Lecture 3: Structuralism

 Objectives

            At the end of this unit students should be able to:  

Discuss the theoretical postulations of structuralism

Apply structuralist principles to the analysis of literary works.

1. Defining Structuralism: Structuralism is a method of interpreting and analyzing such things as language, literature, and society, which focuses on contrasting ideas or elements of structure and attempts to show how they relate to the whole structure.

2. The Emergence of Structuralism 

Structuralism has an effect on your life more than you can realize. It was developed in the early 1900s. It is basically an approach to understanding life, and the way it does this is by looking at the underlying systems or the underlying structures, hence the term structuralism.

   Historically speaking, we are to focus on the notions that structuralism had overturned, and then we look at its early influencers, what exactly it entails, and then we’ll get into the implications of structuralism, and how it is affecting our life and our culture.

So, we are going to begin by defining a few terms that structuralism is going to throw out of the widow. This has been communicated elegantly by Dr. Louis Marko’s lectures on Structuralism. I just want to give credit to him for his insights on this. So, we have these two terms up here: ontology and epistemology.  

Ontology is the study of being and eternal essences. It is a way of uncovering something’s eternal essence. Ontology is a discipline that, for each given sort of thing, specifies its basic nature.

Epistemology is the study of knowledge and the notion of belief and how we can access rational knowledge. (Episteme is the Greek word for 'knowledge' and familiar to us as a part of the longer term 'epistemology', which is that branch of philosophy that concerns itself with the theory of knowledge.) 

I wanted to define these terms because historically these have been of great concern to philosophers. But as we are going to see, structuralism is going to break with this to get a new meaning. 

   Now how does structuralism do that? Let’s get back to some of the roots of philosophy. Plato believed in the forms and that the ultimate idea (the essence of everything) existed in heaven. Plato believed that forms are divine. Their connection to divinity is what makes forms perfect: they lack the flaws of humans and of the physical realm. They are of a higher order of existence than their physical representations. He believed ideas were real things, they had real essences, they were not shadowy or instrumental, manmade—they were real truths. Those forms are the origins of everything in the world. Plato's Theory of Forms asserts that the physical realm is only a shadow, or image, of the true reality of the Realm of Forms. So what are these Forms, according to Plato? The Forms are abstract, perfect, unchanging concepts or ideals that transcend time and space; they exist in the Realm of Forms.

    So, here is Plato’s system with the essence and reality existing in this heavenly realm. Structuralism is going to turn that on its head. It is going to say, No. There is not some kind of spiritual essence or reality that is informing material experience. Any kind of metaphysical meaning that we think we are experiencing is simply arising out of –or is a product of material systems and structures. So, if you want a perfect example of this, just take a look at the proto-structuralist Karl Marx. Marx argued that religion, philosophy, and art are not pure vehicles of higher truths but are products of underlying economic structures. According to Marx, meaning doesn’t start up there and proceeds downward. Meaning begins in our world. The physical material and the other socio-economic forces then makes its way upward. So, things like democracy and religion for Marx are just products of socio-economic forces. So, you see how Marx breaks away from ontology. Now, what about epistemology? 

    Epistemology is the study of knowing, so the idea that the subjective mind, pure consciousness, if you recall Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am”. Historically, the center of all truth was our consciousness, our ego, and our way of knowing. Well, structuralism overturns this, and they will say that even our identity and consciousness are really not the origin of anything. They will say it is just the product of material, physical forces.

     I am going to throw up another proto-structuralist that you will probably recognize. It is Sigmund Freud. He was hugely influential and basically tried to overturn our understanding of epistemology or our understanding of how we know. Freud tried to remove the self as the center or origin of meaning by showing that it is not the clear, meaningful patterns of our conscious mind, but the deeply hidden structures of our conscious mind that determine who we are as individuals. So, basically, Freud said that our conscious mind cannot be the center because even our conscious mind is a product of our unconscious mind. So, for the structuralists meaning and truth do not come from above or from within, rather, they believe the real source of all meaning and truth are these deep structures. As has already been mentioned earlier, they believe that the source of everything is some sort of material system or underlying structure. 

     Let’s take a look at the structure of language, which is, the structuralists will say a self-contained system. To the structuralists, the only thing giving words meaning is the structure of words that surround them (the word) and the relationships and differences that exist. Thus, words do not have any inherent meaning; they can only act on the principle of differentiation. Now, what do we mean by this? Well, think about the game “Guess who”. In this game, you find out who it is by determining who it is not and by making wrong guesses. To the structuralist, this is how language works. Just take a look at the descriptive words.

