Poststructuralism

Poststructuralism is a loosely connected set of reflections on and extensions and critiques of structuralism that emerged mostly in France in the mid-1960s. Poststructuralism does not advocate a wholesale rejection of the premises and arguments of structuralism; rather, poststructuralist thought is best viewed as a sequel to the structuralist works of Ferdinand de Saussure and Claude [Page 591]Lévi-Strauss. It is most often associated with the work of thinkers such as Roland Barthes, Hélène Cixous, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and Richard Rorty, although few of these theorists apply the term to their work. Poststructuralism is known primarily for its critiques of humanism, essentialism, and foundationalism; its rejection of the search for absolute meanings and lawlike generalizations; its decentering of the subject and the death of the author; and its skeptical attitude toward the so-called project of modernity.

Structuralism, as exemplified in the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure, the anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss, and the early literary theory of Roland Barthes, sought to create a theoretical apparatus that would become a foundation for rigorous analysis and research in all of the human and social sciences. Structuralism propounds four basic tenets. First, it rejects the argument that all meanings, practices, and actions can be understood in terms of and are propelled by subjective consciousness. Second, structuralism holds that meanings, practices, and actions can be explained only by studying the relations among elements in structures or systems. Third, structuralism views the binary opposition as the key to understanding structural relationships among elements (e.g., signifier/signified, raw/cooked, male/female). Finally, structuralists tend to be concerned mainly with synchronic analysis, that is, studying the relations among elements of a structure at a moment in time. Poststructuralists generally agree with the first tenet, but for various reasons to be explored in what follows, reject the others. For present purposes, the work of Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault best illustrates the poststructuralist critique of structuralism.

Derrida's most trenchant critique of structuralism takes issue with the second and third tenets of structuralist thought. Derrida argues that the structuralist view of language as a stable system that can be studied only by reference to the relations among its elements relies on a number of untenable assumptions. The most problematic of these assumptions is what Derrida calls logocentrism, which is, moreover, a problematic assumption of most of Western thought. Logocentrism is a term that describes the tendency of Western thinkers to privilege one term in a binary opposition over the other term, thus creating a hierarchy that organizes thought (e.g., speech over writing, male over female, reason over superstition). This hierarchy then appears to be a stable and natural one that has its roots in a stable system of language and its elements. Derrida aims to upset these hierarchical relationships by showing that binary oppositions are rarely exhaustive and mutually exclusive, and are often contradictory, rendering the binary useless for any descriptive or epistemological purposes. In addition, the two terms of a binary opposition define themselves against each other (which he calls supplementarity), and any hierarchy is therefore merely arbitrary. Derrida's project can be described as the deconstruction of logocentrism, which involves breaking down the ways in which logocentrism operates in order to dismantle its hegemony in Western society. In short, Derrida takes aim at the assumed stability of language and the ways in which structuralists construct binary oppositions.

...