[Framework Post] Week 3: Structuralism/ Post-Structuralism.

One of the most important lessons that have come out of the last century surely goes to Ferdinand Saussure’s study of the signification in structuralism. Saussure’s study effectively enabled a first level liberation of reading by allowing people to understand that there was a deep-seated institution involved in the creation of text, where “social facts [must be treated] as part of a system of conventions and values” (Jonathan Culler 8).

What piques me is that much of the Western tradition builds it body of knowledge in a text borne out of an already abstract system of codes. The Roman alphabet from which this system was derived was a set of abstract inscriptions that bear no relation any found objects in the natural world. Naturally, there wouldn’t be a “natural or inevitable link between the signifier and the signified” (Culler 19). What then can we discuss in the text of other cultures? Say for example from the Chinese or Ancient Egyptians who dwelt in a form of pictography in their text?

This is where the first line of fissure appears in the application of structuralism, and possibly even its succeeding offspring post-structuralism, in understanding society as a relational system of signs, codes and conventions. Surely, if cultures dwelling in a pictographic language might it difficult see relevance in Saussure’s work, they might possibly so no reason to extend this body of work in an analysis of society at large. Moreover, if a society were run and governed by rules of its language, system of signification, etc would a culture dealing in pictography have a different genesis, hence set of rules and system of signification. Will structuralism and post-structuralism be a good guide in understanding everything from our construction of society, and in fact the construction of our own identities, if not for an overriding Western influence around the world?

This question is important as not only does it clearly reinforce current notions that not all people and in fact their societies be on equal planes, but more intentionally, that an adoption of a prominent power matrix not only brings about some leverage for those willing, but it is also entails accepting the problems ingrained in that matrix. It’s no wonder then that with the Western voice that foreign cultures have adopted people have begun to purge themselves of the oppressions that accompany.



References:

1. Culler, Jonathan. Saussure. Glasgow: Fontana Collins, 1976.

Note:

This is not to say that I didn’t in fact enjoy this week’s readings. Up until this point, this has been the most interesting chapter in the course. Barthes was especially enlightening in explicating what has always been instinctively felt but never placed.