Abstract EN:

The development of structuralism away from linguistics poses its own specific problematics, that of its modellization around the primacy of the sign in a dimension of unconsciousness for which four ruptures are required : with the subject, the meaning, history and man. The semiological model prompts the formation of the theory of the symbolic function in levi-strauss, of language in barthes, of discourse in foucault, of trace in derrida, of process in althusser, and of the significans in lacan. In proportion to its extension to the whole universe of symbols, semiological structuralism makes systematic use of these four ruptures as a methodological approach. In so far as subject, meaning, history and man are categories linked to a theory of representation marked by the presence of the signification, the validity of structuralism is proportional to the capacity of its model to contest the primacy of the representation and its privileged relationship with a cogito. It appears that the unity of structuralism is not stable, as it has been put to the test with regard to its mainstays [levi-strauss and the return to the origin] and its ruptures [lacan and the subject]. The characteristics of the model are therefore at the crossroads of convergences and divergences [the death of man]. It is by taking these characteristics as criteria for the structuralist project that we have observed impasses and resurgences [in relation to the questions of nature and the meaning of myths in levistrauss ; of the episteme, of politics and of desire in foucault ; and of the althusserian reading of marx]. When the model is presented as a meta-system, the methodological approach and the investigation of structures lead to a discourse on man and the world which sterilizes practical reason. This is the "hollowing out" of the concept of man in favour of a tutelary symbolic order.