Post-structuralism represents a continuation or rejection of structuralism, a movement that analyzed cultural products through language-based structures. While structuralism suggested a mediating 'third order' between reality and ideas, post-structuralism critiques this, questioning self-sufficiency and binary oppositions. Key figures like Barthes and Foucault are associated with both movements.
Post-structuralism is a philosophical movement that critiques structuralism. Structuralism views culture through underlying structures, like language, as a mediator between reality and abstract ideas. Post-structuralism challenges this, rejecting the idea of structural self-sufficiency and questioning binary oppositions. Many theorists associated with structuralism, like Barthes and Foucault, also contributed to post-structuralism.
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| Back | Post-structuralism is either a continuation or a rejection of the intellectual project that preceded it—structuralism. Structuralism proposes that one may understand human culture by means of a structure—modeled on language (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: Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Judith Butler, Jean Baudrillard, Julia Kristeva, and Jürgen Habermas[citation needed], although many theorists who have been called "post-structuralist" have rejected the label. This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. Please help improve it to make it understandable to non-experts, without removing the technical details. (December 2017) 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. 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. 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 either on pure experience (phenomenology) or systematic structures (Structuralism) is impossible because history and culture condition the study of underlying structures and these are subject to biases and misinterpretations. This impossibility was not meant as a failure or loss, but rather as a cause for "celebration and liberation".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. 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 Michel Foucault, also became noteworthy in post-structuralism. |
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