POST STRUCTURALISM INTRODUCTION Post structuralism is a body

POST STRUCTURALISM

INTRODUCTION Post structuralism is a body of work that followed in the wake of structuraslism, and sought to understand a world irrevocably dissected into parts of systems, as in deconstruction. Post structuralism unlike structuralism is a philosophy having no absolute truth. It has a radical view because there is no fixed landmark, no certain standard by which to measure anything. It is like a gravity free space, where meanings are floating and gives us the sense of decentered universe. It is an attitude of mind than a practical method of criticism.

INTRODUCTION It is engaged in deconstruction of the text. It is engaged as reading against the grain or as Terry Eagleton says, “reading the text itself with the purpose of learning the text as it cannot know itself”. Post structuralism is known for its efforts to offer a critical review of normative concepts in classical philosophy, and it makes use of the LINGUISTIC TURN. It stresses the interaction of reader and text as a productivity while structuralism sees the truth behind or within a text. It is highly critical of the unity of stable sign. It is shift from the signified to signifier.

BACKGROUND It’s foundation lies in the weak point of structuralism. Sturucturalist says that language is arbitrary and works in binary oppositions. They further say that language constitutes our world. If look deeply to these points we can the contradiction lies in these points. If sructuralists claim that language works in binary oppositions and has ambiguity in it then how can it constitute our world. This urged Roland Barthes to review his ideology.

BACKGROUND What distinguished structuralism from post structuralism is not always easy to identify, but as a general rule post structuralist see their theories as based on strucruralism’s philosophy of language (Saussure) and anthropology (Levi-Strauss), but they apply those insights to a wider range of topics and radicalize some of structuralism’s premises. The transition structuralism to post structuralism is also reflected in the works of Michel Foucault, and specially in his method of genealogy. Among his various historical (genealogical) works, “The Order of Things “ and “The Births of The Clinic” stand out. Foucault tried to develop a new understanding of historical developments as process of rapture, deviation, and contingency.

BEGINNING It is a continental philosophy that developed in the later half of the 20 th century in a fashion parallel to certain developments in analytical philosophy. At some point in the late 1960 s, structuralism gave birth to “poststructuralism”. When structuralism was reaching its apex as an influential theory of language, alongwith a new wave of philosophers intent on subjecting it to a rigorous and sustained critique Some commentators believe that the later developments were already inherent in the earlier phase. One might say that poststructuralism is simply a fuller working out of the implications of structuralism, but this information is not quite satisfactory because it is evident that poststructuralism tries to deflate the scientific pretentions of structuralism.

BEGINNING Deconstruction, based on the work of Derrida aims to show that any and every text inevitably undermines its own claims to determine a definite meaning. Thus, the lack of meaning sabotages any attempts to form a definite conclusion within a text. This raises the concept of the lack of closure within the text. This in turn emphasized the role of the reader in the process of determining meaning in text, which led Roland Barthes to propose the four main points that comprise The Death of the Author (1968).

POST-STRUCTURALISM IS SUCCESSION OF STRUCTURALISM Post-structuralism, as a general term for recent developments in literary theory and criticism, became common the 1970 s. Is the relation to Structuralism one of succession or supercession? - that is, do we see post-structuralism as simply later than its predecessor, or is it in some sense in advance? Both usages can be found; and poststructuralism covers so many practices that it is impossible to define. But it can be approached as a working through, in various fields of inquiry, of some implications of Deconstruction.

POST-STRUCTURALISM IS SUCCESSION OF STRUCTURALISM Derrida's influential lecture on 'Structure, sign and play in the discourse of the human sciences' proposed a disruption in the very concept of structure as a stable system, mischievously quoting Lévi-Strauss against himself. The effects of deconstruction, though, were not confined to a critique of structuralism. They rather emphasized a methodological shift, a move away from explanation by origin, order by opposition, fixed or closed signification and the person as a unified subject.

ROLAND BARTHES What might be called Barthes’ poststructuralist period is best represented by his short essay ‘The Death of the Author’ (1968). He rejects the traditional view that the author is the origin of the text, the source of its meaning, and the only authority for interpretation. At first, this sounds like a restatement of the familiar New Critical dogma about the literary works independence (autonomy) from its historical and biographical background. The New Critics believed that the unity of a text lay not in its author’s intention but in its structure. His work “The Stylistic Analysis of Narrative” (1960) and “The Pleasure of Life”(1973) are also the shifts from structuralism to post structuralism.

ROLAND BARTHES In which he says that we are not fully in control of the medium of language. Meaning cannot be placed in set places, they can only be randomly scattered or decentered. Meanings of the words can never be guaranteed one hundred percent pure. They are contaminated by their opposites. Actually death of the author is the birth of the reader. The interpretation of Saussure’s categories is most obvious in the work of Roland Barthes, who published two well received introductions to structuralism. As a structuralist, Barthes had belief in the existence of underlying structures, and considered them necessary for the explanation of sign process, but then Barthes did away with such idealistic fiction.

ROLAND BARTHES He rejected the ontological thesis of a prexisting sign system and regarded the sign complex of the text concerned as the decisive instance. According to Barthes we not have to learn rules to use texts, instead we practice the production of meaning directly by using existing signal complexes.

