Structuralism

Critical concepts especially if they end in ism rarely have uneventful lives. More often than not their appearance is sudden and surrounded by an atmosphere of crisis, then, when one thinks they are well established they disappear from the intellectual scene unobtrusively before running the full course of their projected promises leaving behind a trail of surprised commentaries. In this respect Structuralism is no exception. For a very short time, about a decade ago, the word seemed essential to define the common concerns of a certain number of thinkers Barthes, Lacan, Levi-Strauss, Foucault in fields as diverse as anthropology, psychoanalysis and literary criticism, who not only postulated what seemed then a common methodology but alluded to the possibility of referring their various disciplines to a common theoretical matrix. Then as the concept began to spread and books by the title f Structuralism, What is Structuralism, Keys to Structuralism, etc. began to appear, those who by their works were most responsible for the diffusion of the term in the first place started to take their distance both from the concept and from each other, to such an extent that today we may rightly question whether the concept of structuralism has any critical validity and whether such a thing as structuralism ever existed. If one were to look back say to the years after the second world war to when the term Existentialism swept over the French intellectual scene, a certain number of traits common to both situations become apparent which might help us understand the fate of terms such as existentialism or structuralism. Initially the term is used against the established ideologies of the day to mark the presence of something new or different in the works of a certain number of thinkers; the new element being attributed to a new method of analysis derived from Husserlian phenomenology in one case and from linguistic models or semiology in the other. Then as the opposition diminishes or disappears and the new term becomes the new ideology, the need to insist on the methodological pretexts

Epistemology · Post structuralism · Psychoanalysis · Structuralism (philosophy of science) · Cultural Insights and Digital Impacts · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis · Philosophy · Psychology · Semiotics and Representation Studies

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• The Order of Things

  Michel Foucault•The order of things•2005

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• Marx et Freud

  Robert Kalivoda•L Homme et la société•1968

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