In Baltimore, Maryland a conference entitled "The Language of Criticism and the Sciences of Man" convened from 18 to 21 October 1966 at Johns Hopkins University Humanities Center. The three day conference sought to clarify the field of structuralism and identify some of its problems across disciplines. It could have remained just another obscure gathering of academics, but it changed thinking across academic disciplines and continues to influence many disciplines, including humanities, social sciences and language.
The conference, organized by Richard A. Macksey, and sponsored by the Ford Foundation, brought together a collection of French thinkers, including Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, Paul de Man, Jean Hyppolite and Jacques Derrida. Michel Foucault did not attend. Derrida read "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences." Papers read and who read them are below:
Lions and squares: opening remarks / Richard Macksey
Tiresias and the critic / René Girard
Literary invention / Charles Morazé
Criticism and the experience of interiority / Georges Poulet
The two languages of criticism / Eugenio Donato
Structure: human reality and methodological concept / Lucien Goldman
Language and literature / Tzvetan Todotov
To write: an intransitive verb? / Roland Barthes
The structure of philosophic language according to the "preface" to Hegel's Phenomenology of the mind / Jean Hyppolite
Of structure as an inmixing of an otherness prerequisite to any subject whatever / Jacques Lacan
The voice and the literary myth / Guy Rosolato
Structure and infrastructure in primitive society: Lévi-Strauss and Radcliff-Brown / Neville Dyson-Hudson
Structure, sign, and play in the discourse of human sciences / Jacques Derrida
Greek tragedy: problems of interpretation / Jean-Pierre Vernant
Linguistics and poetics / Nicolas Ruwet
Concluding remarks / Richard Macksey, René Girard, Jean Hyppolite
Appendix I: Structure: réalité humaine et concept méthodologique / Lucien Goldman
Appendix II: Structure du langage, philosophique d'après la "preface" de la phénoménologie de l'esprit de Hegel/ Jean Hyppolite
Appendix III: Le Moment historique de la tragédie en Grèce -essai d'interprétation / Jean-Pierre Vernant.
During his career Derrida (July 15, 1930 – October 9, 2004) published more than 40 books, together with hundreds of essays and public presentations. His focus included critical theory, writing, philosophy, trauma and memory. He had a significant influence upon the humanities and social sciences, in addition to philosophy and literature, law, anthropology, historiography, linguistics, sociolinguistics, psychoanalysis, political theory, religious studies, feminism, and gay and lesbian studies. Their publication touched off animated debates in intellectual circles around the globe. Derrida's ideas were best received in the United States.
Post-structuralism offered a way of studying the assembly of a knowledge base and demanded an accounting from structuralist principles. It argued that because history and culture influence the study of underlying structures, both are subject to biases and misinterpretations.
Post-structuralism postulates that a singular meaning within knowledge systems is an illusion. If this manner of thinking is understood and utilized, the arts and other disciplines are freed to explore outlying possibilities which in turn produces creativity in the market place and in academia.
Most of Academia trembled at the thought of change where they become the singular meaning that is crushed by multiplicity in thinking and acting. Many academicians refused to acknowledge Poststructural theory's wide ranging affect. Yet, Post-structuralism was absorbed into the thrum of North America's creative life. The post-structuralist world when introduced at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University had and continues to produce a complex, ripple-like effect on almost everything in contemporary life.
--e. smith sleigh
author and poet
and Post-structuralism online proponent and pioneer
Bibliography
Cusset, François. French Theory: How Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, & Co. transformed the intellectual life of the United States. Translated by Jeff Fort with Josephine Berganza and Marlon Jones. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (with assistance from the French Ministry of Culture), 2008. ISBN 9780816647323. Originally published as French Theory: Foucault, Derrida,
Deleuze & Cie et les mutations de Ia vie intellectuelle aux États-Unis. Éditions LaDécouverte, 2003. ISBN 2707137448.
Derrida, Jacques. Writing and Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Translated by Alan Bass. ISBN 9780226143293. Originally published in 1967 as L'écriture et la différence. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1967. ISBN 2-02-001937-X.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Raw and the Cooked. Translated by John and Doreen Weightman. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1969. ISBN 9780226474878. Originally: Le Cru et le cuit (1964).
Macksey, Richard, and Eugenio Donato. The Structuralist Controversy: The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2007. 40th anniversary edition. ISBN 9780801883958. Originally published as The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970.