Post-Structuralism: Landmark Figures and Concepts for UGC NET 2024

Post-structuralism refers to a philosophical and literary movement that emerged in the 1960s as a response to structuralism. In this in-depth guide, we’ll examine the origins of post-structuralist theory, its major thinkers and texts, core concepts like deconstruction and différance, and the influence this school of thought has had on contemporary social analysis and criticism.

What Is Post-Structuralism?

To understand post-structuralism, we first have to take a step back and consider structuralism. Structuralism was an intellectual movement that analyzed human culture, psychology, and society through the lens of underlying structures and systems. Drawing on linguistics and semiotics, structuralists sought to identify the deep codes and structures that give shape to cultural forms and behaviors.

Post-structuralism emerged as a critique of structuralist assumptions. The post-structuralists argued that structuralism relied too heavily on fixed systems of meaning and rigid binaries. Post-structuralist thinkers challenged the stability of meaning, highlighted the limits of philosophical truth, and emphasized the role of subjective experience in interpretation.

Some of the key objections and concerns raised by post-structuralists include:

• Language does not transparently reflect reality – it shapes and constructs meaning based on difference and deferral.
• Sign systems are not closed, stable structures – they are contingent, uncertain, and full of interpretive gaps.
• The idea of objective, universal knowledge is faulty – all truth claims are partial, historically situated, and tied up with power relations.
• The subject is not a coherent, unified entity – identity is fragmented across language and cultural discourses.
• Dualistic categories like man/woman, speech/writing, rational/emotional are oversimplified – these binaries conceal ambiguity and instability.

In brief, post-structuralists brought a new skepticism toward grand narratives, stable truth claims, and dominant cultural assumptions. Their theories opened up space for pluralism, complexity, and subjective modes of analysis.

Major Figures in Post-Structuralist Thought

Post-structuralism rose to prominence through the highly influential work of 20th century French and European thinkers. Here we’ll survey some of the major names associated with post-structuralism and their key contributions.

Jacques Derrida and Deconstruction

The philosopher Jacques Derrida is considered the father of deconstruction. His writings revealed the uncertainty behind authoritative texts and traditional philosophical systems.

Derrida questioned the basic logic underpinning Western thought going back to Plato. He shed light on the metaphysics of presence – the privileging of speech over writing, immediacy over distance. Derrida’s deconstructive readings unpacked the ambiguity within such binary oppositions.

His methods involved overturning hierarchies within texts and showing how meaning is unstable. Derrida demonstrated how the search for a stable, original truth or center is an illusion. For this rigorous philosophical questioning, he is regarded as a radical thinker who exposed the contingent foundations of knowledge.

Key texts: Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, Dissemination

Michel Foucault and Discourse Analysis

The historian and social theorist Michel Foucault made major contributions to post-structuralist thought. His work focused heavily on the relationship between power and the production of knowledge and truth.

Foucault argued that what we take for granted as scientific fact and “common sense” is actually the outcome of power struggles over dominant discourse. He traced how institutions like prisons, clinics, and asylums shape cultural norms and individual subjectivity.

Through discourse analysis, Foucault highlighted systems of social control and normalization. He urged resistance toward forces of domination through critical thinking. Foucault fundamentally influenced fields ranging from gender studies to criminology.

Key texts: Discipline and Punish, The History of Sexuality, The Order of Things

Roland Barthes and Semiotics

The French literary theorist Roland Barthes brought semiotic analysis to bear on cultural forms. He focused especially on the coded, mythological nature of popular culture.

Barthes outlined a semiotics of sign systems, drawing on Saussure’s ideas of the signifier and signified. His mythologies examined how social power and bourgeois ideology were reinforced through media symbols, narratives, and connotative language.

Beyond structuralist semiology, Barthes eventually explored the open, readerly nature of texts. His post-structuralist phase focused more on pleasure, intertextuality, and subversive modes of reading.

