It is probably best to approach the term "structuralism" through an attempt to understand the concept of "structure" within this theoretical point of view. Without an understanding of this fundamental concept, it is difficult to arrive to an understanding of the intellectual movement referred to as structuralism. Traditionally the major problem with the term structure has been its concreteness. The word refers to phenomena, e.g. buildings, which are most physical in their essence. Needless to say, structures in structuralism are not neither concrete nor physical. Structures refer to mental models built after concrete realty. Furthermore these models are not obvious but demand an understanding of hidden, or deep aspects, of the matter at hand. Following this approach structuralism is an attempt to build models which can help understand or, as structuralists, would put it explicate the materials at hand.
The most difficult aspect of structuralism is that these structures are not based on concrete or physical phenomena as they are in biological or other sciences but based on cultural realities such kinship organization or tales. These cultural realities are mental as are the structures which explicate them. These structures and their structuralist models exist only in human minds and not in nature, for example: a Marxist would claim.
There are many structuralists including Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan and L￩vi-Strauss. It is even possible to claim that some important social and/or psychological theoreticians and certain sciences are structuralist in character because what they do is to build models of psychological or social reality. This seems to be particularly true of Sigmund Freud and Carl Marx. In all of the above a distinction is made between what may be called surface (consciousness, superstructure) structure and deep (unconscious, infrastructure) structure. It is also worth noting that structuralist claim that to understand the surface structure one has to understand the deep structure, and how the it influences the surface structure. It is accurate to say that of all the structuralist the best known and most influential is Claude L. Strauss.
Structuralism as a concept is grand, controversial and elusive. For our purposes it is to be understood at two levels of generality: first, as a broad intellectual movement, one of the most significant ways of theorizing in the human sciences in the twentieth century; second, as a particular set of approaches to literature (and other arts and aspects of culture) flourishing especially in France in the 1960s but with older roots and continuing repercussions. The basic premiss of structuralism is that human activity and its products, even perception and thought itself, are constructed and not natural. Structure is the principle of construction and the object of analysis, to be understood by its intimate reference to the concepts of system and value as defined in SEMIOTICS ... Structuralist students of literature linked semiotic assumptions with ideas from other sources, principally Russian FORMALISM; Prague School structuralism ... ; the narrative analysis of Vladimir Propp; structuralist anthropology as blended from linguistics and Propp in the cooking-pot of Claude L￩vi-Strauss; the new generative linguistics of Chomsky.
More successful has been the analysis of narrative structure. The inspiration came from Vladimir Propp's Morphology of the Folk-Tale (1928), which appeared in French translation in 1957 and in English in 1958. Propp noted that, though the individual characters in Russian tales were very diverse, their functions (villain, helper, etc.) could be described in a limited number of terms (he suggested thirty-one, falling into seven superordinate categories). By reference to these elements, the narrative ordering of any tale could be recognised as a sequence of 'functions of the dramatis personae and associated actions. This is in fact a generative grammar of narrative: a finite system (paradigm) of abstract units generates an infinite set of narrative sequences (syntagms). The linguistic analogy was seized on by L￩vi-Strauss. It became a standard assumption in narratology that the structure of a story was homologous with the structure of a sentence; this assumption allowed the apparatus of sentence-linguistics to be applied to the development of a metalanguage for describing narrative structure. Anglo-Saxon reaction to structuralism has been almost universally hostile, deploring its mechanistic and reductive style and suspecting its exponents of a kind of left-wing philistinism. Fortunately, the response in France has been more subtle and more positively critical, confronting problems of what is neglected in the structuralist approach: reader, author, discourse as communicative practice and as ideology" (Roger Fowler, "Structuralism", in Roger Fowler (ed.), A Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms (Routledge: London, 1973; 1987), pp. 232-35).
Structuralism, however, is not a unified school or methodology; Lvi Strauss does not have a monopoly on structural studies in anthropology or other disciplines. Furthermore, the work done by structuralists is extensive, diverse, and difficult. However because of his influence Lvi Strauss is an excellent example of structuralist approaches. In anthropology the use of the concept of "structure" is far older than L￩vi-Srauss; R. Radcliffe-Brown, George Peter Murdock, and many others have used the term in a different ways. However, it is important to note that the main influence on the work Lvi Strauss' work is multifaceted and that he was influenced not only by other anthropologists but also by linguists, geologists and others. L￩vi-Strauss brings into anthropology these and other influences which have shaped his thinking and anthropological thought through his work. The main aspects of Lvi Strauss' work can be summarized under three headings first, the alliance theory, second,human mental processes,and third, structure analysis of myth.
