In praise of a structuralist pedagogy.

Abstract

This article seeks to provide a basis for the renewal of the teaching of structuralist methods within the study of literature. Some of the reasons for the abandoning of such methods are brought forth, and it is concluded that despite those concerns structuralism still deserves a place in curriculum. A proposal is given for what an introductory structuralist curriculum could look like featuring the work of Jonathan Culler, Terence Hawkes and Roland Barthes.

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In the new forward to the 2001 reprinting of his book The Pursuit of Signs, Jonathan Culler actively reflects on the changes that have taken place in the study of literary interpretation since the publishing of the book's first edition twenty years earlier. He notes that:

   In the 1960s and 1970s French structuralism had energized the study
   of literature as a cultural practice and mode of signification and
   representation, stressing its self-reflexivity, granting a pivotal
   role to avant-garde literature. If the meaning of avant-garde
   literature lies in its challenge to our habitual ways of making
   sense (identifying narrative sequences, recognizable characters, and
   so on) then the project of interpreting these challenging works
   requires one to make explicit the conventions and the interpretive
   procedures on which literary intelligibility generally relies. Thus,
   it is precisely the works that brazenly flout codes and conventions
   that direct us to the importance of understanding those conventions.
   [1]

Culler then goes on to contrast these projects of days gone by with the state of literary study at present:

   Today ... Interpretation still reigns, but these days it is more
   likely to be symptomatic interpretation, which takes the work of
   art as the symptom of a condition or reality thought to lie outside
   it. Students learn to interpret literary works for what they show us
   about the condition of women, for instance, or about the dialectic
   of subversion and containment in which works of art participate.
   Interpretation is still the primary task, but the goal may be to
   identify what the work represses or illuminates by concealing, for
   example, how does this work portray society or what does it reveal
   about social attitudes to the experience of the characters in
   question. [2]

This pedagogical shift has taken place for understandable reasons. In the past twenty years, women have become the majority of college students and minorities are increasingly (although still not adequately) represented. Correspondingly, one can see the effects of something of a scramble within academia to make available curriculum which reflects such demographics.

There have certainly been other shifts that have taken place within the academic environment in the past twenty years, not the least of which is the ascendancy of deconstruction and post-structuralism as now acceptable literary (and generally scholarly) devices. This is partially due to the fact that people of previously underrepresented groups have found a sympathy for their identities and voices within the emerging paradigms of post-structuralism, deconstruction, and post-colonialism. Academics generally, and literary studies in particular, have been the richer for this trend. Who would have dreamt thirty years ago that we would be treated to voices so delightfully irreverent as that of a Gayatri Spivak or a Slavoj Zizek? In light of these new perspectives, there has been the inclination to see structuralism as "positivistic" or "overly deterministic." Perhaps more commonly, though, it is seen as outmoded and is simply ignored. In academic curricula these days, the most common encounter a student will have with the word "structuralism" is its serving as a convenient strawman such as it does in Foucault. With such texts, there exists something of a notion that if we were to entertain structuralism, it would be contrary to "progress"--this is to be taken as contrary to the violent opposition to positivistic notions such as the linear progression of science which one is also likely to come across in the same texts. It is also worth noting that the canon of post-structuralism is likewise for the most part still represented by the writings of white men: plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. Until the subalterns can speak, we are in the unfortunate position of having to rely on others to speak for them.

However, while there certainly should be a place within the study of literature for the examination of questions of gender, race and identities generally, is it appropriate (or efficacious) for those questions to serve as the central point for literary studies in place of a general poetics? I would argue that there is no reason that any of these positions need be seen as mutually exclusive; that we can have a teaching of literature which is conscious simultaneously of positions of dominance and identity, the structures and devices in texts by which meanings (and therefore such notions as dominance and identity) are articulated, as well as a demonstrative deconstructive analysis of the fundamental "aporias" encountered in the deciphering of such meanings.

Let us recall that oft-cited cliche: the youth need an orthodoxy to have something to resist. As orthodoxies go, it is hard to think of one that has led to such a rich and varied history of resistance as structuralism. In a sense, all of the great postmodern and deconstructionist thinkers were born as a result of structuralism. Without that orthodoxy, there would be no Foucault, no Derrida, no Kristeva, and furthermore, I would argue that without an understanding of the orthodoxy which those thinkers were resisting, it is impossible to correctly assess their work. However, it is possible that the academic environment has shifted so much that to today's students, deconstruction may very well seem like orthodoxy! Structuralism could perhaps come to represent to such students a radical freedom to ask questions which were otherwise neglected; perhaps the very same thing that those "trapped" by structuralism felt about the possibilities of deconstruction. These matters, however, are beside the point. What is immediately important, and in my opinion what justifies the teaching of structuralist methods today, is that such an instruction would provide students with a multi-disciplinary fertile ground to start their investigations in the understanding of literature.

What then would constitute a good introduction for today's students to structuralism? Given the lack of elucidation that has recently been brought forth on the issue, I think it not unreasonable to go back to the question: What is Structuralism? In his exemplary introductory text Structuralism and Semiotics, Terence Hawkes makes the wise choice to describe structuralism within the "immense historic shift in the nature of perception which finally crystallized in the early twentieth century, particularly in the field of the physical sciences ...

