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Ch 10, Postmodern Legal Theory: Pragmatism and Post-Structuralism

Introduction: Structuralism and Post-Structuralism p.755-757

By Giovanna Longobardo

Structuralism is an approach to the human sciences that attempts to analyze a specific field as a

complex system of interrelated parts.

1. This movement dominated in the 1950s and 60s. It was made up of French thinkers.2. It began in linguistics with the work of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), but many French

intellectuals perceived it to have a wider application, and the model was soon modified and

applied to other fields, such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, psychoanalysis, literary

theory and architecture.

3. Ferdinand de Saussure was the first to use structuralism as an approach to linguistics. (He isfamous for the idea of the sign). However, many others built upon the structuralist approach

inaugurated by him.a. Roland Barthes: the literary theory.b. Claude Levi-Strauss: cultural anthropology.c. Louis Althusser: Marxist theory.d. Jacques Lacan: psychoanalytic theory.

4. This ushered in the dawn of structuralism as not just a method, but also as a philosophicalmovement, suggesting that cultural forms and artifacts are best understood through the tools

of language theory.

5. The author illustrates structuralism using language as an example of a specific field.a. Language was comprehensible not as an aggregation of individual words, but as a

complex interplay of word and word groupings, all situated in their relevant contexts.6. The author illustrates Structuralism using culture as an example of a specific field.

a. Meaning was fixed by the arrangements of things, not the individual things themselves.7. The author states that interrelationship is the key to understanding.8. Structuralism has been characterized as formalist or anti-realist.

a. Knowledge of the world was not immediately secured through sense data, but mediatedby cognition.

b. Knowledge proceeded from cognitive structures.i. These cognitive structures were the creatures not of the individual, but of the

culture.

c. The approach was anti-individualist, and largely objectivist.9. In the 1970s, structuralism came under internal fire from critics who accused it of being too rigid

and ahistorical (i.e., the movement tended to disregard the significance of cultural evolution).

1970s:

Post-structuralism encompasses the intellectual developments of certain continental philosophers and

sociologists who wrote within the tendencies of twentieth-century French philosophy. The movement is

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difficult to define or summarize, but may be broadly understood as a body of distinct responses to

structuralism (hence the prefix "post").

1. By the 1970s, post-structuralist analysis had plainly supplanted (i.e., took the place of)structuralist analysis.

2. Structuralism itself became a sign or text amenable to linguistic analysis.3. Two key figures in the early post-structuralist movement were Jacques Derrida and Roland

Barthes.

4. Derrida claimed that all signs combine both a presence and an absence; the meaning of a signcould not be fixed by cultural structures.

5. In his 1976 lecture series, Michel Foucault briefly summarized the general impetus of the post-structuralist movement.

a. His work represents extreme structuralism.6. Post-structuralisms implications for legal studies are not entirely clear.

a. On one hand: post-structuralist semiotics certainly undermines faith in textualist,originalist, or intentionalist approaches to the interpretation of legal texts.

b. On the other hand: structural critique may be, for both lawyer and layperson, marginalto daily life.