Structuralism

Structuralism was a French intellectual movement that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, marking a profound shift in the direction of a French philosophical discourse dominated up until that point by existentialism and phenomenology. Gradually introduced into English-speaking academia during the 1970s, the influence of key structuralist figures on the humanities and social sciences was immeasurable, although it was also quite rapidly superseded (or at the very least supplemented) by a new generation of French thinkers commonly known as poststructuralists who sought to challenge many of the assumptions first established by their immediate predecessors. Although many of the shared traits of structuralism may seem rather antiquated today, it is nevertheless the case that many of the ideas, theories, and methods of these thinkers still hold ...