(1) Alliance Theory: Lvi Strauss' theoretical contributions to social anthropology are numerous and significant. The best known of these is "alliance theory." Alliance theory stresses the importance of marriage in society as opposed to the importance of descent. Its basic supposition is that the exchange of women between groups of related men results in greater social solidarity, and that the result of this cohesion is better chances of survival for all members of the resultant kin group. Strauss' claims that the regulating of marriages through prescription and preference and the proscription of other types of marriage creates a "exchange" of women in simple societies. This interchange, accompanied by exchanges of gifts, ensures the cooperation of the members of these groups.
His analysis of the incest taboo is fascinating. For Strauss the link between nature and culture in humankind comes from this universal proscription. In the incest taboo nature transcends itself and creates culture as the controlling element of human behavior. Sex and other drives are regulated by culture; man has become a cultural entity.
(2) Human Mental Processes: There is unity in the way the human mind functions. Strauss claims that, although the manifestations may be very different, the human mental processes are the same in all cultures. The unity of the mental processes results from the biology of the human brain and the way it works. As a result of this unity, e.g. the classification of the universe by "primitive man" has the same basis as when it is done by any group, it is done through models. The fact that resultant models of this classification may be different is irrelevant for him. The analysis of myth in Strauss is also based on the premise about the unity of the human mind.
(3) Structural Analysis of Myth: Strauss' work on myth parallels his interest in mental processes. His attempts to discover unconscious the regularities of the human mind. The use of the structuralist models of myth allows for the reduction of material studied to manageable levels. The dominant manner to accomplish this goal is based on the use of the following concepts: a) surface and deep structure, b) binary oppositions Culture/Nature, and c) mediation.
Some Elements of Structuralism and its Application to Literary Theory
I.General Principles
1. Meaning occurs through difference. Meaning is not identification of the sign with object in the real world or with some pre-existent concept or essential reality; rather it is generated by difference among signs in a signifying system. For instance, the meaning of the words "woman" and "lady" are established by their relations to one another in a meaning-field. They both refer to a human female, but what constitutes "human" and what constitutes "female" are themselves established through difference, not identity with any essence, or ideal truth, or the like.
2. Relations among signs are of two sorts, contiguity and substitutability, the axes of combination and selection: hence the existence of all 'grammars', hence all substitutions, hence the ability to know something by something else, or by a part of it in some way, hence metonymy and metaphor. The conception of combination and selection provides the basis for an analysis of 'literariness' or 'poeticality' in the use, repetition and variation of sound patterns and combinations. It also provides keys to the most fundamental elements of culture.
3. Structuralism notes that much of our imaginative world is structured of, and structured by, binary oppositions (being/nothingness, hot/cold, culture/nature); these oppositions structure meaning, and one can describe fields of cultural thought, or topoi, by describing the binary sets which compose them. As an illustration, here is a binary set for the monstrous
4. Structuralism forms the basis for semiotics, the study of signs: a sign is a union of signifier and signified, and is anything that stands for anything else (or, as Umberto Eco put it, a sign is anything that can be used to lie).
5. Central too to semiotics is the idea of codes, which give signs context -- cultural codes, literary codes, etc. The study of semiotics and of codes opens up literary study to cultural study, and expands the resources of the critic in discussing the meaning of texts. Structuralism, says, Genette, "is a study of the cultural construction or identification of meaning according to the relations of signs that constitute the meaning-spectrum of the culture."
6. Some signs carry with them larger cultural meanings, usually very general; these are called, by Roland Barthes, "myths", or second-order signifiers. Anything can be a myth. For example, two-story pillars supporting the portico of a house are a mythic signifier of wealth and elegance.
7. Structuralism introduces the idea of the 'subject', as opposed to the idea of the individual as a stable indivisible ego. Toquote from Kaja Silverman in The Subject of Semiotics,
There is no attempt here to challenge the meaningfulness of persons; there is an attempt to dethrone the ideology of the ego, the idea that the self is an eternal, indivisible essence, and an attempt to redefine what it is to be a person. The self is, like other things, signified and culturally constructed. Post-structuralism, in particular, will insist that the subject is de-centered.
8. The conception of the constructed subject opens up the borders between the conscious and the unconscious. The unconscious itself is not some strange, impenetrable realm of private meaning but is constructed through the sign-systems and through the repressions of the culture. Both the self and the unconscious are cultural constructs.
9. In the view of structuralism our knowledge of 'reality' is not only coded but also conventional, that is, structured by and through conventions, made up of signs and signifying practices. This is known as "the social construction of reality."
10. There is, then, in structuralism, a coherent connection among the conceptions of reality, the social, the individual, the unconscious: they are all composed of the same signs, codes and conventions, all working according to similar laws.
II. Structuralism, culture and texts
1. Structuralism enables both the reading of texts and the reading of cultures: through semiotics, structuralism leads us to see everything as 'textual', that is, composed of signs, governed by conventions of meaning, ordered according to a pattern of relationships.
