Glossary of Literary Theory by Greig E. Henderson and Christopher Brown

Recuperation:

The process by which a text's system of linguistic and literary codes and conventions is naturalized by its readers, who mistakenly assume that a text refers to the real world. According to structuralism, such naturalization or recuperation is fundamentally wrongheaded, for the real world itself is nothing but a culturally endorsed system of signs, of shared codes, conventions, and ideologies.