Reference points: A “structuralist” account of Deleuze’s (radical) structuralism and semiotics

Abstract

In this essay I explain a radical version of structuralism and concept of the sign, put forward by Deleuze. My aim is to create a model of Deleuze’s structuralism, called Interpretative Structuralism, that can be applied to the world and everything in it (bodies). My explanation of Deleuze could be called structuralist because I take a systematic approach to explaining his structuralism and produce a model for future application. I maintain, however, that the model of Interpretative Structuralism is not an interpretation of Deleuze’s work, a reading. That means, despite being a model, it enables a perspective on bodies and world that sees immanence and difference – in line with Deleuze’s own radical structuralism and philosophy of difference. I focus my analysis on the Deleuze–Parnet essay “On the superiority of Anglo-American literature”. This essay explains Deleuze’s structuralist approach, and, in terms of its own structure, shows Deleuze’s structuralism in action. The concept of the sign outlined in this text is vital, but most salient is the semiotic mediator of structuralism, which (from Deleuze’s concept of external relation) I call ‘the joker’. Crucially important to Deleuze’s radical structuralism is “seeing”, and thinking with, the joker.