Miriam Glucksmann - Structuralist Analysis in Contemporary Social Thought (RLE Social Theory)

Volume 78

STRUCTURALIST ANALYSIS IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL THOUGHT

A comparison of the theories of Claude Lvi-Strauss and Louis Althusser

MIRIAM GLUCKSMANN

First published in 1974

This edition first published in 2015
by Routledge
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1974 Miriam Glucksmann

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eISBN: 978-1-315-76997-4 (Set)
ISBN: 978-1-138-78259-4 (Volume 78)
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Structuralist analysis in contemporary social thought

A comparison of the theories of Claude Lvi-Strauss and Louis Althusser

Miriam Glucksmann

Routledge & Kegan Paul

London and Boston

This book was originally presented as a Ph.D. thesis to the University of London in 1971.

Much of the financial burden of changing the thesis into a book was borne by a grant from the Leicester University Research Board, for which I am very grateful.

Structuralism reached the height of intellectual fashion in France in the mid 1960s, and reached Britain in the late 1960s, propagated principally by Marxish intellectuals who saw it as a possible solution to both theoretical and political problems. In the absence of an alternative coherent framework, other perhaps than phenomenology, which also enjoyed a new vogue, the adoption of structuralism as a homogeneous system of thought was not surprising. However, the enthusiasm for structuralism is conjunctural and must be seen in its historical context. The generation of students who went through the student movement realized the need for theory, both as the basis for a critique of bourgeois ideology, and as the foundation of their own political activity. Structuralism seemed to fulfil this need in several ways. First, it stressed rigorous theory, and maintained that a scientific epistemology was a necessary precondition for nonempiricist and objective knowledge of the social formation as well as its cultural and psychological dimensions. This emphasis on explicit premises contrasted with the empiricism and woolly theory of academic thought, and provided the concepts for a critique of sociology and anthropology in particular. Second, structuralism was neither reductionist nor economic determinist, but examined contradictions within the capitalist-imperialist system other than the classic ones, and also attempted a non-reductionist theory of the superstructure. Finally, the apparently political character of the structuralists, all of whose analyses implied a critique of conventional orthodoxy, promised some practical relevance for the theory, and a link between social analysis and political action of which bourgeois thought is incapable.

Both individually and collectively, the structuralists provided a coherent framework for social analysis, in the absence of alternatives. Lvi-Strausss approach to kinship and primitive thought produced insights which were inconceivable within an evolutionary or functionalist problematic. His critique of history and evolutionism implies an anti-imperialist stance, and the structuralist orientation towards his material points the way forward for theoretical anthropology in a post-fieldwork era. The applicability of his method to data conventionally thought to be the preserve of other disciplines breaks down the barriers between the study of literature, language and culture on the one hand, and economics, sociology and anthropology on the other, especially with his consideration of communication in all its guises.

Similarly, Althussers critique of Hegel and of historicist variants of Marxism could culminate in a rigorous structuralist analysis of different social formations and their component substructures and internal contradictions, without succumbing to humanist philosophy or millennial predictions about the collapse of capitalism. His militant interpretation of Marx and Lenin brings into focus the political relevance of their epistemology, and provides the groundwork for a theory of contemporary capitalism by formulating necessary concepts. His political standpoint brings into question the relationship between Marxist theory and revolutionary political practice.

Lvi-Strauss, Althusser, Lacan, Barthes and Foucault produced similar critiques of empiricism, historicism and reductionismcritiques which any scholar in their fields now has to face and answer. But the homogeneity of structuralism can be discerned only by overemphasizing the epistemological and methodological aspects of their work. There are important philosophical and political differences between the structuralists, which are becoming increasingly evident with the continuing development of their ideas, and in time these may override the existing epistemological similarities. Althusser remains a Marxist militant, but his recent writings and those of his followers entail a theoreticism, intellectual elitism and virtual contempt for political practice which were not apparent in his earlier work. Lvi-Strausss physiological reductionism has reached its full expression only in the last volume of the Mythologiques, and makes nonsense of his earlier claims to provide a theory of the superstructure, complementary to Marxs analysis of the base. Politically and philosophically, Althusser and Lvi-Strauss are poles apart, but this is only now becoming manifest.

The conjunctural nature of structuralism as a distinctive problematic does not necessarily mean that it is only of temporary significance. The epistemological critique of bourgeois thought remains one of the most coherent; and the enthusiasm for the structuralist approach should bear fruit in Britain during the next few years with the production of theories of contemporary capitalism, and other social formations, as well as structuralist analyses of art, music, film and literature.