or "bat." Second, these relations are systematic and can be described synchronically, as a state of the system, rather than only diachronically, as a sequence of changes. Third, the most important relations are oppositions — and in many structuralist analyses, binary oppositions (raw/cooked, nature/culture, sacred/profane) are the elementary forms of thought. Fourth, the system is unconscious: speakers use the language, and members of a culture participate in its rules, without being able to state them. The task of the structuralist is to reconstruct the hidden system from its observable effects.

Saussure's own vocabulary remains the clearest statement of the program. Langue is the system of a language — the set of rules and relations — while parole is any particular act of speech. The linguistic sign unites a signifier (the sound-image) with a signified (the concept), and the relation between them is arbitrary: there is no natural connection between the sound "tree" and the concept tree. Because signs are arbitrary, their identity can only be a matter of difference — which is why Saussure could say that in language there are only differences without positive terms. This is the single most influential idea of structuralism: identity is an effect of difference.

Important Figures

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) is the founder. His Course in General Linguistics was assembled by his students and published three years after his death, yet it transformed the study of language and became the charter document of the semiotic method. Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) carried the method into anthropology, analyzing kinship systems, myths, and the logic of classification as expressions of underlying structures of the human mind. Roman Jakobson (1896–1982), a linguist of the Prague School, refined the analysis of phonological systems and introduced the concept of the distinctive feature, which influenced both linguistics and the structuralism of the 1960s. In France, the movement was institutionalized by figures such as Louis Althusser in philosophy, Jacques Lacan in psychoanalysis, and Roland Barthes in literary and cultural criticism — each of whom adapted the structuralist method to a different domain while claiming the same scientific prestige.

Modern Influence

Structuralism's influence is difficult to overstate, because so much of the contemporary human sciences is built on its ruins. The semiotic approach to culture — the reading of advertisements, rituals, fashions, and media as systems of signs — descends directly from Saussure. The idea that the meaning of any term is fixed by its place in a system of differences underwrites large parts of linguistics, anthropology, and literary theory to this day. At the same time, the movement's limits have become clear. Its ambition to discover universal structures of the mind has been criticized as ahistorical, and its neglect of the speaking subject — the individual agent who uses the system — provoked the very reaction that produced post-structuralism. The current consensus is neither to revive structuralism as a scientific program nor to dismiss it, but to treat it as the indispensable grammar of modern critical thought.

Criticism

Structuralism has attracted serious criticism from several directions. Post-structuralists argued that the closure of the system is untenable: if identity is always a matter of difference, then difference cannot be exhausted by a finite set of oppositions, and the structure must be opened onto a play of signification that never comes to rest. Pragmatists and ordinary-language philosophers objected to the abstraction of the model, insisting that meaning is inseparable from use and practice. Historians and sociologists complained that the search for timeless structures ignores power, conflict, and historical change. And a persistent line of criticism, exemplified by Henri Bergson's earlier philosophy of duration, holds that the static, synchronic model of structure misrepresents a reality that is fundamentally temporal and creative. None of these objections has destroyed the structuralist method; each has instead defined the terms in which it continues to be used and debated.

Sources

• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Structuralism" (iep.utm.edu/structuralism)
• Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics. Trans. Roy Harris. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1983.
• Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Structural Anthropology. Trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf. New York: Basic Books, 1963.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Ferdinand de Saussure" (plato.stanford.edu/entries/saussure)