François Dosse: History of Structuralism, 2 vols. (1991–) [BR-PT, EN, ES]

“Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault—the ideas of this group of French intellectuals who propounded structuralism and poststructuralism have had a profound impact on disciplines ranging from literary theory to sociology, from anthropology to philosophy, from history to psychoanalysis. In this long-awaited translation, History of Structuralism examines the thinkers who made up the movement, providing a fascinating elucidation of a central aspect of postwar intellectual history.

François Dosse tells the story of structuralism from its beginnings in postwar Paris, a city dominated by the towering figure of Jean-Paul Sartre. The work of Saussure became the point of departure for a group of younger scholars, and the outcome was not only the doom of Sartre as intellectual leader but the birth of a movement that would come to reconfigure French intellectual life and would eventually reverberate throughout the Western world.

Dosse provides a readable, intelligible overall account, one that shows the interrelationship among the central currents of structuralism and situates them in context. Dosse illuminates the way developments in what are usually distinct fields came to exert such influence on each other, showing how the early structuralists paved the way for later developments and for recent discourses such as postmodernism. The cast of characters related by Dosse includes those mentioned above as well as Roman Jakobson, Julia Kristeva, Pierre Bourdieu, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Tzvetan Todorov, and many others. Chapters are devoted to major figures, and Dosse has done extensive interviews with the major and minor figures of the movement, furnishing an intellectual history in which historical players look back at the period.

This first comprehensive history of the structuralist movement is an essential guide to a major moment in the development of twentieth-century thought, one that provides a cogent map to a dizzying array of personalities and their ideas. It will be compelling reading for those interested in philosophy, literary theory, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, and psychoanalysis.”

First published in French as Histoire du structuralisme, Éditions La Découverte, Paris, 1991, 1992

English edition
Translated by Deborah Glassman
Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 1997
ISBN 0816622418, 9780816622412 & 0816623716, 9780816623716
488 & 534 pages

Publisher (EN)

História do estruturalismo I (BR-Portuguese, trans. Álvaro Cabral, 1993, added on 2024-1-20)
História do estruturalismo II (BR-Portuguese, trans. Álvaro Cabral, 1994, added on 2024-1-20)

History of Structuralism, 1: The Rising Sign, 1945-1966 (English, trans. Deborah Glassman, 1997, via falsedeity)
History of Structuralism, 2: The Sign Sets, 1967-Present (English, trans. Deborah Glassman, 1997)

Historia del estructuralismo I (Spanish, trans. María del Mar Llinares, 2004)
Historia del estructuralismo II (Spanish, trans. María del Mar Llinares, 2004)