School of thought

Structuralism

Movement

Classification

Period: c. 1950-1975 CE
Regions: Europe (origin)
Domains: Philosophy of Language

Overview

Structuralism analyzes cultural phenomena — language, myths, kinship, literature — as systems of signs governed by underlying structures. Inspired by Saussure's linguistics, Lévi-Strauss applied structural analysis to anthropology, Barthes to semiotics and literature, and Althusser to Marxism. The individual subject is decentered; meaning arises not from intention but from the system of differences.

Key ideas

Sign System: Meaning is produced not by the relation between words and things but by differences within a system of signs. Saussure's example: French mouton and English sheep can translate each other yet differ in value, because English also has mutton for the meat and French does not split them. Sounds work the same way: 'cat' is identified by its difference from 'bat' and 'cap'.
Deep Structures: Beneath the surface variety of myths, kinship systems, and cultural practices lie universal, unconscious structures — binary oppositions that organize human thought.
Decentering the Subject: The individual is not the author of meaning. Structures — linguistic, social, unconscious — speak through us rather than being created by us.

Key figures

Ferdinand de Saussure (precursor, d. 1913) · Claude Lévi-Strauss · Roland Barthes · Louis Althusser

Methods used

Structural Analysis · Open in Methods

Influenced by

Marxism
Marxism shaped Althusser's and Barthes's structural analyses of ideology and culture, grafting the analysis of power onto the Saussurean model of the sign.

Later connections

Deconstruction Reacted to this tradition
Derrida's 1966 lecture 'Structure, Sign, and Play' attacked the structuralist assumption of a stable center, turning structuralism's own tools against it.
Post-Structuralism Reacted to this tradition
Contested the claim that meaning rests on stable, universal, self-contained structures: Derrida and Foucault kept the analysis of systems of difference while arguing that no such system ever closes and that its oppositions are historically produced, not timeless.

References

François Dosse, History of Structuralism (University of Minnesota Press, 1997)
Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (1916), Part Two, ch. IV (linguistic value: French mouton against English sheep and mutton)
Christopher Johnson, Claude Lévi-Strauss: The Formative Years (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Introduction; François Dosse, History of Structuralism (1997) — Formation: Lévi-Strauss's teaching and work in Paris from around 1950.
Course in General Linguistics — Ferdinand de Saussure
The Savage Mind — Claude Lévi-Strauss
Mythologies — Roland Barthes