2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

S TRUCTURALISM AND PHILOSOPHY
sights provided by the “pilot discipline,” e. g. linguistics. More specifically, it tried to build
on the “structural analysis” of language first provided by the Swiss linguist de Saussure at
the beginning of the century and later developed by the Prague’s school of linguistic under
the leading influence of Prince Nikolai Troubetzkoy and, somewhat later, Roman Jakob-
son. Once thus narrowed, the term “Structuralism” becomes a little more manageable and
can be used to refer to the works of four French theorists who reached their peaks between,
roughly, 1955 and 1975 and worked in four different disciplines: the anthropologist Claude
Lévi-Strauss, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the literary critique Roland Barthes and the
philosopher Michel Foucault. As any definition, this is controversial, since it may be con-
sidered both too narrow and too broad. On the one hand, only Lévi-Strauss, and to a lesser
degree Lacan, associated himself explicitly with “structuralism,” while Foucault, for exam-
ple, has always refused to be so labeled, although his first books, and especially Les mots
et les choses (1966) was widely, and perhaps justly, considered one of Structuralism’s man-
ifestos and best applications. On the other hand, other figures were also closely linked with
structuralism, for example the semioticians Algirdas J. Greimas and Umberto Eco, as well
as the philosophers Louis Althusser and Gilles Deleuze. 52
In what follows, I will focus on the works of one the four mentioned leading figures:
the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. Although the relationship between his works and
the general “structuralist” movement are far from absent—and so my analysis could apply
to a broader context—I will remain within the narrower domain of his works since the ex-
ploration of the broader picture would require a totally different enterprise. Therefore, if
from time to time the terms “structuralism” or “structuralist” are used without a further
qualification to narrow their scope, they should be interpreted to apply first and foremost
to the Lévi-Straussian brand of anthropological structuralism.
51. “Sciences humaines has a different, and broader, scope from “Humanities.” It encompasses (or encompassed,
in the years under consideration) the social sciences as well as literary criticism, semiotics,
rhetorics, psychoanalysis, etc. It is also strongly connoted, since it assumes that a “scientific” methodology
will be used in those fields.
52. See Algirdas Greimas, Du sens: Essais semiotiques (Paris: Seuil, 1970) and Du Sens II (Paris: Seuil,
1983), Umberto Eco, Trattato di semiotica generale (Milano: Bompiani, 1975), Louis Althusser and
Etienne Balibar, Lire “le Capital” (Paris: Maspero, 1970-73) Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, L’
Anti-Oedipe (Paris: Seuil, 1972).
171