Post-structuralism is a term for philosophical and literary forms of theory that both build upon and reject ideas established by
structuralism, the intellectual project that preceded it. Though 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 opposition
A binary opposition (also binary system) is a pair of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning. Binary opposition is the system of language and/or thought by which two theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set off against one ...
s that constitute its structures. Accordingly, post-structuralism discards the idea of interpreting media (or the world) within pre-established, socially constructed structures.
[Bensmaïa, Réda. 2005. "Poststructuralism." Pp. 92–93 in ]
The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought
', edited by L. Kritzman. Columbia University Press.[ Poster, Mark. 1988. "Introduction: Theory and the problem of Context." pp. 5–6 i]
''Critical theory and poststructuralism: in search of a context''
[ Merquior, José G. 1987. ''Foucault'', ( Fontana Modern Masters series). University of California Press. .]
''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
Reality is the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within a system, as opposed to that which is only imaginary. The term is also used to refer to the ontological status of things, indicating their existence. In physical terms, rea ...
on the one hand, abstract
ideas about reality on the other hand, and a "third order" that mediates between the two. 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.
Writers whose works are often characterised as post-structuralist include
Roland Barthes
Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popula ...
,
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida; See also . 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in numerous texts, and which was developed th ...
,
Michel Foucault,
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( , ; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volu ...
, and
Jean Baudrillard, although many theorists who have been called "post-structuralist" have rejected the label.
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
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...
, and other fields to
interpret
Interpreting is a Translation studies, translational activity in which one produces a first and final target-language output on the basis of a one-time exposure to an expression in a Source language (translation), source language.
The most commo ...
those structures. Structuralism posits the concept of
binary opposition
A binary opposition (also binary system) is a pair of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning. Binary opposition is the system of language and/or thought by which two theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set off against one ...
, in which frequently-used pairs of opposite-but-related words (concepts) are often arranged in a hierarchy; for example:
Enlightenment/
Romantic, female/male, 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
Phenomenology may refer to:
Art
* Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties
Philosophy
* Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...
) or on
systematic structures (structuralism) is impossible, because history and culture actually condition the study of underlying structures, and these are subject to biases and misinterpretations.
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( , ; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volu ...
and others saw this impossibility not as a failure or loss, but rather as a cause for "celebration and liberation."
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. 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
Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popula ...
and
Michel Foucault, also became noteworthy in post-structuralism.
History
Post-structuralism emerged in
France during the 1960s as a movement critiquing
structuralism. According to
J. G. Merquior, a
love–hate relationship
A love–hate relationship is an interpersonal relationship involving simultaneous or alternating emotions of love and hate—something particularly common when emotions are intense.
The term is used frequently in psychology, popular writing and ...
with structuralism developed among many leading French thinkers in the 1960s.
The period was marked by the rebellion of students and workers against the state in
May 1968
The following events occurred in May 1968:
May 1, 1968 (Wednesday)
* CARIFTA, the Caribbean Free Trade Association, was formally created as an agreement between Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago.
*RAF Strike C ...
.
In a 1966 lecture titled "
",
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida; See also . 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in numerous texts, and which was developed th ...
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,
Roland Barthes
Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popula ...
published "
The Death of the Author
"The Death of the Author" ( French: ''La mort de l'auteur'') is a 1967 essay by the French literary critic and theorist Roland Barthes (1915–1980). Barthes's essay argues against traditional literary criticism's practice of relying on the inte ...
", 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.
Barthes and the need for metalanguage
In ''
Elements of Semiology'' (1967), Barthes advances the concept of the ''
metalanguage
In logic and linguistics, a metalanguage is a language used to describe another language, often called the ''object language''. Expressions in a metalanguage are often distinguished from those in the object language by the use of italics, quot ...
'', 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
Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida; See also . 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in numerous texts, and which was developed th ...
,
Roland Barthes
Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popula ...
, and
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, , ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and pu ...
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.
