Dossier: Current affairs of structuralism

Publication forecast 01/2025 Deadline for submission 10/31/2024

In 1972, Gilles Deleuze published a text in which he sought to establish a certain number of criteria common to a movement that, since the early 1960s, seemed transform the field of problems in the human sciences. Entitled “How can you recognize structuralism?” and written as one of the chapters of “History of philosophy” by François Châtelet, Deleuze’s article listed seven central problems of this movement, for example, the problem of the symbolic, the serial and the
differentiation, or even more obscure problems, difficult to define in a single criterion, as the problem of the subject and practice. Some of these common problems could be recognized in authors such as Foucault, Lacan, Althusser, Barthes and Lévi-Strauss, and we could include the 1968 and 1969 works of Deleuze himself, namely, “Difference and repetition” and “Logic of meaning”.
However, although the apparent unity of this movement could be recognized for certain common problems, this unit was quickly placed under suspicion by its critics, and the epithet “structuralist” rejected by those who were designated as the protagonists of this  ovement. On the critics' side, accusations were about the lack of a true structuralist method, about the misunderstanding of the notion of structure and its supposed ahistorical character. Already on the side of those who were able to draw inspiration from their problems, the refusal to have their work classified as structuralists seemed to have their reason in the excessive importance that gave the role of language and meaning.
But, if structuralism could provoke so many reactions, both positive, by pointing out to a new field of problems in the human sciences, both negative and suggest a limit to its generalization in the “sciences of man”, how can we evaluate this movement today and what relevance can we attribute to it? And if the discussions contemporary scenes animated by Jean-Claude Milner, Patrice Maniglier and Viveiros de Castro seem to give structuralism a new breath, in which we could recognize the relevance of its “distinctive signs” and what, from the 1950s to the 1970s, still constitutes a problem that  eserves to be posed based on what constitutes the our thoughts today?
Thus, in order to promote discussions around structuralism and its current affairs, this dossier aims to open a space for theoretical, critical and
analyzes that address some of the fundamental questions of this movement.

Editors responsible for the dossier:
Marcos Alexandre Gomes Nalli (UEL)
Lorena de Paula Balbino (UEL)