POST STRUCTURALISM: DECONSTRUCTIONISM
Post-Structuralism is a late 20th century movement in philosophy, literature and literary criticism. It is a literary movement in opposition to the previous popular theory of Structuralism (1950s – 1960s). The fire of this new movement was first ignited by Jacques Derrida in 1966 when he delivered a lecture on ‘Structure, Sign and Play’ in an international symposium. In this lecture Derrida exposed the paradoxes or problems of structuralism and carved a new niche for the scholars in the field of literature and linguistics.
ORIGIN / HISTORY OF POST STRUCTURALISM:
Major Post Structuralists:
After Derrida’s lecture on ‘Structure, Sign and Play’ in 1966, the fire of deconstructionism and post structuralist approach to literature became stronger when he published three game-changing, revolutionary books in 1967.
‘Of Grammatology’
‘Writing and Difference’
‘Speech and Phenomena & Other Essays’
This post structuralist approach was further supported by Roland Barthes when he published ‘The Death of the Author’ in 1968.
Michel Foucault's ‘Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison’ published in 1975 also enhanced the theory of post structuralism.
Other notable Post-Structuralists include Gilles Deleuze (1925 - 1995), Julia Kristeva (1941 - ), Umberto Eco (1932 - 2016), Jean Baudrillard (1929 - 2007) and Judith Butler (1956 -), an American philosopher.
WHAT IS POST STRUCTURALISM OR DECONSTRUCTION?
To understand this theory of Post Structuralism or Deconstruction, we need to have a look at the major traits of this theory.
THE AUTHOR IS DEAD:
In the Post-Structuralist approach to textual analysis, the reader replaces the author as the primary subject of inquiry. Here the author is “dead”, he has no role to play in the “making of meaning”. Post Structuralists scholars try to examine other sources for meaning, i.e. readers, their cultural and social background, other literature etc. Hence, they believe that meaning does not come from the text or language. It comes from outside. And there is no consistency in the meaning. The reader interprets a work of art as per his own understanding, his own social, economic and cultural environment. As a result, meaning differs from one reader to the other.
Hence, the author's intended meaning is secondary to the meaning that the reader receives, and a literary text has no single meaning or existence. This leads to multiple meanings of the text which is the prime feature of post modernism.
MEANING IS NOT FIXED:
Structuralists believe that meaning is absolute or fixed. But poststructuralists argue that nothing in modern world is fixed or stable, and meaning too is not fixed. Derrida says that meaning is changing constantly from place to place and from person to person. He gave the theory of “Difference”.
Difference = Differ + Defer
“Differ” means “Not same”.
“Defer” means “Something which continues”.
Day / Say / Lay
In the above example, the first letters of every word is “differ” (not same) and the last two letters “ay” are “defer” (continues). “Difference” is an amalgamation or mixture of “differ” and “defer”.
PHILOSOPHY OF ABSENCE:
According to Derrida and other poststructuralists, meaning is changing because of the philosophy of absence.
___ ay / ___ ay / ___ ay
In the above three examples, the first letter is absent, which has the power to give different meanings to each word. We may use the letter “d”, “s” or “l” to give them different meanings.
NO RELATION BETWEEN “SIGNIFIER & SIGNIFIED”:
Structuralists believed that there is a relationship between “Signifier” (sound image) and “Signified” (received meaning).
But the poststructuralists like Lucan developed a theory that “Signifier” and “Signified” are not fixed and constant and hence they lead to different meanings at different times. We speak something, but we mean something else.
When we see a beautiful natural scene, we enjoy it at that moment. But there is no guarantee that we will enjoy the same scene with the same intensity after five minutes.
Time changes, mood changes, light changes, everything changes even after a moment. So poststructuralists strongly believe that meaning does not depend on “sign” and “signifier”.
NO BINARY OPPOSITION:
Structuralism believes that there is a binary (two sided) relationship between everything in this world.
Small Vs Big / Light Vs Darkness / Rich Vs Poor
We understand darkness only because we have seen the light. Someone is rich because some other person is poor. We say a table is small because it is not big.
But poststructuralists have an opposite view; they hold the idea that there is actually no binary opposition. For example, “Private Vs Public”. In today’s time of technology, there is nothing “Private”. Take another example, “Male Vs Female”. A male may have feminine qualities and in the same manner a female may have some masculine qualities. Take another example, “Light Vs Dark”. We may change the night into a day and a day into a night with the help of technology and science in the modern times.
WRITING IS SUPERIOR TO SPEECH:
Structuralists opined that speech is superior to writing. They argued that a child first learns “speaking” skill and then he learns the “writing” skill. But poststructuralists hold the view that “writing” comes first than “speaking”. Let’s see an example.
We can’t read this, because it is not “written” in our mind. A child first of all writes in his mind that so and so person is his father, and then he calls him as “father”. Hence, we may say that “speech” comes next, first comes “writing”. In fact, we may say that “speech” and “writing” are complementary to each other.
CONCLUSION:
In nutshell, we may summarize the whole discussion by saying that post structuralism was a philosophical and literary movement which was an offshoot and reaction against structuralism. It began with Derrida’s lecture on ‘Structure, Sign and Play’ in 1966. Roland Barthes, Lucan, Judith Butler and others were the major followers of post structuralism.
Post structuralism holds the argument that there is no single or fixed meaning of the text. The author’s intended meaning has nothing to do with the text. The author is dead once he finishes his creation. Meaning depends on the reader, his circumstances, and his social and cultural brought up. As a result, there are always multiple meanings of the same text.
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