Key texts: Mythologies, S/Z, The Pleasure of the Text

Read This Too: Postmodernist Literature: A Comprehensive Guide for UGC NET 2024

Julia Kristeva and Intertextuality

The Bulgarian-French philosopher Julia Kristeva significantly influenced literary theory and feminist thought. She is known for her concepts of intertextuality, abjection, and the semiotic.

Kristeva built upon Bakhtin’s dialogism to put forth a post-structuralist theory of intertextuality. She asserted that a text has meaning only in relation to other texts – it is a dynamic intersection of textual surfaces rather than a closed work.

Kristeva fused literary analysis and psychoanalysis. Her semiotic approach examined poetic language and the disruptive role of the unconscious in signification. She problematized traditional notions of authorship and stable textual meaning.

Key texts: Desire in Language, Powers of Horror, Revolution in Poetic Language

Jacques Lacan and Psychoanalysis

The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan combined linguistics, philosophy, and Freudian theory. His concepts impacted post-structuralism and critical theory.

Lacan theorized that the unconscious is structured like a language. He argued that human desire stems from a permanent sense of lack brought about by our entrance into the symbolic order of language and social norms.

Lacanian psychoanalysis destabilized Cartesian notions of a coherent, self-aware subject. It revealed the fragmented, conflicted nature of identity across linguistic and cultural discourses.

Key texts: Écrits, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan

Core Concepts and Strategies

Post-structuralism advanced new concepts and interpretive strategies that transformed social theory and philosophical discourse:

Deconstruction

This term is tied to Derrida’s approach of overturning ingrained binary oppositions and exposing the undecidable nature of texts. Deconstruction reveals the ambiguity and internal contradictions within seemingly authoritative works.

Différance

Derrida proposed différance to describe the endless deferral of stable meaning. Signification relies on differences between signifiers – meaning is perpetually deferred along a chain of signification.

Intertextuality

Julia Kristeva developed this concept to highlight how texts borrow from and influence one another. Intertextuality asserts that meaning arises from the interconnection between texts rather than a discrete, unified work.

Discourse Analysis

Foucault’s methods for analyzing discourse examine how power circulates through societal texts, practices, and institutions to normalize cultural assumptions.

Absence/Presence

Post-structuralism calls into question metaphysical prioritization of presence and originary truth, pointing instead to absence, ellipsis, and the unsaid.

Anti-Essentialism

The post-structuralist subject is socially constructed, not essential. Identity is contingent, multifaceted, and sculpted by language and culture over time.

By advancing such concepts, post-structuralism fundamentally shook the foundations of structuralism. It catalyzed new interpretive frameworks while urging skepticism of master narratives, power structures, and received truth.

The Influence of Post-Structuralist Thought

Post-structuralism left an indelible mark across the humanities and social sciences. Its relativist perspectives gave rise to postmodern theory, decolonial studies, gender and queer theory, critical race studies, and cultural studies.

Thinkers like Derrida, Foucault, and Barthes opened up new vistas for understanding society, politics, psychology, and literature. Their focus on marginalized voices challenged established hierarchies.

However, post-structuralism is not without its critics. Some argue it leads to nihilism, dangerous relativism, and lack of agency. Defenders maintain that post-structuralism simply urges skepticism rather than outright denial of truth.

Regardless of controversies, post-structuralism remains hugely influential. It catalyzed paradigm shifts across academia and left seminal concepts like deconstruction imprinted on the theoretical landscape.

Conclusion

From deconstruction to discourse analysis, post-structuralism ushered in compelling new approaches for questioning dominant systems of thought and unsettling established meanings. It emerged as a radical interrogation of structuralism, focusing on ambiguity, subjectivity, and the limits of knowledge.

Key figures like Derrida and Foucault challenged ingrained assumptions and shaped new modes of interpretation that remain culturally relevant. Post-structuralism’s impact confirms that often, it is at the margins of accepted wisdom that the most surprising intellectual adventures begin.