Post-structuralism
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Post-structuralism is a philosophical movement that questions the objectivity or stability of the various interpretive structures that are posited by structuralism and considers them to be constituted by broader systems of power.[1] Although post-structuralists all present different critiques of structuralism, common themes among them include the rejection of the self-sufficiency of structuralism, as well as an interrogation of the binary oppositions that constitute its structures. Accordingly, post-structuralism discards the idea of interpreting media (or the world) within pre-established, socially constructed structures.[2][3][4][5]
Structuralism proposes that human culture can be understood by means of a structure that is modeled on language. As a result, there is concrete reality on the one hand, abstract ideas about reality on the other hand, and a "third order" that mediates between the two.[6]
A post-structuralist critique, then, might suggest that in order to build meaning out of such an interpretation, one must (falsely) assume that the definitions of these signs are both valid and fixed, and that the author employing structuralist theory is somehow above and apart from these structures they are describing so as to be able to wholly appreciate them. The rigidity and tendency to categorize intimations of universal truths found in structuralist thinking is a common target of post-structuralist thought, while also building upon structuralist conceptions of reality mediated by the interrelationship between signs.[7]
Writers whose works are often characterised as post-structuralist include Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean Baudrillard, although many theorists who have been called "post-structuralist" have rejected the label.[8]
History
Post-structuralism emerged in
In a 1966 lecture titled "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."
A year later, in 1967, Roland 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.[citation needed]
Barthes and the need for metalanguage
In Elements of Semiology (1967), Barthes advances the concept of the metalanguage, 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 the 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 Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, and Jacques 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.
Post-structuralism and structuralism
Structuralism, as an intellectual movement in France in the 1950s and 1960s, studied underlying structures in cultural products (such as texts) and used analytical concepts from linguistics, psychology, anthropology, and other fields to interpret those structures. Structuralism posits the concept of binary opposition, in which frequently-used pairs of opposite-but-related words (concepts) are often arranged in a hierarchy; for example: Enlightenment/Romantic, male/female, speech/writing, rational/emotional, signified/signifier, symbolic/imaginary, and east/west.
Post-structuralism rejects the structuralist notion that the dominant word in a pair is dependent on its subservient counterpart, and instead argues that founding knowledge on either pure experience (phenomenology) or on systematic structures (structuralism) is impossible,[9] because history and culture actually condition the study of underlying structures, and these are subject to biases and misinterpretations. Gilles Deleuze and others saw this impossibility not as a failure or loss, but rather as a cause for "celebration and liberation."[10] A post-structuralist approach argues that to understand an object (a text, for example), one must study both the object itself and the systems of knowledge that produced the object.[11] The uncertain boundaries between structuralism and post-structuralism become further blurred by the fact that scholars rarely label themselves as post-structuralists. Some scholars associated with structuralism, such as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault, also became noteworthy in post-structuralism.[12]
Authors
The following are often said to be post-structuralists, or to have had a post-structuralist period:
- Kathy Acker[13]
- Giorgio Agamben[14]
- Jean Baudrillard[15]
- Roland Barthes[16]
- Wendy Brown[17]
- Judith Butler[18]
- Rey Chow[19]
- Hélène Cixous[20]
- Jodi Dean[21]
- Gilles Deleuze[22]
- Jacques Derrida[23]
- Umberto Eco[24]
- John Fiske[25]
- Michel Foucault[26]
- Nancy Fraser[27]
- Félix Guattari[28]
- Luce Irigaray[29]
- Julia Kristeva[30]
- Teresa de Lauretis[31]
- Sarah Kofman[32]
- Jacques Lacan[33]
- Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe[34]
- Ernesto Laclau[35]
- Jean-François Lyotard[36]
- Achille Mbembe[37]
- Todd May[38]
- Chantal Mouffe[39]
- Jean-Luc Nancy[40]
- Avital Ronell[41]
- Bernard Stiegler[42]
- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak[43]
Criticism
Some observers from outside of the post-structuralist camp have questioned the rigour and legitimacy of the field. American philosopher John Searle suggested in 1990: "The spread of 'poststructuralist'
Literature scholar
See also
- Development criticism
- Narrative therapy
- Post-postmodernism
- Post-structural feminism
- Post-structuralist subject
- Reader-response criticism
- Semiotics
- Social criticism
- Social theory
References
- JSTOR 464788.
