What is Structuralism? Levi-Strauss, Barthes and Lacan
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- Опубліковано 1 чер 2024
- What is Structuralism? In this episode, we are going to break down the Structuralist theory pioneered by Claude Lévi Strauss and explored by the likes of Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan and Jean Piaget. We will be looking at the meaning of Structuralism and what the main criticisms of it were from Jean Piaget and from the Poststructuralism angle of Jacques Derrida.
The simple answer to what is Structuralism would look at the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure. His work especially the idea of langue and parole as we explore in this video was a pivotal inspiration for the structural anthropology of Claude Levi Strauss and for structural sociology as seen in the work of Barthes and Foucault and in structuralism psychology as seen in the works of Jacques Lacan. There are influential ways of looking at structuralism in literature as we shall see with the works of Joseph Campbell who while not a structuralist was influenced by Claude Lévi Strauss and whose work is the epitome of Structuralism.
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⌛ Timestamps:
0:00 Intro: What is Structuralism
0:34 Ferdinand de Saussure and Structural Linguistics
2:08 The Structuralists
4:34 Piaget and the Failures of Structuralism as Science
7:22 The Poststructuralism Critique by Derrida
9:06 Summary and Conclusion
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#Structuralism #thelivingphilosophy #philosophy #historyofphilosophy #poststructuralism #Lacan #Barthes #Levi-Strauss #Foucault
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⌛ Timestamps:
0:00 Intro: What is Structuralism
0:34 Ferdinand de Saussure and Structural Linguistics
2:08 The Structuralists
4:34 Piaget and the Failures of Structuralism as Science
7:22 The Poststructuralism Critique by Derrida
9:06 Summary and Conclusion
As a small precision, Marx's doctrine is not dialectical materialism (which is a term that was coined after him and which refers to the application of the dialectics to nature) but rather historical materialism (which is specific to human society) eventhough he never referred to his findings with that name.
A smal precision perhaps but massively appreciated Miretov. I was thinking that historical materialism was Hegel's term for some reason. Also didn't realise that Marx didn't use the term at all. The correction is appreciated and hopefully you'll be able to help me with more such details as we move further into this tradition
Beat me to it lol
I've been reading Judith Butler's criticism of Lacan and Levi Strauss for my thesis and your video builds up the perfect context, massive thanks!
Ah wonderful I'm delighted to hear it!
Hey! Would you mind recommending which Judith Butler text you were reading ?
Hi. Your analysis of structuralism is indeed clear and nice. It just gets me wondering that in the Brazilian academic midst the works of Barthes is still a standard. Not just him, but mainly Greimas and his school of discoursive semiotics take the state of the knowledge in discourse analysis. I can tell that theories like Multiliteracies in teaching are still strongly influenced by structuralism. Philosophy college courses are aware of that, but linguistics is definitely stuck in classic structuralism. Other names in linguistics like Charaudeau and Maigueneau are still growing works, but I believe they also come from the same sources.
I understand the spirit behind Derrida's criticism but surely there is value in trying to simplify reality to get a better grasp on it. He might be right that it is overly ambitious to find immutable structures in the human world (we know we are subject to evolution) but even finding a temporary structure can illuminate some of our behaviors in ways that are not obvious and highly valuable. Loved your video as usual!
I agree. I think that we can't just set aside the idea of immuatable structures. It's hard to do so when you look at subjects like Maths and chemistry so why should humanity be any different. Of course we might say that the human condition is more complex than maths or chemistry or rather it's harder to simplify and isolate the individual variables with but it seems a new form of religiosity to say that humans are so special that they cannot be understood at all in the way that the rest of the universe is. And as you say it needn't be an immutable one and Piaget's work is a fine example of that. I do love the novelty of Derrida's perspective though. It's a new way of looking at the Western intellectual tradition that really excited my mind. I have hopes that he might be like Nietzsche where I don't agree with everything he says but find the engagment to be highly stimulating
As far as I understand, Derrida's criticism isn't really that structures are changing, rather than unchanging, more so that what you find to be a "temporary structure" isn't really the same as an "underlying structure", so simplifying reality as you put it, might not be the best approach.
