The Edinburgh Companion to Poststructuralism, page 12
on capitalism by the reinstating of the traditions, privileges or institutions that capitalism has swept away; the aim rather is to develop the possibilities immanent to capitalism.
This does not mean, of course, that any of the poststructuralists were
Marxists (although Deleuze (1995: 171), at least, was happy to accept this
label). It is clear that poststructuralism offers a strong challenge to Marxism
– and not merely to its Stalinist variations: the poststructuralists repudiate Untitled-2 78
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concepts and theses found in many kinds of Marxism, as well as in the work
of Marx himself. At the same time, however, poststructuralism takes much
from Marxism. In its anti-humanism and its materialism, its politicisation of philosophy and its subversion of supposedly ‘natural’ and ‘eternal’ institutions, and in its commitment to the possibility of political and social change, poststructuralism is very much the heir of Marxism. This is why many of the poststructuralists explicitly affirm the contemporary significance of Marx
and Marxism. An adequate understanding of poststructuralism cannot be
reached unless its profound debt to Marxism is acknowledged. In addition,
and despite what some of its detractors claim, poststructuralism continues
to criticise capitalism, and in doing so it draws upon the arguments and
analyses put forward by Marx.
The phrase ‘from Marxism to poststructuralism’, then, should be read in
two senses: there is a definite movement away from Marxism to poststructur-
alism, as the latter develops alternative concepts and strategies; yet there is also and at the same time a transfer of concepts and strategies from Marxism to poststructuralism, as the latter draws and expands upon the theoretical
and political resources bequeathed by the former. Poststructuralism neither rejects Marxism nor merely repeats or applies its insights. It offers an interpretation of Marxism – but it is what Derrida (1994: 51) calls a ‘performative interpretation, that is … an interpretation that transforms the very thing
that it interprets’. As Derrida notes, it is Marx himself, in his eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, who calls for us to move beyond mere interpretation. If
after poststructuralism it becomes difficult to talk of ‘Marxism’, this is not because the poststructuralists have rendered Marxist insights redundant;
rather, it is because their own insights have transformed Marxism. In short, rather than simply offering a rereading of Marxism, the poststructuralists
put Marxism to use – a use which in the end is more ‘Marxist’ than those of many Marxists.
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Chapter 3
From Structuralism to Poststructuralism
Craig Lundy
emergence
from structuralism to poststructuralism
Introduction: Identifying and Differentiating
As the immediate precursor to poststructuralism, the movement or para-
digm of structuralism was naturally responsible for determining many of
poststructuralism’s salient features. But what was structuralism, and how are we to understand its transformation into poststructuralism? In this chapter I will address these issues by first outlining the contours of what might be called the image of structuralism. An appreciation of this image is necessary for a full understanding of the shift from structuralism to poststructuralism.
Nevertheless, an acknowledgement of its limitations, of the inconsistencies it suppresses and the inaccuracies it perpetrates, is equally necessary. As I will therefore demonstrate, alongside the formation and propagation of the
classical structuralist image runs a history of its transformation – a history of those aspects and individuals who subverted the image of structuralism
in one way or other, as it was in the process of emerging.
Many of these aspects and individuals will in time be collected under
the banner of ‘poststructuralism’. But as we will see, this raises several
problems. Firstly, how are we to comprehend and categorise these various
proto-developments? Are they properly poststructuralist, or merely a dif-
ferent kind of structuralism? If the former, how can poststructuralism pre-
exist its own emergence, and if the latter, then what is it that distinguishes structuralism from poststructuralism? Such considerations are made even
more difficult by the fact that almost none of the thinkers identified today as
‘poststructuralist’ ever used the term, let alone self-identified with it. These issues, however, belie a larger problem that has been of concern to structuralists and poststructuralists alike: the problematic nature of transformation.
If we are to make sense of the shift from structuralism to poststructuralism, the manner in which we make sense will itself require analysis and critique. A Untitled-2 83
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historical analysis of the relation between structuralism and poststructuralism will thus arguably take us only so far. In addition to this history, what will also be required is an analysis of the particular problematics from which our investigation garners its imperative force. By considering the problematic
nature of the transformation from structuralism to poststructuralism in
conjunction with its history, a final and perhaps more pressing question will be raised: what is it that drives our interest in the shift from structuralism to poststructuralism, and what is the importance of these two terms for us
today?
The Image of Structuralism
Structuralism was a largely French intellectual movement that began in the
1950s and rose to great prominence throughout the 1960s and ’70s. At its
height, structuralism was the leading intellectual paradigm in France, with advocates to be found in a vast range of disciplines. Influential thinkers who were associated with the movement at one point or another included Claude
Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Louis
Althusser, Nicos Poulantzas, Algirdas Julien Greimas, Tzvetan Todorov,
Jacques Derrida and Pierre Bourdieu. Structuralism promised to unlock
the mysteries of human culture by suggesting new ways for looking at and
approaching social relations. Much of the impetus for these new techniques
and insights originated from disciplines in the social sciences such as anthropology, linguistics, semiology, psychoanalysis and sociology. Although more traditional disciplines such as philosophy and history would in time come to make enormous contributions to the nature and success of structuralism, at
its inception structuralism was wedded to the post-World War II rise of the social sciences and their explicit critique of venerated academic institutions (such as the Sorbonne) and their traditionally favoured disciplinary agendas.
Structuralism, as such, was an eminently modern movement that sought
to break away from previous academic constraints by entirely recasting
the terms and conditions for understanding human existence. Central to
this intellectual revolution was the quest for scientificity. Due to its strong affiliation with science and scientific method, early structuralism was able to radically distinguish itself from traditional approaches to society in the humanities and consequently position itself between (if not above) the sciences and the arts. As François Wahl put it in his introduction to Qu’est-ce que le structuralisme? , structuralism had a specifically ‘scientific vocation’
(Wahl 1968: 7). This vocation provided structuralism with an immensely
seductive programme that purported to replace subjective conjecture with
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objective truth in the social domain. The desire for social disciplines to
partake in the successes of science was of course hardly a new phenomenon.
History, to name just one example, had carried out a similar appropriation
of science in the second half of the nineteenth century, when it attempted
to detach itself from philosophy and literature in order to recast its method as astutely objective.1 But like history before it, this quest for scientificity in the social realm would ultimately fail, despite its great advances; in time, the validity of structuralism’s scientific credentials would be exposed by
critics and modified or abandoned by poststructuralists, leaving classical
structuralism adrift between the port it had left and the promised land it
never quite reached.
Part of the desire to attain scientificity was driven by the widespread disillusionment with ideology in the mid to late 1950s. In the period following
the end of WWII, French culture and politics were dominated by Marxism
and existentialism. Political events would, however, come to severely undermine the popularity and credibility of these movements. In 1956, Nikita
