B.

Stawarska: Saussure’s Philosophy of

Language as Phenomenology

With this clearly argued and engaging study of Saussure, Beata Stawarska
has done a great service to the broad, ongoing effort to radically reassess
the established historiography not only of structuralism or phenomenology,
but of pre-war European intellectual history as a whole. By convincingly
making the case that one should liberate Saussure’s thought from its
infamously strict dichotomies (langue-parole, synchrony-diachrony,
signified-signifier), explore its entanglements with Hegelian and Husserlian
phenomenology and give heed to its positive echoes in Merleau-Ponty
rather than its critique by Derrida, Stawarska contributes crucial elements to
a new historiographical account that presents structuralism and
phenomenology not as antagonistic schools tightly bound to their respective
founding figures, Saussure and Husserl, but as intermingling, even
complementary threads in the still misunderstood interdisciplinary, highly
networked and pan-European scientific context of the late 19th and early
20th Centuries. Instead of the unproductive opposition or mutual ignorance
that have mostly characterised the relations between structuralism and
phenomenology since the early 1960s, Stawarska correctly intimates, the
rediscovery of their entangled history opens the way to a “rapprochement”
and carries the promise of new vigour for both traditions.

Given its broad, ambitiously revisionist scope, the first thing that
commends Stawarska’s study is its clairvoyance in determining precisely –
and then focussing squarely on – the obvious targets of a productive
reassessment of Saussure’s and structuralism’s legacies in a
phenomenological light, namely the unspoken “truisms” that lie at the heart
of the mainstream, yet unreflected assumptions on Saussure and the
allegedly anti-phenomenological “doctrine” of the Course in General
Linguistics. These truisms, in Stawarska’s own words, are that “Saussure is
the official founder of the structuralist movement in linguistics, the human
sciences, and philosophy”, “Saussure’s method consists of a structural
analysis of language viewed as a system of signs, “structural analysis is
opposed to the speaking subject” and “it therefore goes without saying
[that] Saussurean structuralism lies on the opposite end of the spectrum
from the tradition of phenomenology” (p. 1). Not mentioned explicitly in
the introduction but nonetheless addressed by the author later in the book is
the assumption that structuralism really blossomed only in the post-war era
as a quintessentially French movement.
Having listed these interlinked truisms, Stawarska proposes “to revisit
them, and to show them to be suspect” (p. 1). This she successfully
achieves by proceeding in three distinct stages. Firstly, through a detailed,
comparative reading of Saussure’s Nachlass, she contests the strict dualism,
abstract formalism and anti-subjectivism that are generally considered to be
the doctrinal foundation of the Course (Part I). Secondly, she emphasises
the conceptual function and undeniable presence of notions such as the
subject, consciousness or the phenomenon in Saussure’s own thought as
well as in a number of traditions closely related to Saussurean structuralism
(Part II). Thirdly, she critically reconstructs parts of the biased processes of
edition, reception and canonisation of the Course as Saussure’s authentic
intellectual testament by Bally and Séchehaye, as well as by Derrida and
the French structuralists of the 1960s (Part III).

As is already evident from this summary, ultimately Stawarska’s aim is not

“to rewrite the tangled history of structuralism, post-structuralism, and
phenomenology within contemporary continental philosophy in toto” but
“to look back to the official sources of the structuralist movement in
Saussure’s linguistics” (p. 2) and to concentrate on an almost philological
task – the comparative reassessment of the textual materials beyond the
Course itself. Because this detailed comparative work is carried out by the
author with a clear hermeneutic intent (i.e. to clear the historical and
conceptual space for a rapprochement between structuralism and
phenomenology both within and beyond Saussure’s work), it neither
descends into unnecessary minutiae, nor does it fall into the trap of trying to
establish a definitive interpretation of the “true” Saussure as a latent
phenomenologist. The textual focus of Stawarska’s study also satisfyingly
limits its scope, both justifying some of the omissions and distortions that
the programmatic ambition of her endeavour necessarily entails and giving
it a coherence it might otherwise easily have lacked given the richness of
the historical and theoretical context dealt with here.

