Structuralism
Structuralism is compelling because it restores the priority of language — again, the domain of the subject — over non-linguistic reality. This subverts positivism’s faith in real objects and their atomic facts. While groundbreaking in linguistics, logic, and philology, this view mirrors traditional society’s veneration of the Logos, of the ontology of speech and reason. Although the assertion of a sovereign textual ontology may appear grotesque, in the positivist context — conscious or unconscious — it revives pre-nominalist, realist attitudes. The medieval debate over universals essentially pitted those who affirmed the autonomous ontology of names (realists and idealists) against the nominalists who denied it.
Thus, structuralism — although born in a different philosophical and cultural context — resonates with realism and idealism and with Premodern thought.
Moreover, considering the ties between leading structuralists — such as Trubetzkoy and Jakobson, founders of phonology — and the Eurasian movement, as well as the traditionalist leanings in Dumézil’s work on Indo-European tripartite ideology, and the parallels between Propp, Greimas, and sacred worldviews, this connection deepens significantly.
Read the full essay here:
https://www.multipolarpress.com/p/alternative-postmodernism
