Etymology and Meanings of Poststructuralism Literary Theory
Etymologically, poststructuralism comprises two different terms post- as its prefix as it occurs in the beginning of the word, structuralism. Therefore, it means the time after structuralism. Dehyphenation of this word shows that now it is a complete word having its own semantic shades.
Grammatically, it is a noun and shows a type of philosophy, or system of thoughts, or ideas having its own principles.
Definition of “Poststructuralism” Literary Theory
In literary theory, poststructuralism, however, is still used with a hyphen that does not make any difference either. This literary theory is based on the ideas comprising rejection points of structuralism almost of the same theorists who form the group behind structuralism, or that they were late structuralists. It means they reject the self-sufficiency of the structuralist point of view, do not accept binary opposition, do not accept preassumed notions of the socially constructed reality, propagate texts having independent existence and readers having the independence of meaning-making.
Difference Between Structuralism and Poststructuralism Literary Theories
Structuralism uses underlying structures in literary texts including linguistics or anthropology to interpret cultural nuances. It also takes into account binary oppositions, while poststructuralism rejects these notions, taking into account the system of knowledge, text, or objects, excluding the creators and including the existing culture.
Origin of “Poststructuralism” Literary Theory
Although it seems that poststructuralism immediately emerged after structuralism, it actually emerged during the decade of the 50s and ruled the theoretical academic setting until the 80s. Although it stepped out of its philosophical realm, it touched critical theory in social sciences and entered the literary discipline, considering systematic studies of literary pieces as an important step forward. Almost all structuralists worked to launch the post-structural movement except a few figures, while the “gang of four” in structuralism (Claude Levi-Strauss, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, and Roland Barthes) also joined post-structuralists except Levi-Strauss. Some others like Derrida, Kristeva, and Deleuze also joined them to cause some stir in the philosophical movement.
Principles of Poststructuralism Literary Theory
- Poststructuralists contend that an individual is a hotchpotch of conflicts and confusion due to classification based on several factors such as class, gender, and culture. Hence, every individual has a unique self that is based on a unique cultural background. It means that every reader is different, having different discursive or other impacts on the self.
- The author holds secondary importance in the mean-making process.
- The reader gets top priority after a text comes into being. Every reader has his own meaning, depending on their level of understanding, culture, social situation, and upbringing.
- A text could have multiple purposes and objectives to achieve. It is not important o reach that objective.
- What is important is that a text could have various interpretations after it undergoes a critiquing process.
- Meanings are not fixed and permanent. They rather fluctuate from reader to reader and are not stable. There are also other sources of meanings such as culture, norms, mores, conventions, and even signs and symbols.
- Binary opposition is a myth. There are other important considerations to take care of.
- It has given rise to metalanguage or the discussion of the main elements of language and how it works.
Criticism Against Poststructuralism Literary Theory
Examples of Poststructuralism
Example # 1
From “Death of the Author” by Roland Barthes
In his story Sarrasine, Balzac, speaking of a castrato disguised as a woman, writes this sentence: “It was Woman, with her sudden fears, her irrational whims, her instinctive fears, her unprovoked bravado, her daring and her delicious delicacy of feeling” Who is speaking in this way? Is it the story’s hero, concerned to ignore the castrato con-cealed beneath the woman? Is it the man Balzac, endowed by his personal experience with a philosophy of Woman? Is it the author Balzac, professing certain “literary” ideas of femininity? Is it universal wisdom? or romantic psychology? It will always be impossible to know, for the good reason that all writing is itself this special voice, consisting of several indiscernible voices, and that literature is precisely the invention of this voice, to which we cannot assign a specific origin: literature is that neuter, that composite, that oblique into which every subject escapes, the trap where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes.
This essay by Barthes demonstrates the application of poststructuralism and its different aspects. The questions given after the main introduction show how Barthes thinks that the story by Balzac should show its meaning. It is not just the story; rather, it is Balzac himself, his philosophy, and different facets of his personality that peep through it. Therefore, poststructuralism breaks away from structuralism in this aspect.
