The Structuralists: From Marx to Levi-Strauss

De George

An overview of Structuralism

Key Terms: Structuralism, Levi-Strauss, Marx, Foucault, Barthes, Lacan, Althusser, Consciousness

- Levi-Strauss seen as the ‘high priest’ of Structuralism, who brought the word into the everyday discourse

-      Other structuralists: Marx, Barthes, Lacan, Foucault, Althusser

-      Structuralism: “the attempt to uncover deep structures, unconscious motivations, and underlying causes which account for human actions at a more basic and profound leel than do individual conscious decisions, and which shape,, influence, and structure these decisions.”

-      Marx says men must live before they can think, and the way a man thinks is directly tied to how he lives

-      Marx: thinking and ideas develop together with human activity and life

-      Structuralists seek to explain consciousness by life and not life by consciousness

-      Foucault, like Marx, concerned with thought of an age, unlike Freud who is interested in individual

-      “That social thought can be explained and aaccounted for in terms other than that of conscious thought itself is a basic insight which Marx shares with structuralists”

-      Saussure’s ideas of structural linguistics- approach language as a system and attempt to uncover its structure, the general laws or rules governing its operation

-      In this way it is not possible to study words alone, divorced of meaning. Traditional dichotomy of content and form is unsatisfactory. Instead, early structuralists developed concept of structure, that is, of the systems within the word (the words, syntax, ideas, plot, etc) which together help produce a given esthetic effect and make an integral whole. For example, the dress of persons in a painting is a cultural set of signs which society expresses itself through and which barthes makes the object of a structural analysis.

-      Levi-Strauss aimed to uncover structure of human nature itself, to discover the universal, basic structure of man which is hidden below the surface and which manifests itself in language, cooking, dress, table manners, art, myths, and other expressions of social lfie. Like Marx and Freud he believes much of what is considered arbitrary and accidental is determined and seemingly gratuitious customs and beliefs are but surface man9ifestations of deeper realities and of deeper order.