Structuralism and Reality in Wrestling

When discussing structuralism, I find that it takes a realistic viewpoint of how the world is represented, as we essentially are awash in concepts and signs via the structures of communication and language. In this week's readings I found more depth to the ideas behind structuralism that my previous exposures, especially when looking to Roland Barthes' "The World of Wrestling" from his collection Mythologies. "The World of Wrestling" provided ample insight into how the structuralist idea of difference plays into deriving meaning (or meanings) from literature in innumerable ways, especially in how the reception of specific mythemes and signifiers evoke structurally conditioned responses from the public.

One of the most important concepts in structuralism lies within the idea of how meaning is derived, and discovering that depth or inner structure of creating meaning transcends the power of an individual text. However, this does not mean that the parole (or individual utterance; Tyson 213) itself is irrelevant, but that it is a reproduction of how meaning is derived from the structures that created the text itself. Instead of looking at the text as a standalone, autonomous object that creates its own objectivity, we instead look at the text as an act of communication, similar to a speech act, a declaration of a concept that is not the physical representation of the concept - rather a sign that points to the concept in an indirect manner. The example given in the lecture notes (and Lois Tyson's Critical Theory Today) revolves around the word for book in both French and English. The English word "book" potentially means nothing to a French speaker; and "Livre" nothing to the English speaker, as each is an example of the speakers und...

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...uralist view.

This understanding of the public demonstrates how structuralism arrives at its point, that the underlying structure of making meaning can appear in subtle fashions, even in the wrestling ring, away from deep concepts such as meaning or understanding. Anything that can be determined as language or expression can hinge its meaning on a set of structures that produce it, and different structures provide different meanings. All works however, provide a sense of how human understanding is derived, which is one of the benefits of Structuralism and its application in literature.

Works Cited

Bressler, Charles E. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. 5th ed. New York: Longman, 2011. Print.

Levine, George. "Frankenstein and the Tradition of Realism." Frankenstein. Ed. J. Paul Hunter. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 2011. Print.