post - structuralism presentation by prof. akhalaq...

P O S T S T R U C T U R A L I S M

Presentation by

Prof. AKHALAQ TADE

COORDINATOR, NAAC & IQAC

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

WILLINGDON COLLEGE SANGLI – 416 415 ( Maharashtra, INDIA )

Structuralists gave crucial importance to Saussure’s thesis which formed the base of their studies. Post-structuralism may be considered as an attempt to challenge some of the assumptions and methods followed by the structuralists. In this sense, Poststructuralism indicates a broad variety of critical perspective and procedures that destabilized the dominance of Structuralism.

Prof. Akhalaq Tade, Willingdon College,

Sangli (Maharashtra, India)

Jacques Derrida’s name is chiefly associated with post-structuralism.



Derrida, in his paper, Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences delivered in 1966 at Johns Hopkins University in America, caused the emergence of the Post-structural theory. Derrida attacked the structuralists’ view based on the Saussurean theory of language since it was he who carried out the extreme logical consequences of structuralism.



According to Saussure, a systematic structure, whether linguistic or other, presupposes a regulating “center” that controls the differential play of internal relationships without getting involved into the play. Derrida shows that this illogical and impractical notion of an ever-active yet always absent center is ‘logocentric’, that is, typical of Western thinking.



Other contemporary thinkers like Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan and Roland Barthes also undertook to ‘decenter’ or ‘subvert’ the traditional claims of the existence of self-evident foundations that assure the validity of knowledge and truth.



According to M.H. Abrams, this process of decentering of the self-evident foundations is designated by the term

‘antifoundationalism’ which is noticed to some extent in the current modes of literary studies including Marxism,

Feminism, New Historicism.



‘Postmodern’ is sometimes used interchangeably with ‘Post-structural’. The salient features of post-structural thought and criticism are as follows.

1 - The Primacy of Theory : In post-structural criticism ‘theory’ has significant position. The word ‘theory’ refers to an account of the general conditions of signification that determines meaning and interpretation in all spheres of human action, production and intellection. A prominent aspect of post-structural theories is that they are posed in opposition to inherited ways of thinking in all field of knowledge. Prof. Akhalaq Tade, Willingdon College,


2 - The Decentering of the Subject :

Post-structuralism decenters the subject. Post-structural critics strongly oppose the traditional view in which the author, the human ‘subject’, is considered a rational and competent identity gifted with purpose and initiative, and whose designs and intentions affect the form and meaning of the literary product.



Derrida abolishes the possibility of a controlling agency in language by erasing the structural linguistic center and leaves the use of language to become an unregulated play of purely rational elements, that is, of the signifiers. Thus, for Derrida, the text becomes an uncontrolled and uncontrollable play of signifiers. According to many critics of Deconstuction, the subject or author or narrator of a text becomes itself a purely linguistic product.



Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes both indicated this departure of the traditional idea of the author by announcing the ‘disappearance of the author’-

that is, ‘the death of the author’.

Michel Foucault Roland Barthes



Roland Barthes published his essay, The Death of the Author in 1968. Michel Foucault wrote his essay, What Is an Author? in 1969.



Barthes and Foucault intend to mean that a human individual is an essential bond in the chain of events that results in a parole or a text; and what they denied was the validity of the ‘function’ or ‘role’ assigned to an author. Barthes and Foucault discarded the notion that an author is the origin of all knowledge and determiner of the form and meanings of a text. A number of current forms of Marxist, Feminist, Psychoanalytic and New Historicist criticism clearly show a similar tendency of ‘decentering’ and sometimes deleting the so called ‘agency’ of the author.



According to Roland Barthes, the death of the author emancipates the reader by providing him an opportunity to enter the literary text in whatever way he or she chooses.



3 - Reading, Texts and Writing : The deletion or decentering of the author leaves the interpreter as the vital figure in post structural criticism. However the interpreter is too stripped of human attributes like that of the author and is transformed into an impersonal process called ‘reading’. This reading which engages the interpreter is no more called as a work of literature; but a ‘text’ - that is, a structure of signifiers. Prof. Akhalaq Tade, Willingdon College,


Texts, in this way in the above process, lose their individual identity, and are represented as manifestations of ‘ecriture’. A ‘text’, for a deconstructive critic, is a chain of signifiers whose seeming determinacy of meaning and reference to an extra-textual world, are nothing but ‘effects’ produced by the differential play of conflicting internal forces. Prof. Akhalaq Tade, Willingdon College,


4 - The Concept of Discourse :

In post structural criticism ‘discourse’ has become a very important term. It applies not only to conversational passages but also to all verbal constructions; and implies the superficiality of the boundaries between literary and non-literary modes of signification. Prof. Akhalaq Tade, Willingdon College,


Discourse, according to Michel Foucault, is the

central subject of criticism which is to be analyzed anonymously, just on the level of

‘it is said’ (on dit).



5 - No text can mean what it seems to say, or what its writer intends to say.

Deconstructive critics attribute the subversion of the superficial meaning to the unstable and self- conflicting nature of language itself; whereas the social analysts consider the apparent meaning of a text as a disguise or substitution for underlying meanings which cannot be expressed frankly, as they are, sometimes, unutterable. According to post-structuralists, the surface meanings of a literary or other text serve as a disguise or mask of its real meanings.



Derrida made no distinction between philosophy and literature because he thinks that all disciplines employ language; and all languages share the quality of being indeterminate. Derrida holds that there is no reliable or intimate relationship between words and reality or between words and knowledge. According to him, a word has variety of meanings and each meaning becomes a signifier ultimately pointing towards many signifieds. When we try to say something, we may be moving towards it, but we never reach it.



Derrida says that there exists no transcendental signifier or reality principle behind any text or word;

hence our quest for meaning, according to him, is only a wild goose chase.



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I T’ S

Prof. AKHALAQ TADE’S

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post - structuralism presentation by prof. akhalaq...

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