Levi-Strauss Research Articles

Sign and Symbol in Picasso

Writers on the semiology of Cubism have often cited Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler’s 1946–48 descriptions of Cubism as a form of writing. They seem, however, to have overlooked Pablo Picasso’s 1945–48 statements about art as a sign language. The first section of this essay argues that Kahnweiler was in fact inspired by Picasso’s statements. The second section retraces the origins of semiology in nineteenth-century philology, its revival by Claude Levi-Strauss, his influence on critical theory, the rise of a semiological interpretation of Cubism, and the problems with this interpretation. The third section links Picasso’s 1945–48 statements about art as a sign language to his contemporary visual work; specifically, to his illustrations for Pierre Reverdy’s book of poems Le Chant des morts. The idea of art as a sign language is traced to Picasso’s 1924 drawings of “star charts” or “constellations”. However, Picasso’s 1945–48 designs using a similar vocabulary are analyzed as signifiers without signifieds—that is, as symbols, rather than signs.

Élever le bricolage à la dignité du savoir-y-faire avec le symptôme

AimsThis article proposes to question the dimension of “inventive craftwork” in clinical practice, and to open up the field of its complexity, by taking as a basis the singular elaborative work of several young people participating in workshops within a mental healthcare institution. If today the notions of the unconscious, subjectivity, the patients’ word, desire, enjoyment, and lust are reduced to the bare minimum, and if the neuroscientific approach might ultimately ignore the field of the unconscious as some debates suggest, we will expose other horizons : that of the value of the word, that of the “clinical at the bedside,” that of the function of the symptom, and that of inventive “craftwork” as a singular creation. We will insist on the following postulate : rather than considering a subject as deficient, we will, instead, consider them as a subject attempting to deal with their anxiety. Beyond the question of understanding, we will strive not to back down in the face of psychosis, thus following the recommendations of previous psychiatrists. MethodFirst, we will move away from a deficitary approach, as it is commonly understood today, in order to restore to their rightful places the function of the symptom and the welcoming of a singular subjective “oddness.” We will rely on the words of the teenagers who participated in and with whom we worked in the offered creative workshops. This description will consist in highlighting the singular logic at work in each young person, and how each of them teaches us their own way of dealing with their symptom. We will propose to learn from the singular language of these subjects participating in the workshops to receive the inventive way in which they deal with the suffering they are facing. Then, we will revisit the questions of art, creation, and sublimation in the work of Sigmund Freud. If the inventor of psychoanalysis thinks of creation as illusory, as difficult to understand through analysis, as drawing on the child's play, or even as sublimation, by exploring these patients’ contributions, we will look at the works of several psychoanalysts who succeeded Freud, or who read him from different point of view. Donald Woods Winnicott worked extensively on the dimension of play and creativity in his clinical practice with children. He also looked at what he called the “creative lifestyle.” This author shifts from Freudian sublimation to opening the field of transitionality. In his Seminar on the Ethics of Psychoanalysis Jacques Lacan questioned the sublimation of and the destiny of the trieb by demonstrating how this destiny consists in elevating its primary goal to the rank of a shareable work. This literature review will allow us to question the dimension of creation within clinical practice. With the Freudian model alone not being able to account for the creative impulse, Jacques Lacan also proposed the concept of the sinthome, in the last years of his teaching, and especially between 1975 and 1976. We will therefore consider this concept of the sinthome; and to measure, distinguish, and compare it to what more contemporary authors call “sinthomation” or even “sinthomization.” This choice of perspective aims at setting in motion, demonstrating, and pinpointing what we mean, clinically, by “inventive craftwork.” ResultsIn the workshops, we observe how important it is to take seriously the inventive solutions of each of the subjects with whom we work. We can also observe the importance of measuring the “transference manoeuvre.” In our encounter with the subject-at-work, there is much to gain in paying attention to the subject's inventiveness, as well as that of the clinician. DiscussionBy studying the etymological roots of the terms “craftwork” and “invention,” we will question the path of this inventive craftsman, a path that leads to surprise as well as to the possibility not only to find but also to ricochet. The craftsman is also described by Claude Levi-Strauss, in The Savage Mind, as “the one who works with his own hands” by “roundabout means” and who makes do “with the means at hand.” We will try to grasp how craftwork clinically summons an essential function of defending oneself against an unbearable real. ConclusionIf, in any case, the question of creation is sometimes considered as a matter of sublimation, “craftwork” will be raised to the dignified position of a means of dealing with the symptom. The clinical examples given here illustrate and emphasize an art of resourcefulness.

