Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- A note on references
- List of abbreviations
- PART I THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC (1890–1940)
- PART II THE REIGN OF EXISTENTIAL PHENOMENOLOGY (1940–1960)
- PART III STRUCTURALISM AND BEYOND (1960–1990)
- 8 The structuralist invasion
- 9 Foucault
- 10 Derrida
- 11 Philosophies of difference
- 12 Fin-de-siècle again: “le temps retrouvé”?
- Conclusion: the philosophy of freedom
- Appendix: philosophy and the French educational system
- References
- Index
8 - The structuralist invasion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- A note on references
- List of abbreviations
- PART I THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC (1890–1940)
- PART II THE REIGN OF EXISTENTIAL PHENOMENOLOGY (1940–1960)
- PART III STRUCTURALISM AND BEYOND (1960–1990)
- 8 The structuralist invasion
- 9 Foucault
- 10 Derrida
- 11 Philosophies of difference
- 12 Fin-de-siècle again: “le temps retrouvé”?
- Conclusion: the philosophy of freedom
- Appendix: philosophy and the French educational system
- References
- Index
Summary
I liked to fix my thoughts only on what was still obscure to me, and to be able … thanks to the increasing but, alas, distorting and alien light of my intellect, to link to one another the fragmentary and interrupted lines of structure which at first had been almost hidden in mist.
(Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, v, 501)Although Merleau-Ponty heralded structuralism as an essential complement to phenomenology and a key to solving its problem of the subject–object relation, the success of structuralism among philosophers was very soon proclaimed as the defeat of phenomenology. We need, accordingly, to look at the structuralist project and its appropriation by French intellectuals. I will begin with the two originary developments, Saussure's linguistics and Lévi-Strauss's anthropology, and then look at the work of Cavaillès, Canguilhem, and Serres, whose “philosophy of the concept” has important similarities to structuralism. Finally, I will briefly explore extensions of structuralism to social theory (Althusser), psychoanalysis (Lacan and Kristeva), and literary theory (Barthes).
SAUSSURE
From 1907 to 1911, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), a Swiss professor of linguistics, offered a course in general linguistics at the University of Geneva. Although he never published anything based on this course, two of his colleagues did after his death. This book, Corns de linguistique général, is derived from notes taken by students the three times Saussure offered the course.
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- French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century , pp. 215 - 257Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001