   The 'new' perception involved the realization that despite
   appearances to the contrary the world does not consist of
   independently existing objects, whose concrete features can
   be perceived clearly and individually, and whose nature can
   be classified accordingly. In fact, every perceiver's method
   of perceiving can be shown to contain an inherent bias which
   affects what is perceived to a significant degree. A wholly
   objective perception of individual entities is therefore not
   possible: any observer is bound to create something of what
   he observes. Accordingly, the relationship between observer
   and observed achieves a kind of primacy. It becomes the only
   thing that can be observed ... In consequence, the true nature
   of things may be said to lie not in things themselves, but in
   the relationships which we construct, and then perceive, between
   them. This new concept, that the world is made up of relationships
   rather than things, constitutes the first principle of that way of
   thinking which can properly be called 'structuralist'." [3]

This simple review of structuralism's philosophical heritage should make an indelible impression on a student of just how clearly opposed to positivism it is. Once this essential groundwork has been laid, one can go on to such useful illustrative examples as that of Jean Piaget's definition of a "structure" as being an entity of wholeness (internal coherence), transformational dynamism, and self-regulation. [4] And at this point, a whole range of useful theoretical models become accessible to the student such as Saussure's crucial concepts of the langue and the parole [5] or Roman Jakobson's six distinctive factors of speech events (addresser, addressee, contact, context, message, and code). [6]

However, I can think of few concepts which would prove more immediately helpful to the student of literature than that of Saussure's distinction of the associative (also called "vertical") and syntagmatic (also called "horizontal") planes of language. [7] The syntagmatic is represented by the way in which meaning is created from the stringing together of words. That is, each word, following the one before it and preceding the one after it, has a specific use in that place. The associative plane, on the other hand, functions through the connotations produced by each individual word-choice. As Hawkes describes the functioning of this plane: "each word will also have relationships with other words in the language that do not occur at this point in time, but are capable of doing so. The word, that is, has 'formulaic' associations with those other words from among which it has, so to speak, been chosen. And these other words ... might be synonyms, antonyms, words of similar sound or of the same grammatical function" and they help "by not being chosen, to define the meaning of the word which has." [8]

What is crucial about the distinction is that we can recognize that all speech acts (literary or not) function on both planes. However, and this is what is important for the understanding of literature, some kinds of language use rely on one plane more than the other. For example, by providing students this distinction, we can offer them a useful (if incomplete) method to systematically understand what makes poetry and prose different: poetry relies more on the choices of specific words and why any one word was used in particular (i.e., it is more reliant on the associative plane), while on the other hand, the individual word choices in prose are not generally so important as the driving meaning behind what the text is saying (and therefore it is more dependent upon the syntagmatic). Students will then be able to see why we might refer to a given piece of prose as "poetic"--because that particular text relies more on the associations produced by individual word-choices than a piece of prose generally does.

Hopefully, this example has demonstrated that the teaching of structuralism does not necessarily have to come at a great difficulty on the part of the student or the instructor. As a matter of fact, an adequate pedagogical introduction to structuralism can be developed from three inviting and unpretentious texts: Jonathan Culler's Structuralist Poetics [9], the aforementioned Structuralism and Semiotics, and Mythologies [10] by the great (and not nearly well enough appreciated) Roland Barthes. The considerable overlap between the material covered in the books of Culler and Hawkes can be taken to demonstrate to students the different ways with which one can approach the same models and concepts. Hawkes' is the more immediately welcoming to the complete beginner since his text favors concision and places structuralism within a philosophical framework starting from Vico. Structuralist Poetics, on the other hand, is considerably less of an introductory text and considerably more oriented specifically to the study of literature. However, Culler's fluent prose is more than rewarding and the breadth of his methodological scrutiny astounding and inspiring. Culler's project is a thorough and compelling analysis of the successes and deficiencies of the various structuralist methodologies which had at that time been employed in the interpretation of literature, and it is one deserving of the attention of anyone trying to grasp the processes of literary meaning. Mythologies, on the other hand, can only be described as a brilliant work by a singular mind. Barthes' text should be considered a foundation to any kind of cultural studies practice which endeavors to truly understand the complex cultural and sociological landscapes which make up our everyday world of collective being. A collection of mostly short essays which range on topics from pro wrestling, to detergent ads, to the social significance implied in drinking wine, Mythologies also features a useful appendix in which Barthes spells out the methodology which guided the production of his studies of everyday life. All three of these books were well known twenty years ago, and I see no reason why they should not be equally valued today. Has our situation really changed so much in twenty years that these texts which once served such a valuable purpose in the instruction of different approaches to literature are no longer suitable for such purposes?

While these methodologies may seem abstruse to the new student (but certainly not any more so than the suggestions of deconstruction, which I would argue cannot be properly taught without a prior instruction in structuralism), I believe that the results make up for this initial inaccessibility. Through such an instruction in structuralist models and methods, students are likely to develop an improved architectonic clarity in their own writing. Also, a structuralist education could potentially serve as an introduction to many academic disciplines (particularly linguistics and anthropology) which students would never have been exposed to otherwise. In my mind, these potential benefits for students, coupled with the possibility of lending a better understanding of the communicative devices by which literature comes into existence, make a strong case for the continuing teaching of structuralism.

Notes

[1] Jonathan Culler, The Pursuit of Signs (Cornell UP: Ithaca 2001) p. vii

[2] Jonathan Culler, The Pursuit of Signs, p. xi

[3] Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics (University of California Press: Berkeley 1977) p. 17

[4] Jean Piaget, Structuralism, trans. Chaninah Naschler (Routledge: London 1973)

[5] Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, trans. Wade Baskin (McGraw Hill: New York 1966)

[6] Roman Jakobson, "Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics", in Sebeok ed., Style in Language (MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass 1960)

[7] Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, p. 122

[8] Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics, p. 27

[9] Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics (Comell UP: Ithaca 1975)

[10] Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (Hill and Wang: New York 1972)

Marc Lombardo, Claremont Graduate University, CA

Marc Lombardo is a graduate student in Cultural Studies at Claremont Graduate University.