Dva základní analytické koncepty strukturalistického myšlení // Two elementary analytical concepts of structuralist thought

Both texts present a systematic survey of two elementary analytical categories of Structuralist thought — binarity and opposition, especially in their semionarratological implications. In “Binarity”, one structuralist version of binary analysis is described as a decomposition “of the continuum of the observed world along universal relational axes constituting logical oppositions (contradictions). An inventory of elementary binary oppositions is established, which form a paradigmatic matrix of the observed area and structure is as a relational system or network”. Within this method an apriori aspect can be sometimes distinguished when an elementary binary logical structure is assumed as a universal principle underlying the multiplicity of observable phenomena. According to another, yet different conception, used in the context of artificial linguistic simulations and computing, binarity is understood as a principle of reversible de/composition of code based on two elementary signals or elements (formalized, for instance, as +/- or 0/1), which makes further combinatorial descriptions and operations of the system possible. The genesis of binary method, beginning with G. W. Leibniz’s binary code on one hand and Ferdinand de Saussure’s structural linguistics on the other, is followed, including Trubetzkoy’s and Jakobson’s phonology, Claude Lévi-Strauss’s ethnology, Greimas’s structural semantics and ending with the fundamental critique of binarism formulated by Jacques Derrida through his notion of différance and his descriptions of temporalization of structure. In “Opposition”, Trubetzkoy’s non-binary oppositions (gradual, equipollent, isolated, ternary, n-ary oppositions) within phonology, Greimas’s semiotic square (two types of binary oppositions: contradiction, contrariety or Mukařovský’s notions of dynamic antinomies within functionalstructuralist aesthetics are further taken into account.