Structuralism: An Extremely Short Introduction

[These are my notes for a presentation I made on Structuralism a couple years ago for
an assignment on schools of thought related to literature, though I admittedly dont
dwell on literature at all. The presentation is about as accessible as I could make it,
though many of my colleagues found it overly complicated. Most of the material is
from the book European Intellectual History Since 1789 by N. Roland Stromberg, the
Structuralism entry in the Colliers Encyclopedia, and some websites that I have
since forgotten. For a magnificent & extremely accessible comparison of structuralism
to poststructuralism (the best I have read on the topic), I direct the reader to John
Lyes essay Some Post-Structural Assumptions here.]
What Is Structuralism?
Philosophy/Sociology/Anthropology movement rising to prominence in the late
1950s-early 1960s (especially in France), reaching a peak in the later 1960s.
Successor to existentialism as a fashion in French ideas. Provided a cool,
detached, objective, antihistorical view.
Specialized in the linguistic analysis of social codes, versus the frenetic
subjectivism & romanticism of the existentialists.
Though roots were in linguistics, it became a mode/method of thought that
could be used almost anywhere, thus transcending specialization.
Applied to such fields as anthropology (myth, kinship systems), literary criticism,
sociology, & psychology.
How Does It Work?
1. Analysis of patterns in language & media, taking into account the structure +
the human faculties of comprehension.
2. Antihumanism: the abolishment of the individual. The boundaries of language
force speakers to think in certain ways, thus is it so irrational to assume that
these boundaries affect action as well?
3. Determinism: People are prisoners of language and cannot escape, no more
than a physicist can find an observation point outside of nature.
4. Consideration of clothing, etiquette, myth, gesture, etc., as languages'; less
focus on content, more on patterns & structure.
5. However, offered a new principle of certainty, a science of the permanent
(Claude Lvi-Strauss).
6. Johannes Weissinger marked this as one of the most extraordinary of modern
intellectual trends, describing it as the penetration of mathematics,
mathematical methods, and above all the mathematical way of thinking, into
areas which previously appeared to be closed to it.
Basic Principles
Social & cultural phenomena do not have essences but are defined by their
internal structure (the relations among their parts) and by their relations with
other phenomena in the relevant social & cultural systems.
These systems are systems of signification, so that social & cultural phenomena
are not just objects and events, but objects and events with meaning.
Courtesy of: Prof. Ali Raza Fahad Dept. of English Govt Postgraduate College, Gojra

Isolates factors which have significance in a given culture (e.g. length of a skirt
versus its color, one not being socially significant).
In identifying the features by which subjects (e.g. a garment) become signs (i.e.
symbols), the structuralist would be attempting to make explicit the system of
implicit conventions at work in the behaviour of members of the culture.
Explains how social institutions, systems of convention that can only be
elucidated by a structural analysis, make human experience possible.
Underlying systems make it possible to score a goal, to write a poem, to be
impolite.
Structural explanation does not trace temporal antecedents & link them to a
causal chain, but explains why a particular object or action has significance by
relating it to a system of underlying norms & categories (e.g. neckties).
Substitution of a synchronic (looking at a system frozen at a given point in
time) for a diachronic (emphasizing change over a period of time) perspective is
characteristic of structuralism and has three important correlates:
1. Structuralism is less interested in what might have caused a particular
phenomenon to occur at a given moment than in enabling conditions that make
it appropriate and significant.
2. Structural explanation relies on the notion of the unconscious. For example, I
know a language, in that I can pronounce and understand new utterances, but I
do not know what I know; the complex grammatical system I employ is mostly
inaccessible to me and still has not been completely described by linguists.
Their task is to describe the unconscious system at work in my linguistic
behaviour.
Structuralism is indebted to thinkers such as Marx & Freud who have
promoted the analysis of powerful underlying systems & structures.
3. Since it explains meaning in terms of systems that escape the subjects
conscious grasp, structuralism is inclined to treat the conscious decisions of
individuals as effects rather than causes. The self or subject is not a given but a
product of social/cultural systems.
When Did It Originate?
Principal figures in the movement are the linguist Roman Jakobson (1896-1982),
the anthropologist Claude Lvi-Strauss (1908-2005), literary critic Roland
Barthes (1915-1980), and linguist Noam Chomsky (1928-present).
Others associated with it are child psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980),
intellectual historian Michel Foucault (1926-1984), psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan
(1901-1981), and Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser (1918-1990).
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), the founder of modern linguistics, is
generally regarded as the father of structuralism.
He distinguished between actual speech acts or utterances (parole) and the
underlying system one learns when one learns a language (langue). He argued
that linguistics should concentrate on the latter.

