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.