Structuralism began in linguistics and was enlarged by Claude
Levi-Strauss into a new way of thinking that views our world as
consisting of relationships between structures we create rather
than of objective realities. The Age of Structuralism examines the
work of seven writers who either expanded upon or reacted against
Levi-Strauss. In a panoramic overview of the origins of
deconstructionism and its critics, Edith Kurzweil offers a lucid
and penetrating portrait of the movement that dominated French
intellectual life for much of the postwar era, and which continues
to influence the French intellectual milieu. She explains
Levi-Strauss's strikingly original contributions, then proceeds to
illuminate the ideas of crusaders and critics. The key figures
dealt with include: Louis Althusser, who reinterpreted Marxism
through a rereading of Marx's texts with the help of structuralist
techniques; Henri Lefebvre, who remained faithful to Marx's
humanism and was one of the earliest and most vehement critics of
structuralism; Paul Ricoeur, whose phenomenology sought to
reconcile ethical theory and intellectual pursuits; Alain Touraine,
a socialist whose sociology of political action led him to dismiss
structuralist concerns; Jacques Lacan, who criticized ego-oriented
psychoanalytic theory and practice, and whose own work emphasized
linguistic structures in psychoanalysis; Roland Barthes, whose
literary criticism, in its determination to reject all false
notions and systems, led to a highly idiosyncratic approach that
drew upon all systems; and finally, Michel Foucault, whose social
histories of deviance, medicine, psychology, grammar, language,
sexuality criminology, have reexamined every facet of social
theory. Placing these major figures in the context of political,
historical, and psychoanalytic currents of the time, The Age of
Structuralism is a commanding and far-reaching study of a decisive
epoch in intellectual history. Kurzweil's new opening essay
explains how these towering figures prefigured current emphasis on
semiotics, post-structuralism, deconstruction, and
post-postmodernism. Kurt H. Wolff called it "lucid, splendid and
unobtrusive" when the book first appeared. It remains a central
work in the appreciation of the French giants upon whose shoulders
the new crop of thinkers expect to stand.
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