>In the humanities

>In the 20th century, structuralism in the humanities is associated with Emile Durkheim and Georg Simmel in sociology, Ferdinand de Saussure (and later Roman Jakobson) in linguistics, and Claude Lévi-Strauss in anthropology.

Ferdinand de Saussure, Écrits de linguistique générale:

>The notion of identity will be, in all these orders, the necessary basis, the one that serves as an absolute basis: it is only through it and in relation to it that we can then determine the entities of each order, the primary terms that the linguist can legitimately believe to have before them.

>(Vocal Order) Flow of ideas: Everything that is declared identical by form, in opposition to what is not identical, is a finite term, which is not yet defined and can be arbitrary but represents for the first time a knowable object, while the observation of specific vocal facts outside the consideration of identity represents no object. A certain vocal being is thus constituted and recognized in the name of an identity that we establish, and then thousands of others are obtained using the same principle, we can begin to classify these identity patterns of all sorts that we take, and are obliged to take, for the primary and specific and concrete facts, although they are each in their infinite diversity only the result of a vast prior operation of generalization.

>Couldn't we limit ourselves to implying this great fundamental operation? Isn't it obvious from the outset that as soon as we talk about a group, for example, we mean the generality of cases where a group exists, so there is little subtle interest in recalling that this entity is fundamentally and primarily based on an identity?

>We will immediately see that it is not allowed to substitute abstract entities for the fact of the identity of certain concrete facts with impunity because we will deal with other abstract entities, and the only pole in the middle of this will be identity or non-identity.