In the first part of the book, Stawarska proceeds to unpick one by one the
famous oppositions that are still widely regarded both as the linchpins of
the Saussurean or structuralist doctrine itself and as the source of the latter’s
fundamental incompatibility with phenomenology. Her main concern, in
each case, is not to reject the oppositions per se, but to underline that they
do not function as strict dichotomies establishing sets of incommensurable
abstractions (signifier and signified), objects (langue and parole) or
dimensions (synchrony and diachrony). Rather, in Stawarska’s reading, they
entail complex relations of chiasmatic encroachment and reversibility 1 and
generally signal a locus of still fluid methodological questioning in
Saussure’s teaching practice, rather than established points of doctrine or
general axioms. To her review of the entrenched Saussurean dichotomies,
Stawarska adds a thorough discussion of the question of the arbitrariness of
the sign, which she addresses through a very effective rebuttal of Derrida’s
interpretation of Saussure as a “phonocentric” theory.
From the point of view of Saussurean scholarship, not all her arguments in
this section are original, be it with regard to their general orientation
towards a more differentiated, less strictly binary interpretation of Saussure,
to their emphasis on a closer reading of the manuscript sources or even to
some of the specific points she makes, for example in relation to the idea of
a socio-historical sedimentation of language. 2 Given, however, that
Stawarska’s specific aim in this section is less to contribute ground-
breaking scholarship on Saussure himself than to refute the assumptions
that most obviously impede a phenomenological understanding of his ideas,
this relative lack of novelty should be taken here as a sign of the solid
foundations of her apparently so iconoclastic position rather than as a
weakness or deficiency. Because she frames her discussion in a well
defined and original interpretive perspective, moreover, Stawarska succeeds
in providing a much clearer view of the phenomenological “compatibility”
and potential of Saussure’s thought, which is in itself a valuable
contribution.
Having addressed and cleared the most obvious objections against a
phenomenological reading of Saussure, Stawarska turns to a constructive
approach in the second part of her study, where she seeks to reclaim
Saussure in the service of what she terms a “linguistic phenomenology”.
Here again, her point of departure is well chosen, since she decides to frame
her argument through the methodological dilemma faced by general
linguistics, namely, that despite its aspiration to be an objective science, it
has to account for the fact that its object of study, language, is only ever
“encountered subjectively, within the consciousness that a language user
has of being involved in language-bound practices of speaking, listening,
and writing” (p. 109). This approach allows Stawarska to highlight both
how Saussure specifically grappled with this question and how it led him to
critically interrogate the nature of language (which he preferred to treat as a
“phenomenon” than as a “substance”), the role of the linguist and his
multiple points of view [points de vue] on his object, and the intertwined
roles of originary knowledge (as given, for example, in a speaker’s
language consciousness [conscience de la langue]) and scientific
knowledge – all in a way that resonates with the preoccupations and aims of
phenomenology.

To her theoretical treatment of the role of subjectivity in linguistic method,

of the concept of the phenomenon or the place of consciousness in
Saussure’s own general linguistics, Stawarska adds a number of very useful
historical, contextualising discussions. She introduces both relevant
predecessors (the Kazan School of Jan Baudouin de Courtenay and Mikolaj
Kruszewski, Hegel’s “phenomenological science”) and successors
(Jakobson – in particular through his ties with Špet Husserl –, Merleau-
Ponty), whom she all presents as contributors to the aforementioned
“linguistic phenomenology” – a conception of language and linguistics, in
other words, that goes well beyond the thought and writings of Saussure
himself.

This second part of Stawarska’s book is its most interesting and stimulating.
The case she makes for a linguistic phenomenology that encompasses but is
not circumscribed by the work of Saussure is indeed both convincing in
itself and replete with tantalising possibilities. The one criticism that could
be voiced here is that she does not make it clear enough that her study
constitutes in many ways only a preliminary hearing for her proposed
linguistic phenomenology, and that much more evidence can be brought (or
has already been brought) forward. For example, whereas the mentions of
Kruszewski, Baudouin de Courtenay and the neglected relevance of the
Cercle Linguistique de Prague are certainly pertinent in every respect, they
only brush the surface of the incredibly rich, complex and productive web
of interractions between „structuralist” linguists and phenomenology in
Russia, Czechoslowakia as well as Poland. As a result of her focus on
phenomenology, Stawarska also gives too short shrift to the imbrication of
other traditions or paradigms in the linguistic phenomenology that she sees
developing from the Kazan School up to Merleau-Ponty. Wundt, for
example, is mentionned too briefly, as are Bühler, the Gestalt psychologists,
Marty or Bergson (what is more only in a critical light). With one revealing
exception, one finds no mention of Neo-Kantian philosophy.

