This "sketch" (this work) is not the sum of my thoughts, but only a copy of the thoughts of others. In order to understand the previous experience of generations and what all the different heroes of history have put into the concepts of structuralism and post-structuralism, I need (ideally) to read and understand philosophical ideas and everything that relates and has a relationship with the proposed concepts. I believe that rephrasing can affect the meaning, and the presentation of my own opinion regarding, for example, the issue of the initial а logos or а letter, I do not set as the task of this “sketch”. Therefore, readers who understand the issue do not have to read further, but those who are interested, in an easier form of understanding of these concepts, you might want to continue. This work is the interpretation of lectures, interviews on the Internet, the same way a painter interprets reality in an academic drawing. This “sketch” is my research, collection and information which is forming new understanding of the old notion of structuralism and post-structuralism. So:
«Structuralism - the direction and intellectual movement in the philosophical and humanitarian knowledge of the 1950s and 70s. XX century, based on the identification of the structure - stable multi-level self-reproducing relationships and properties of the object, system.»
«Distinctive features of structuralism:
- impersonal logic;
- order;
- integrity;
- well-coordinated ensemble;
- organic unity.»
«The foundations of structuralism were laid in linguistics. The founder of this trend is Ferdinand de Saussure. His idea was that everyone has a different language, pronunciation, their own characteristics of intonation and voice, but despite this, we can communicate and understand each other. The subject of linguistic science is language, the basic element of language is a sign, an abstract object that does not bind object and name, but forms a unity of concept, or signified, and sound image, or signifier. Saussure insisted on the arbitrariness or conventionality of the connection between the signified and the signifier, considering this thesis to be self-evident. The sign does not connect existing ideas and sounds but separates two formless continuum of experience.»
«Claude Levy-Strauss shifted the approach to the analysis of language to the analysis of culture, because, in his opinion, any cultural phenomenon is a sign. A sign is part of the language, therefore, when studying culture, we can distinguish not the subject, but such cultural structures of life as myths, rituals, languages.»
«On the way from structuralism to post-structuralism Michel Foucault removes the subject - “... Foucault defined structuralism as “anonymous thinking, knowledge without a subject, a theory without identity”. He considers in detail the term Madness as the opposite - reason. Foucault wondered why such a definition of insanity, and not another? The conclusion is the already formed relationship to the madman. In the practice of language, there are a number of terms and signs in relation to this kind of individual. State institutions, in turn, operate in a structure. Such a structure depresses and prevents the development of individualism, personality and dissent. Therefore, humanism and man as a centre of culture, according to Foucault, have no future.»
«Thus, it can be concluded that structuralism denies history and is aimed at impersonal and unconscious systems.»
«Post-structuralism served as the philosophical foundation of postmodernism.»
«Modernism is an extremist denial of the modern world, and postmodernism is a non-extremist denial of the same modern.»
«Derrida was the main grave digger of structuralism.»
«Post-structuralism is the common name for a number of approaches in the socio-humanitarian and philosophical cognition of the 1970s and 80s., during the period of scientific interest in the ethics of individualism, the ethics of hedonism (permissiveness of desires and pleasures, the emancipation of desires and the search for pleasures in any act of life). This is the philosophy of the other side of the structure when the body and power become objects of paramount interest and mean more than language and object.»
«Derrida introduced a temporal element, turning the Saussure distinction into a process of discrimination - an endless delay or postponement. Time and language are structurally identical. Temporality understood as formation, and not as history inseparable from the nature of significations. Linguistic structures are always generated by previous events. These events determined by structures, among which it is impossible to find the original one. Each subsequent signifier is also a signifies, and so on to infinity.»
«Derrida proceeds from the premise that the meaning is constructed in the process of reading, and the habitual representation is either devoid of depth (trivial) or imposed by the author’s repressive authority. Therefore, a provocation is needed that initiates thought and releases the hidden meanings of the text that are not controlled by the author.»
«It is necessary to find the difference, and then the inversion is the replacement of the main concept with the antipode. The most basic difference is the difference between writing and speech. All Western metaphysics is a written culture. Writing prevails in our history. The signifier is a written sign, and the signified is its content. But the logo appears as the initial one, which Derrida considers a deep mistake because there is no this first breath - the logo. But our culture always tries to distinguish between the logos and writing and puts it on top of writing, but the philosopher just gives priority to writing. Writing is a trace.»
Lawrence Weiner, Installation View, 1978. [Installation] At: https://renaissancesociety.org/exhibitions/292/lawrence-weiner/ (Accessed 18.06.2020)
«From the point of view of Baudrillard, the source of the process of turning a symbol into an independent object is the tradition of a subject-object dichotomy, which reaches its maximum in modern culture, when the subject loses control of the object in the form of computer technologies that create virtual reality, which itself begins to dictate to the subject the parameters of his existence.»
“Post-structuralists blamed their predecessors for dogmatism. They recognized the existence of structures, but were confident in their decentralization and that "the main thing in the structure is what extends beyond it".»
Bibliography and references
1. Deleuze Gilles (1994) Difference and Repetition, Columbia University Press
2. Introduction to modern philosophy: Michel Foucault 2018 (Alexander Smulyansky) Введение в современную философию: Мишель Фуко 2018 (Александр Смулянский) [online] At: https://youtu.be/6ocqXCRx5zw (Accessed 01.04.2020)
3. Deleuze Gilles (1998) Различие и повторение [in Russian] (Difference and Repetition) Translated by N.B. Mankovskaya
4. Psyera Psychological Society Structuralism and Poststructuralism. Postmodernism Психологическое общество Структурализм и постструктурализм. Постмодернизм [online] At: https://psyera.ru/strukturalizm-i-poststrukturalizm-postmodernizm-1135.htm (Accessed 01.04.2020)
5. Derrida, J. (2000) Writing and Difference Письмо и различие. [in Russian] (Writing and Difference). Translated by V. Lapitsky
6. Philosophy of Science, Reader (2005) T.G. Shchedrina, Moscow "Progress-Tradition" Философия науки, Хрестоматия (2005) Т.Г. Щедрина, Москва "Прогресс-Традиция"
7. Wikipedia [online] At: h ttps://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Структурализм (Accessed 01.04.2020)
8. Wikipedia [online] At: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Деконструкция (Accessed 01.04.2020)
9. N. Avtonomova Electronic library of the IPh RAS “The New Philosophical Encyclopedia” POST STRUCTURALISM Н.С.Автономова Электронная библиотека ИФ РАН » Новая философская энциклопедия » ПОСТСТРУКТУРАЛИЗМ [online] At: https://iphlib.ru/library/collection/newphilenc/document/HASHe582c8604b992ee6c8eae5 (Accessed 01.04.2020)
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