 

NOT MAN MADE.GROWS FRUIT HAS LEAVES.NOT A BUSH YOU CAN CLIMB IT. NOT A LADDER YOU CAN CUT IT DOWN. HAS WOOD. BIRDS LIVE IN IT. NOT A BIRD HOUSE

                                      TREE

 This is the external structure in which you can understand another word. Can you guess which word these terms are referring to? It is the word “tree” Ok so, to the structuralist, the term “tree” does not refer to this object because of some innate quality of the word but mostly because it does not refer to other things like “grass, or bush or lake.” Structures are not founded on things –or individual elements that have meanings in and of themselves, but instead, they are founded on relations between things. So, structural meaning arises out of the differences between all parts. The individual elements of a structure have no internal meaning; it is only when you arrange those things in a system or structure of differences that you have a structure that can determine any type of meaning. Hence, structuralism is a system in which each element in a group can only be understood by its relation to other elements as part of a larger structure. So, the word’s structure is merely created by the common understanding of people. It is not fixed or tethered to a higher reality. It is merely created, merely a human invention. 

    At this point, we should introduce you to one of the rising leaders of structuralism. His name is Ferdinand de Saussure. This is perfectly true because structuralism originates in his linguistic studies. Saussure argues that language and words are completely arbitrary. Now, for most of us when we speak we carry this notion that our words mean something, that our words are not arbitrary, and that they are somehow linked to some kind of Idea with the capital “I”. But Saussure did not see it this way. For de Saussure, a word or what he calls a sign does not unite this pre-existing thing with a kind of perfect name. 

 

Sign (Concept + word together) = the image of a tree (sign) the word “tree” concept.

 Rather, a word or a sign links a concept that is called “signified” with a sound or symbol which is called “signifier”. According to Saussure, all language is made of signs. By putting together signs it is possible to create messages. Each sign has two parts: signifier and signified.

1. Signifier: is very difficult to define. It refers to the psychological imprint of the sound, the impression it makes on us. It is how we think about something in our head i.e. sound image. 
2. 2. Signified: refers to the concept or essence of thing. What the signifier is referring to the sound tree refers to the concept of tree. It is what we think when we think.

So, to the structuralist when we say the word “tree” all we are doing is looking at a concept of a tree and coming up with a sound. Words are just letters and sounds we slap on some concept and there is no real link between what is coming out of your mouth and the actual concept. Saussure even says the relationship between the signified and the signifier is arbitrary meaning there is no natural connection between the signifier and the signified.

 

 

                                 Signifier (sound, word, image of tree

 

 And what he offers as a proof is that if it were not arbitrary, there would be only one language in the world. He says our words are arbitrary they do not have meaning or capture truth. Words are simply arbitrary.

Structuralists assert that everything we have come to know as capital T. Truth can be traced back and explained away in material origins. And they do this by pointing to the underlying structures. So, the underlying structures can explain anything. There is no mystery, no metaphysical essence, just a systematic and deterministic string of ones and zeros.

Qualities of the Structures 

     So, here is a quick overview of the qualities of a structure. And for the structuralist, this is what undergirds every subject of understanding. To them, a structure is unconscious materialistic and deterministic. Again, we are not the makers of our own destinies. We are determined by these structures. Secondly, structures are not founded on things, but on relations between things. Let’s give another example. Think about a CD. As many of you know, it works on a binary code. So, every bit of information is encoded as either a 1 or a 0. Now the ones and Zeros have no meaning in and of themselves. But when you take them together as a system of differences (1 is not zero, zero is not 1), and you string them out they produce a complex symphony. So 1 and 0 are nothing, only the structure of differences that create this sound. That’s what the structuralists are arguing here. Think about your DNA. My DNA is a kind of structure and it is formed of four (4) elements abbreviated C.A.T.G. Now the individual C.A.T.G. have no meaning in and of themselves, but when you string them together a C.A.T.G is a system of differences. You have a living breathing, conscious human being. So, you get what I am saying, the structures are not founded on inherent things but on the relationship between those things. Thirdly, structures are complete, logical, and all-encompassing. They are not static but dynamic and are constantly transforming themselves to form new elements and they change over time. Lastly, structures are found in all areas of thought and study. Basically, any discipline can be interrogated by its structure. 

    So, how does this affect you? Well, for one, it explains why the sciences are taking over most disciplines. Some have even said, “Humanity is being drained away from the humanities.” You certainly see this in contemporary art. In fact, a lot of contemporary artists take a little bit more cold calculated approach to their art and what was once considered a discipline of transcendence now has some scientific approach. Beauty becomes arbitrary and explainable. So, the influence of structuralism cuts very deep into contemporary art because people can analyze the art at its structure. Music becomes reducible to its structure and can almost be treated like an equation.    