To be fair, most of these omissions are perfectly acceptable since, as

indicated above, they would have widened the scope of Stawarska’s study
excessively and led her too far from her core subjet, which remains
Saussure’s autographed manuscripts. The absence of the Neo-Kantians,
however, does fit in a subtle pattern of “anti-kantian” bias in Stawarska’s
study. The explanation for the presence of such a bias in the first place is
probably straightforward : the established view of Saussure and
structuralism, as expressed famously by Paul Ricoeur in Le Conflit des
interprétations, is that they constitute “a Kantism without transcendental
subject”. Because she is contesting this view, Stawarska is thus also
constantly, if not always explicitly attacking the asubjective “Kantian”
reading imposed on Saussure by the French structuralists of the post-war
period. In the main, she is perfectly justified in doing so, and her arguments
against the abstract, objective formalism ascribed by Ricoeur to the
structuralists are indeed effective. Given it would be absurd to deny any
influence at all to Kantian or Neo-Kantian philosophy on structuralism
(something the author does not do), Stawarska’s argument would
nonetheless benefit from a more explicit discussion of their ties – a
clarification, perhaps paradoxically, which would also further strengthen
her interpretation.

For instance, when laying out the premises of her argument on the
problematic status of general linguistics right at the beginning of Part II,
Stawarska quotes the little-known Dutch linguist and philosopher Hendrik
Pos. This is instructive because Pos was among the first to provide a
theoretically explicit formulation of the epistemological challenge posed by
the study of language. His lead, moreover, was directly followed by major
structuralists and phenomenologists, including Jakobson, Hjelmslev and
Merleau-Ponty. Although Stawarska does not further refer to Pos or discuss
his role, it is thus clear that he should serve here as much more than a
conceptual point of comparison, but as an important contextualising
historical anchor for linguistic phenomenology. The paradox, of course, is
that Pos clearly identifies the theoretical source of his own position and the
best methodological framework for a new linguistics as being the Neo-
Kantian theories of Heinrich Rickert (and to a lesser extent Lotze). This is
not to say that Pos’s programme for linguistics was exclusively Neo-
Kantian : he was also a student of Husserl and Heidegger (as well as of
Dutch Neo-Hegelianism) and inflected his thought quickly towards a
phenomenological and historical approach. Still, the Rickertian origin of
Pos’s reflections on language and linguistics offers a clear indication of the
positive involvement of (Neo-)Kantian philosophy in the
phenomenologically-compatible structuralism defended by Stawarska.

The detailled assessment of the last part of Stawarska’s study is best left to
experts of the autographed manuscripts and the history of the Geneva
School. One does get the impression though that she is too harsh on Bally
and Séchehaye and emphasises too strongly their role in canonising a
Course that was not in fact representative of Saussure’s thinking. The
Prague linguists were also guilty of instrumentalising the Course and most
of the French structuralists of the post-war era were more than willing to
interpret Saussurean linguistics as an asubjective, abstract system without
the help of intermediary editors (a fact borne out by the similar distortions
imposed on the work of Trubeckoj or the Russian formalists). The totemic
filiation at the heart of most interpretations of structuralism, moreover, is
surely not that between Saussure, Bally/Séchehaye and Hjelmslev, but that
between Saussure and Lévi-Strauss. Where Stawarska is nonetheless
certainly correct – and this is in fine the most important point of her
criticism of the edition and subsequent canonisation of the Course – is that
 the “doctrinal” Saussure and the version of French structuralism it helped
prop up were only possible thanks to a clear erasure both of the Saussurean
sources and of the complex intellectual context in which they were
inscribed.

1. One spots clearly Merleau-Pontian undertones in the

vocabulary employed by Stawarska to describe this less
rigid Saussureanism, a fact which chimes perhaps too
comfortably with her later claim in Part II that “If it made
sense to evoke a spirit of Saussureanism, Merleau-Ponty’s
phenomenology of language would have come closest to
distilling it” (p. 190). Although we agree with the author in
seeing Merleau-Ponty as one of the (if not the) most
significant post-war standard-bearers of structuralism, she
seems to over-interpret Saussure’s latent anticipation of
Merleau-Ponty (as well as too readily neglect other obvious
structuralist influences on Merleau-Ponty such as Lévi-

Strauss, Jakobson and Pos).

2. Cf. Jean-Claude Coquet (Physis et logos 2007), François
Rastier (e.g. “Saussure et les textes” 2009), Pierre Bouissac
(Saussure 2010), John Joseph (Saussure 2012) or Boris
Gasparov (Beyond Reason 2012), which Stawarska does not
systematically reference
http://reviews.ophen.org/fr/2015/10/19/b-stawarska-
saussures-philosophy-of-language-as-phenomenology/