Structuralism Quotes

• Structuralism argues that a liberal capitalist world economy tends to preserve or actually increase inequalities between developed and less developed economies.

  Robert Gilpin

  World, Arguing, Economy

  "The Political Economy of International Relations". Book by Robert Gilpin, 1987.

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• Post-structuralism is among other things a kind of theoretical hangover from the failed uprising of ‘68, a way of keeping the revolution warm at the level of language, blending the euphoric libertarianism of that moment with the stoical melancholia of its aftermath.

  Terry Eagleton

  Hangover, Uprising, Levels

  The Guardian, October 27, 1992.

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• I hate intellectual discussion. When I hear the words 'phenomenology' or 'structuralism', I reach for my buck knife.

  Edward Abbey

  Hate, Philosophy, School

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.10, RosettaBooks

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• I studied Comparative Literature at Cornell. Structuralism was real big then. The idea of reading and writing as being this language game. There's a lot of appeal to that. It's nice to think of it as this playful kind of thing. But I think that another way to look at it is "Look, I just want to be sincere. I want to write something and make you feel something and maybe you will go out and do something." And it seems that the world is in such bad shape now that we don't have time to do nothing but language games. That's how it seems to me.

  William T. Vollmann

  Real, Nice, Reading

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• I'm not sure how far Derrida's later 'theological' interests are really rooted in post-structuralism or whether they don't rather reflect a kind of Kantian-Marxist trajectory - with a French twist on the centrality of liberty, equality and fraternity (cf. Politics of Friendship). Not to mention the role of Levinas and, behind Levinas, Judaism's twinning of eschatology and the call for justice.

  George Pattison

  Cfs, Justice, Liberty

  "Towards hope". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. July 18, 2014.

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• We do not need French post-structuralism, whose pedantic jargon, clumsy convolutions, and prissy abstractions have spread throughout academe and the arts and are now blighting the most promising minds of the next generation. This is a major crisis if there ever was one, and every sensible person must help bring it to an end.

  Camille Paglia

  Art, Mind, Needs

  Camille Paglia (2011). “Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays”, p.8, Vintage

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