On Post-Structuralism

BEGINNING THEORY: NOTE ON POST-STRUCTURALISM

Post-Structuralism

• A form of rebellion against structuralism

• Begins in France in late 1960s

• Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida

Distinction between structuralism and post-structuralism (60-63):

1. Origins:

• Structuralism derives mainly from linguistics, which is a discipline concentrates on establishing objective knowledge. It believes that if we collect data systematically and make logical deductions then we can establish reliable conclusions about language and the world. Structuralism inherits this scientific outlook: it too believes in method, system, and reason as being able to establish reliable truths.

• Post-structuralism derives from philosophy, which is a discipline tended to emphasize the difficulty of achieving secure knowledge about things. As Nietzsche stated, “There are no facts, only interpretations.” Philosophy is skeptical by nature and questions commonsensical notions and assumptions.

• Post-structuralism inherits this habit of skepticism, and intensifies it.Post-Structuralism distrusts the very notion of reason, and the idea of the human being as an independent entity, preferring the notion of the “dissolved” or “constructed” subject. An individual is a product of social and linguistic forces—that is, not an essence at all, merely a “tissue of textualities.”

2. Tone and Style:

• Structuralist writing tends towards abstraction and generalization: it aims for a detached, ‘scientific coolness’ of tone.

• Post-Structuralist writing tends to be more emotive. Contains word-play, pun, allusions; self-consciously showy. Overall it aims for an engaged warmth rather than detached coolness.

3. Attitude to language:

• Structuralists believe that language is an orderly system, not a chaotic one, so realizing our dependence upon it need not induce intellectual despair. They believe that we can only access to the reality through linguistic medium based on the notion that the world is constructed through language. 構造主義：言語学が基盤なので、科学的な態度をとる。執筆は抽象化・一般化（冷たい）。言語は世界を作ったものだと思われる。

• Post-structuralists hold linguistic anxiety. They believe that language is slippery and fluid. ポスト構造主義：哲学が基盤なので、懐疑的な態度をとる。執筆はより感情的（暖かい）。言語は滑りやすく流動的なものだ。人間というのは社会的文化的産品であり、独立したものではないと思われる。

The ‘Decentring’ of our Intellectual Universe: Two Important Post-structuralists

• Roland Barthes’s The Death of the Author (1968) is where he turns from structuralism to post-structuralism. The essay makes declaration of a radical textual independence. The death of the author is the birth of the reader. Hence, post-structuralism promotes the endless play of meanings and the escape of all forms of textual authority. (64)ポスト構造主義は、根本的なテキストの独立の宣言をし、意味の無限の遊びとあらゆる形態のテキストの権威の脱出を促進します。

• Derrida’s “deconstructive” reading has been borrowed by literary critics and used in the reading of literary works. Texts previously regarded as unified artistic artefacts are shown to be fragmented, self-divided, and centerless. (65) 以前は統一された芸術的遺物と見なされていたテキストは、断片化され、自己分割され、中心がないことが示されています。

• Derrida’s Of Grammatology: “There is nothing outside of the text.”

• Reading and interpretation are not just reproducing what the writer thought, and expressed it in the text (= double commentary).