2. Structuralism enables us to approach texts historically or trans-culturally in a disciplined way. Whenever we have to look more objectively, when we are transversing barriers of time, say, or of culture or interest, then the structural method, the search for principles of order, coherence and meaning, become dominant.
Structuralism is oriented toward the reader insofar as it says that the reader constructs literature, that is, reads the text with certain conventions and expectations in mind. Some post-structural theorists, Fish for instance, hold that the reader constructs the text entirely, through the conventions of reading of her interpretive community.
Structuralism underlines the importance of genre, i.e., basic rules as to how subjects are approached, about conventions of reading for theme, level of seriousness, significance of language use, and so forth. "Different genres lead to different expectations of types of situations and actions, and of psychological, moral, and esthetic values." (Genette)
Through structuralism, literature is seen as a whole: it functions as a system of meaning and reference no matter how many works there are, two or two thousand. Thus any work becomes the parole, the individual articulation, of a cultural langue, or system of signification. As literature is a system, no work of literature is an autonomous whole; similarly, literature itself is not autonomous but is part of the larger structures of signification of the culture.
The following are some points based on Culler's ideas about the advantages of structuralism, having to do with the idea that literature is a protocol of reading:
a. Structuralism is a firmer starting-point for reading literature as literature than are other approaches, because literariness and/or fictionality does not have to be shown to be inherent in the text, but in the way it is read. It explains, for instance, why the same sentence can have a different meaning depending on the genre in which it appears, it explains how the boundaries of the literary can change from age to age, it accommodates and explains differing readings of a text given differing reading protocols -- one can read a text for its 'literary' qualities or for its sociological or ideological qualities, for instance, and read as complex a text in doing so.
b. One gains an appreciation of literature as an institution, as a coherent and related set of codes and practices, and so one sees also that reading is situated reading, that is, it is in a certain meaning-domain or set of codes. It follows that when literature is written, it will be written under these codes (it can break or alter the codes to create effects, but this is still a function of the codes).
c. Consequently one can be more open to challenges to and alterations of literary conventions.
d. Once one sees that reading and writing are both coded and based on conventions one can read 'against the grain' in a disciplined way, and one can read readings of literature -- reading can become a more self-reflexive process.
IV. Structural Analysis
As structuralism is so broad a theory with such extensive ramifications, there will be different ways of doing structural analysis. Here are some possible approaches.
1. The study of the basic codes which make narrative possible, and which make it work. This is known generally as narratology, and often produces what might be called a grammar of narrative. Greimas, Barthes, Todorov and others investigated what the components and relations of narrative are. This gives rise to such things as Barthes division of incidents into nuclei and catalyzers, and his promulgation of five codes of narrative, given briefly here, as adapted from Cohen and Shires:
a. proairetic -- things (events) in their sequence; recognizable actions and their effects.
b. semic -- the field where signifiers point to other signifiers to produce a chain of recognizable connotations. In a general sense, that which enables meaning to happen.
c. hermeneutic -- the code of narrative suspense, including the ways in which the story suspends closure, structures parallels, repetitions and so forth toward closure.
d. symbolic -- marks out meaning as difference; the binaries which the culture uses/enacts to create its meanings; binaries which, of course,but disunite and join.
e. reference -- refers to various bodies of knowledge which constitute the society; creates the familiarity of reality by quoting from a large assortment of social texts which mediate and organize cultural knowledge of reality -- medicine, law, morality, psychology, philosophy, religion, plus all the clichs and proverbs of popular culture.
f. diegetic (C&S's addition) -- the narration, the text's encoding of narrative conventions that signify how it means as a telling.
2. The study of the construction of meaning in texts, as for instance through tropes, through repetitions with difference. Hayden White analyzes the structure of Western historical narrative through a theory of tropes; Lodge shows how metaphor and metonymy can be seen to form the bases respectively of symbolic and realist texts.
3. The study of mimesis, that is, of the representation of reality, becomes i) the study of naturalization, of the way in which reality effects are created and the way in which we create a sense of reality and meaning from texts; ii) the study of conventions of meaning in texts.
4. Texts are also analyzed for their structures of opposition, particularly binary oppositions, as informing structures and as representing the central concerns and imaginative structures of the society.
5. Texts can be analyzed as they represent the codes and conventions of the culture -- we can read the texts as ways of understanding the meaning-structures of the cultures and sub-cultures out of which they are written and which they represent.
References:
http://www.utpa.edu/faculty/mglazer/Theory/structuralism.htm
http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/4F70/struct.php
http://www.colorado.edu/English/courses/ENGL2012Klages/1derrida.html
http://www.as.ua.edu/ant/Faculty/murphy/struct.htm
http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/SESLL/EngLit/ugrad/hons/theory/(Post)Structuralism.htm