@@petchinv2870 Ah fascinating. That's a good distinction thank you for sharing
@@petchinv2870 Why can't a fixed set of underlying structures lead to evolving "sub-structures"? a+b=c leads to different results, depending on the variables you put in.
Evolution itself started as a rather simple set of rules, but became complex because the amount of variables increased exponentially.
I think the main problem is that the underlying structures (which I believe exist) are way too complex to grasp and we barely scratched the surface.
Maybe one day, AI-technology will be the key to push this concept further, but no human brain will ever be able to see the whole picture at once.
@@kidcoma1340 I think we mean very different things when talking about "underlying structures" for us to understand each other for now
Hermoso resumen e introducción
Marvellous exposition! Thank you!
Thanks Lex!
you are my favourite chanel!! thank you for teaching so fantastically
Ah thank you so much Clara!!
Hey do you have any videos on what structuralism has to do with existentialism? I don’t see the connections.
Thansk, this has been a nice sumary to get some ideas in order before goinig into some of this authors' texts!
Ah lovely stuff Martín! Delighted to be of assistance!
Basically structuralism is something of the world around us.. it's a thing shaped in a certain way..simply love this theory..and very helpful for my research and essays
Delighted to hear it's a help Samsara!
I think the best analogy for structure would be meteorology. The underlying structures are kind of simple (thermodynamics), but the outcome is incredibly hard to predict because of the amount of variables that influence each other.
Each year, our computers get better and better at making predictions. The only fallacy here is, that a human mind could make all this on its own.
Great example. Lets the underlying structures be simple enough to understand but the emergent complexity being very challenging to work out on the macro level
great Video on Structuralism 11:12 Beautiful Picture!
Greetings from Germany
Thank you! That's one of Hilma af Klint's paintings. A very interesting woman with amazing works of art
Your voice finally sounds natural to me, now I enjoy not only the content but also the voice which provides it.
As a layman I have a question about structuralism, Isn't "belief" inherent to structuralism? Does not structuralism need belief (by groups of individuals) in order for it to exist (or justify its own existence)? Theoretically I can create the best system for trains to function, but if it never sees the light of day, how can it ever be perceived let alone ranked as the best? It takes the belief of individuals for something (structure) to be seen as important / deemed necessary to focus on.
I find this paradox quite amusing, as it gives justification towards religious belief to a certain extent. Basically what I observe is that a "Belief" needs to be there prior in order to give a hierarchical reality so that you (we, I) then can deem what fits best into said hierarchy, now this hierarchy is subject to a "rock/paper/scissors" reality where what functions best is cancelled out (if the material conditions are correct) by another potential structure, and the dialectic (of the world/ideology) needs to happen between the different structures/systems/ideologies in order to arrive at a synthesis, the unchanging axioms (or forms or whatever you wish to call them) must then tie to our inherent natural disposition in order for them to have any sort of longevity (look at unstable particles which cease to exist due to their form), which explains why certain religions still have (and will continue to have) strong holds over humans, as their teachings are tied to our inherent nature (or Soul/Consciousness).
Ah thank you for the kind words Obama that means a lot!
As for your question I'm but a layman myself so I don't know if I can answer your question but let me ask you this: since Structuralism is seeking the underlying structure in the human world and so it gets involved in the spiderwebs there lurking let me ask you if your thought would still make sense in the broader scientific field. So what I mean is that the theory of evolution is a structuralist theory if we use the word loosely beyond the human world. Evolution is not a surface fact but an underlying structure - the langue of life. So would this idea of belief make sense there or is it exclusive to the human world? I'm just trying to clarify more what you mean because I'm not sure I fully understand yet though the thoughtful comment is much appreciated
Basically, you propose that structures, or structuralism, has a potentially active and dictating role in the human condition only if the structure in question is demeed valuable by belief. If thats the case, I would argue that belief is not a priori to structuralism itself but to its relevance. Great comment
@@TheLivingPhilosophy Evolution in my eyes is simply a path chosen from many other discarded due to external elements effecting the physical/material reality of human existence in time, it's not a proof or a "ultimate Truth", rather a decision made by biology in response to external effects, the most likely path taken. (much like Marx when he spoke about "material conditions needing to be right in order for revolution to occur").