4. Structuralism in Literary Theory

    Structuralism is a theory that argues that all literary texts are written to be parts of a greater pattern, or structure, which can consist of a narrative model, a set of recurring motifs or patterns of story, or perhaps a particular set of beliefs or convictions. Thus virtually every work of literature will adhere to one or more set patterns, and individual variations will be of little interest to the structuralist critic. In fact, under the term “text” structuralists mean the whole world as any document or piece of art can be analyzed like a text with perfectly coordinated components.

Structuralism is used in literary theory, for example, 

...if you examine the structure of a large number of short stories to discover the underlying principles that govern their composition...principles of narrative progression...or of characterization...you are also engaged in structuralist activity if you describe the structure of a single literary work to discover how its composition demonstrates the underlying principles of a given structural system. (Tyson 197-198).

Northrop Frye, however, takes a different approach to structuralism by exploring ways in which genres of Western literature fall into his four mythoi (also see Jungian criticism in the Freudian Literary Criticism resource): theory of modes, or historical criticism (tragic, comic, and thematic); theory of symbols, or ethical criticism (literal/descriptive, formal, mythical, and anagogic); theory of myths, or archetypal criticism (comedy, romance, tragedy, irony/satire); theory of genres, or rhetorical criticism (epos, prose, drama, lyric) (Tyson 240).

           Structuralism argues, moreover, that systems are constructed in terms of simple binary oppositions that establish patterns of identity and difference that encode signs and make them functional as meaningful elements within a system of differentiation and equivalences. A radical claim made by structuralism is that the human subject does not invent language but is preceded by language and is born into it. That sounds odd until one realizes that DNA is a semiotic system with properties rather like language and that our ability to converse was prepared for long before humans evolved, given that animals had most of the features of speech and the basic sociality to go with it long before we evolved. Because the " wholism " of structuralism is so at odds with how people have been habituated to think about language, the movement never became widely popular, though conceptually it is more robust than, say, New Criticism or traditional historicism. The work by anthropologist Claude Lévi - Strauss is considered a major bulwark of structuralism, though structuralism has been practiced with considerable success by literary critics, among them, Roland Barthes, Gerard Genette, Philippe Hamon, Michael Riffaterre, Tzvetan Todorov, and Julia Kristeva. The advantage to structuralism is that it doesn't begin with the assumption that literature is a semiotic representation of some independent mental reality (or content) that exists transcendentally either out in the world or in the writer's imagination. In other words, structuralism abandons the mimetic fallacy of a pre-existing reality, whether mental or concrete, that the writer is translating into signs. Rather, structuralism argues that the real effect of a text is produced by the sign system, not reproduced by it. This seems like a small difference, but this shift has very significant consequences from an interpretive point of view. For one thing, it demystifies the idea that a novel is very much like a photograph of some independent reality. 

Roland Barthes's Semiotics 

           Barthes's major critical concern was to explore how a culture's system of values and various ideologies are encoded in the culture's languages and other social interactions. Barthes stressed that these values and ideologies were spread throughout cultures through stereotypes or "mythologies." Barthes believed that language was a powerful force that served to influence the way people understood the world around them. Language, according to Barthes, is always controlled by various cultural, social, and political ideologies and serves to structure the way we conceptualize the world in which we reside. Barthes's theoretical work, then, served to challenge institutions and languages that allowed one group of people to govern and control another. What Barthes was ultimately contending, then, was that most of what we consider to be natural within a culture is based upon relative and subjective historical social, political, and cultural constructs. Barthes's later work in semiotics (which is the study of signs and symbols), developed out of the conception of the relativity of language. Through his study of signs and symbols, Barthes concluded that unlikely objects are signs and always function as part of a larger system of signs in which the true meaning and intention of the signs themselves.

b. Conclusion

           According to Eagleton (1996), structuralism, as the term suggests, is concerned with structures, and more particularly with examining the general laws by which they work. Literary structuralism flourished in the 1960s as an attempt to apply to literature the methods and insights of the founder of modern structural linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure viewed language as a system of signs, which was to be studied 'synchronically' that is to say, studied as a complete system at a given point in time- rather than 'diachronically', in its historical development. Each sign was to be seen as being made up of a 'signifier (a sound image, or its graphic equivalent), and a 'signified' (the concept or meaning). For instance, the three black marks c - a-t is a signifier that evokes the signified 'cat' in an English mind. The relation between signifier and signified is an arbitrary one: there is no inherent reason why these three marks should mean 'cat', other than cultural and historical convention. Each sign in the system has meaning only by its difference from the others. 'Cat' has meant not 'in itself, but because it is not 'cap' or 'cad' or 'bat'. It does not matter how the signifier alters, as long as it preserves its difference from all the other signifiers; you can pronounce it in many different accents as long as this difference is maintained. 'In the linguistic system,' says Saussure, 'there are only differences': meaning is not mysteriously immanent in a sign but is functional, the result of its difference from other signs. Finally, Saussure believed that linguistics would get into a hopeless mess if it concerned itself with actual speech or parole as he called it. He was not interested in investigating what people said; he was concerned with the objective structure of signs which made their speech possible in the first place, and this he called langue. Neither was Saussure concerned with the real objects which people spoke about: to study language effectively, the referents of the signs, the things they denoted, had to be placed in brackets.