Ungkapan Mitos Kehamilan Perspektif Tokoh Agama dan Strukturasinya pada Generasi Milenial di Provinsi Kepulauan Bangka Belitung

The aim of this study is to describe the variety of expression of the myth of pregnancy and its implementation in the millennial generation in the Bangka Belitung Islands Province. This type of research is field research, using descriptive qualitative and quantitative research methods. The research approach is a sociological approach using the mythical structuralist theory of Claude Levi-Strauss. The results of this study show that there are twenty-one different myths during pregnancy that develop in the community in the province of Kepualauan Bangka Belitung. This pregnancy myth contains about anxieties or prohibitions that have a certain impact if followed or not followed for the society that believes in it. Of the 120 millennial respondents who answered about the implementation of pregnancy myths, it was found that 30.8 percent had implemented a myth during pregnancies, 28.3 percent sometimes implemented the myth while pregnant, and 40.8 percent never implemented myth when pregnant. Thus, it can be concluded that the millennial generation is still quite a lot that implements both the myth of prohibition and abortion during pregnancy. This means that many millennials still believe and still believe in the leaders or ancestors of the parents / elders or cultures / traditions spread in the community environment where they live. The results of this research are in line with Claude Levi-Strauss’s theory of structural patterns of mythology, namely about human myths and intuitions, mythos and language, the structure of the myth, as well as myth and social values.

WHEN JAZZ BROKE OPERA: SOUND AND MYTH IN …(IPHIGENIA)

As an anthropologist, I am no stranger to the importance of myth to both meaning-making and as connective tissue with ancestral forms of knowledge. Claude Levi-Strauss is synonymous with the study of myth in twentieth-century anthropology. Zora Neale Hurston, however, has only recently been reclaimed by the discipline of anthropology, even though she was both a student of Franz Boas—the so-called ‘father’ of American anthropology—and she conducted tireless ethnographic research in the US South and Caribbean for over forty years, focused on what she preferred to call folklore, or lies. Hurston is an important lens through which to interpret …(Iphigenia) because Hurston's corpus catalogues the mythocentrism of African American and African diasporic culture. She created a mind-bendingly prolific body of both fiction and non-fiction work centered on myth and provides an important context for the connections being drawn in this opera between jazz and Greek tragedy: that of sound.

The Semiotic Potential of Mythology: Post-Metaphysical Version

Myth has been and continues to be an enigma to science, and its interest has led to an endless number of theories, concepts, and new questions. One of them is the phenomenon of myth when it is infinite through its semantic interpretation of the world without giving up its symbolic character. If for a long time the concepts of “myth” and “logic” were conceptually opposed, the linguistic paradigm of cultural philosophy, born in the womb of postmetaphysics, has opened the possibility of fully thinking through the logic of myth.In Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy, myth is total – it is in language and style, among the means of logical constructions of his texts, etc., because for him the existence of the world itself is semiotic. The phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, spoke about the myth in the key of finding and recreating their primary meanings as the reference concepts of ontology. The philosophy of symbolic forms by Ernst Cassirer, as well as the apology of the logic of myth by Alexey Losev, Yakov Golosovker are considered in terms of justification of the symbolic nature of myth as a manifestation of the symbolic language of sacral character.The “mythology” term used in this work does not claim to be a concept, but its legitimacy is based on the teaching of Claude Levi-Strauss, “charged” ideas of existential philosophy, which contributed to the discovery of the phenomenon of «handiness" as manifestations of immediate sensitivity to the world as existence. The ideas about the sacred nature of the symbol, which are further developed in this article, served as a basis for the possibility of speaking about mythology as a method of encoding the sacred, which is particularly significant and peculiar in the symbol. It is assumed that the symbolic exists in the space of the sacred, whose loss transforms it into a sign.

