Watch on YouTube. Here is a surprisingly edifying and entertaining synopsis of structuralism. I particularly like how Prof. Louis Markos connects Saussure's work to the "proto-structuralism" of Freud and Marx. Also enjoyable is Markos' mini-rant, in light of Wes's recent post: Structures are found in all areas of thought and study, from history to linguistics, psychology to Continue Reading …
Paul Fry (Yale) on Levi-Strauss (and the rest of ’em)
On the podcast both Derick and I made some references to Paul Fry's literary theory course, which includes lectures on Saussure, Levi-Strauss, and Derrida. It's a much longer course, of course, so you can get ahead of us to get a handle on the dreaded Lacan, or see what Fry has to say on feminism and African-American criticism. The individual lecture pages linked above even Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-51: Semiotics and Structuralism (Saussure, et al)
This is a short preview of the full episode. Buy Now Purchase this episode for $2.99. Or become a PEL Citizen for $5 a month, and get access to this and all other paywalled episodes, including 68 back catalogue episodes; exclusive Part 2's for episodes published after September, 2020; and our after-show Nightcap, where the guys respond to listener email and chat more Continue Reading …
Episode 51: Semiotics and Structuralism (Saussure, et al) (Citizens Only)
On Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics (1916) (Part I and Part II, Ch. 4), Claude Levi-Strauss's "The Structural Study of Myth" (1955), and Jacques Derrida's "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" (1966). What is language? What is the relation between language and reality? Saussure argued that a language at a given time has a Continue Reading …
Topic for #51: Semiotics and Structuralism (Saussure, Levi-Strauss, Derrida)
We've posted our episode (here) on a historical progression in thought that is still responsible for a lot of the hard-to-read parts of continental (mostly French) philosophy today. First, we read Part I and Part II, Chapter IV of Ferdiand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics(read it online here), published posthumously in 1916 (it's basically lecture notes by his Continue Reading …