The shift away from structuralism has been in part, to use the terms of the French linguist Emile Benveniste, a move from ‘language’ to ‘discourse’.
Eagleton on structuralism
Structuralism has been in fashion in Anglo-American intellectual circles since the late sixties, as is demonstrated by the number of critical anthologies and books which have appeared in the last decade. The critical excitement generated by structuralism reached its peak in America in the mid-seventies: the label became then the product, with the predictable result that any thinker, past or present, who was anyone fit under the ‘structuralist umbrella’.
Harari – Structuralism
Structuralism is a philosophical view according to which the reality of the objects of the human or social sciences is relational rather than substantial. It generates a critical method that consists of inquiring into and specifying the sets of relations (or structures) that constitute these objects or into which they enter, and of identifying and analyzing groups of such objects whose members are structural transformations of one another
On Structuralism
Structuralism had relatively little influence on criticism in the English-speaking world: in America in particular, few critics showed any interest in it. Its anti-humanism and the fact that it tended to concentrate on forms and genres rather than the close reading of texts made it difficult to accommodate.
