The Liberating Operation
Structuralism begins with a liberating operation:
rather than first asking what a thing is in itself, look at the place it occupies within a system of differences and relationships.
A “father” is a father not because of a set of characteristics inherent in him. He occupies a particular position in the structure of kinship relations. Remove the entire network of relationships, and the very position of “father” disappears.
This is a blow to naive essentialism:
- a “king” is not a king because of the physical properties of the person: it is a position;
- money is not money because of the chemical composition of paper;
- “left” cannot be defined without “right.”
The initial move literally says: do not mistake what has been given form for reality itself.
The Reversal
And then an astonishing reversal takes place. The discovered system of relationships begins to be perceived not as a way of organizing what has been distinguished, but as an independent causal reality:
there is no essence → there are relationships → relationships form a structure
→ the structure is objective → the structure is primary → the structure produces the human being
Initially, structure was a way of saying: “an object does not exist in isolation.” Then structure begins to say: “now I myself am the true reality.”
Reification of an Abstraction
What happens here is literally the reification of an abstraction:
relationships → description of relationships → the concept of “structure”
→ reification of the concept → structure becomes an acting being
We performed an act of distinction. We noticed recurring relationships. We called them a “structure.” Then we forgot that “structure” was originally our way of grasping relationships, and began to say: “structure compels,” “structure determines,” “structure produces the subject.”
Grammatically, structure becomes the subject of the action. The human being becomes something akin to a terminal through which the structure’s program runs.
Two Directions
Two opposing directions can be written down:
The Living Direction
subject → distinction → relationship → structure → form
Here, structure is the result of giving form to distinctions.
The Reversed Direction
structure → differences → categories → subject
Structure is declared to be the first principle.
The second version may work perfectly well as a model. The problem arises at the moment when:
the effectiveness of the model is taken as proof of its ontological primacy.
“We can explain a great deal through structure” imperceptibly turns into “therefore structure is what everything arises from.” These are not at all the same claim.
The Question That Pierces the Model
Structuralism brilliantly exposes form but struggles to answer the question of the origin of meaning. One may describe the structure of chess perfectly, but the structure of the rules does not explain why one person is indifferent to chess while another devotes their life to it.
A deeper question therefore arises:
who performed the distinction from which the structure emerged in the first place?
for whom are these relationships relationships?
To assert that “A stands in relation R to B,” it is already necessary to distinguish A, B, R, and the boundaries between them. That is, structure itself presupposes an operation of distinction. Yet structuralist ontology treats this result as though it existed prior to any distinction.
Genealogy
The genealogy can be condensed as follows:
- before structuralism: what is this thing in itself?
- structuralism: look at the position it occupies in a system of differences.
- poststructuralism: why do you consider this particular system of differences natural and stable?
- the further question: where is the subject who produced these distinctions, or accepted them as meaningful, in the first place?
The final question pierces the structural model. Structure begins to appear not as reality itself, but as one of the ways in which the subject gives form to reality. This does not make structure fictitious: structures can be extremely stable and genuinely constrain a person’s possibilities. But that is not the same as saying: “structure exists by itself and produces the subject.”
Connection to the Usurpation of Meaning by Form
This analysis is a particular case of the general mechanism described in Usurpation of Meaning by Form: form (structure), created by the subject, forgets its own origin and proclaims itself the first principle. Structuralism is not the mechanism itself here, but one of its striking examples.
