The study of societies and social relationships has been transformed by relationist linguistics. French structuralism was inspired by it to offer a way to model deep underlying social principles. This has influenced the way we understand a range of social processes from caste in India to the logic of capitalism in all corners of the world. The criticisms of French structuralism are also many and post-structuralism sought to distance itself from structuralisms' positivist stance, while still carrying forward a relationist understanding of knowledge and culture. Post-structuralism emphasized power in the construction of social relationships and meanings and questioned dominant cultural interpretations. Post-colonial studies echoes many of these theoretical ideas in the cultural critique of domination and power in countries like India. The questioning of the hegemonic discourses of the state, the nation and its post-colonial elites has been a particular area of emphasis.
Weeks 4,5,6
Core Readings:
Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. 1960. “Social Structure.” In Method in Social Anthropology, 138–47. Bombay: Asia Publishing House.
Barthes, Roland. The Rustle of Language. Translated by Richard Howard. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986. Chapter "Death of the author" pp 49-55
Chatterjee, Partha. 1993. “Whose Imagined Community.” In The Nation and Its Fragments, 3–14. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Additional Readings:
Ritzer, George. "Structuralism, Post-Structuralism and Post-Modern Social Theory.” In Sociological Theory, 8th ed., 605-44. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011.
Elliott, Anthony, and Charles Lemert. 2014. Introduction to Contemporary Social Theory. New York and London: Routledge. "Foucault: knowledge, social order and power"
Foucault, Michel. "Truth and Power.” In The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow, 51-75. Vintage, 1984.
Derrida, Jacques. "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the HumanSciences.” In Writing and Difference, 278-94. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981.
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. 2nd ed. Routledge, 2006.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. Structural Anthropology. Translated by Claire Jacobson and Brooke G. Schoepf. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972. "Structural analysis in linguistics and anthropology”, pp 30-54
Douglas, Mary. (1966) 2001. “Introduction.” In Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, 1–6. London and New York: Routledge.
Said, Edward. “Orientalism.” In Post Colonial Studies Reader, edited by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, 87–91. London: Routledge, 1995.
Said, Edward. (1978) 2003. “Knowing the Oriental.” In Orientalism, 31–49. London: Penguin.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, 271-313. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000. “Introduction: The Idea of Provincializing Europe.” In Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, 3–23. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Nigam, Aditya. 2020. “Decolonization of Theory: A New Conjuncture.” In Decolonizing Theory: Thinking across Traditions, 26–50. New Delhi: Bloomsbury.