Derrida on Lévi-Strauss

Some additions to last week's blog on Structuralism:

The Structuralists, not least among them Freud, Marx, de Saussure, Barthes, Lévi-Strauss and Derrida, advocated that there are structures that we have unwittingly created that lie beneath the institutions, the practices, the customs, etc that make up culture. Our cultures.

After identifying an underlying structure - a move that often requires at least intellectual courage - the next step is to question the accepted history of the origins of the structure. Or, as Derrida says, what is needed is to follow 'the traces' of the accepted history. This is what Derrida says Lévi-Strauss did. So far so good.

But according to Derrida, Lévi-Strauss did not go far enough. Although Lévi-Strauss questioned the history of underlying structures, he failed to question the meanings applied to the histories.

Specifically, Lévi-Strauss, identified, isolated and separated the structure. His mistake, however, was not to re-define what he had identified, or to allow it to be re-defined. Rather, to a structure identified as lying outside what we take to be 'normal', Lévi-Strauss gave  the very same unexamined, unquestioned meaning and value that we unthinkingly apply to structures within 'the normal'.

Derrida continues that to unthinkingly, reflexively do this is to also fall into the trap of not acknowledging that although there are categories that separate, the meaning of what is being categorised can itself sometimes defy categorisation. How?

One meaning may indeed land in more than one category - and still be correct. For Derrida, Lévi-Strauss erred in not recognising the permeability of categorical walls, and ultimately, in overlooking that there is no 'truth' because no truth is objective enough to be recognised as such.

Structuralists such as de Saussure and Barthes

Words differently arranged have different meanings, and meanings differently arranged have a different effect.

- Blaise Pascal

de Saussure, Barthes, Lévi-Strauss and Derrida all took an interesting exploring underlying structures that give meaning, but using the hermeutics of language, and specifically, the relational aspect of language. De Saussure explored the underlying structure of language. Barthes looked at the underlying structure of expression, its use of symbols that are manipulated by the many different facets of media.

de Saussure dissected language through grammar - how language is used - but did so in a static manner. For him, a sign (and its ‘network of connections’) was composed of the sign (the signified + the signifier), which equaled the thing agreed upon. De Saussure limited himself just to the sign and its signifier, and chose to ignore what I would call context, what Terry Eagleton calls ‘referent’ (Leitch 2000: 959). It is that to which the signifier is referring.

Barthes took de Saussure’s equation a step further. For him, the visual symbol, in which is embedded the signified + the signifier, equals the thing agreed upon – that is then further used the basis for ‘myth’.

It would seem that for Barthes, myth is created for and used as Marx’s ‘opiate for the masses’. It gives ‘the masses’ something to rally around, a symbol to stand behind, something in which they can claim identity. How?

The ‘visual’ is broadcast to the public by the many facets of the media. The symbolism (signifier) of the symbol (the visual object that is signified) says ‘this is what the symbol means’ and ‘this is who you are’.

What Barthes today points out seems mundane and obvious. In the 1950s, however, in the midst of the transition and transformation taking place, it is easy to understand how his insight was groundbreaking, particularly in light of his conviction that the ‘new’, the ‘modern’ is what ‘society experiences as cathartic’.

A question remains, though. Barthes speaks of ‘readerly’ and ‘writerly’ texts. The latter is more challenging, and also like a fetish in the pleasure that it gives. But is this seen from the writer’s point of view, because he is the one apportioning meaning to the words used? Whereas, with a ‘readerly’ text, there is no challenge as the words are not used outside their agreed upon meaning. This is the question….

Bibliography

Leitch, Vincent B. 2001

Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism

New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Limited Rationalism

Freud, Derrida

If, say, Einstein, Freud, Darwin and Marx have in the twentieth century helped to ‘revolutionise the modern Western conception of human life and its place in the universe’ (Leitch 2001: 913), who in the twenty-first century could be said to be of equal stature and influence?

The aforementioned came to prominence during – as a result of? -  the industrial revolution that, during their time, was still gaining in power. If we in the West have been living in a post-democracy since the last half of the twentieth century (Crouch 2009), and if our revolution has been in services rather than industry, does the question of ‘how we conceive of human life and its place in the universe’ remain relevant? Is the question actually a universal quest always to be investigated, but that provides no definitive answer?

Business publications seem to identify the movers and shakers of the twenty-first century as those people who have created the most-used businesses; or people who have become (the how is rarely questioned) the richest people on earth. It is the status of ‘rich’ and ‘richest’ that seems to fascinate readers and publishers alike. Indeed, our fascination with the accumulation of wealth seems to be our fetish (Leitch 2001: 917) so far in this century.

Other publications, touted as less Western-centric because their lists include foreign figures who are nonetheless known to Western audiences, seem to report on people who have big ideas designed to help the most wretched of the unfortunate.

But the scope of the ideas, and to get them up and running, means that the creative types behind the ideas must rub shoulders with the rich and powerful. Soon enough, the trail of who is most influential in the twenty-first century seems to lead back to the figures situated at the apex of the relationship between money and power.

But have these movers and shakers, the people in power with power, actually ‘revolutionised the modern Western conception of human life’? Or has their influence been more subtle, but no less pervasive: have they simply had the greatest impact on how modern Western human life is lived? Is the question of how we discern our place to be in the universe a topic of serious pursuit in the twenty-first century? Is it possible to have moved past the relevance of the question?

From today’s perspective of accepting the gains in gender equality, one wonders at how Freud could not see that the world he took to be normal was shot through with bias and inequality. The underlying, overlapping structures of patriarchy Freud did not identify. Perhaps this points to the truth of ‘the personal is political’: we see as issues to be addressed those issues that irritate us, personally.

If we solve the issue, or uncover portions of it as did Freud, then perhaps we have only succeeded in making the personal public, which should not diminish its truth. It is just that the motivating factors must too be taken into account, be deconstructed in order for the whole to be understood.

Bibliography

Crouch, Colin 2009.

Post Demokratie.

Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Leitch, Vincent B. et al. 2001.

Marxism. In: The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.

New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

                                          

Marxism: The Frankfurt School

The definition of Marxism is apt – and so pervasive (with its seven stages of development) that it could, perhaps does, apply to all possible manifestations of culture.

Whether by supporters or detractors, Marxism is also usually associated with fervent idealism, idealism that often has an aspect of negativity attached to it. It seems to lead to pessimism, making one feel that whatever cultural manifestation might eventually present itself, Marxism would label it doomed, and by extension, humanity, as well.

In comparison to Marxism is capitalism that in its description alone at times seems to a glimmer of hope in the form of the prospect of self-autonomy. Capitalism lurks behind the belief that the ‘big success’ could happen to you, too. This perspective views Marxism and capitalism through the narrow prism of economic individuality.

From an artistic perspective, Marxism offers individuals the hope of escaping the stifling blanket of hegemony, only to face the dangers of being labelled ‘counter culture’ (Norton 2001: 14). It is flexibility that seems in short supply in Marxism.

Deleuze and Gauttari have earned their place in literature for their criticism of Freud. He based, they say, the nuclear family on the patriarchal structure (ibid: 17) of a man in charge and a woman at home under his thumb – as though this were natural and not man-made.

Bibliography

Leitch, Vincent B. et al. 2001.

Marxism. In: The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.

New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.