STRUCTULIST THEORY

Structuralist Theory

View attachment:

Structuralist Theory

Structuralist Marxism has several strands? including the philosophical? and “scientific” Marxism promoted by Louis Althusser (1918-1990) in France; the genetic Marxism of Lucien Goldman (1913-1970)? again in France; and Galvano della Volpe (1895-1968) and Lucio Colletti (1924-2001) in Italy.

Structuralist Marxism consisted? first? of a method: The key achievement here was a “return to Marx?” which opened up Marx's work to a critical and “symptomatic” reading (in the manner of Freud's interpretation of dreams). This reoriented political Marxism away from a crude? humanist? “battle of ideologies” approach? derived from Marx's early works? toward an understanding of the implicit structure of the relations of production in political economy. Second? Structuralist Marxism? as with the movement of structuralism in general? de-centered the subject? so that history ceased to be seen as the expression of a subjective human essence. Third? history becomes discontinuous because it is not the history of a subject (whether this be man or nature or the state) but? rather? is the autonomous evolution of time in which numerous forces are at work.

Of course? no explanation of structuralism—whether or not of the Marxist variety—can avoid considering the innovation brought to the understanding of language by Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913); nor can it avoid noting the importance attributed to language in the social sciences influenced by a structuralist approach. The work of Claude Lévi-Strauss in anthropology is a case in point. The structure of language becomes the methodological point of departure par excellence; the social world itself is like a language? based on relations? not on essential attributes.

For the structuralist view? then? language is a system of relations? not a collection of static elements (words). Value (e.g.? meaning) is established through analysing the differential relations pertaining between the elements. Value emerges only in the relation between the elements themselves. As Saussure famously said? “Language is a system without positive terms.” At another? more historical? level? structuralist Marxism was also developed by thinkers (Althusser? Balibar? Rancière et al.) for whom epistemology was the point of departure for analysing economic and political phenomena.

Influential in this regard is the “father” of epistemology and the history of science in France? Gaston Bachelard. Indeed? if one looks to Bachelard here? structuralist Marxism begins to fall within a program of thinking and research that would clearly include philosophers and sociologists such as Michel Foucault (1926-1984) and Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002)? even though their allegiance to Marxism was always weak.

Three aspects of Bachelard's thought endeared him to a structuralist approach. The first is his emphasis on epistemology? which implied that scientists should not be blinded by positivism but should develop a reflexive sense. In other words? knowledge of the subjective dimension is also important to the scientific project. Scientists need to grasp the real space in which they are working as well as the rep resented space they are studying. An appreciation of the difference between real and represented space requires recourse to theory. This is not to deny the ...