The word structure derives from the Latin structura: “a fitting together, an adaptation, an adjustment.” Oddly enough, it can designate the mode of building, i.e., the activity of construction (the layering of bricks), the building or edifice itself (the wall), and the material from which it is built (the bricks). Deriving from the Latin verb struo, which means to place by or upon each other, to arrange, to pile up, to layer, structure designates the movement in which a mere heap, a pile, assumes the quality of being arranged or ordered. Figuratively, the notion is also applied to language: a sentence as pile of words whose sense must follows certain rules and whose effects are altered by arrangement and rhythm. Etymologically speaking, structure has the peculiar status of referring at once to a thing, an activity and the relations that obtain between the activity of construction and the thing constructed.

However, it is not until the 19th century that the notion assumes a certain autonomy and as Hubert Damisch suggests, it is within the architectural discourse of Viollet-le-Duc that structure is first rigorously opposed to form and differentiated from matter. Taking the emergence of Structuralism itself as our point of orientation (Saussure’s linguistics and Levi-Strauss’s anthropology) in order to highlight a distinction between structure and form, we shall look at how the this distinction and the emergence of a concept of “structure” necessitates a radical rethinking of the relation between form and matter. Working closely with works of art—such as Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, Carl Andre’s sculpture, or Piet Mondrian’s paintings—the aim will be to consider how the foregrounding of “structure” leads to the liquidation of the notion of the person and the return of the problem of the subject.