STRUCTURALISM
SYNTHESE LIBRAR Y MONOGRAPHS ON EPISTEMOLOGY, LOGIC, METHODOLOGY, PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE AND OF KNOWLEDGE, AND ON THE MATHEMATICAL METHODS OF SOCIAL AND BEHA VIORAL SCIENCES Editors: ROBERT S. COHEN, Boston University DONALD DAVIDSON, Rockefeller University and Princeton University JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Academy of Finland and Stanford University GABRIEL NUCHELMANS, University of Leyden WESLEY C. SALMON, University of Arizona VOLUME 67
JAN M. BROEKMAN STRUCTURALISM M oscow - Prague - Paris D. REIDEL PUBLlSHING COMPANY DORDRECHT-HOLLAND I BOSTON-U.S.A.
First printing: December 1974 STRUKTURALISMUS First published in 1971 by Verlag Karl Al/er, FreiburgjMunchen Translated Irom the German by lan F. Beekman and Brunhilde Helm Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 74-79570 ISBN-13: 978-94-010-2253-8 DOI: 10.1007/978-94-010-2251-4 e-isbn-13: 978-94-010-2251-4 Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company, P.O. Box 17, Dordrecht, Holland Sold and distributed in the U.S.A., Canada, and Mexico by D. Reidel Publishing Company, lnc. 306 Dartmouth Street, Boston, Mass. 02116, V.S.A. AII Rights Reserved Copyright 1974 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 1974 No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher
TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE TO THE ENGLlSH EDITION VII CHAPTER 1 / THE STRUCTURALIST ENDEAVOUR 1 1. The World as Musical Score 1 2. The Concept of 'Structure' 4 3. Epistemological Grounds 10 4. Sociology and Structuralism 12 CHAPTER 2/ MOSCOW 19 1. Constellations 19 2. Russian Formalism 29 3. Formalism and Marxism 38 CHAPTER 3 / PRAGUE 43 1. Constellations 43 2. Czech Structuralism 49 CHAPTER 4 / PARIS 70 1. Constellations 70 2. Parisian Structuralism 72 3. Philosophical Designs 91 CHAPTER 5 / WHAT IS STR UCTURALISTIC PHILOSOPHIZING? 102 I.Series 102 2.0rdo 105 BIBLIOGRAPHY 108 INDEX OF NAMES 114 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 116
PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION The use of the word 'structuralism', not only as a title for the present book but also as a valuable indication for outstanding philosophical and cultural developments of our century, may embarrass the English reader. The same might be the case regarding some of the philosophical thoughts developed in connexion with this structuralism. Emphasis is namely not on a set of technical operations using ideas and conceptions closely linked up with 'structural' or 'systematical' analyses, system and in formation theories, biology, psychology and even literary criticism. On the contrary, the concept of structuralism here defmitely refers to a holistic approach, not unlike existentialism or phenomenology. Many philosophical implications of this structuralism are however quite different from those contained in existential philosophies. The first difference applies to philosophy itself: no existential thinker will doubt or deny that the thoughts developed are genuine philosophical thoughts. Structuralism however does not take that decision beforehand, and thus no longer restricts itself to the traditionallaws and habits of philosophical reasoning. It presents itself on the one hand as a holistic attempt to interpret reality among lines of philosophical argumentation, bu t tries to do so without the decision that this argumentation leads to philosophy. Structuralism therefore presents itself as a specific activity, a modus operandi in reality itself. In consequence, the philosophical implications of this operation are to be analyzed in the same way, but they are only elements of the total structuralistic discourse, a discourse that extends to anthropology, psychology, linguistics, aesthetics, and other fields rather than interpreting itself as philosophical in the traditional sense of the word. This idea is clearly rooted in general cultural developments covering many fields and a wide variety of interests. This becomes clear after a closer examination of Russian aesthetics in Formalism, Marxism, Fu turism, or Romanticism; in French Cubism, Italian Futurism, or Czech structural linguistics;not to mention intertwining de:velopments in phonology, ethnology, mathematics, or biology. Only since structuralism became a fashion in Paris, in the years after the high tide of existentialism and comparable essentialist modes of thought, did unity of the structuralist approach (its relevance as well as the specificity of the structuralist activity) become clear. This relevance is in accordance with the ideas of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, who
