What's here?

• Reading assignments for this session
  
• Background information--and encouraging words
  
• Study questions on these readings
  

Assignment for next time

• Ferdinand de Saussure, from Course in General Linguistics, in Critical Theory Since 1965, ed. Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle (Tallahassee: U of Florida P, 1986): 645-57. (on reserve)
  

• Claude Levi-Strauss, "The Structural Study of Myth,"in Critical Theory Since 1965: 808-22. (on reserve)
  

Some background information--and a few encouraging words

In dealing with Saussure, who is usually described as the founder of structural linguistics, it's important to recall the commonsense view of language, which holds that words (like "cat") name or refer to things (like domesticated felines). On such a view of language, there's a direct, one-to-one relationship between words (which dwell within language) and things (which dwell outside language). Saussure is unwilling to accept this view--and we will have to figure out why. How does Saussure demonstrate the flaws of the commonsense view of language, and what does he propose to put in its place?

To help you with Levi-Strauss, who is known as the founder of structural anthropology--and who may be even more difficult than Saussure--I've created a few extra webpages.

• one page glosses a few of his key terms;
• another set of pages deals with the Oedipus myth, which he discusses at length;
• a third set of pages deals with the Zuni origin myth, which he also treats in detail.

Please print out these pages before diving into Levi-Strauss. You won't be sorry. In any case, rest assured that I don't expect you to follow every single step in Levi-Strauss's arguments. I do want you to focus on his generalizations, however, and to ask a few questions about them. Why does he think that his method "eliminates a problem which has been one of the main obstacles to the progress of mythological studies" (815)? What kinds of "logical processes" does he think are "at the root of mythical thought" (818)? And what does he mean when he says that "the purpose of myth is to provide a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction" (821)?

Study questions

1. Here are four of Saussure's aphorisms:
   
   a. "The linguistic unit is a double entity." (646)
   b. "The bond between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary." (647)
   c. "By himself, the individual is incapable of fixing a single value." (649)
   d. "In language there are only differences." (652)
   

   What does each of these things mean? And how are these points illustrated and developed by Saussure? Why, for example, is he so concerned with money? How does thinking about money help us to see, for example, that "in language there are only differences"?

2. Structuralism, the movement that grows out of Saussure's linguistics, has frequently been described as anti-humanistic. Can you see why? What traditional humanist (or if you prefer, liberal humanist) ideas or values might appear to be threatened by a movement like structuralism?

3. What does Levi-Strauss borrow from Saussure? And what does he add to Saussure? Can we distinguish Levi-Strauss from Saussure--and if so, how?

4. What, finally, is the appeal of structuralism? What might it do for you as an interpretor or reader of cultural phenomena--not only myths and narratives, but all sorts of other things as well? Why might someone embrace structuralism--and why, on the other hand, might someone else reject it?