Structuralism

Structuralism is a theoretical paradigm in sociology, anthropology and linguistics positing that elements of human culture must be understood in terms of their relationship to a larger, overarching system or structure. It works to uncover the structures that underlie all the things that humans do, think, perceive, and feel.

.. A potential problem of structuralist interpretation is that it can be highly reductive, as scholar Catherine Belsey puts it: “the structuralist danger of collapsing all difference.”[15] An example of such a reading might be if a student concludes the authors of West Side Story did not write anything “really” new, because their work has the same structure as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In both texts a girl and a boy fall in love (a “formula” with a symbolic operator between them would be “Boy + Girl”) despite the fact that they belong to two groups that hate each other (“Boy’s Group – Girl’s Group” or “Opposing forces”) and conflict is resolved by their death. Structuralist readings focus on how the structures of the single text resolve inherent narrative tensions.

The Drone Philosopher

“What are the humanities good for?” — will be intrigued by the almost therapeutic vocational definition he gives in his article: “The job of philosophy,” he writes, “is not to create existential crises but to handle or work through existential responsibility.” The philosopher is here to serve! For the philosopher, unless he’s Diogenes the barrel-dwelling Cynic, must also buy his bread in the agora, or obtain it from a patron, or from the state . . .

.. Genovese saw a genteel, conservative elite, averse to social change and hateful of the commerce and economic development that brought such change

.. His history—like all histories, in one way or another—used actors from the past to restage the drama of its own times.