What do you guys think of Claude Levi-Strauss? I'm currently

>>8838559
Was he redpilled?

You can spend all this time learning about structuralism only to realize it's already quaint and irrelevant. And then you learn post-structuralism and you're finally caught up to the 1970s, and you're still 40 years behind real life.

>>8838559
Thumbs up OP.

Structuralism is very good & worthwhile. I'm a Lacan guy myself.

>>8838571


Woah! Fuck! Just bought all the latest released from Amazon only to go home an hour later and realise they're already outdated! :[ ... guess I'll just read Facebook... #FOMO

>>8838571
First of all, I've read post-structuralists before, it's not like we have to read it all chronologically. Second, perhaps structuralism is not taken in much consideration today, but what better way can I learn about this transformation than learning about structuralism itself. Time well spent.

Structuralism is cool, but it's to the point where it is a little played out and honestly the core ideas have already been absorbed into culture. Everyone inherently understands the ideas as they relate to media and culture.

The Death of the Author is an absolutely classic essay you must read

Seymour Chatman's book on story and discourse is another classic text

Johnathan Culler's book from the 70s is the best in-era overview of structuralists and their approach. you should read it to better understand what they were all thinking.

Umberto Eco's Semiotics is a sort of related, very important text for this field of thought

Fredric Jameson's Prisonhouse of Language is essential. Deals with both structuralism and russian formalism

Roman Jakobson's book from around 1960 is another important book in the body of things that influenced future critics. Jakobson isn't as popular, but belongs beside Levi-Strauss as an influence on practicing structuralists in the 70s and 80s.


I need to go to the post office. Might come back by and post some more. Good luck OP.

http://cahiers.kingston.ac.uk/

>>8838595
>>8838571
The real critique of structuralism isn't that it's outdated, it's that it was so profoundly correct that it has become part of our common understanding of media, language, and even culture.

There's no harm in reading structuralists. It's just no one calls themselves a structuralist any more because the movement made its point, changed the way we think about culture, and people moved on.

>>8838576
Lacan is neither a structuralist or a post-structuralist

>>8838597
Thanks for the recommendations, anon.

Can someone post something that isn't another reading list?

>>8838608
I agree with your main point but I don't think what we call structuralism has been so widely absorbed; perhaps in academic anthropology, but not in culture.

He's all right, but he likes to assimilate a lot of data to fit his anthropological structuralism, similar to Campbell

>>8838661
>perhaps in academic anthropology, but not in culture.

I disagree with this. Anyone who watches a movie and says "I can predict the end of this" is practicing basic structuralism. Popular understanding of movies/tv shows/etc. is very much in a structuralist mindset over the last 20 or 30 years. Movies are mostly the same within a genre, and we praise them based on their variation. When you watch a romantic comedy you already know what is going to happen, but you pay attention to what they do different. That is structuralism. We are all structuralists. That wasn't the case 75 years ago.

>>8839210
As support for this, Seinfeld is a highly praised show even in fairly simple cultural context simply because it takes the foundations of a sitcom and has clever variations.

Structuralism is about variations. It's about understanding the way we think, i.e. how we might set up a sitcom, and assessing meaingful variations upon that expected routine that is established by our language and methods of thought.

Even if we don't call it structuralism in popular culture, everyone can appreciate the chinese restaurant episode on Seinfeld where they decide to go to a restaurant and the entire episode is just them standing in a line. We can appreciate it because we understand what a sitcom usually entails, and we understand how masterfully the chinese restaurant episode includes all of those elements without ever leaving a line to get into a restaurant. It is a brilliant variation, and everyone from a cultural critic to a casual viewer could understand that because the idea of variations upon a common form is so prevalent in our society now.

>>8838571
I agree that the newest things are always best, and that the value of any given idea is solely correlated with its novelty.

Derrida B'dTFO Levi-Strauss, go read L'écriture et la différence.