Making sense of the American Collective Identity through Captain America: The First Avenger (2011): A Multi-method Analysis

American national identity has received much attention from multidisciplinary fields of research. Thus, this research deals with the role of heroes and villains in reflecting on post-9/11 events—specifically in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011). The focus is directed toward the symbolic meanings of the main characters in the chosen movie. Through cinematic representations, this research highlights the nexus between heroization, villainization, and the American national identity. The confrontations between American heroes and foreign villains in entertainment reflect America’s global positioning as a superpower fighting “evil.” I chose a qualitative research method to prove this hypothesis. I conducted a thematic analysis that involves decoding the main characters by examining their binary opposition and representation of the U.S. and the foreign enemy and their connotations within the broad context of reasserting and repositioning the U.S. as a global power after 9/11. I also decoded the meanings of key events within the movies in relation to their historical contexts and their connotations in a post9/11 context. My theoretical framework relies mainly on Claude Levi-Strauss’s theory of Binary Opposition, Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, Jeffrey Alexander’s Cultural Trauma, and Michael C. Frank’s Cultural Imaginary of Terrorism in post-9/11. This research suggests that the symbolism of Superheroes and Supervillains articulates their role in rebuilding national identity in post-traumatic times.

Bernard Bailyn's Barbarous Modernity

Bernard Bailyn's Barbarous Modernity

THE CONCEPT OF BUDI IN THE MALAY-SPEAKING WORLD: A STRUCTURALIST VIEW OF SITTI NURBAYA

The word Budi is a well-known term in the Malay-speaking world and has numerous meanings. In this article, the authors describe the term Budi and its use. The authors argue that Budi stands for a whole concept and is closely related to the Malay worldview. A structuralist research method was used to detect specific patterns. In their analysis, the researchers considered the ideas of Claude Levi-Strauss and Ferdinand Saussure. The researchers analyzed an ‘ideal’ personality that is mentioned in the literature. The authors looked into the novel ‘Sitti Nurbaya’ and illustrated the concept of Budi. It was detected that Sitti Nurbaya personifies in many ways the element of Budi and is a kind of ideal. On the other side, many despicable character traits could be found in the character of Datuk Meringgih. The authors concluded that Budi is an idea that includes a lot of praiseworthy character traits of the people in the Malay-speaking world.

Liberatory violence or the gift: paths to decoloniality in Black Panther

Black Panther's (Coogler 2018) popularity amongst its black audiences in part stems from its foregrounding of the persistent social injustices engendered by colonialism and slavery (what Aníbal Quijano (2000:533) terms 'coloniality') and black people's struggles to overcome them. As a representational tactic in approaching this theme, the Hollywood blockbuster draws on the imaginings of Afrofuturism, which variously endorses radical or more conciliatory approaches to decoloniality. This southern theoretical approach and the critique of coloniality offered by Afrofuturism frame our exploration of how the film positions the hero, T'Challa and the villain, Erik Killmonger, as embodiments of contrasting approaches to emancipation from colonialism's entrenched legacy. Using a structuralist approach that draws on the narrative models of Tsvetan Todorov, Vladimir Propp and Claude Levi-Strauss, we analyse the film's approach to decoloniality by examining the relationship between T'Challa and Killmonger as the protagonist and antagonist respectively. The analysis reveals the limitations of the film's construction of the hero's and villain's understandings of the path to liberation. Rather than offering a revolutionary remedy for the injustices of colonialism and its aftermath, the film embraces a liberal standpoint that remains palatable to the white establishment, both within Hollywood and the broader socio-political milieu.

The Anthropology of Aquaculture

Aquaculture is nothing new. It has a long, fascinating history that stretches from antiquity at least 8,000 years ago. What is new is the evolution of aquaculture in modern times into highly intensive monocultures which arose in the 1970–1980's. Modern aquaculture production has grown worldwide but remains concentrated in Asia due to the: (1) increased demands for aquatic foods as explosive population growth occurred in coastal cities with increasing affluence, (2) expansion of scientific and engineering breakthroughs, (3) high export values of aquatic foods, and (4) sharp decline of costs of global to local transport/shipping. The pioneering anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss brought the idea of “structuralism” to anthropology: the concept that societies throughout history followed universal patterns of behavior. A qualitative document analysis of the key anthropological literature to assess aquaculture developments from antiquity to the beginning of the modern era was conducted to evaluate if there was adequate evidence to support a theory of anthropological “structuralism” for aquaculture in human history. Seven case studies of the cultural/environmental history of aquaculture were reviewed in diverse parts of the world (China, Australia, Egypt, Europe, South America, Canada/USA, Hawai'i). Analysis supports the structural theory that whenever the demands of aquatic/seafood-eating peoples exceeded the abilities of their indigenous fishery ecosystems to provide for them, they developed aquaculture. Modern aquaculture concepts and new communities of practice in “restoration aquaculture” have beginnings in Indigenous anthropology and archeology in aquaculture and point the way for Indigenous nations to engage as leaders of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) ecosystem approach to aquaculture worldwide. Bringing ancient knowledge of Indigenous aquaculture into the modern context is an essential part of an alternative, “radical transformation” of modern aquaculture. There is an urgent need to develop and promote locally designed and culturally appropriate aquaculture systems that fit into the livelihoods of communities as part of a larger, diverse portfolio of food security.

