Bahktin's work must be seen in the context of modern linguistic theory. Silences and repressed discourse were not recognized as subjects of historical inquiry until the advent of structuralism and semiotics.6 According to Roland Barthes (1915–80), “Structuralism is neither a school, a movement, nor a vocabulary, but an activity that reaches beyond philosophy, that consists of a succession of mental operations which attempt to reconstruct an object in order to manifest the rules of its functioning.” The “reconstruction of the object” referred to universal human experiences and cultural processes which could be studied and understood through language as recurring, rule-governed phenomena. Structuralism was inherently comparative, seeking ubiquitous patterns and formal similarities among the diversity of cultural and temporal differences. This practice of comparative analysis was most clearly influential among the social sciences of anthropology (most notably the work of Claude Levi-Strauss), psychology (particularly Jacques Lacan), and literary criticism.