Example # 2
From “The Sing, Structure and the Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” by Jacques Derrida
Perhaps something has occurred in the history of the concept of structure that could be called an “event,” if this loaded word did not entail a meaning which it is precisely the function of structural—or structurality—thought to reduce or to suspect. But let me use the term “event” anyway, employing it with caution and as if in quotation marks. In this sense, this event will have the exterior form of a rupture and a redoubling. It would be easy enough to show that the concept of structure and even the word “structure” itself are as old as the epistémé—that is to say, as old as western science and western philosophy—and that their roots thrust deep into the soil of ordinary language, into whose deepest recesses the epistémé plunges to gather them together once more, making them part of itself in a metaphorical displacement.
This passage from Derrida shows the application of signs, structure, and language. Specifically, his last comment about metaphorical language as part of episteme shows his understanding of structuralism and the limits of this philosophical concept when it comes to textbooks.
Example # 3
From “The Order of Discourse” by Michel Foucault
Here is the hypothesis which I would like to put forward tonight in order to fix the terrain – or perhaps the very provisional theatre – of the work I am doing; that in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organized and redistributed by a certain number of procedures whose role is to ward off its powers and dangers, to gain mastery over its chance events, to evade ponderous, formidable materiality. In a society like ours, the procedures of exclusion are well known. The most obvious and familiar is the prohibition. We know quite well that we do not have the right to say everything, that we cannot speak of just anything in any circumstances whatever, and that not everyone has the right to speak anything whatever.
This passage from Michel Foucault beautifully sums up his views about discourse or written words or narratives which is also considered literature. If this counts too much which means the control over literature, several tenets of structuralism lose their values such as; signs, their meanings, the author’s purpose, and cultural embeddedness. Therefore, this shows the arrival of post-structuralism. Several poems show this application as they are intended to have meanings packed in them for a specific purpose after which the real authors do not have control over their impacts.
Example # 4
From “The Laugh of the Medusa” by Helene Cixous, Translation by Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen
Women must put herself into the text – as into the world and into history – by her own movement. The future must no longer be determined by the past. I do not deny that the effects of the past are still with us. But I refuse to strengthen them by repeating them, to confer upon them an irremovability the equivalent of destiny, to confuse the biological and the cultural. Anticipation is imperative. Since these relfections are taking shape in an area juset on the point of being discovered, they necessarily bear the mark of our time – a time during which the new breaks away from the old, and, more precisdely, the (feminine) new from the old (la nouvelle de l’ancien). Thus, as there are no grounds for establishing a dicourse, but rather an arid millennial ground to break, what I say has at least two sides and two aims: to break up, to destroy and to foresee the unforseeable, to project.
This passage occurs in the popular essay of Helen Cixious “The Laugh of Medusa.” Although it discusses femininity from a new perspective or femininity from the feminine perspective, it shows clearly the suggestion of Cixous about two sides and two aims that are to leave the past and see the future. This is what poststructuralism shows by keeping the past away from the future.
Keywords in Poststructuralism Literary Theory
Signified, transcendental signified, logocentrism, phonocentrism, arche-writing, supplement, differance, presence-absence, defer-differance, aporia/impasses, trace, code, denotation/connotation, encoding/decoding, salience, semiosis, semiosophere, umwelt
Suggested Readings
Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things. Routledge, 2005.
Cixous, Hélène. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Feminisms Redux: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism (1975): 416-431.
Agger, Ben. “Critical Theory, Poststructuralism, Postmodernism: Their Sociological Relevance.” Annual Review of Sociology 17.1 (1991): 105-131. Derrida, Jacques. 1970. Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences. In The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man: The Structuralist Controversy, pp. 247-272, edited by Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato, John Hopkins University, London. 1970.
