Structuralism

Structuralism, originating in Saussure's linguistics, holds that meaning arises from differences within a system of signs rather than from the intrinsic properties of signs or their correspondence to an independent reality. Applied to anthropology by Levi-Strauss, to psychoanalysis by Lacan, and to literature by Barthes, it transformed the human sciences. Its critical successor, post-structuralism, questioned whether structures are ever as stable or determining as structuralism assumed.