The Use of Pragmatic Documents in Medieval Wallachia and Moldavia: Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries by Mariana Goina

Reviewed by: The Use of Pragmatic Documents in Medieval Wallachia and Moldavia: Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries by Mariana Goina Mark Amsler Goina, Mariana, The Use of Pragmatic Documents in Medieval Wallachia and Moldavia: Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries (Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, 47), Turnhout, Brepols, 2020; cloth; pp. xvii, 329; 26 b/w illustrations, 2 b/w tables; R.R.P. €90.00; ISBN 9782503587974. Michael Clanchy, riffing on Claude Levi-Strauss, kickstarted a branch of social history seeking out ‘literate mentalities’. In particular, pragmatic literacy studies refer to the uses of documents for everyday or administrative communication or for record-keeping purposes. Mariana Goina’s new book, based on her Central European University dissertation, brings new and interesting light to a late development in European literacy in the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia (present-day Romania). Oddly, after the Romans exited from Dacia around 271 ce, it was more than a thousand years before another literate culture emerged in the area. How did that happen? Goina takes on that question in her rich archival study. Her book is organized in three parts: historical background, survey of the sources, and use and dissemination of written texts. The sources range from the late thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. Goina’s multi-chapter survey of sources makes for dense reading, as she gives generous detailed attention to the types of documents, primarily land charters and letters. Her analysis of the uses and dissemination of writing in Moldavia and Wallachia shows how people continued to use oral modes of validation and communication alongside newer, sometimes foreign, written modes. From her sources, she also works out what people thought about the written texts they were using, their ‘literate mentalities’, whether a land charter needed to be authenticated by oral testimony or whether it could be evidence of ownership in itself, or whether the charter was an aide-memoire for what was considered the primary oral agreement. Goina’s study of Moldavian and Wallachian documents will make better known texts whose genres may be familiar but whose local details and what they reveal about social and political life of the time are less so. The history of literacy is social history, and Goina and her documents don’t disappoint. Land ownership was a constant and contentious experience across the social spectrum, from princes and high court officials to merchants and villagers. In late fifteenth-century Wallachia, for example, as higher-ups sought to acquire and consolidate land holdings, free villagers marshalled written authority to certify their ownership and prevent encroachment and their relegation to serfdom. It is sobering to see the extent to which the surviving documents are mostly to do with land inheritance, ownership, and conveyance. Writing goes hand in hand with control or disruption of power. Goina discusses many intriguing cases of literacy as social practice. She explains the legal fiction by which a family used a specific text to turn a daughter into a ‘son’ and therefore eligible to inherit land, or the practice of adopting another member of the community as a ‘brother’ for similar purposes. Textual acts [End Page 243] are constitutive within a social context. At the same time, Goina’s evidence points to women’s, especially widows’, active participation in literate culture, mostly on behalf of inheritance and land ownership. The surviving documents also reveal the costs of literacy. To make a land charter, an owner or claimant might pay the scribe a horse or forty złotis, but then pay out six times that amount for a feast to gather together ‘oath-helpers’ to vouch orally for the charter and the land rights. Goina pays good attention to the languages of charters and other documents in the archives. Charters and other texts survive in Latin, Slovanic, Polish, and German. German communities were especially prominent in the principalities. Wallachian and Moldavian literacy was thickened by the active presence of Hungarian, German, Polish, and other foreign scribes in the principalities. The princes’ international relations and the region’s geographic location as a major trade route suggest how local practices were partly shaped by other literate contacts, especially merchants. It is also clear from Goina’s research that literate practice...

