Gilles Deleuze and the Critique of the Concept of Sign in Structuralism.

Abstract

Taking the second half of the 20th century as the culmination of its historical peak, French structuralism developed a set of epistemological and methodological premises that fostered the genesis and revolution of the social sciences. During this period, an animated debate arose around the methodological and epistemological positions of structuralism, with interventions and inquiries driven by philosophy at an ontological level. In this context, the objective of this article is to identify the central points of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze's critique of French structuralism, especially in relation to the concept of the sign, enabling the proposal of an alternative semiotics. Although Deleuze did not directly address the confrontation with structuralism, specifically the semiotic aspect (Barthes, Lotman, Greimas, Courtés, Jakobson), in a defined theoretical program, this debate can be traced in his materialist and vitalist concept of the sign. In this way, a series of oppositions are identified that define Deleuze's epistemological criticism, namely: difference as opposition versus difference of intensity, generativity versus genesis, representation versus expression, self-referentiality versus the "dark precursor".This article argues that these oppositions seek to demonstrate that, in contrast to the structuralist approach, Deleuze's perspective turns to the sign to offer an epistemological alternative that projects towards an alternative design of semiotics, aiming to describe the "world of signs" and, simultaneously, explore its exercises of "departure" from that world.