As an example of my first comment, if you take chess as an example, the board, the pieces and their legal moves are the structure (that everyone that plays accepts), but the way in which the pieces will move is entirely dependent on calculation and responses to the opposite players, these things are subjective (within what is structurally legal moves) dependent on skill/intelligence and pattern remembrance of the players. Opening chess theory (London system, Caro-Kann, Queens Indian defense etc) would fit the roles of "institutions" or "axioms" inside the structure, ie agreed upon as the "most mathematically efficient" way of opening. With all this said, this whole structure is still being upheld by the *Belief* that your opponent understands and respects the structures of the game and wont take out a hammer and smash your King in his opening move. But without this *Belief* the structure would fall apart, like when a child takes his ball home because the opponent scored a goal against him.
Maybe i'm misunderstanding structuralism (which wouldn't be the first time I misunderstand philosophical concepts and take the long way around before I get it, I like the journey though, makes it make intuitive sense rather than dogmatic repetition) but again, Belief would be the thing in which we filter every single experience through prior to any form of "knowledge seeking" or "structure building" as its a prerequisite for conscious thinking, this is what Descartes missed with his "Cogito Ergo Sum" quote.
A structure can't exist without it existing in a space which is not the structure itself ("the center is not the center" - Derrida), a structure can only exist in relation to a non-structure, but this again means that the structure itself has a "shadow" or a "nothingness" (or potential) that equals itself in it's greatness (maybe this fits with "Hauntology" to a certain extent), thus a potential for a change equal in relation to itself. So why is it that we prioritize one structure over potentially another one? "Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?" (Deleuze?) Because there is a belief structure created in order to continue within the structure, a form of reification which is based on "human nature" and "desire". The bigger the structure, the bigger the "negative space" which explains why cynicism has become the modern belief-system which has come to occupy this "negative space" almost like a inverse metaphysics, and how post-modernity and reification (Guy Debord) of materialism is the byproduct of this belief system, which grows greater as capitalism (to borrow a concept from Deleuze and Guattari) reterritorializes more and more space, ie the structure that is *exploitation* has grown so vast that the belief system must match it (in the negative space) by cynicism and materialist worship and a postmodern plane of existence in order for the structure of exploitation to be kept alive.
“The spectacle is the nightmare of imprisoned modern society which ultimately expresses nothing more than its desire to sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of sleep.” - Guy Debord
After reading my whole text, I don't actually know if I answered anything of your message, I think I muddied things even more, which reflects my mind quite well while thinking and writing about this.
@@gabrielsimpson9919I would say that Belief is a prerequisite for the existence of consciousness itself. Belief is the horse, and the cart is the structures we accept into material reality and that which ends up outside the structures are the space we travel through (theory, time etc), we can chose (with the horse) to move the cart into another lane, thus changing its course within the material plane of existence (creating new structures).
Then we can add stuff like Jung's "collective consciousness", or things like "natural disposition" or "innate nature" in order to ground the horse and cart within a spectrum of this plane of movement, so that we don't get into the territory of nihilism or ultimate subjectivity.
What I mentioned above always makes me think about Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle" in particle physics, "that the position and the velocity of an object cannot both be measured exactly, at the same time, even in theory." which gives us leeway for concepts like "free will" to exist to a certain extent and so, also room for moral arguments (good and evil) etc.
Please continue these videos.
You really help me in my studies.
Awesome! delighted to hear it and I shall do!
Wonderful. Thank you! What is the picture around 11:23, please?