Accessibility in urban spaces

Sustainability in the urban context means much more than environmental and planning efficiency. To make a place sustainable is also to make it equitable to people with differences, maintain and foster rich cultural connections and relationships. The differences extend to class, color, race, caste, gender, disability. Truly sustainable spaces are also accessible spaces. Urban resilience, which by definition enfolds sustainability, is an opportunity to include the agenda of accessibility. This is more so in the Indian context where urban development more often than not is inconsistent in adopting accessibility, and accessible spaces are patchy and disconnected. If the concept of jugaad as indigenous innovation fits in with urban resilience, it needs to, by extension, be examined with respect to sustainable and accessible environments. The essay will examine the question: where does jugaad figure when urbanism is viewed through the lens of accessibility? What is the potential and limits of jugaad in this context? It is intriguing to explore jugaad as bricolage, in Claude Levi-Strauss' dichotomy of the bricoleur and the scientist, which extrapolates to various other relevant dichotomies such as local/global, mythic/scientific, particular/universal. The essay also examines the history of accessibility in Indian cities, setting up the present need for this critical component of any sustainable, equitable environment. It then examines jugaad's potential and limits in the making of accessible urban spaces. The essay is an open-ended inquiry into the subject, sparked by a combination of factors: my Indian origin and experience of living in India for over two decades, scholarly graduate study of the mythicity of Indian cities, and my personal experience of participating in the daily care of my son, a young adult with developmental disabilities.

A Double-Headed Turtle God

When I was asked to comment on the illustration printed on the cover of the first (1961) volume of the journal L’Homme, I was honored to have my name associated with the inimitable Claude Levi-Strauss, the founder of structuralist anthropology, which was nurtured by the tropical forests of Brazil and nourished by the exceptionally diverse ethnic groups whose forebears had lived there for millennia. I myself am an archaeologist, and when I arrived in the Republic of Panama in 1969 to begin the...

Dialectics, Structure, Language – Lacanian “Return to Freud” in the First Half of the 1950s

The purpose of this article is to show the influence of Claude Levi-Strauss’structural anthropology and kojévian Hegelianism on Jacques Lacan’s early teaching. However, this is not just about showing the similarities between these theories, but also about how these influences defined the shape of Lacan’s theory. It turns out that the influence that kojévian Hegelianism had on Lacan is not just a theoretical curiosity, but it constitutes the essence and the aim of Lacan’s clinical practice. The final conclusion of the article is the thesis that the essence of the early period of Lacan’s teaching can be defined as more Hegelian than structuralist. The essence of this theory is not so much focus on Symbolic understood anthropologically, but reflection on the tension between the Universal and the Particular. In the article, I first describe the problem of the unconscious and Universality in Lèvi-Strauss’s teaching. Subsequently, I explain how Lèvi-Strauss’ concept of the unconscious influenced Lacan’s theory. Finally, I present Hegelian aspects of Lacan’s clinical theory and ontology.

The Other and memory in Roger Bastide

This article investigates the figure of the French sociologist and anthropologist Roger Bastide in relation to the theory of memory that he elaborates in the context of his studies of Afro-Brazilian cultures. Following the studies of Maurice Halbwachs and Claude Levi-Strauss, Bastide elaborates an idea of memory as the result of a dialectic interplay between the processes of collective memory and those of bricolage. This idea of memory could be useful in a more general analysis of the role of the past in contacts between different cultures.

Sketches After Latour: A Working Paper

Thirteen various observations on the thinking of Bruno Latour, from We Have Never Been Modern through Reassembling the Social and up to modes. Excursions into Stanley Fish, Paul Feyerabend, and Claude Levi-Strauss. Topics: religion, history, social organization, culture, mind, language, truth and felicity. Thread running throughout: Latour’s “flat ontology”, in which everything has agency, has fruitful, perhaps even substantial and revelatory, implications.

Western “Supremacy” and the “Renaissance” Issue: Decolonising as Imitative Reaction

Claude Levi-Strauss reminds us that “the notion of humanity, encompassing, without distinction of race or civilization, all forms of the human species, is a recent phenomenon and of limited expansion … But for the major part of the human species, dozens of millennia, this notion appears totally absent. Humanity stops at the frontiers of the tribe, the language group, often even of the village …” (Finkielkraut 1996, 1).