VIII PREFACE - creating a century of fundamental reorientation towards the foundations of Westem thought - stressed the plural use rather than the singular selfevidence of the phenomenon order. This might be the reason why in contemporary structuralism their texts are continually interpreted and reread. They function as organizing forces within the structuralist discourse of today, the more so as in their texts the structuralist thesis is anticipated. The true philosophical problem is that of order. and their texts are to be read as an attempt towards a structuralist activity - the practice of the plurality of orders - implying a fundamental relativism. This process ofrecognition, presence, and awareness about a set of textual structures functioning in our contemporary society creates a structuralist mi/ieu. But, as Anthony Wilden suggests in the preface to his System and Structure, the ability to participate in those milieux differs widely on both sides of the Channel and the Atlantic Ocean, due to traditional values at work when relevant discourses are constructed. This is clearly the case when one analyses for instance the reception of the works of Uvi-Strauss. In the Anglo-Saxon world critics overlooked the holistic overtones of his Mythologies, and they criticized only details of his investigations as well as separate chains of arguments. On the Continent, especially in Paris, no detailed analysis was made, but discussion tended to be polarized: the theory as a whole, includ ing its rather shallow and haphazard philosophical statements, was either taken for granted or rejected. One is a structuralist or one is not. Nevertheless, the gap is stih not bridged - not by more general works on the subject, like Wilden's, nor by the fast-increasing number of translations into English, such as the works of Foucault, Barthes, or Althusser. But in the meantime the structuralist fashion in Paris has faded away and the contemporary situation differs from the time when the German text of this book was written. One could say tbat strucfuralism as a Parisian fashion stressed only the first phase in the development of structuralist thought after the Second World War - a development generally based on the main principles of Russian Formalism and Czech literary structuralism. This phase, covering the years 1945-1965/70, i.e. from the first influences of the ideas of Uvi-Strauss and Jakobson until Michel Foucault's L'ordre du discours, could be described, in terms of Cubist aesthetic theory, as the analytical phase of structuralism. During this period the connexion between general linguistics and ethnology produced an enormous amount of field research and trans-cultural material, and both aimed at a general theory and at generallaws of explanation - not by the construction of a methodological discourse dealing with essentialia but by applying specific procedures like analysis and arrangement. as well as differentiation and opposition. These
PREFACE IX procedures were already applied in the phonology of Troubetzkoy, the linguistic theories of de Saussure and Propp's analyses of literary fonn. Throughout ali the years of the development of the structurallst ideas since the Moscow Circle (1915), Roman Jakobson carried out fundamental and parallel research in these fields. In his works and those of Levi-Strauss the impression was created that structurallinguistics could provide a more or less comprehensive theory, and ethnology the facts of that theory. The works of Barthes, Foucault, Sollers and Derrida since 1965 developed into a more synthetical phase of structuralism. The idea of a general theory, was shaped to agreat extent by the investigation conceming literary theory in particular. Uterature was revealed as a process of constant transfonnation according to laws which are the products of functioning social value-systems. The result ofevery act ofliterature as well as of every speechact is a text. For that reason a far-reaching identification of the structure of a text and the structure of reallty was proclaimed. Even the metaphysical basis of a theory had to be interpreted as a specific textual structure generated by texts, not by individuals. In those textual structures, and nowhere else, sets of speechacts can be produced, So in the synthetic phase of structuralism two intertwining structures play dominant roles, the structure of texts and the structure of discourses. Although both are given _. since texts and discourses are never the sole result of a subjective intention - both are at the same time constructed - again not by the subjective intention of a scientific observer, but by the values and traditions detennining the ensemble and the functioning principles. That is exactly what Michel Foucault once called "anonymous thinking,knowledge without subject, theory without identity." These ideas lead definitely to new awarenesses conceming the depthstructure of reality. This depth-structuje is not exclusively a structure of consciousness but underlies and even constitutes the phenotextual structure of the so-called apparent reality. This again leads to a critical attitude, to creative mistrust (Nietzsche) and relativism. This attitude is closely linked to other problems conceming structures, such as in Chomskian linguistics, in genetics, in biochemistry and cybemetics, in economics, or in social interaction. This leads to the defmite denial of'a theoretically omniscient observer' (Husserl) and to the promotion of a scientific activity in which the subject's autonomy becomes relative. Human activity is an inscriptive activity, and human history has to be seen as an ensemble of graffiti. 1974 JAN M. BROEKMAN