DERRIDA AND POST STRUCTURALISM Another point criticized in de Saussure’s theory was his usage of the term “system” understood as a closed totality that somehow organizes language. De Saussure says that: “language is both a self-contained whole and the principle of classification. Later on that: A linguistic system is a series of phonetic differences matched with a series of conceptual differences. But this matching of a certain number of auditory signals and a similar number of items carved out of the mass of thought gives rise to a system of values. It is this system which provides the operative bond between phonic and mental elements within each sign. According to Derrida, “the notion of structure refers only to space, morphological space, the order of forms and sites. geometric or

DERRIDA AND POST STRUCTURALISM This conception faces two major problems. The first one, connected with the closure of structure, consists in the recognition that the pas- sage from one structure to another may only take place by way of a catastrophe or pure chance. The second one, linked with the existence of the center, concerns the change which may effectuate within a structure: it will always be the result of its internal logic. The fusion of these two topics clearly points to the contradictory nature of the idea of the structure and calls for post structuralism. Post structuralism can be conceived of as textual labour in the form of a double reading.

DERRIDA AND POST STRUCTURALISM The 1 ST reading is a faithful attempt to follow the dominant interpretation of the text, its assumptions, concepts and arguments. The second reading consists in tracing its excluded, repressed and inferior interpretation that forms an undercurrent in the text of two interpretations can demonstrate that the dominant interpretation is dependent on what it excludes. Consequently, the relation between the two interpretations becomes more important than the dominant intepretation. Derrida argues that it is so because of the supplementary character of the second interpretation which fills in the original lack in the dominant one

PAUL DE MAN Ø He found romantic poetry and open invitation to deconstruction, because romantics actually deconstruct their own writing by showing that the presence they desire is always absent, always in the past and future. Ø Blindness and Insight (1917): it gives the idea of Paradox that critics only achieve insight through a certain blindness. This insight blindness is facilitated by an unconscious slide. Ø Allegories of Reading (1979): This becomes the criticism of ambiguity by this ambiguous poetic language. In Allegories of Reading be man develop rhetoric type of deconstruction always begin in blindness and sight.

LACAN AND THE DISCURSIVE FOUNDATION OF SUBJECTIVITY Another important thinker on the historical map of the discourse theory is Jacques Lacan in whose works the problems of discourse are inextricably connected with the reflection on the nature of human subjectivity. There are two ways of interpreting the relation between subjectivity and discourse in Lacan. The first interpretation – the post-structuralist one – regards subjectivity as dependent on discourse and puts emphasis on the examination of the discursive systems in which it is involved, claiming that they play an essential role in the constitution of the subject’s identity. The second interpretation, appreciating Lacan’s psychoanalytical practice, contradicts the post-structuralist stance and asserts that it is the subject – construed in opposition to the essentialist

LACAN AND THE DISCURSIVE FOUNDATION OF SUBJECTIVITY it is the subject – construed in opposition to the essentialist philosophical tradition – that plays the essential role in the constitution of the discursive system. Lacan is interested in figures of speech and how speech, creating systems of desire and identification, moves the subject. On the one hand, this analysis is highly theoretical: Lacan is fully engaged in all the conceptual resources formulated by post-structuralist thought. But on the other hand, Lacan’s analysis is highly practical. As an analyst, Lacan confronted subjects who resisted, denied and displaced linguistic effects. This forced him to formulate a description of a subject much more active and resistant than the subject imagined by post-structuralist thought

BARBARA JOHNSON In her essay “Writing, ” Barbara Johnson grapples with many of the paradoxes of the medium as exposed by theoretical movements of 1960 s France. Describing and leaning on the works of Barthes, Saussure, Lacan, and Derrida, Johnson shows that within this order of thought writing is more than a simple “transcription of the spoken word, ” Johnson finds the latter of these more useful and goes on to describe the beginnings of this concept in terms of Saussurean linguistics. Saussure sees language as a system, the basic unit of this system being the sign, which is composed of two parts, the “signified” and the “signifier, ” the “mental image or concept” referred to and the phonic or graphic vehicle” used to express it.

BARBARA JOHNSON This two part structure of the sign is handy as is it shows the arbitrary nature of the signifier across languages and the inconsistent nature of the signified. Because of these ambiguities, language is intelligible only when taken as a system, with meaning in the system derived from signs “not as independently meaningful units corresponding to external objects but as elements whose value is generated by their difference from neighboring elements in the system” (342). Thus, “difference” becomes the origin of meaning, not identity, as in a thing’s “thingness. ”

BARBARA JOHNSON With this mind, Johnson turns to the work of Derrida. In the three volumes that Johnson discusses, Derrida’s main goal is the “reevaluation” of the binaries that dominate Western metaphysic. For Johnson in light of these multiple meanings, it is our task as readers then “to read what is written rather than simply attempt to intuit what might have been meant”.

APPLICATION OF POST STRUCTURALISM ON LITERATURE A post structuralist sees the language of the text in a way that: Ø There are no facts in the text only interpretation. Ø As theory is based on philosophy instead of scientific rules so, there is nothing outside the text. Text is everything. Ø Its origin lies in the habits of skepticism and uncertainity. Ø The tone and style of post structuralism is emotive, urgent and euphoric. Ø Titles may have puns and allusions. Ø Signs in the text float free of what they designate.

APPLICATION OF POST STRUCTURALISM ON LITERATURE Ø There is no centre and theme around which text revolve. Text is decentered incoherent and disunified. Ø Decentralization of the text involves multiplicity of interpretations. Ø Multiple interpretation are connected with free discourse. Discourse analysis can be done through the lens of psychology, sociology etc. Ø Text comprises a chain of signifiers which appears to evoke a singular meaning, but which upon investigation can be shown to contradict itself.

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