Post-structuralism, sometimes referred as
the French theory, is associated with the
works of a series of mid-20th-century French
continental philosophers and critical theorists
who came to international prominence in the
1960s and 1970s. The term is defined by its
relationship to the system before it—structuralism
(an intellectual movement developed in Europe
from the early to mid-20th century). Structuralism
proposes that one may understand human culture
by means of a structure—modeled on language
(i.e., structural linguistics)—that differs
from concrete reality and from abstract ideas—a
"third order" that mediates between the two.Post-structuralist
authors all present different critiques of
structuralism, but common themes include the
rejection of the self-sufficiency of structuralism
and an interrogation of the binary oppositions
that constitute its structures. Writers whose
works are often characterised as post-structuralist
include: Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault,
Gilles Deleuze, Judith Butler, Jean Baudrillard
and Julia Kristeva, although many theorists
who have been called "post-structuralist"
have rejected the label.Existential phenomenology
is a significant influence; Colin Davis has
argued that post-structuralists might just
as accurately be called "post-phenomenologists".
== Theory ==
Post-structuralist philosophers like Derrida
and Foucault did not form a self-conscious
group, but each responded to the traditions
of phenomenology and structuralism. The idea
that knowledge could be centred on the beholder
is rejected by structuralism, which claims
to be a more secure foundation for knowledge.
In phenomenology, this foundation is experiential
in itself. In Structuralism, knowledge is
founded on the "structures" that make experience
possible: concepts, and language or signs.
By contrast, Post-structuralism argues that
founding knowledge either on pure experience
(phenomenology) or systematic structures (Structuralism)
is impossible. This impossibility was not
meant as a failure or loss, but rather as
a cause for "celebration and liberation".A
major theory associated with structuralism
is binary opposition. This theory proposes
that there are frequently used pairs of opposite
but related words (concepts), often arranged
in a hierarchy. Examples of common binary
pairs include: Enlightenment/Romantic, male/female,
speech/writing, rational/emotional, signifier/signified,
symbolic/imaginary. Post-structuralism rejects
the notion of the dominant word in the pair
being dependent on its subservient counterpart.
The only way to properly understand the purpose
of these pairings is to assess each term individually,
and then its relationship to the related term.
== Post-structuralism and structuralism ==
Structuralism was an intellectual movement
in France in the 1950s and 1960s that studied
the underlying structures in cultural products
(such as texts) and used analytical concepts
from linguistics, psychology, anthropology,
and other fields to interpret those structures.
It emphasized the logical and scientific nature
of its results.
Post-structuralism offers a way of studying
how knowledge is produced and critiques structuralist
premises. It argues that because history and
culture condition the study of underlying
structures, both are subject to biases and
misinterpretations. A post-structuralist approach
argues that to understand an object (e.g.,
a text), it is necessary to study both the
object itself and the systems of knowledge
that produced the object.
=== Historical vs. descriptive view ===
Post-structuralists generally assert that
post-structuralism is the historical context
surrounding the arts, while structuralism
is considered descriptive of the present.
This terminology is derived from Ferdinand
de Saussure's distinction between the views
of historical (diachronic) and descriptive
(synchronic) reading. From this basic distinction,
Post-structuralist studies often emphasize
history to analyze descriptive concepts. By
studying how cultural concepts have changed
over time, Post-structuralists seek to understand
how the same concepts are understood by readers
in the present. For example, Michel Foucault's
Madness and Civilization is both an observation
of history and an inspection of cultural attitudes
about madness. The theme of history in modern
Continental thought can be linked to such
influences as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
Friedrich Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of
Morals and Martin Heidegger's Being and Time.
=== Scholars between both movements ===
The uncertain distance between structuralism
and post-structuralism is further blurred
by the fact that scholars rarely label themselves
as Post-structuralists. Some scholars associated
with structuralism, such as Roland Barthes
and Foucault, also became noteworthy in Post-structuralism.
=== Controversy ===
Some observers from outside the post-structuralist
camp have questioned the rigor and legitimacy
of the field. American philosopher John Searle
argued in 1990 that "The spread of 'poststructuralist'
literary theory is perhaps the best known
example of a silly but non-catastrophic phenomenon."
Similarly, physicist Alan Sokal in 1997 criticized
"the postmodernist/poststructuralist gibberish
that is now hegemonic in some sectors of the
American academy." Literature scholar Norman
Holland argued that Post-structuralism was
flawed due to reliance on Saussure's linguistic
model, which was seriously challenged by the
1950s and was soon abandoned by linguists:
"Saussure's views are not held, so far as
I know, by modern linguists, only by literary
critics and the occasional philosopher. [Strict
adherence to Saussure] has elicited wrong
film and literary theory on a grand scale.
