One probably needs to conceptually sketch the various ways Derrida and Foucault reacted to and incorporated structuralism, in order to think the two together, or probably even have both latent there in one mind at all--the differences between them being so extreme. One cannot do this, however, with a monolithic understanding of structuralism. Nevertheless, some ways of entry into this task can be indicated if we turn to the notion of the bricoleur in Lévi-Strauss. But, one must remember that the bricoleur that makes his appearance in La penseé sauvage can be used more as a representative for a larger tendency of structuralist thinking than Derrida in "Structure, Sign and Play" famously makes him out to be. And it is only in this register that the bricoleur can be useful for us. For what he represents is not necessarily the possibility of a use of only conceptual fragments from other texts to simultaneously posit thought that critiques and exceeds that text. What he represents is the tendency to use concepts of other texts as a check on one's own thought, and thus--and only thus--as something that can be used both ways (to criticize and to work out thought positively) because it is only being used provisionally. This imbues the operation of the bricoleur with a particular force for which both Derrida and Foucault work hard to account--an operation much more widely employed than in the quite rigid (though brilliant) use of it in Lévi-Strauss. But to illustrate what I mean, witness what Lévi-Strauss says in The Raw and the Cooked, which Derrida quotes, regarding the analysis of myth:
The total body of myth belonging to a given community is comparable to its speech. Unless the population dies out physically or morally, the totality is never complete... (more on this tomorrow... I'm tired!)
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