c. Summary 

           In this unit, you have learned that structuralism in general is an attempt to apply linguistic theory to the study of literature. As Eagleton notes, you can view a myth, wrestling match, system of tribal kinship, restaurant menu or oil painting as a system of signs and a structuralist analysis will try to isolate the underlying set of laws by which these signs are combined into meanings. It will largely ignore what the signs actually 'say', and concentrate instead on their internal relations with one another. Structuralism, as Fredric Jameson has put it, is an attempt ―to rethink everything once again in terms of linguistics.

Typical Questions

Using a specific structuralist framework (like Frye's mythoi)...how should the text be classified in terms of its genre? In other words, what patterns exist within the text that make it a part of other works like it?

Using a specific structuralist framework...analyze the text’s narrative operations...can you speculate about the relationship between the... [text]... and the culture from which the text emerged? In other words, what patterns exist within the text that make it a product of a larger culture?

What patterns exist within the text that connects it to the larger "human" experience? In other words, can we connect patterns and elements within the text to other texts from other cultures to map similarities that tell us more about the common human experience? This is a liberal humanist move that assumes that since we are all human, we all share basic human commonalities.

What rules or codes of interpretation must be internalized to 'make sense of the text?

What is the semiotics of a given category of cultural phenomena, or 'text,' such as high-school football games, television and/or magazine ads for a particular brand of perfume...or even media coverage of a historical event? (Tyson 225)

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Many Structuralist critics believe that all literature genres can be reduced to the retelling of a few basic myths. By creating this rigid structure of genre, Structuralists believe that we can recognize the commonality of human experience. Explain

 Answer

   Structuralism is a theoretical framework that emerged in the mid-20th century, primarily in linguistics and anthropology, but later extended its influence to literary theory. Structuralist critics believe that underlying the diversity of human expression, there are universal structures or patterns that shape our understanding of the world. This perspective is often applied to literature, where structuralists attempt to identify underlying structures that transcend individual works.

In the context of literature, some structuralist critics argue that all literary genres can be reduced to the retelling of a few basic myths or underlying narrative structures. By doing so, they believe that it is possible to identify common elements and patterns that are shared across different literary works. The idea is that beneath the surface variations in plot, characters, and settings, there exist fundamental structures that reflect universal aspects of human experience.

The concept of myths is crucial in this context. Myths are traditional stories or narratives that often explain the origins of a culture, customs, or natural phenomena. Structuralists argue that these myths serve as fundamental templates for storytelling, and they manifest in various forms across different cultures and times. By identifying and analyzing these underlying mythic structures, structuralist critics believe they can reveal the deep-seated commonalities of human experience that transcend cultural and historical differences.

For example, a structuralist analysis might identify recurring themes such as the hero's journey, the quest for knowledge, the battle between good and evil, or the cyclical nature of life and death. These themes, according to structuralists, represent fundamental human concerns that are expressed in diverse ways across different literary genres.

By creating a rigid structure of genre based on these underlying mythic elements, structuralists aim to demonstrate the universality of certain narrative patterns and archetypes. This approach suggests that, despite the apparent diversity of literary works, there are shared, fundamental structures that reflect the common aspects of the human psyche and experience.

It's important to note that structuralism has been both influential and criticized within literary theory. While it provides a systematic way of understanding literature and identifying shared patterns, critics argue that it may oversimplify the richness and complexity of individual works, neglecting the unique qualities that make each piece of literature distinct. Additionally, the emphasis on universal structures has been challenged by poststructuralist and postmodernist theories that highlight the instability of meaning and the role of individual interpretation in literary analysis.

References

Foucault, Michel. "Structuralism and Literary Analysis." Critical Inquiry 45, no. 2 (January 2019): 531–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/700991.

Michelson, Annette. "Art and the Structuralist Perspective." October 169 (August 2019): 3–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/octo_a_00357

Culler, Jonathan D. Structuralist Poetics. London: Taylor & Francis Inc, 2004
Culler, Jonathan. Structuralist poetics: Structuralism, linguistics and the study of literature. London: Routledge, 2002.

Hawkes, Terence. Structuralism & semiotics. London: Routledge, 1991.

Endre, Bojtár. Slavic structuralism. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1985

Berman, Art. From the new criticism to deconstruction: Thereception of structuralism and post-structuralism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988.

Banfield, Ann. "I. A. Richards." In Literary Theory and Criticism, 96–106. Oxford University PressOxford, 2006. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199291335.003.0007.