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Post-structuralism. Literature in English ~ ASL. Introduction. A broad historical description of intellectual developments in continental philosophy and critical theory An outcome of Twentieth-century French philosophy The prefix "post “ : critical of structuralism
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Post-structuralism Literature in English ~ ASL
Introduction • A broad historical description of intellectual developments in continental philosophy and critical theory • An outcome of Twentieth-century French philosophy • The prefix "post“: critical of structuralism • Structuralism: culturally independent meaning • Post-structuralists: culture as integral to meaning
Introduction • A ‘rebellion against’ structuralism • A critical and comprehensive response to the basic assumptions of structuralism • Studies the underlying structures inherent in cultural products (such as texts) • Utilizes analytical concepts from linguistics, psychology, anthropology and other fields
Introduction • To understand an object (e.g. one of the many meanings of a text), we need to study… • the object itself • the systems of knowledge which were coordinated to produce the object
Introduction • Post-structuralism: a study of how knowledge is produced • Reader's culture = reader’s society (in the interpretation of a piece)
Basic Assumptions • Concept of "self" as a singular and coherent entity: a fictional construct • An individual = Conflicting tensions + Knowledge claims (e.g. gender, class, profession, etc.) • To properly study a text, the reader must understand how the work is related to his own personal concept of self • Self-perception:critical in one's interpretation of meaning
Basic Assumptions • The meaning the author intended – secondary to the meaning that the reader perceives • Rejects the idea of a literary text having one purpose, one meaning or one singular existence • To utilize a variety of perspectives to create a multifaceted (or conflicting) interpretation of a text • To analyze how the meanings of a text shift in relation to certain variables (usually the identity of the reader)
Concepts (1): Destabilized Meaning • Reader as the primary subject of inquiry (instead of author / writer) • Such displacement: the "destabilizing" or "decentering" of the author • Disregarding an essentialist reading of the content • Other sources are examined for meaning (e.g. readers, cultural norms, other literature, etc.) • Such alternative sources promise no consistency
Concepts (1): Destabilized Meaning • “...language refers to the position of the listener and the speaker, that is, to the contingency of their story. To seize by inventory all the contexts of language and all possible positions of interlocutors is a senseless task. Every verbal signification lies at the confluence of countless semantic rivers. Experience, like language, no longer seems to be made of isolated elements lodged somehow in a Euclidean space... [Words] signify from the "world" and from the position of one who is looking.” Lévinas, Signification and Sense, Humanism of the Other, tr. Nidra Poller
Concepts (2): Deconstruction • Rejects that there is a consistent structure to texts, specifically the theory of binary opposition • Post-structuralists advocate deconstruction • Meanings of texts and concepts constantly shift in relation to myriad variables • The only way to properly understand these meanings: deconstruct the assumptions and knowledge systems which produce the illusion of singular meaning
Post-structuralist Writers • Jean Baudrillard • Judith Butler • Félix Guattari • Fredric Jameson • Sarah Kofman • Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe • Jean-François Lyotard • Jean-Luc Nancy • Bernard Stiegler
