Patrice Maniglier's 'La vie énigmatique des signes' rethinks structuralism through Saussure

In 'La vie énigmatique des signes', philosopher Patrice Maniglier offers a novel reinterpretation of structuralism, challenging long-held views. Drawing on unpublished archives of Ferdinand de Saussure, Maniglier argues that Saussure's thought was not epistemological but ontological and philosophical, radically undermining 19th-century positivism. He presents Saussure as a skeptical, almost tragic figure who discovered the radical indeterminacy of signs—immaterial entities that cannot be directly observed. This indeterminacy, Maniglier contends, is the core problem of structuralism, which he redefines not as a search for transhistorical invariants but as an acknowledgment of inherent variability in language and social facts. The book also explores Saussure's theory of value, synesthesia in language, and the collective variability of languages. Maniglier bridges divides between structuralism and post-structuralism, linking figures like Althusser, Foucault, Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, Derrida, and Deleuze. Published by Éditions Léo Scheer, the work aims to revive structuralism as a legitimate tradition of meaning study alongside hermeneutics and analytic philosophy.