IN THE TRACKS OF STRUCTURALISM. STRUCTURALISM AS A FIELD OF TENSIONS

Abstract

In this paper, we will use the Althusserian concept of problematic to rethink structuralism. Our question is: how to understand structuralism? How to indicate its limits when it was composed of a set of theoretical propositions that went through disciplines, which suffered crosses with various theories and whose premises were never clearly established? Based on the concept of problematic, developed by Althusser primarily on For Marx, we will question the set of theoretical propositions that shaped it, not so much as a canon applicable to the most diverse subjects, but as a theoretical space traversed by contradictions. Thus, we will build on this concept because we consider it particularly fertile to think a theoretical field more as a set of problems and questions than as a compendium of answers to clearly defined theoretical difficulties.

We pretend to highlight the contradictions that underpin structuralism because they will lead us to suggest that it is possible to identify a distance within structuralism itself, gap that will show as a variant of structuralism the one which settles the impossibility of thinking a structure of structures that totalize them as a whole. This fact talks about how structuralism internal tensions mark out the path of poststructuralism.