Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human...

‘Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences (Derrida, 1978: 278 Ââ€"293) may be read as the document of an event, although Derrida actually commences the essay with a reservation regarding the word event, as it entails a meaning which it is precisely the function of structural Ââ€" or structuralist Ââ€" thought to reduce or suspect (278). This, I infer, refers to the emphasis within structuralist discourse on the synchronous analysis of systems and relations within them, as opposed to a diachronic schemata occupied with uncovering genetic and teleological content in the transformations of history. br brThe event which the essay documents is that of a definitive epistemological break with structuralist thought, of the†¦show more content†¦The guiding thread Derrida chooses is Levi-Strauss opposition between nature and culture. (I am in parts paraphrasing elements from page 282 Ââ€" 287). Derrida writes that Levi-Strauss encounters a scandal, which is the incest prohibition (283). The scandal is in that the prohibition is simultaneously universal and thus natural, while also at the same time as a system of norms and interdicts (283): it is cultural. The contradiction encountered by Levi-Strauss is that the difference established in the nature/culture binary opposition is erased or at least questioned. Due to this erasure of difference the origin of this prohibition becomes unthinkable as the whole of philosophical conceptualisationÂ…is designedÂ… (283/284) to leave the possibility of the conceptualisation unthinkable, that is, the meaning of the construction of mean ing, difference having been erased, becomes itself impossible to bring to account. br brLevi-Strauss, by way of this realization, is forced to move from metaphysics to metacommentary (cf. Jameson, 1988) because even though he