One can find dozens of books of literary theory
bogged down in signifiers and signifieds,
but only a handful that refer to Chomsky."David
Foster Wallace wrote:
The deconstructionists ("deconstructionist"
and "poststructuralist" mean the same thing,
by the way: "poststructuralist" is what you
call a deconstructionist who doesn't want
to be called a deconstructionist) ... see
the debate over the ownership of meaning as
a skirmish in a larger war in Western philosophy
over the idea that presence and unity are
ontologically prior to expression. There’s
been this longstanding deluded presumption,
they think, that if there is an utterance
then there must exist a unified, efficacious
presence that causes and owns that utterance.
The poststructuralists attack what they see
as a post-Platonic prejudice in favor of presence
over absence and speech over writing. We tend
to trust speech over writing because of the
immediacy of the speaker: he's right there,
and we can grab him by the lapels and look
into his face and figure out just exactly
what one single thing he means. But the reason
why poststructuralists are in the literary
theory business at all is that they see writing,
not speech, as more faithful to the metaphysics
of true expression. For Barthes, Derrida,
and Foucault, writing is a better animal than
speech because it is iterable; it is iterable
because it is abstract; and it is abstract
because it is a function not of presence but
of absence: the reader’s absent when the
writer’s writing, and the writer's absent
when the reader's reading.
For a deconstructionist, then, a writer's
circumstances and intentions are indeed a
part of the "context" of a text, but context
imposes no real cinctures on the text's meaning,
because meaning in language requires a cultivation
of absence rather than presence, involves
not the imposition but the erasure of consciousness.
This is so because these guys–Derrida following
Heidegger and Barthes Mallarme and Foucault
God knows who–see literary language as not
a tool but an environment. A writer does not
wield language; he is subsumed in it. Language
speaks us; writing writes; etc.
== History ==
Post-structuralism emerged in France during
the 1960s as a movement critiquing structuralism.
According to J. G. Merquior a love–hate
relationship with structuralism developed
among many leading French thinkers in the
1960s.
In a 1966 lecture "Structure, Sign, and Play
in the Discourse of the Human Sciences", Jacques
Derrida presented a thesis on an apparent
rupture in intellectual life. Derrida interpreted
this event as a "decentering" of the former
intellectual cosmos. Instead of progress or
divergence from an identified centre, Derrida
described this "event" as a kind of "play."
In 1967, Barthes published "The Death of the
Author" in which he announced a metaphorical
event: the "death" of the author as an authentic
source of meaning for a given text. Barthes
argued that any literary text has multiple
meanings, and that the author was not the
prime source of the work's semantic content.
The "Death of the Author," Barthes maintained,
was the "Birth of the Reader," as the source
of the proliferation of meanings of the text.
The period was marked by the rebellion of
students and workers against the state in
May 1968.
== Major works ==
=== Barthes and the need for metalanguage
===
Barthes in his work, Elements of Semiology
(1967), advanced the concept of the "metalanguage".
A metalanguage is a systematized way of talking
about concepts like meaning and grammar beyond
the constraints of a traditional (first-order)
language; in a metalanguage, symbols replace
words and phrases. Insofar as one metalanguage
is required for one explanation of first-order
language, another may be required, so metalanguages
may actually replace first-order languages.
Barthes exposes how this structuralist system
is regressive; orders of language rely upon
a metalanguage by which it is explained, and
therefore deconstruction itself is in danger
of becoming a metalanguage, thus exposing
all languages and discourse to scrutiny. Barthes'
other works contributed deconstructive theories
about texts.
=== Derrida's lecture at Johns Hopkins ===
The occasional designation of Post-structuralism
as a movement can be tied to the fact that
mounting criticism of Structuralism became
evident at approximately the same time that
Structuralism became a topic of interest in
universities in the United States. This interest
led to a colloquium at Johns Hopkins University
in 1966 titled "The Languages of Criticism
and the Sciences of Man", to which such French
philosophers as Derrida, Barthes, and Lacan
were invited to speak.
Derrida's lecture at that conference, "Structure,
Sign, and Play in the Human Sciences", was
one of the earliest to propose some theoretical
limitations to Structuralism, and to attempt
to theorize on terms that were clearly no
longer structuralist.
The element of "play" in the title of Derrida's
essay is often erroneously interpreted in
a linguistic sense, based on a general tendency
towards puns and humour, while social constructionism
as developed in the later work of Michel Foucault
is said to create play in the sense of strategic
agency by laying bare the levers of historical
change. Many see the importance of Foucault's
work to be in its synthesis of this social/historical
account of the operation of power (see governmentality).
== See also ==
=== Authors ===
The following are often said to be post-structuralists,
or to have had a post-structuralist period:
== References ==
== Sources ==
== External links ==
Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse
of the Human Sciences - Jacques Derrida
The Baudrillard Dictionary edited by Richard
G Smith
"Some Post-Structural Assumptions" - John
Lye
Talking pomo: An analysis of the post-modern
movement, by Steve Mizrach
Information on Michel Foucault, including
an archive of writings and lectures
poststructuralism.info - A collaborative web
site that aims to allow users not only to
describe post-structuralist ideas, but to
create new ideas and concepts based on post-structuralist
foundations
