Abstract
Structuralism may originate from Saussurian linguistics. In the Course of General Linguistics, Saussure defines one essential methodological principle: in response to previous methodologies, which defined historical evolution as the main object of linguistics, Saussure assumes that language must be studied as a system, not a history. To him, one cannot understand the inherent logic of a language by studying its origins, for language is a self-sufficient organized whole. This apparent distinction between history and structure substantially modified linguistics; especially, it introduces a very strong division between synchrony and diachrony. Synchrony, as a time of a relative immobility of language, would permit to explain the system, while diachrony, would describe its modifications. Historical and structural problems, therefore, appeared to be mutually exclusive.
Thus, if we define broadly structuralism as the theoretical perspective that tries to describe its objects as the combination of elements combined in overall structures, structuralism seems to have difficult relations with history. This exclusion appeared to be problematic, from the moment the structuralist approach has been extended to other social sciences. I will try here to explicit these relations. I chose to focus on three main authors related to that issue: Levi-Strauss, Althusser and Foucault. Levi-Strauss, by trying to integrate Saussurian methods to the domain of anthropology, opened a debate that goes largely beyond linguistics. He clearly adopts the label of structuralist, and can be considered a “classical” structuralist. The cases of Althusser and Foucault are more ambiguous, for both of them explicitly rejected this. There are undoubtedly significant differences between those authors; and Foucault and Althusser are not structuralists as Levi-Strauss is; however we can integrate them to the question, for they often have been –willingly or not – described as structuralists, and are clearly linked to the debate of structuralism.
