On Structuralism 

BEGINNING THEORY: NOTE ON STRUCTURALISM

What is structuralism?

• Structuralism is the belief that things cannot be understood in isolation—they have to be seen in the context of the larger structures they are part of. Hence the term ‘structuralism’ (38).

• It is an intellectual movement began in France by the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss and the literary critic Roland Bathes (1915-1980). It was imported into England and America in the 1970s.

• ‘Structures,’ here, are not objective entities already existing in the world but those imposed by our way of perceiving the world and organizing experience.

• Meaning or significance isn’t a kind of essence inside things: rather, meaning is always outside. Meanings are attributed to the things by the human mind, not contained within them.

Structuralism in Literary Studies:

The structuralist approach to literature is actually taking you further and further away from the text, and into larger abstract questions of genre, history, philosophy, rather than closer and closer to it, as the Anglo-American tradition (liberal humanism) demands (39).

Structuralism マクロの視点

= determining the nature of the ‘chicken’

目に見えない構造（社会的・文化的現象）への分析

Liberal Humanism ミクロの視点

= close analysis of the ‘egg’　

= text-led criticism

Saussure: Signs of the fathers (40-43)

• Structuralism has its root in the thinking of the Swiss linguistic Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913).

• Saussure is a key figure in the development of modern approaches to language study.

• According to Saussure（ソシュールの言語学)

1. The meanings we give to words are purely arbitrary (random). Language isn’t a reflection of the world or of experience, but a system that stands quite separate from it. 言葉が何をさして、何を意味するかは、物質世界のあり方と独立し、言語システムの内部で決まっている。E.g. the word ‘hut’ is not in any way ‘appropriate’ to its meaning.

2. The meanings of words are relational. 意味は差異よって生まれる。In a language, there are only differences, without fixed meanings. E.g. the terms ‘male’ and ‘female’; ‘day’ and ‘night.’ No word can be defined in isolation from other words.

3. Language constitutes the world, not just reflecting it. 言葉は現実を説明する道具ではなく、現実を作っていくのだ。E.g. ‘terrorist’ and ‘freedom fighter’ are the same and yet we see the difference, whereby the former holds negative implication while the latter does not; ‘poll tax’ and ‘community charge’ are the same thing, but the government preferred the latter term as to avoid the negative word ‘tax’; we give the seasons of the year into four names, but actually the year runs continuously without any breaks. It isn’t, in reality, divided into four. The seasons, then, are a way of seeing the year, not an objective fact of nature.

Roland Barthes on ‘Boxing’ and ‘Wrestling’ (46-7):

• Roland Barthes applied the structuralist method to the general field of modern culture. In Mythologies (1957), e.g. the difference between ‘boxing’ and ‘wrestling’ is that boxing is seen as a sport concerned with repression, endurance, and the boxer fights as himself, not as a hero. Whereas wrestlers grunt and snarl with aggression, stage elaborate displays of agony and triumph, and fight as exaggerated, like super-heroes. Clearly, these two sports have quite different functions within society: boxing enacts the stoical endurance which is sometimes necessary in life, while wrestling dramatizes struggles and conflicts between good and evil.

Boxing = endurance, stoicism, individualism

Wrestling = aggression, performativity, good/evil dualism

What structuralists do? (50)

• They analyze prose narratives, relating the text to some larger containing structure, such as:

  • • • the conventions of a particular literary genre, or

      • a network of intertextual connections, or

      • a projected model of an underlying universal narrative structure, or

      • a notion of narratives as a complex of recurrent patterns or motifs.

• They apply the concept of systematic patterning and structuring to the whole field of Western culture, and across culture, treating as ‘systems of signs’ anything from Ancient Greek myths to brands of soap powder.

Example of 1.3:

Aric was driving a Jaguar, just run in. Its newness pleased him – the [rich, sweet, heady, sexy, opulent] smell of the leather, the neat zeros on the mileage dial. He was among those men whose car is never more than a year old.

The words ‘rich,’ ‘sweet,’ ‘sexy’ all come close to turning Eric into a leather fetishist, while ‘rich’ has a certain directness which implies that his pleasure in things is in direct proportion to their cost. The text’s ‘opulent’ has the similar implication but seems to imply an appreciation of quality and craftmanship for its own sake.

The most basic difference between liberal humanist and structuralist reading:

• The structuralist concentrates on the structure, symbol, and design of the narrative, while the emphasis on any wider moral significance, and on the interpretation itself in the broad sense, is very much reduced. So instead of going into the content, in the liberal humanist manner, the structuralist presents a series of parallels, echoes, reflections, patterns, and contrasts, so that the narrative becomes highly schematized, is translated into what we might call a verbal diagram.  

Parallels/Echoes/Reflections/Repetitions/Contrasts/Patterns

in

Plot/Structure/Character/Situation/Language

To have a better understanding of Structuralism in Japanese, click here: https://liberal-arts-guide.com/structuralism/