Page 101 - Contemporary Cultural Theory 3rd edition

ContCultural Theory Text Pages 4/4/03 1:42 PM Page 92

4

Semiology: from structuralism to

post-structuralism

Critical theory shared with culturalism at least two—essentially
humanist—theoretical presuppositions: the analytical postulate
of a fundamental contradiction between cultural value and the
developmental logics of utilitarian capitalist civilisation; and
the prescriptive imperative to locate some social institution, or
social grouping, powerful enough to sustain the former against
the latter.
Culturalism’s hopes were variously invested in the state, the
church, the literary intelligentsia and the labour movement;
critical theory’s in the Lukácsian proletariat and Marcuse’s
outcasts, but more importantly in the critical intelligentsia,
its art and philosophy or, as in Bourdieu, its sociology. Sem-
iology, the science of the study of signs, accepted neither
analytical postulate nor prescriptive imperative. In its earlier
structuralist phases, it replaced the former with a dichotomy
between appearance and essence, in which essence was
revealed in structure; the latter with a scientistic epistemology
that denied both the need for prescriptive practice and
the possibility of meaningful group action. Each of these
positions was subject to revision in its later post-structuralist
phases, but neither, as we shall see, in directions that moved
toward humanism.

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