Daddy, Mammy and Daughter Matters and the Fulfillment of Feminine Self in John Maxwell. Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country (1999)

คำวา “ตำนาน” มการนำมาใชในหลายลกษณะ การบนทกตำนานในสงคมไทยมหลายรปแบบ บทความนมวตถประสงคหลก 2 ประการ ประการแรก เปนการนำตำนานประเภทตำนานปรมปราในสงคมวฒนธรรมไทยทบนทกไวในเอกสารตางๆ ดวยภาษาทเปนสญลกษณมาวเคราะหโดยใชวธการศกษาแบบโครงสรางนยมของโคลด เลว สเตราส พบวา สารสำคญทบรรพชนไทยสงสารผานตำนานปรมปราเปนเรองปมความขดแยงในการเลอกรบนบถอศาสนาระหวางความเชอดงเดมกบพทธศาสนาประการหนง และเรองความสมพนธระหวางชนกลมตางๆ อกประการหนง ประการหลง เปนการวเคราะหการใชคำวา “ตำนาน” ในลกษณะตางๆ ทบานหนองขาว จงหวดกาญจนบร ซงเปนหมบานทมการจดการทองเทยวเชงวฒนธรรม ผลการศกษาทำใหเหนวา เรองราวจากทงประวตศาสตร วรรณคด ประวตชวตบคคล พทธประวต สามารถรบรในฐานะตำนานได และยงกอใหเกดตำนานและความเชออนๆ ตอไปไดอก ทงยงสามารถสรางตำนานขนใหมแลวบนทกและถายทอดในรปของการแสดงไดอกดวย การศกษาทงสองประเดนดงกลาว สะทอนใหเหนถงความภมใจของคนไทยทมภาษาไทยในการบนทกปมปญหาขดแยงในใจของบรรพชนไทยสงผานมาใหคนรนหลงไดลวงร และความภมใจของชาวบานทมตำนานตางๆ บนทกหรอถายทอดอยในชมชน ทำใหตนไดรบรหรอใชประโยชนจากตำนานเหลานน The word “Tamnan,” is used in manifold contexts. There are numerous forms of documenting tamnan in Thai society. This article contains two major objectives. First, it aims to analyze myths as a kind of tamnans in Thai culture as recorded in symbolic language in various documents, using Claude Levi-Strauss’ Structuralism. The findings show that the vital messages handed down by the Thai forefathers concern the conflict between indigenous beliefs and faith in Buddhism, and the relationship among different group of peoples. The latter objective is to analyze the use of the word “Tamnan” in different contexts in Ban Nong Khao, where cultural tourism has been promoted, in Kanchanaburi Province. The results of the study illustrate that historical accounts, literature, biographies, the life of Buddha can be acknowledged not only as tamnans but also as resources to generate other beliefs and new tamnans. Also, these tamnans can be recorded and passed on by performance. From the two results of the study, it can be seen firstly, that Thai people take pride in the Thai language which is used not only to record but also discern their ancestors’ inner cultural conflicts and secondly, that the villagers are gratified to learn and make use of those tamnans recorded and passed on in their own community.

Is All Discourse Official? On the Poetics of Gifting and Gossiping

This essay discusses gift-giving and gossiping in a canonical American novel (John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, 1939) by way of the two texts which sealed the fate of dominant literary scholarship after WWII: Marcel Mauss’s essay The Gift and Claude Levi-Strauss’s Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss. Steinbeck’s use of informal discourse and Marcel Mauss’s descriptions of tacit compulsory reciprocation present the opportunity to dispute central assumptions in literary theory that pertain to literary meaning, interpretation, and referentiality. This essay argues that literary language is conventional precisely because its conventionality fulfills a social function; the conventional nature of literary language is in itself meaningful socially. This, in turn, suggests that the interpretation of literary texts remains dependent on a correct understanding of the material and symbolic economies they participate in.

The concept of structuralism in the context of historical development of art and design

The article discusses theoretical foundations for the emergence and formation of structuralism in Western European art criticism in the 1930-1940s, namely, the theory of representatives of the Viennese school. It considers the main concepts and terms of the concept of structuralism formed by theorists of that time in the context of the development of art history. An attempt to project the ideas of structuralism into the sphere of design is made with the involvement of the research by French theorists Claude Levi-Strauss and Roland Barthes. As a result, the main theoretical provisions of structuralism as a modeling activity and a structural person as a creator of meanings were correlated with the design field and the professional duties of a designer. Considering certain structuralism ideas in the works of French researchers in the context of the modern process of creating an industrial product, the concept of structuralism was supplemented and its certain predictability for the development of design in general was revealed.