SUBJECTIVITY, EXISTENCE AND STRUCTURE: ON MARIĆ’S EARLY RECEPTION OF FOUCAULT’S STRUCTURALISM

Text topic: Serbian Philosophic Culture

Text author: Владимир Милисављевић

This paper reconsiders some aspects of the treatment of structuralism by Sreten Marić in his introductory essay to the Serbo-Croat translation of Foucault’s classic work The Order of Things (“Existential Fundamentals of Structuralism”, 1971). The central topics of this treatment are grouped and analyzed under three principal titles, corresponding to Marić’s discussion of the then-fashionable thesis of the death of Man, to his scrutiny of the leading role of linguistics as a future paradigm for social sciences, as well as to his reflection on the limits of structuralism. It seems noteworthy that this early examination of the Foucault’s structuralism may be considered as an anticipation of further development of this author, which would eventually lead him back, in his last books, to the complex of questions concerning the philosophical status of subjectivity.