Courtesy of: Prof. Ali Raza Fahad Dept. of English Govt Postgraduate College, Gojra

Saussure urged that synchronic linguistics should take the place over diachronic
or historical linguistics, i.e. defining the elements of linguistics in terms of their
relations with one another.
Following Saussures suggestions, Jakobson and other linguists produced
analyses of sound systems of various languages.
For Lvi-Strauss, these structural analyses in phonology, with their descriptions
of systems of rules and oppositions that may operate unconsciously, provided a
model for structuralism.
Aspects of Structuralism In Literature
1. Attempt by Jakobson & others to give a linguistic description of literary
structures.
2. The development of narratology or a science of narrative, which would identify
the various constituents of narrative and describe the fundamental structures &
their rules of combination.
3. The investigation of the various codes, produced by prior literary works and by
various conventional systems of a culture, that enable literary works to have
meaning.
4. Analysis of the role of the reader in bringing into being the meaning of a literary
work, and of the ways in which works resist and comply with the readers
expectations.
Structuralism in literary criticism is in part a response to modern literature, which has
self-consciously explored the limits of meaning and sought effects in the violation of
conventions of language, literature, and social practices. In its concentration on codes
& structures, structuralism rejects, as modern literature often has, the notion of
literature as imitation of the world, and sees its as experimentation with the language
and codes of a culture. Literature is valued for its probing of the structuring
procedures by which we order and understand the world. It reveals the conventional
nature of our social world.
Why The Big Deal? Who Has It Affected?
Structuralisms antihumanism starkly constrasts other schools of thought:
Humanity has been abolished; it was an invention now seen through. History is
a process without a subject (Althusser), its formations imposed on people by
the hidden mechanisms of language forcing people to think in certain ways.
The author is irrelevant to the study of a work.
The structuralist approach to criticism lies in its adherence to the scientific
method, that is, breaking down complex phenomena into its component parts
and then analyzing the relations between them, as opposed to the Symbolists,
who find meaning in constituents rather than relations.
Its principle of certainty provided a unification of all the social sciences as well
as human sciences, e.g. literature, art, & popular culture, supplying the muchdesired role of an underlying connecting factor among increasingly specializing
and fragmentary fields.
Structures originate from the a priori logic printed in each mind; the world has
meaning because we endow it with such. In this case we can see that oddly
Courtesy of: Prof. Ali Raza Fahad Dept. of English Govt Postgraduate College, Gojra

enough, Structuralists seems to agree at bottom with their foes, the

existentialists.
In its examination of the culture wherein literature is formed & found as well as
the impact of the reader themself (viz. their expectations and how the work
resists & complies with these) it foreshadows & perhaps paved the way for
modern day subjectivism in literary analysis; eisegesis rather than exegesis.
Though structuralism began in linguistics it has been extended to such fields as
anthropology, psychoanalysis, literary theory, architecture, and indeed, its use
as a method can be applied to any field or discipline, emphasizing scientific
results.
Where Has It Gone?
In two fundamental ways, poststructuralism agrees with structuralism:
Deconstruction retained & even intensified the Structuralist abolition of
the subject (self), unmasking the metaphysics of presence (Derrida) that
causes us to assume a person behind the text. No such essential author
exists, we have only the text.
The Poststructuralists also agreed that we are dominated by an
impersonal realm of language & culture of social norms.
However, the Poststructuralists took delight in showing that logical structures
are illusions, which may be shown to rest on some unproven assumption,
rhetorical statement, or contradiction.
Whereas Structuralists had held that the text, if not the author, could be placed
within a logical structure, Deconstructionists often took for granted that texts
themselves had no implicit meaning. What this means is that, as well as there
being no real (objective) Kafka, there is also no real The Hunger Artist, because
every readers subjective interpretation will differ, leaving it a vain matter to
search for which one is true.
For example, the sentence Time flies like an arrow does not have merely one
possible interpretation: it can mean I want you to record the speed of these
flies as you would record the speed of an arrow, time flies enjoy an arrow, or
time progresses in a linear manner similar to the flight of an arrow. There is no
correct interpretation.
The realm of language was accepted to be irrational, not subject to objective
quantification.
From then on, almost any interpretation went, as long as it was intelligibly
explained, and outr interpretations were given a premium.
The reigning doctrine of the intellectuals became that no intellectual
construction could be trusted. Accepting anything at face value affirmed by a
writer became a mark of naveteach work must be scrutinized to show its
underlying secrets. Works were often subject to many different forms of
completely different interpretations, e.g. Freudian, Marxist, structuralist,
symbolist, etc. (essentially, social, personal, economic, or psychological).

Courtesy of: Prof. Ali Raza Fahad Dept. of English Govt Postgraduate College, Gojra

Roland Barthes: Classical criticism has never paid any attention to the reader
the writer is the only person in literatureit is necessary to overthrow the myth:
the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author.
The death of Structuralism signified the loss of hope in classical beliefs of great
synthesizing systems, the fragmentation of thought into specialization and
microanalysis, and the stark division of objectivity versus subjectivity. In the realm of
art & culture, here was now a need for extremes in order to secure a shock effect:
The rage of the younger generation was that of those who wanted to break the rules
but found no rules left to break (Stromberg, 301).
Synopsis: How Is Structuralism Relevant To Me?
Introduced determinism as a significant issue. Forces one to ask oneself whether
or not they believe in free will.
Allows further understanding of contemporary thoughtwhy historical
ideologies are so different from those of today. Structuralisms death was
modernitys turning point.
Elucidates the spectrum of Objective vs Subjective, tough- versus tenderminded realms of thought, allowing one to see where ones own thought lies
thereupon.
Alerts people to how they are limited by their language & vocabularies, perhaps
inspiring the learning of new words or even new languages (e.g. the German
word schadenfreude, which has no English equivalent). There is no such thing
as a synonym: every word has its own nuances which make it distinct from
similar ones.
Fostering awareness that everything has symbolic value; each thing represents
more things, and the chain of these is what leads to systematic structures.

Courtesy of: Prof. Ali Raza Fahad Dept. of English Govt Postgraduate College, Gojra