Performing Meaning through Structure: A Structuralist Reading of Rachel Cusk’s Kudos

This study examines Rachel Cusk’s Kudos (2018) through the lens of Jonathan Culler’s structuralism. Structuralism does not focus on emotional content, but on the conditions that make that content tangible, shifting attention from interpretation to the mechanisms through which meaning is produced. The study explores how Kudos constructs a system of meaning out of absence and disjointedness, where meaning is not directly communicated but emerges through repetition and structural arrangement rather than narrative disclosure. By drawing on the concepts of langue and parole, the analysis demonstrates how the novel treats silence not as a psychological void but as a patterned structure within a system of relations. The concept of literary competence is also employed, requiring the reader to recognize narrative signals, decode structural gaps, and attend to what is withheld instead of what is revealed. This qualitative and theory driven approach focuses on how meaning is structurally inscribed through codes, repetition, gaps, and delays. The findings suggest that Faye’s silence and flattened tone function as a structural presence, operating as a mode of narrative arrangement that resists confession. In this way, silence becomes a form of self-writing, where subjectivity is shaped through arrangement rather than direct disclosure, and where structure organizes meaning without relying on explicit explanation.