- ISBN 9780231107907 – via Google Books.
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- ISBN 0-415-18712-5. p. 597.
- ISBN 1-58435-018-0. pp. 171–73.
- ^ Harcourt, Bernard E. (12 March 2007). "An Answer to the Question: "What Is Poststructuralism?"". Chicago Unbound - Public Law and Legal Theory. 156: 17–19.
- ISBN 9780761942634.
- ISBN 9781134578023 – via Google Books.either on pure experience (phenomenology) or systematic structures (structuralism).
Post-structuralism responded to the impossibility of founding knowledge
- ISBN 9781134578023.
In Deleuze's case, like many other post-structuralists, this recognised impossibility of organising life into closed structures was not a failure or loss but a cause for celebration and liberation.
- S2CID 144500134.
- ISBN 9781844653683.
- JSTOR 41289288.
- ISBN 978-1-315-88442-4, retrieved 18 May 2023
- ^ "V. Postmodern & Poststructuralist Theories". Cultural Politics. Retrieved 18 May 2023.
- doi:10.32996/ijllt.2021.4.1.18.)
{{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - ^ Relations, E.-International (25 April 2017). "Interview - Wendy Brown". E-International Relations. Retrieved 18 May 2023.
- S2CID 140450434.
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- ISBN 978-1-3995-1324-1, retrieved 18 May 2023
- ^ "Repoliticizing the Left: An Interview with Jodi Dean". read.dukeupress.edu. Retrieved 18 May 2023.
- ISBN 978-1-84465-032-3, retrieved 18 May 2023
- ^ "Post-structuralism - Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy". www.rep.routledge.com. Retrieved 18 May 2023.
- ISBN 978-1-5015-0714-4, retrieved 18 May 2023
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- JSTOR 4122573.
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- S2CID 143878117.
- ISBN 978-1-84465-032-3, retrieved 18 May 2023
- ^ "Teresa de Lauretis". Oxford Reference. Retrieved 18 May 2023.
- ^ bloomsbury.com. "Nietzsche and Metaphor". Bloomsbury. Retrieved 18 May 2023.
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- ISBN 978-1-315-71219-2, retrieved 18 May 2023
- S2CID 145292313.
- ^ "The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism By Todd May". www.psupress.org. Retrieved 18 May 2023.
- S2CID 147566983.
- JSTOR 10.3366/j.ctt5hh2xg.
- ^ admin. "Avital Ronell". The European Graduate School. Retrieved 18 May 2023.
- S2CID 151333183.
- S2CID 234163391, retrieved 18 May 2023
- ^ Searle, John. (1990). "The Storm Over the University." The New York Review of Books, 6 December 1990.
- ISSN 0028-7504. Retrieved 6 June 2020.
- ^ Sokal, Alan. 1997. "Professor Latour's Philosophical Mystifications." (Originally published in French in Le Monde, 31 January 1997; translated by the author.)
- ISBN 0-231-07650-9, p. 140.
Sources
- Angermuller, J. (2015): Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France. The Making of an Intellectual Generation. London: Bloomsbury.
- Angermuller, J. (2014): Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis. Subjectivity in Enunciative Pragmatics. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
- Barry, P. Beginning theory: an introduction to literary and cultural theory. Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2002.
- Barthes, Roland. Elements of Semiology. New York: Hill and Wang, 1967.
- Cuddon, J. A. Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory. London: Penguin, 1998.
- Eagleton, T. Literary theory: an introduction Basil Blackwell, Oxford,1983.
- Matthews, E. Twentieth-Century French Philosophy. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996.
- Morland, Dave (2004). "Anti-capitalism and poststructuralist anarchism". In Bowen, James; Purkis, Jon (eds.). Changing Anarchism: Anarchist Theory and Practice in a Global Age. ISBN 0-7190-6694-8.
- Ryan, M. Literary theory: a practical introduction. Blackwell Publishers Inc, Massachusetts,1999.
- Wolfreys, J & Baker, W (eds). Literary theories: a case study in critical performance. Macmillan Press, Hong Kong,1996.
External links
- Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences - Jacques Derrida
- Smith, Richard G., ed. (2010). The Baudrillard Dictionary. Edinburgh University Press. JSTOR 10.3366/j.ctt1g09vw4.
- "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 website that aims to allow users not only to describe post-structuralist ideas but to create new ideas and concepts based on post-structuralist foundations