Glad you enjoyed it Meng that's a painting by a great painter called Hilma af Klint you can find it here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilma_af_Klint#/media/File:Hilma_af_Klint_-_Group_IX_SUW,_The_Swan_No._1_(13947).jpg
@@TheLivingPhilosophy thank you so much!
OK, now take a breath and try to keep in mind just exactly how you did it. This is zero fat. Wake up and stay that way. The video is clear, clear as fuck and you will get run over if you are not engaged and thinking. I want to say it is well done. it is absolutely enlightening and well informed and informing. You may want to anticipate stopping this madman every so often and thinking about his statements. This is very compact information. I am quite interested. Chewing is required, at least for me. Really thankful to have come across this post. Trying my best to take it in, Multiple listens will be necessary.
Great!
Thanks Jacob!
@@TheLivingPhilosophy 7 days ago 3 letters 6 pictures | waiting for your move
I'd advise anyone who may find themselves drawn in some way to structuralism but dissatisfied with it's lack of ambition to attempt to seize any kind of empirical evidence behind structure, to read the works of Rene Girard. He actually comes to a theory of structure/culture that explains its origin in what he calls the victim/scapegoat mechanism. He attempts to complete Emile Durkheim's idea of the centrality of religion in the formation of culture, and argues that a founding murder(s), which is replicated through sacrifice, polarized in group violence onto a victim which reconciles the group and forms the sacred, or religion in other words. This event repeated many times forms the key lynchpin of structural forms of thinking, such as language, time, life, death, hunting, marriage and almost everything that can come under the word culture. It's far more complex and fascinating than I've made out but I truly believe he has solved the issue that structuralists and post-structuralists think unsolvable the origin of structure.
It's been years since I studied all of this. As I recall, Lacan basically implied that we were held hostage by language and couldn't escape it as it was the ultimate form of neurosis. How then would he proposed to see the underlying structure as a structuralist? Don't you have to be able to escape a structure to see it in its whole?
You don't see it in its whole. You can't. So you don't look for it. You look at its elemental.
To take the analogy from the video - you don't look for all possible moves on a chessboard in all possible situations. It's structurally impossible. On the other hand, this impossibility is opened by its very structure. There are rules that structure the game, and it is only within these rules that chess is possible. And when you play your game by and through these rules, you play chess. There is no chess without these rules. You can't do anything about chess if you escape these rules. This is core - you can approach language only within language and through language. No recourse to externals, like the vocal apparatus or neural links can bring you any closer - for you would be seeking through whole another ruleset, a different game. Doing that, and Lacan was also strict about this point (he equated structure with language) - though you would be seeking for another ruleset, you'd be doing that only from the capacity of language to open these rules. For you open them by fixing your terms and operations always and intrinsically through language. So by seeking for the outside of it, you'd be doing that from inside of it - inside of it. It will always order what you might try apprehend, for that's the only place where you can try to do it.
Lacan might say that there are things that are 'language-resistant.'
According to Lacan we are driven by desire, and from desire rises the urge to speak, communicate, whatever way that makes it clear what we desire, so we can manage to have our desires met. Language is simply one way to do that, nowadays GIFs and photographs are a great communicator of things we desire without having to explain them through language. Yet we are still "trapped" by desire, which is the supposedly underlying structure for Lacan that is obscured by reality: culture, politics,... Obstacles that prevent us from our desires being met immediately. The only thing Lacan never explained how some people actually learn to deal with desire, because for Lacan that is just another desire: to have control over desire - which contradicts that we can never be in control. Desire is the engine and the fuel, so to speak.
I wouldn't take all of it too seriously. Lacan had great ideas and made great discoveries, but not everything he said was very sound. Just take a dive into his 'objet a' and the story of the tin can. It's a nice thought experiment, but not scientifically proof.
You should take away from this that even Structuralists were already suspicious that not everything can be explained scientifically, and that it's more of a guessing game who will be right in the end when it comes to humanities. Hence Post-Structuralism, and its greatness that finally set the human mind free to dream without any restrictions.
do a video on deconstructionism please
It's in the works awotnot!