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'
literary theory is perhaps the best-known example of a silly but non-catastrophic phenomenon." Similarly, physicist
Alan Sokal
Alan David Sokal (; born January 24, 1955) is an American professor of mathematics at University College London and professor emeritus of physics at New York University. He works in statistical mechanics and combinatorics. He is a critic of post ...
in 1997 criticized "the postmodernist/poststructuralist gibberish that is now
hegemonic
Hegemony (, , ) is the political, economic, and military predominance of one state over other states. In Ancient Greece (8th BC – AD 6th ), hegemony denoted the politico-military dominance of the ''hegemon'' city-state over other city-states. ...
in some sectors of the American academy."
Literature scholar
Norman Holland
Norman N. Holland (September 19, 1927, New York City - September 28, 2017) was an American literary critic and Marston-Milbauer Eminent Scholar Emeritus at the University of Florida.
Holland's scholarship focused largely on psychoanalytic criti ...
in 1992 saw post-structuralism as 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. trict adherence to Saussurehas 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 refers to Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky i ...
."[Holland, Norman N. (1992) ''The Critical I'', Columbia University Press, , p. 140.]
David Foster Wallace wrote:
See also
Authors
The following are often said to be post-structuralists, or to have had a post-structuralist period:
*
Kathy Acker
*
Jean Baudrillard
*
Roland Barthes
Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popula ...
*
Wendy Brown
*
Judith Butler
Judith Pamela Butler (born February 24, 1956) is an American philosopher and gender theorist whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminism, queer theory, and literary theory. In 1993, Butler b ...
*
Rey Chow
*
Hélène Cixous
*
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( , ; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volu ...
*
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida; See also . 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in numerous texts, and which was developed th ...
*
Umberto Eco
*
John Fiske
*
Michel Foucault
*
René Girard
*
Félix Guattari
*
Luce Irigaray
Luce Irigaray (born 3 May 1930) is a Belgian-born French feminist, philosopher, linguist, psycholinguist, psychoanalyst, and cultural theorist who examined the uses and misuses of language in relation to women. Irigaray's first and most well kno ...
*
Julia Kristeva
Julia Kristeva (; born Yuliya Stoyanova Krasteva, bg, Юлия Стоянова Кръстева; on 24 June 1941) is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, semiotician, psychoanalyst, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who h ...
*
Teresa de Lauretis
Teresa de Lauretis (; born 1938 in Bologna) is an Italian author and Distinguished Professor Emerita of the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her areas of interest include semiotics, psychoanalysis, film theory ...
*
Sarah Kofman
Sarah Kofman (; September 14, 1934 – October 15, 1994) was a French philosopher .
Biography
Kofman began her teaching career in Toulouse in 1960 at the Lycée Saint-Sernin, and worked with both Jean Hyppolite and Gilles Deleuze. Her aban ...
*
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe ( , ; 6 March 1940 – 28 January 2007) was a French philosopher. He was also a literary critic and translator. Lacoue-Labarthe published several influential works with his friend Jean-Luc Nancy.
Lacoue-Labarthe was ...
*
Jean-François Lyotard
Jean-François Lyotard (; ; ; 10 August 1924 – 21 April 1998) was a French philosopher, sociologist, and literary theorist. His interdisciplinary discourse spans such topics as epistemology and communication, the human body, modern art and ...
*
Chantal Mouffe
Chantal Mouffe (; born 17 June 1943) is a Belgian political theorist, formerly teaching at University of Westminster.
She is best known for her contribution to the development—jointly with Ernesto Laclau, with whom she co-authored her most f ...
*
Jean-Luc Nancy
Jean-Luc Nancy ( , ; 26 July 1940 – 23 August 2021) was a French philosopher. Nancy's first book, published in 1973, was ''Le titre de la lettre'' (''The Title of the Letter'', 1992), a reading of the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Laca ...
*
Avital Ronell
Avital Ronell ( ; born 15 April 1952) is an American academic who writes about continental philosophy, literary studies, psychoanalysis, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the humanities and in the departments of Germanic l ...
*
Bernard Stiegler
Bernard Stiegler (; 1 April 1952 – 5 August 2020) was a French philosopher. He was head of the Institut de recherche et d'innovation (IRI), which he founded in 2006 at the Centre Georges-Pompidou. He was also the founder in 2005 of the polit ...
References
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.
* 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*
*
ttps://foucault.info/ Information on Michel Foucault, including an archive of writings and lecturesbr>
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
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