by Kemal Yildirim (Author)
Structuralism was an intellectual movement in France in the 1950s and 1960s that studied the underlying structures in cultural products (such as texts) and used analytical concepts from linguistics, psychology, anthropology, and other fields to interpret those structures. Structuralism posits the concept of binary opposition, in which frequently used pairs of opposite, but related words (concepts) are often arranged in a hierarchy, for example: Enlightenment/ Romantic, male/ female, speech/ writing, rational/ emotional, signified/ signifier, symbolic/ imaginary. Post-structuralism emerged in France during the 1960s as a movement critiquing structuralism. According to J. G. Merquior a love-hate relationship with structuralism developed among many leading French thinkers in the 1960s.