Post-Structuralism

Post-structuralism is an intellectual movement that responds to and critiques structuralism. Post-structuralism has had an impact on a number of disciplines in humanities and social sciences, in particular literature, film studies, and media studies. Despite its influence, there is not a set of theories called post-structuralist theories and there is not a group of theorists called post-structuralists. In addition, post-structuralist theories intercept with postmodern theories, postcolonial theories, deconstruction theories, and psychoanalytic theories. Similarly, some of the key thinkers in post-structuralism, such as Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, and Luce Irigaray, are also neo-Marxist, postmodernist, structuralist, and psychoanalyst.

It is impossible to understand post-structuralism without understanding structuralism. Structuralism had a major impact on the development of theories in the 20th century in fields such as psychoanalysis, anthropology, and linguistics. The goal of structuralism is to understand the human world as systems. One key thinker of structuralism is the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure wanted to understand languages as systems of signs. To Saussure, language is not limited to spoken and written language; it also includes signs (such as road signs), color, music, and so on. He proposed that there are two components to every sign: the signifier and the signified. The signifier can be a word (such as the word tree), a sound (the sound /tri/), or an image (a drawing of a tree or a picture of a tree). The signified is a concept elicited in the person's head. When an English speaker sees the word “tree,” hears the sound /tri/, or sees an image of a tree, the concept of a perennial woody plant will be elicited in the head. Therefore, words, sounds, and images are all signs to Saussure. Saussure also coined the concepts of language (langue) and speech (parole). Language is a rule-governed system. Humans make speech according to linguistic rules. For example, in English, the [Page 286]sentence “I eat an apple” is a speech governed by several grammatical rules: there is only one subject; the verb follows the noun; and there is an article in front of the object. Using the same rules, speakers can make as many sentences as possible. Saussure's theory of semiology was later developed by Roland Barthes, who studied fashion, the Japanese culture, and images as systems of signs.

Structuralists believe that meanings are embedded in the systems and individuals simply obey the rules to make meanings. Structuralists also do not question if individuals have the power to make meanings or not. Post-structuralist theorists critique structuralists for failing to see the importance of language in meaning-making and for failing to realize the power of individuals to make meanings.

The later work of Barthes reflected his shift to post-structuralism from structuralism. In the essay “The Death of the Author” collected in Image-Music-Text, he argued that in traditional literary studies, the author is seen as the origin of meanings. Analysts and readers often ask, “What does the author mean?” This approach assumes that the author is the one who embeds meanings in a text. The meanings are later decoded by readers. Barthes had come to believe that the meanings of texts depend on the readers, not on the writers.

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