Okey dude, please do not cry :(
This sounds a bit like Plato - trying to find some underlying things which causes all the surface-level stuff we observe. Except that Plato claims they're concepts which are more real than reality, while Structuralists just say that they're abstractions that are useful to describe a phenomenon and that's it (and if the model doesn't describe reality, update it).
EDIT: I just got to the part in the video where Derrida said the same thing about Plato.
Maybe there's another reason that Structuralism was more successful in psychology than anthropology; it's easy to do controlled experiments and interventions with individual humans in psychology.. But with whole cultures in anthropology it would be very difficult and unethical to do interventions while controlling all factors. All you can do is observe.
The delivery and accent are quite something.
I wonder what Freud would say to Lacan if he walked in the room with that deformed cigar hanging out of his mouth (@ 5:50). " Hey Jacques, we really have to talk about that cigar".
Hahaha the words oral fixation just wouldn't have cut it
Great hair, great explanation
Haha thanks Gabriel!
When you accept that all languages are descriptive, you'll begin to understand language.
Así es!
Barthes scrutinized Structuralism, and discovered by himself Structuralism makes no sense. He's THE Post-Structuralist by default because of this, his work is poetic.
I can't argue with you but he was also one of the key structuralists. Something similar could be said of Lacan as far as I know. Both of them straddled the line and were very important in both schools
Maybe Jung should have been mentioned, shouldn’t it? You even mentioned the word archetype...
You raise some good points Otávio
this what i dont get isnt then almost every study of something structrualist at its essence.
@@degla232 upp
are you ok
A moment of common sense in the European narrative - which reverted back to the religiously-hopeful basis of Phenomenology almost by default. From minds who cannot understand that we are nothing more than accidental outcome of this Universe, a cobbled-together, temporal creature with more flaws than strengths but with the potential to master this universe (and our future) when we understand the basic structure of human reality; which is locked permanently in the genome. Which yields excellence in far too few of us simply because we do not fully-enable every new life into a great replacement adult. The sheer variety of human excellence should have been a clue. Music, Science, Architecture, Sport, Craft, Literature, Exploration, etc., are but a necessity to the alpha, the genome-derived birthright available to so few.
[Argument: We humans are born with survival instincts (prepared minds) and are reliant on neurotransmitters (modifying behaviour) to enable our autonomy and power - as are all the others. Such a society would be ungovernable because it is adequately infused with courage, resilience, achievement-seeking and sociability. i.e. Natural Stoicism. The bedrock of the distributed system model of self-governance or a democratic/capitalist society. Command free. A conclusion only recently available thanks to Science's inquisitiveness.]
SO FORMS ARE LANGUE O M FF *crying while super high*
구조주의의 정점 정상은 망델브로의 프랙탈 이론이다
부르바키가 구조주의 모태인데 망델브로는 그 계보에 속한다
그 이후 구조주의는 서서히 쇠퇴한다
Really? Is Mandelbrot considered a Structuralist? Also didn't realise he was in the Bourbaki group
What? Levi-Strauss's ideas haven't stood the test of time? Are you kidding me? I heartily disagree. David Graeber's Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value basically picks up where Levi-Strauss left off. The political conclusions of serious anthropological simply became politically incorrect, which is to say unfashionable.
Foucault and the post-structuralists, the advocates of deconstruction extend "structuralism," the basic philosophy of the diversity and multicultural advocates. This makes the thought of Levi Strauss very much alive today, succeeding Existentialism (having become passe by the late 1970s). A good example is the concern over racial discrimination "structures" underlying all societies, but especially that of the West, particularly the United States. Beyond this, consider race as a biological continuity and not a social "construct" ...a product of the human genotype. A sort of "My family, not yours" (altruism). Racism is, indeed an archetype necessary for genuine progress. That real "progress" is now coming to an end. A new marxian dark age is emerging.
It's 'levee' (Levi)
No no no